In some photographs, an overly light background spoils the entire viewing experience. It distracts, attention is scattered throughout the picture, and it is difficult for the viewer to focus on one and the most important thing. The best way out of this situation is to darken the background.
Instructions
Step 1
Photoshop is known to be a professional graphics editor with a very large set of tools, so there are countless options for darkening the background in a photo. You can simply paint over the picture with a darkening brush, you can select the main characters on a separate layer using the lasso and dim the brightness of the background layer, or simply use some kind of light filter. We want to offer you another way. At first glance, it looks a little complicated, but in fact, you don't have to do anything difficult or unusual, and the result of such darkening looks very natural and beautiful.
Step 2
For successful work we need a Quick Mask and a Gradient located on the toolbar. The kind of gradient you choose will depend on the shape of the main element of the photo. For example, when working with a portrait, it is better to choose gradient number two with rays radiating from the center, in our case, it will use gradient number 4, which will give us a smooth transition along the entire main element.
Step 3
Click the Quick Mask button. Go to the Gradient Tool, choose the one that works best for you and apply a gradient to the image so that the main element is filled with red. It should look something like this.
Step 4
Press the Quick Mask button again, thereby exiting its mode. Press CTRL + J to copy the selection to a new layer. Go to the menu item Image - Adjustments - Brightness / Contrast. Move the sliders to decrease the brightness of the layer and increase or decrease its contrast. It all depends only on how you would like to see the future photo. If it also darkens the areas that you would like to keep light, there is nothing to worry about. Turn on the layer mask on the desktop and, alternating between white and black soft brushes, remove or add darkening to the desired area of the image.
Step 5
We can say that the background is already darkened, we now have a highlighted main element in the photo - this is a girl in white, and a completely dark background. The result looks a little unnatural, and if you prefer a more natural look, lower the opacity of the top layer by 30-50 percent. This algorithm is suitable not only for darkening the background, but also for creating vignettes of different darkness and diameter.
