One of the tasks arising in the processing of the results of subject photography, which was carried out with insufficient or incorrectly exposed lighting, is the whitening of the background of the photographs. You can turn grayish areas of such photos into white using the Replace Color option.
Necessary
- - Photoshop program;
- - Photo.
Instructions
Step 1
Open the image to be processed in a graphics editor and create a copy of the image on a new layer using the Duplicate Layer option of the Layer menu. In the process of work, you may need fragments of the original photo, so it makes sense to save it in the document.
Step 2
If the background of the picture looks almost white, but you are not sure if the colors are displayed correctly on the monitor, you can check the color composition of the background. To do this, use the Info option of the Window menu to turn on the information palette and move the cursor over the image. In areas where the value of the color component of any of the channels will differ from 255, the background is not pure white.
Step 3
If there are not too many areas with such a background shade, you can paint over them with the Brush tool, choosing white as the main color. To do this, click on the sample of the main color and enter the value ffffff in the input field.
Step 4
If the background of the image needs a more thorough correction, open the color replacement settings window with the Replace Color option in the Adjustments group of the Image menu. When you hover over the image, the cursor will look like an eyedropper. By clicking with this tool on a fragment of the picture, indicate the color that you want to change.
Step 5
As a rule, the background of images that need to be brightened contains areas of different brightness. Choose the darkest area of the background as a sample of the replacement color, but do not use the shadow cast by the subject in the photo. Adjust the Fuzziness parameter so that the entire background in the preview window is light. The subject in the frame must remain dark.
Step 6
Click on the color swatch in the Result field and select a pure white color from the palette that opens. If the result of lightening the background, which you can see in the open document window, does not suit you, move the Lightness slider to the right.
Step 7
Strong background lightening can affect the subject in the photo. Most often, in such a situation, its edges suffer. To return the subject to its original appearance, create a mask on the modified layer using the Reveal All option in the Layer Mask group of the Layer menu. Paint the mask with black in areas where the subject should look like in the original photo. For convenience, zoom in on the image.
Step 8
Save the edited picture with the Save for Web or Save As option of the File menu.
