This week I am putting together a few posts on Photoshop Elements.  Some of these techniques can also be followed in the full version, but I am using Elements because it is in the price range of most.  I do recommend Elements as a programme, although if you are wanting to work at a professional level as an artist, designer or photographer, then I recommend stumping up for the full version which has some useful additional tools.

The technique I want to look at today is enhancing the contrast and colour in photos.   So if you have Elements and want to follow along, here we go!

First find a photo to practice with and open it in the usual way using the File menu.  There are a host of auto tools under the Enhance menu.  Experiment with these to see how they affect your image.  There's nothing wrong with using these tools, but they don't give you a great deal of flexibility.

I want to focus in this post on the tool called 'Levels'.  This tool is found in most image editing programmes so it is worth covering.  In the Enhance menu choose Lighting and then Levels.

You will get this window:

If you want to find out more about levels there is a link to the help menu where you see the light bulb symbol.

Note that under the graph you will see a white triangle on the right, a grey triangle in the middle, and a black triangle to the left.  Slide each of these triangles along the bottom of the graph to get the desired contrast.  If you click on the white triangle and slide it to the left your image will become brighter.  That is, more of the pixels contained in your image will be moved into the white area.  Moving the black triangle to the right will make the dark pixels darker.  Moving the grey triangle to the left will make the grey pixels darker, but move it to the left and you will make the grey pixels lighter.  Experiment to see what effect you get.  Moving both the white slider and the black slider nearer the middle increases the contrast in the image.

You can also use this tool to fix problems with colour.  Above the graph you will see a drop down arrow that initially says RGB (short for Red, Green, Blue).  When you click on it you will see these colours listed.    You can alter colours in the following ways:

Choose the red channel:  Moving the dark triangle in will make the image less red (and more cyan), moving the white triangle will make it more red.

Choosing the green channel:  Moving the dark triangle in will make the image less green (and more magenta), moving the white triangle will make it more green.

Choosing the blue channel:  Moving the dark triangle in will make the image less blue (and more yellow), moving the white triangle will make it more blue.

Practising with these tools will help you become more familiar with them.  Have fun!