In this video, I'm going to show you how to
make colors pop in Photoshop. Hi, welcome back to the Photoshop Training
Channel. I'm Jesus Ramirez. In this video, I'm going to show you how to
make colors pop in Photoshop. You're going to learn five different techniques
that are going to show you how to make colors stand out from one another. We're going to use techniques ranging from
adding saturation and vibrance to a photo to using complementary colors to make colors
stand out. These techniques should help you tackle any
situation that you may come across in your projects. Also, keep in mind that the examples that
I'm going to show are extreme, but when you're working with your images, remember to use
a subtle approach. Okay, let's get started. We're going to work with this image. As you can see, this image is not highly saturated,
and one way of enhancing this image would be to make the colors pop. You can, of course, create a new hue and saturation
Adjustment Layer and increase the saturation to make the colors pop. But this is not one of my favorite methods
to make colors pop. I actually like using the vibrance Adjustment
Layer instead. This Adjustment Layer also has the saturation
slider and the vibrance slider. And I know that you may not know the differences. What I'll do in this tutorial is give you
a brief explanation, but if you are interested in an in-depth tutorial, then I do have a
tutorial on that, and I'll post a link to it right below in the description. But anyway, vibrance and saturation both add
saturation to an image. Saturation simply bumps the saturation of
all pixels equally. It just increases saturation. Vibrance, on the other hand, protects already
saturated pixels and skin tones. So when I increase vibrance, notice that the
effect is not as strong as saturation, and it's more pleasing to the eye. So, increasing vibrance is what I recommend
to start with to make colors pop in a photo. If I get to a certain point, and I feel that
I still need to make the colors pop even further, I can also add the saturation adjustment to
that but keep the saturation adjustment subtle. Another thing that I can do is target specific
colors and increase the saturation of those colors. I can do that in one of two ways. I could use a hue and saturation Adjustment
Layer for that and click on this icon. Then hover over the color that you want to
make pop, in this case a dress. Click, and drag to the right and notice that
increases the saturation. Photoshop automatically selects the color
from the dropdown. In this case, the color that I selected is
found in the reds, and you can confirm that by looking at the gradient right here, right
below the properties panel. I could also click on the leaves, for example,
and increase the saturation on those. And notice that greens were selected, so this
is a way of selectively targeting colors to pop in Photoshop. The second method is by right-clicking on
the layer and converting it into a Smart Object, then applying the Camera Raw filter from the
filter menu. From here, we also have the vibrance slider
and the saturation slider. We also have access to the clarity slider,
which increases contrast and mid-tones, and that also can help you make your colors pop,
and we even have access to the hue saturation lightness tabs, where we can control those
elements with these sliders. Notice that in saturation, we have access
to eight different sliders. I'm going to press okay for now. Then, I'm going to enable the hue and saturation
Adjustment Layer and show you that here, we only have access to six different colors. So the Camera Raw filter gives us access to
more colors, and by the way, when you're working with a Smart Object, you are working non-destructively,
which means that you can always come back and edit the changes. In a Smart Object, you can double click on
the label to bring back that specific filter, in this case, the Camera Raw filter. So I can go back into hue, saturation, luminance,
and I can adjust those colors. I can increase the saturation of the oranges
and the greens, just as I did before, and I can control the luminance to make that orange
pop even more. And I can do the same thing with the greens
or any other color, of course. I can press okay, and this is what it looks
like without any adjustments and with adjustments. So these are two different techniques that
you can use to make your colors pop in a photo, and I have three more for you. The next one is going to be a little different. We're going to work with this image here,
and as you can see, this image is already highly saturated, but her shirt is not really
popping. And sure, I could create a hue and saturation
Adjustment Layer, select yellows and increase the saturation, and that would increase the
saturation of the shirt, but I want to show you an alternate technique that you can use
so that you get different results. So, I'm going to click on the quick selection
tool, and I'm going to click and drag, and I'm just going to roughly make a selection. It doesn't have to be perfect. I'm just worried about the shirt for now. I'm going to subtract from the selection once
I get a good enough selection. So, at this point, I feel like the selection
is good enough. I want to hold Alt, Option on the Mac, click
and drag to subtract from the selection. So, I'll know I'm subtracting the areas that
are not part of the shirt, like her arms, her fingers, and in a moment, I'm going to
go and move up into the shoulder area right about here and move that away and then this
area here. And again, I'm not going to spend too much
time fine-tuning the selection because that's not the point of the tutorial, but of course,
