Kissy Photo Shoot

Today I am going to show you how to make an average photo look a little brighter.

Before and After photo

Today I was going for a brighter kind of washed out girlie look.

Ok, I like to use my tablet for pretty much anything on Photohop. But, if you don't have a tablet then it is just as easy to use your mouse. I also need to state that I am using Photoshop CS2, but most of this stuff is pretty basic, so I am sure that its just as easy on any other version.

First start off with opening up the photo you want to adjust in Photoshop... pretty straight forward ☺

What you will want to do next is zoom into your picture where you would like it to be, and then crop it. You don't need to crop it all the way down to where you want it to be at the end, but its easier if the image doesnt have all the extra background stuff that you don't want.

Next you will want to find the "Levels" tool.

Once you find it, adjust the image so that it appears to be lighter. I usually slide the middle arrow to the left a bit as well as the far right arrow. And then I slide the left arrow to the right just a tini bit.

Then you will want to find your "Blur Tool". You will want to use this to smooth out any grainy spots in your photo. The lighting was poor in the room that I took this in, so I needed to use it. If you took your picture outside or in a nicely lit room, you might not need to use this.

I decided after smoothing everything out that I wanted there to be a bit more contrast. So if you also decide this at any point find your contrast/brightness tool.

This tool is pretty straight forward to use. If you play around with the bars you will get it.

Now find and open  your color balance tool.

This tool is great to use if you have too much of any color in your picture. For example, the lights in my bedroom (where the picture was taken) have a lot of yellow in them. And the sheets are also a little yellowy. So when you open your color balance tool, you will want to slide the bar the opposite of the color you are trying to fade out. So I slid the bar further towards blue, but when I did this it looked a little more red, so I slid it to Cyan. You get the point, so slide the bars around until it looks more natural.

Next you will want to find your burn tool. You will want to use this tool where there are any shadows, or dark spots. You just want to make these spots a tini bit darker so your image doesn't look quite as washed out from using the levels tool and the contrast tool. In this particular picture I also darkened up the kiss marks a little more so they were more noticeable.

Now find your dodge tool. This is the tool used to lighten instead of darken.

Now you will want to get a bigger brush for your dodge tool. Once you have done that lighten around the edges and around your baby/kid/whateva ☺
Once you have done that you can crop your image to whatever size you would like it to be at, I decided I wanted a little less of the background, but you don't have to do this.

You now have your finished product! 

This is a great way to make your more "grainy" pictures look nicer. There are different techniques for making pictures look nice if they are really clear. I will show you one of those another time.
Thanks for reading!