Photoshop for beginners Part-11, Change foreground color, Lighten the rock area - Curves Adjustment

 In this image, I want to lighten the foreground area and change the color of the rocks as well as dodge this rock over here a little bit more heavily.

In order to do so, I will start off by making a selection. I can quickly select the quick selection tool by taping the w key or you can select it from the toolbar. Then I will click and drag in the foreground rock area to select it. I can always release my cursor and continue adding my selection. And because photoshop has selected a little bit too much I will hold down the alt key and just drag to deselect this extra selected are here. Once I have my selection from the bottom of the layer panel, I’ll choose curves to add my curves adjustment layer. As soon as I add the “curves adjustment layer” Photoshop converts the selection into a mask. We can see on the layers panel where the mask is white in the rock area that’s where the adjustment will be visible and it will hide it from the black area of the mask. Now I could click in the area of the curve to start manipulating the curves or I can use the on-screen adjustment tool, click in the foreground area, and then drag up in order to lighten the area or drag down in order to darken it. I am going to lighten the foreground but it’s looking a little bit flat so I release my cursor and then in the properties panel I will click and drag down the base of the curves here in order to add back a little bit of contrast. In curves, you can also go in the individual channels and adjust the color. I select blue from the list I want to subtract blue so I am going to click and drag down. As I subtract blue the rocks are going to take on a nice warmer look. Then I switch to the red channel, Here I want to increase red so I just click and drag up a bit.

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In order to soften the edges of the mask, I going to click the mask icon and add a feather so I can no longer see the difference between the selected areas. We can switch off the adjustment layers eye to see before and after-effects. You can also add a curves adjustment layer and the paint in the mask in order to hide and reveal the adjustment. I want to brighten the rock a bit. So, at the bottom of the Layers panel, I will add another curves adjustment layer, this time I am going to click directly on the curves and drag them up to lighten them. But I don’t want to affect the entire image. So, from the edit menu, I will choose to fill, and then I will fill this with black, Photoshop hide the adjustment layer from the entire image. I will tab the “b” key or select brush tool from the toolbar and then will adjust the brush size to get a larger brush. I want to make sure that white is the foreground color and black is the background color. I will change the opacity to maybe 20%. So, I can paint in this rock area and each time I lay down a stroke it’s going to dodge that area. So, I just make a number of small strokes. And use the left bracket key to reduce the brush size or the right bracket key to larger the brush size. So, let’s click on the eye icon to see what have I have done. Now you can see there is before and after. Finally, I want to add a vignette to this image. So, Under the select menu, I’ll choose “Select All” And then I want to modify this selection. So, I’ll choose to select modify and contract. I’ll contract it for about 250P. I want to be sure “apply effect at canvas bound” I’ll click ok. I will add another curves adjustment layer. I’ll drive the curve down in order to darken it. Using the mask option, I’ll scroll down and click ‘invert’ and then add a large feather to soften that edge. You can see adding an adjustment layer in Photoshop is a very powerful way to change not only the tonality but also the color in your image.