How to Adjust Mood in a Photograph
Posted on 23 December 2011 by Sean Farmer
The mood in a photo can define the whole photograph. A dark and somber, or even pensive photograph’s mood is typically set by a low key, but if you take the same photograph and shoot it in large key, it can completely alter the photograph producing it seem light hearted and fun. Even though it is crucial to get the mood proper when you shoot by setting the lighting, utilizing filters, or what ever else you need to achieve the mood you want, often it is not achievable, particularly in outdoor and place photography. So here is a good technique you can do in Photoshop to change the mood of a photograph to much better suit what you genuinely wished to capture.
I will commence with this picture, and alter its mood to a more Dark and Urban mood.
1) Create a new Empty layer, and fill it with your secondary tone.
This layer will provide a secondary color tone for your image. In the image I am working with I chose to use a darker brown to compliment the designs skin colour as well as create a darker undertone. As soon as you have created this layer you will need to have to set its blending mode to Soft Light, and minimize the Fill to someplace in between 25-40%, dependent on the strength of the undertone you want. For the picture I am making use of I set the Fill to 37%
Picture after adding a Brown toner layer.
two) Generate another new Empty layer, and fill it with your primary tone.
This layer will work a lot like the first, except that the color utilized in this layer will be the primary tone utilized to create the mood of the photograph. You will need to have to set the Blending Mode of this layer to Soft Light and the fill between 50-80%. Typically, I uncover it greatest to chose a percentage almost double that of your prior color (I set mine here to about 70%). The colour you select here really should straight have an effect on the mood you are trying to generate. For instance, in my picture I am trying to develop a darker urban feel, so I determined to use a dark green that complements the previous layers brown.
Image after adding a green toner layer.
3) Merge all of the photos together to develop a single composite image, then Duplicate it. The moment you’ve duplicated the composite image add a Gaussian Blur of about 4.one to the duplicate. Make positive the duplicates Blending mode is set to Typical, and alter the opacity to anyplace amongst 50-70% and the Fill to among 60-80%. This will produce a a lot more surreal appear to your picture, with out significantly altering it. In my picture I set the Opacity to 67% and the Fill to 73%.
Final image after adding the gaussian blur.
And that is it. With these few straightforward modifications you can significantly alter the mood of an image.
The Just before and Following:
