Tutorial:How to Enhance the Color of an Object Using Photoshop

In this tutorial you will learn how to enhance the color of an object, such as a hair, making it more vivid and surely lovely!

Step 1: Place the photo you want to retouch on your document or get the “before” photo above, then press Ctrl-J to duplicate the photo. This will help preserve the original photo.
Step 2: The original photo looks a bit dark so we should make it brighter first. Go to Image>Adjustments>Curve and move the line up a bit

Our photo now looks brighte

Step 3: Next we should contrast her hair’s color for better modification, so use the Burn Tool to “burn” it a bit

Step 4: Create a new layer and change its blending mode to Overlay. This mode will apply its colors to the below layers so we can change her hair’s colors, make it vivid

Step 5: Use the Gradient Tool with gradient color from dark yellow to light yellow as following:

You should reduce the Opacity of this effect a bit to make sure it doesn’t look too bright, then draw a straight line from top-left to bottom-right of this photo and you will get:

Step 6: Add a layer mask to this layer and use the Brush tool to remove yellow light from the background (curtain) and her skin

Step 7: Press Ctrl-J to duplicate this layer to get a more vivid hair

Step 8: Once again use the Brush tool on the layer masks to erase unwanted yellow areas, focus on the edges of her hair

Step 9: Create a new layer and fill it (Edit>Fill) with 50% gray and change the blending mode of this layer to Overlay. The Overlay mode lets gray light go through so we can see the underlying layers. By using the Burn Tool on this new layer we can “burn” the gray to a darker color and you can see the effect on the photo.

Use the Burn Tool with a soft brush to paint some areas on her hair to make it look more real

Step 10: Finally we should blur this layer a bit to stretch “burn” effect to make it look soft and natural by going to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur

If you feel her hair too bright then you can reduce the opacity of the two underlying layers

Well, it’s all! Let’s have a look at the result again:

In conclusion, we can use Over mode to enhance the color of an object and use a 50% gray layer with Overlay mode to enhance subtle details and make it more real. Hope you enjoy this tutorial!

credit: 9tuts.com