Enhancing Washed out Photos

By: Nicole Young

From Washed Out to WOW! Enhancing washing out photos Do you have a stack of photos that are washed out and you aren’t sure what to do with them?? Wish they had that WOW factor that other photos have? This tutorial will help take your washed out photos to a whole new level! 1. Start by opening your photo that you want to enhance. Copy it and paste it as a new image. (this way we are working on a copy of the photo rather than the original) Here is the photo I started with: 2. Duplicate your photo and set the top layer to the blend mode of Overlay at 100% opacity. 3. Duplicate the layer again and set the new top layer to multiply at 100% opacity. 4. Duplicate the layer again and set the new top layer to overlay at 50% opacity. 5. Duplicate the layer again and set the new top layer to burn at 10% opacity. 6. Merge the visible layers (you can do this by right clicking on the top layer in your layers palette and choosing Merge>Merge Visible) 7. Duplicate this layer and while the top layer is the active layer go to Effects>Photo Effects>Black and White Film The settings I used were: Brightness of 9, Clarify of 4, Red 30.2%, Green 41.6%, Blue 28.2% (feel free to change these settings according to your own photo!) This is after the Black and White treatment: 8. Next , duplicate the Black and White layer, while the top layer is active, go to Effects>Photo Effects>Sepia Toning and set it to 80 years 9. Set the sepia toned layer to the blend mode of Color at an opacity of 60%. Here are the final images that I created using the steps in this tutorial: Tutorial as it is written produced this photo: Turning off the sepia toned layer produces this black and white photo: Turning back on the sepia toned layer, but turning off the black and white layer produces this antique colored photo: