How do you contrast a picture on photoshop?
I was wondering if you can change the contrast of a picture can you select which part of the picture you want to contrast or does it only do the whole picture
I was wondering if you can change the contrast of a picture can you select which part of the picture you want to contrast or does it only do the whole picture
Comments
In Photoshop, Lightroom and many other photo editing software, you can do either global (affecting the entire image) or local (affecting specific areas) adjustments. These types of adjustments that can be made either globally or locally are huge. Pretty much every filter, and every possible adjustment can be done either way.
The best way to control locally is to create an adjustment layer, make your adjustments globally, and then create a mask to remove the affect from the areas that you want to leave unaffected by the adjustment. Yes, you can easily avoid this multi-layer step by just creating a selection using the Magic Wand, Lasso Tool, Pen Tool, and various other methods. Then, with just that area selected, you can make any and all adjustments including filters.
The down side to NOT using multiple adjustment layers is that once you save the image, say as a JPEG, you loose the ability to go back and und what you've done. With adjustment layers, you can close and reopen the file and then go into each layer and undo anything. This non-destructive way of editing is considered to be THE way of editing images. Once completed, you will have to save the image as something other than a JPEG because JPEGs cannot have multiple layers. A TIFF file format is a great option as it can be 8-bit to 32-bit files. Once that image is saved, then you can go ahead and flatten the layers and save that version as a JPEG to be used on social media, to send to a printer, etc...
Go to YouTube and do a search for Photoshop adjustment layers, there's a bit to it and a little bit of a learning curve, but it's not really that hard.
You can also select an area using either the Marquee or Lasso tools. Set some sort of Feather. When you make an adjustment, only the parts in the selection will change. As ? states, best to use an adjustment layer so you can make changes later on without affecting the original image.
You can do both. If you select a part of the photo first, you can apply contrast just to that part. If not, contrast will affect the whole thing.