Tonight, I’m gonna show you guys a few simple Photoshop techniques to make your blogging photos look better, and literally, Wow-ing your readers.

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!