Photoshop tutorial

Okay, so I've been getting quite a few questions about how I edit my photos.

I thought I'd give you a step-by-step of how I usually edit them! I've never had any sort of Photoshop training, this is just what I came up with by playing around.

So the left one is what came out of the camera, the right one's what we're gonna create.

I use Photoshop CS on this Mac, but what I do can be done (better) with all other versions of Photoshop.

First I use the clone stamp tool to get rid of those plastic bags, streetlights etc.

What I always use are gradient layers. If you've never used them, play around with them a bit. They can really change the look and feel of your photo, and achieve a much nicer effect than the photo filters Photoshop offers.

Go to Layers > Adjustment Layers > Gradient Map. You'll end up with a screen looking somewhat like this:

I usually just do a two-color gradient; you can choose the colors you want by clicking on the little square underneath the bar. I usually take yellow and pink tones, but if you're looking for a different atmosphere you could go for blue or whatever you like. Like I said: fun to play around with.

Once we've applied the layer, we're gonna lower the opacity.

See what happens to the colors in your photo.

Because you're working in layers, you can always go back and change the colors if they don't end up the way you expected once the opacity's lowered.

If you want to create that hazy effect we're gonna create another gradient layer, but just on a part of the photo. Usually you want this to be the part of the photo where the natural light comes from, so I selected the whole top part of this photo (using the lasso tool) and feathered it (Select > Feather).

Feathering just means you're smoothening the edges of your selection. The amount of feathering needed depends on the size of your photo. Seeing as mine's pretty big I'm gonna take the maximum of 250px.

Then you go to Layers> Adjustment Layers > Gradient Map again.

As you can see, the gradient shows only on the part that I selected. I chose light pink with white, but again, play around with that. Keep the colors lighter than the original colors though.

Again, lower the opacity to where you think it looks nice. It's important to keep it subtle.

Then I select the subject of the photo, feather it a bit and make a levels layer. (Layers> Adjustment Layer > Levels). I drag the right arrow a bit to the centre, you'll see it'll become a bit lighter.

In the end I crop the photo a bit (always save cropping for last!) and I'm done!

Hope that was helpful!