in your images, you might want to spend a little more time fine-tuning the selections. But anyway, now that I have this selection
active, I'm going to select the Eyedropper tool, and I'm just going to select any color
found on her shirt. It really doesn't matter which color it is. So, I have that color selected. Then, I'm going to create a Solid Color Adjustment
Layer, which is going to create a solid color base on the color that I selected, the color
of her shirt. Then, I can change the blending mode to soft
light, and you can see how doing so makes that color pop. So, this is another method that you can use
to make the colors pop in your image, selecting soft light as a blending mode or even overlay. In a lot of cases, overlay is a little too
much. You can, of course, reduce the opacity of
the layer if you want to, and as I mentioned before, spend more time fine-tuning the selection
so that it looks more realistic. We've been using methods that include increasing
saturation, contrast or targeting a specific color to make it stand out more. What we're going to do now is look at complementary
colors and use color theory to make colors pop in an image. So, we're going to work with this image here,
and you can see that the background is green and that the foreground is blue, and we want
to make the colors pop even more. The shirt is already highly saturated, so
one way of making it pop is by using complementary colors, and let me show you what I mean by
that. I'm going to open my browser, and I am on
Adobe Color CC's website. You can find it at color.adobe.com, that website
there, color.adobe.com. And this website allows you to select different
color theories and move these handles to get different color swatches. If you select complementary, you'll get complementary
colors. If I click and drag any one of these points,
for example, to the green area because the background of the image that we were working
with was green, you'll see that the opposite color is red. When complementary colors are put side by
side, they tend to pop, so if we want to make this shirt pop, you need to change the color
to the complementary color of the background so that it stand out. So, what I'm going to do is create a hue and
saturation Adjustment Layer, click on this icon, then hold Ctrl, Command on a Mac, click
and drag to change the color of the shirt. And if I change the color to red, you will
see that this color pops more than the blue because now, we're working with complementary
colors. So that is another technique that you can
use. Use complementary colors, put them side by
side so that it pops. Also, I chose to change the color of the shirt,
but I could have just as easily changed the color of the background. So, if we go back into our color wheel, you
will see that the opposite of blue, the complementary color of blue, is yellow or orange, depending
on the blue. So, we'll be safe with selecting a yellow-orange
color. So, if I go back into Photoshop, I can create
a hue and saturation Adjustment Layer and do the same exact thing. Hold the Ctrl, Command on the Mac, click and
drag to change the color of the background until we have an orange or yellow color. So, somewhere about here, maybe increase the
saturation a bit and the lightness. So that's before and after. So this is a complementary color method that
you can use to make colors pop in Photoshop. And I have a final method for you. This one is actually very simple. We're going to work with this image here of
this red car, and another way of making colors pop is by desaturating all colors except for
the ones that you want to pop. So, you can go into the maskers in the dropdown
and reduce the saturation of the entire image. Then, you can select reds and increase the
saturation, so now, the reds pop because all the other colors are muted. That is one way of doing it. Another way of doing it is by reducing the
saturation, then creating a hue and saturation Adjustment Layer, which controls the reds
and increases saturation to that. And the reason that you may want to do this
is so that you can delete the layer mask and then use the lasso tool to make a rough selection
around the car, create a layer mask. And now, this Adjustment Layer only takes
care of the car. You will notice that there is some saturation
on the ground. That's easily fixed by doing two things. First, I can increase the feather, which blurs
the edge of the mask if I hold Alt, Option on the Mac and click on the layer mask thumbnail. You can see how that edge is blurred as I
increase the feather. I'm going to hold Alt, Option on the Mac again
and click on the layer mask thumbnail to bring that back. Then, I can use the brush tool and with a
soft brush with a hardness of 0%, and you can see how I'm painting with black on that
layer mask to hide those pixels. And notice that I'm not being very precise,
but I'm getting good results. So that's before and after, and of course,
I can control the Opacity of this layer so that it's not so strong, so before and after. And, obviously, in this tutorial, I used extreme
examples to make it easy to see, but you don't have to go as extreme as I did in these examples. Also, as I've been working through this tutorial,
you probably noticed that I have a banana here on my tools bar. If you want to know what that's about, then
look at the description. I've placed a link there to a video that describes
it, and it shows you how to get it. Let me know in the comments below which of
these techniques was new to you or which you plan to use on your next project. Also, if this your first time at the Photoshop
Training Channel, then don't forget to click on that and subscribe and notification buttons. Thank you so much for watching, and I will
see you at the next tutorial.
