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I Met A Man Who Wasn't There (sharizard) wrote in rp_tutorials,
@ 2010-10-17 13:38:00

Entry tags:

images: editing

Question on image editing
Hello, hello! There was a post in here a while back on adjusting images that are dark so you can make decent icons out of them (or something along those lines). I believe it was for Photoshop. I can't seem to find it in the tags, so I'm not sure if it was deleted or not, but I need to get a picture sort of evenly lightened to icon it.

I have Photoshop and GIMP so any links or tips to accomplish this would be greatly appreciated. The image is http://tinypic.com/r/eju2wh/7.

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fromamerica
2010-10-17 06:39 pm UTC (link)

Writing a full tutorial on this kind of thing is hard because every image is different, so you can't do a 'this works for most things' kind of tutorial. However! The best tools for this are usually Brightness & Contrast meets Levels.

My computer with my programs are in the shop, so I used pixlr to mess a bit. Under Pixlr, these tools are under adjustment. I believe the path in Photoshop is Edit > Levels and Edit > Brightness & Contrast, I'm not at all sure about Gimp.

If you open Levels first, you should see a graph looking thing and three arrows at the bottom. Grab the far right arrow, it may be white depending on your program/version. If you drag this left, it will increase the white in the image, thus making it brighter. The middle one can be played with to try and keep things from being too washed out. You really have to play with it, it's an eyeballing thing.

Then you can go to Brightness and Contrast. Brightness will lighten the whole picture, and can really fade it out. Get it to a brightness you like (pull the arrow right) then you can mess with the contrast to help any bleach-outs.

Lastly, you might mess with Hue & Saturation or Color Balance. This image, for example, turned very very yellow with the adjustments, playing around with those two or a combination of those two can take it back more towards 'normal' colors.

I will note that not every image can be 'saved,' but this is a good way to give it a fighting chance.

I hope that helps?

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	fromamerica 2010-10-17 07:14 pm UTC (link)
	Ah, the paths are Image > Adjustment > Levels and Image > Adjustment > Brightness Contrast Sorry! (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	sharizard 2010-10-18 03:47 pm UTC (link)
	It's okay, thanks so much for your help! (Reply to this) (Parent)

tetris
2010-10-17 07:19 pm UTC (link)

Okay, contrast and brighten are only going to do so much. They'll make the image darker while brightening everything AROUND the figures, basically. What you want to do is use the "screen" option. First, in photoshop you go to "LAYER - DUPLICATE LAYER." When the next layer comes up, go to the right-hand sidebar and look for where it says "NORMAL / OPACITY 100%." You have to open the box and it'll give you a ton of options. Darken, Brighten, etc. Choose SCREEN. This will instantly make your image lighter, but sometimes it'll be too pale so you need to adjust the OPACITY. If it's still too dark, though, you can just duplicate the SCREEN layer again and it'll go even lighter. Keep doing this until you achieve what you want.

After that, you do to it like you would any other image. Adjust the levels, brighteness, contrast, sharpening. You should get a pretty decent image.

(Reply to this)

tetris
2010-10-17 07:24 pm UTC (link)

And like someone said above, fiddling with it makes the image VERY yellow like below:

While it can't ALWAYS be fixed, playing around with it in selective colouring may help. This is what my playing around got:

Not perfect, but it took away a lot of the ugly greenish/yellow tones. I tried to make an icon from it, but it wasn't too good. I'm sure your playing around will be more dedicated thsan mine.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	adam_west 2010-10-18 10:52 am UTC (link)
	wow this looks really good! compared to what it was! (Reply to this) (Parent)

	sharizard 2010-10-18 03:47 pm UTC (link)
	This really does look fantastic, thanks so much for all of your help! You saved my sanity! (Reply to this) (Parent)

	nimbuschick 2010-10-20 02:15 am UTC (link)
	Sometimes, before I play with levels, I just make a new layer and set it as a screen. Occasionally it's all I need to add enough contrast and it's way easier. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	nimbuschick 2010-10-20 02:15 am UTC (link)
	*duplicate layer (Reply to this) (Parent)