Put your dull, colorless photos into Photoshop and turn them into something that will make your friends ask, “Hey, when did you get a DSLR?”

I took this photo (below) of Cafe Cafe in Sibu a while back. I thought it lacks vibrancy in its color. For sure, without the comparison, most of us amateur photographer would be satisfied with the first picture. I’ll be showing LAB Color mode technique to add vibrancy to your photo. This technique works great on photos with rich color elements.

Before and After – The power of a little adjustment on the Lab color mode.

This will be the original photo we’ll be working. The photo was taken during our last trip to Bangkok from an overhead bridge over the busy streets of Bangkok.

The photo is perfect for this type of technique as it’s filled with rich color variations in its fruits.

First I’m gonna duplicate the original layer and work on the duplicated layer. It’ll be called “Background copy”.

Go to Image > Mode > Lab Color. It’ll turn the color mode of the duplicated layer to Lab mode. Photoshop will prompt you to Flatten the images.

Choose “Don’t Flatten”. You’ll be needing the original layer so you can blend the editted layer into it.

Next, go to Image > Adjustment > Curves

Channel: Lightness. You can leave this as is, or you can adjust your picture to get better lighting.

Choose a from the Channel drop-down list. Move the top and bottom point of the graph so you get something like above. Note that you’ll need to move the same amount of column for the top and bottom point. If you move 2 columns on the top point, do the same on the bottom point.

Repeat the same step to Channel: b.

Now, right click on the “Background copy” and select Blending Option.

Select “Overlay” as the Blend mode and opacity. You can play around with the opacity to get the result you desired.

Before

After

You’ll end up with a vibrant, colorful photo like this. Now who said the original photo looked okay? Try this today and wow your friends!

Here’s another technique to create a sharp and vivid photo but yet, soft to look at. So I surf around blogs and found this photos which I think suits my intention tonight. With permission, I grabbed the photo of MiriCommunity.net’s Favorite blogger, Miss Goolooloo, and loaded it up in my Photoshop.

This is the original pic. Many would think that the color is good enough already and thus, need no editting. But as always, a little effort can go a long way in making the photo looks more vibrant.

Duplicate the background layer so you get something like this. I renamed it Layer 1 and further work will be done on this layer. Highlight the layer by selecting it.

Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur, then apply about 20-30 pixels to its radius, make it blur enough so you can’t see the detail of the original photo.

After that, right click on “Layer 1″ in the layer window and select “Blending Option”. You’ll come up with this window where you’ll pick “Overlay” as the Blend mode and set Opacity at around 85%. You can play with the opacity from 0-100% until you get the perfect picture that you desire.

This will be the final picture. Fast and easy way to wow your friends with your photos!

But there’s more, I wanna make the photo look more dreamy. So here goes another round of gaussian blurring.

I duplicated the original photo at the “Background” layer. It’ll be automatically named “Background Copy”. We’ll be working on the duplicated layer.

Repeat the Gaussian blur step with the same value. Then repeat the Blending option step with Overlay as Blend mode and Opacity at around 80% depending on your desired dreaminess.

This is what I get after the blend. Dreamy and lovely!

Hope you guys have enjoyed the tutorial and make use of it in your next blog post! Stay tuned for more! Alright, time to go to bed. Good night bb!

The only tools you’ll need is Photoshop and some CSS knowledge. Let me show you how it’s done, it’s easy and everyone can do it.

In Photoshop, open a new document and name is “Stamp”, make its width and height both 300 pixels, follow the parameters as follow.

I’m gonna make the stamp white. So, select White as the foreground color.

Next, select the Custom Shape Tool.

Choose the spiky edged circle in the list of custom shapes.

After that, create the shape by holding down the “Shift” key and drag the mouse along the workspace. Don’t make it too big cause we’ll need some space to put some other things in later…

In the Layers window, right click on the shape layer and click “Rasterize Vector Mask”

Next, create a new layer beneath the Shape layer.

Flood the layer with whatever dark color that you may like as this is to make the white colored shape standout and easier to work with. I flooded it with #FF9B00.

It’s time to play around with the Stamp. Right click on the “Shape 1″ layer and click on Blending Options.

I’ve set the Drop Shadow’s parameters as shown in the image above.

I need some 3Dism look to the stamp, so I checked Bevel and Emboss and set the parameters as shown above.

Remember to change the Gloss Contour as well (pick the contour as shown above).

You should have something like this after the blends.

Next off, I created another layer in the middle of the 2 layers.

It’ll be a type layer. I chose Arial as the font face with 400pt. What I need to make is a white strap to be place behind the stamp. Type in 2-3 underlines ( ___ ), and that should be able to do the job.

Then, rasterize the type layer that you’ve just made.

Make sure that the white strap is behind the stamp. Also, centralize all the layers in an order manner.

Now that you’ve created the base of the stamp, you can start putting your name, your logo, photos, just about anything you want onto the stamp. This is what I did.

Create a new layer above all layers.

Set the type parameters as these.

I’ll just use “Award” as this will be a stamp for all Awards. Up to this point, the image is ready to be used. But as for my case, I’m trying to put it on my blog, so I needed more modifications.

I’m gonna put the stamp on the left hand corner of my website, so I need to tilt it a bit to make it look like those classic tilted stamps.

Click on Image > Rotate Canvas > Arbitrary.

I’ll tilted it 40 degrees counter-clockwise as I need to put it on the upper left hand corner. If you chose to put it on the upper right hand corner instead, rotate it 40 degree clockwise.

Select the area and make sure that the white strap is perfect and not cut-off. Then, crop the selection. Select Image > Crop.

The outcome would look like this.

If you need a transparent background, like I do, just delete the orange background in Layer 1 and save it as .GIF with transparency.

Now, the image is done. It’s time to move on to the programming part.

Copy and paste this line into your CSS file.

img.logo {
position:absolute; top: 0px; left: 0px;
}

And insert this line in the BODY part of the page where you want the stamp to appear.

<a href="http://www.xyz.com"><img src="http://www.xyz.com/where/yourimageis/stamp.gif" class="logo" /></a>

Hola! It’s done. And you should see something like this (I created a different stamp for my own blog). I do hope that you’ve enjoyed trying this tutorial.