The lovely thing about digital photography (and I am being facetious here) is that is leaves your images with this ugly grey saran-wrap type film effect.
Although I no longer use photoshop (except to design art and drop images into blog templates), I’d like to pass on a couple of super-simple PS tricks that effectively remove that grey film from your images and leave them looking pretty darn good. The best part? They each take just seconds to do.
The first one: (be sure to duplicate your background layer first)
Original unedited image on the left. On the right: increased local contrast with unsharp mask. See image notes for settings.
f/5.6 100 ISO 1/30 sec 35mm
The next one is even better at removing that grey film. Be careful not to use too heavy a hand though- you can end up with too much contrast- blown out highlights, overly-dark shadows and uber-saturated unreal colors.
Duplicate background layer (don’t skip this step- it affects the outcome). In the layer style drop-down box at the top of the layers palette, select hard light. Set the opacity of the dupe layer to somewhere between 19% and 56%. The higher the percent, the stronger the contrast.
BTW: This is Henri, aka ‘H’. He is a movie star.
Both similar ways to increase contrast, but in a more sophisticated way than straight levels.
Have fun with it!
