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Dramatic Color Effects

 

How to jazz up your photos with dramatic color effects.

Corey Barker

Corey Barker is Executive Producer of PlanetPhotoshop.com and is an Education and Curriculum Developer for the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. Corey has also made numerous appearances on the highly rated podcast, PhotoshopUser TV, and is co-host of Layers TV.

18 Comments

  1. Jay Waltmunson said on — March 28, 2008 @ 10:07 pm

    Corey, you have a great teaching style! I hope we can see more of these. Well paced and I learned a few tricks along the way (e.g., copying the channel to its own layer). One suggestion would be to supply the photo so that someone could ensure your exact steps, comparing to the before and after.

  2. Julie said on — March 31, 2008 @ 12:46 pm

    I tried to follow your instructions but I use Photoshop Elements 6.0. I got stuck when trying to use the channels after adding the Vivid Light Background copy. Can you post the same article using ELEMENTS?
    Thanks so much
    julie

  3. Corey Barker said on — April 23, 2008 @ 2:35 pm

    As this effect requires the use of channels, it can only be achieved in full version Photoshop. Elements doesn’t allow access to the color channels.

  4. Paulo Jordao said on — April 23, 2008 @ 6:50 pm

    Great tutorial… fun to watch you working.
    Thanks

  5. sasa said on — May 3, 2008 @ 12:56 pm

    very cool, quality tutorials

  6. Kayla said on — May 3, 2008 @ 11:48 pm

    How can I reset my channels back to normal, its stuck at grey… and i can no longer use colors!
    HELP!
    thanks,
    Kayla

  7. Venkatx5 said on — May 8, 2008 @ 2:19 am

    Cool Tutorial..
    Kayla : After Duplicating the Red Color Channel, you’ve to select the Top Most Channel which shows all Channels. :D

  8. Evie said on — May 29, 2008 @ 9:44 am

    Great tutorial.

    Lots of help jazzing up photos in my digital photography class.

  9. Zen said on — July 6, 2008 @ 9:00 am

    i enjoy all your tutorials, they’re amazing and easy to follow…nice one mate

  10. 13 Photoshop Must Have Photographer Resources Pingback on — October 6, 2008 @ 9:37 am

    [...] 6. http://www.planetphotoshop.com/dramatic-color-effects.html [...]

  11. Abdullah said on — October 20, 2008 @ 10:04 pm

    Hey, nice tutorial. All the tutorials I’ve seen are great, easy to follow. I found this site yesterday by random and thank God I found it.

  12. Faith said on — February 4, 2009 @ 11:12 am

    Hello there,
    I was wondering if it would be possible for someone to actually write the steps down to some of the longer techniques and have them available alongside the video. I love the videos they are great, but I can not recall all the stuff you said when I try it for myself so have to keep starting and stopping the video to follow it!
    Not a very good way to work!

    I buy a photo mag in the UK which has a DVD of video techniques and also has them written in the mag so you can refer to that after watching the videos I find that an easy way to work, but I have to say their stuff isn’t as good as yours!

  13. Edwin said on — February 25, 2009 @ 9:13 am

    thanks for this cool tutorial. Now I could make this for my photo product dramatically… :)

  14. Vish said on — February 27, 2009 @ 8:20 am

    Corey those tutes are so helpful:) thanks!!!

  15. Zach said on — June 17, 2011 @ 5:30 pm

    I can’t believe you’ve had numerous appearances and an executive producer of such identity doing things like these. You’re colors and contrast are too drastic. Original looked way better with a few minor adjustments. I guess it’s really not what you know but who you know. take care.

  16. African Paintings Gallery » Blog Archive » Color effect pictures Pingback on — July 24, 2011 @ 3:16 am

    [...] Dramatic Color Effects | Effects Photography Tutorials Videos … One suggestion would be to supply the photo so that someone could ensure your exact steps, comparing to the before … [...]

  17. Leo said on — September 14, 2011 @ 1:12 am

    To Zach, wow you’ve read my mind. That effect gave me the creeps. It makes the photo to stand out and would definitely catch my eye if I would be browsing through photos. But that is because of how colorful it is rather than how well photoshoped it is. That effect puts the photo in photoshop disaster category. Sorry for being harsh but that’s my opinion.

  18. Corey Barker said on — September 14, 2011 @ 10:29 am

    Sadly the finished effect does not come across well on the compressed video. The final image, as seen in Photoshop came out really dramatic and the detail can be seen more.

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Create A Composite Layer

If you have a multilayer composition and you
want to apply an effect to all the layers at once, don’t flatten the layers–use a composite layer instead. Hide the layers you want excluded, and press Shift-Command-Option-E (PC: Shift-Ctrl-Alt-E). A new layer will be created at the top containing a merged copy of all the visible layers.

Another option is to create a new layer at the top of the stack and make it active. Command-click (PC: Ctrl-click) each layer you want to include to make those layers active, as well. Press Option-Command-E (PC: Alt-Ctrl-E).
by Colin Smith

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