Lighten images

[bradhathaway]

I have a picture where the sun was shining in a different direction and caused my brother to be dark on half of his body and face, how would I lighten just him in the picture?

[Colin Walls]

To do this kind of thing requires you to master some fundamental PS functionality - actually the fundamental operations of digital image manipulation.

Broadly, you need to select just the area to be affected [your bro] and apply appropriate effects [increase brightness].

How exactly would I do it? Depends a bit upon the image. I would possibly select him using the extract tool [having copied the layer] and tidy up using the history brush and/or QuickMask. I'd insert a brightness/contrast adjustment layer, with a mask made from this selection. I'd add a gradient to this mask.

Hopefully this will lead you in the right direction Brad and guide you to the right things to look up in the manual and online help. If you need more assistance, do come back.

[YrbkMgr]

A quick and nifty little technique that works well on some images is to copy the layer/selection, then paste it as it's own layer and set the blend mode to Screen. You can vary the opacity to fine tune it.

[-Splunge-]

OK this might confuse you but it's just a mod of what Yrbk suggested....(a cool way to select the dark areas of the face)

Go under SELECT - COLOR RANGE

A little box should come up with a small version of your pic....Put the cursor over the DARK part of the face on the real image and click...That part should turn white in the box...adjust the 'FUZZINESS' if you want to expand the selection a little...

Hit OK.

Go back under SELECT - FEATHER

Depending on the resolution of the image select say 2-3 for 72 dpi or about 5-10 for 300.

Now hit CTRL-J (makes a new layer of the selection) and set the blend to Screen.

You may need to tweek these setting a bit for your picture but as long as you use the CTRL-J you'll never hurt the original!

[YrbkMgr]

A note about using the Selection|Color Range tool. When the dialog is open, you can use the eye dropper and the shift key to ADD color ranges to your selection; Also, the sample area used is defined by the eyedropper tool (5x5, 3x3, or point sample).

Cheese, Dodge/burn work sometimes, but I find they are too generic - it's like brightness and contrast. I think there are other tools that give greater control over lightening and darkening, personally. But hey, if they work for a particular image <shrug> great.

Peace,
Tony

[dave milbut]

brad, try this old adobe tutorial:

<http://aikodude.tripod.com/PSRemoveShadows/main.html>

[Colin Walls]

Dave:
That tutorial seems kinda clunky - makes me wonder which version of PS it was for - not a layer or mask in sight!
Having said that, it works a treat [with PS7].
I'm now trying to work out how to apply the same idea the "modern" way ...
Thanks.

[William Kazak]

I would use the lasso tool. Lasso your bro, then use lighten or darken tools
or even the color adjustments if needed.