In this tutorial, you’re going to be fixing photos as you work through these issues:
- Leveling a photo’s horizon
- Fixing tonality selectively
- Improving a sky
You’re welcome to use my photo for this, or use your own which presents similar issues. Click it to get a larger version.
We’ll be working with several Photoshop techniques and tools:
- Using Crop to straighten
- Using the Ruler Tool
- Using Content-Aware Fill
- Using an Adjustment Layer
- Using an Adjustment Layer Mask
- Using the Brush Tools
- Using the Clone Stamp Tool
- Creative Cropping
Of course you can use Elements to fix photos! I’ll give directions as they differ, over here in these gray boxes.
First of all, have a good look at the photo. What do you want it to do? What is it doing now? What’s wrong with it to your eyes?
Seeing what’s wrong is an acquired skill, and it’s different for all people. That is, I’m going to see something that I’d like to fix, and you’d think it’s fine.
For this picture, I am unhappy with the orientation of the shot.
Sometimes, it’s obvious that a photo is not straight. An ocean shot with a slanted horizon would be an obvious example.
Looking at my photo, it may well be straight, and likely is, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that it doesn’t look straight. The tree that’s prominent on the right side leans off toward the right, and I’d like it to be straight.
We can straighten a photo in one slick step with the Crop tool as I show at the right.
But, by so doing, we’re losing the soul of this photo. Meh, no.
A better choice here is this. I’ll use a Photoshop tool called the Ruler 
tool. (It’s generally hanging out under the Eyedropper.)
To use this tool, we drag it along something that we want to be straight. I’ll drag it from the base of that tree to its top. (For the horizon in my ocean photo above, I’d drag along that horizon. It works the same way.)
Now click Straighten Layer in the Options bar. Tada! Of course, this does change our composition a bit. We can crop it as is or fill in the blank spaces with Clone Stamping or Content Aware Fill.
Elements users, you can use your Straighten tool for this. It’s in your toolbox at the bottom, and looks like a little level. It works just the same way.
At the right is the result of my straightening. Of course, this does change our composition a bit. We can crop it as is or fill in the blank spaces with Clone Stamping or Content Aware Fill. I rather like the composition, so, rather than cropping, I’m going to use Content Aware Fill to fill in the blank spaces:
> Make a new layer.
> Roughly select one of the areas to be filled.
> Edit > Content-Aware Fill.
In the huge dialog box that follows, you choose the areas from which you want Photoshop to recreate the background. You can brush out areas that you do not want, as I’m doing here at the left 3 arrows. The right arrow is pointing to the area that’s being patched. The preview panel to the right shows what the image will look like. You may have to do a bit of cloning, but I find this tool to be remarkably good.
Here’s my result after my application of Content-Aware Fill and a bit of clone stamping. I did each bit of Content-Aware Fill on a separate layer, just in case something went wonky.
I’m still seeing the darkness on the lower left that’s a little too mysterious for my tastes. Let’s look at that next.
Here, I’ll use a Curves Adjustment Layer.
> Click the Add Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers Palette.
> Drag the curve so that the worst part of the image is ok. The rest of the image is going to be horrible – blown-out trees, ugh – but we’ll fix that in a minute.
Now we’re going to fix the over-blown part.
> Click that white square that comes with the Adjustment Layer in the Layers palette. That’s the Adjustment Layer Mask.
We will color black everywhere we want the Adjustment to be HIDDEN. We will leave the mask white where we want the adjustment to be shown, and gray can go where we want the adjustment partially shown.
To begin with, everywhere at the top of the image needs to have the adjustment blocked off. So we want to paint that black. At the same time, we want the adjustment to fade kind of gradually into the area where it will be fully shown. So let’s try a gradient.
I used a foreground > background Linear Gradient on the Adjustment layer and here’s my result at the right.
But we still have that ugly white sky. Let’s see what we can do about that.
There are several ways to improve a sky. You could drag some sky in from another photo or you could paint in a new sky.
I painted this sky. I made a new layer and then filled it with a white > blue gradient. Then I masked out everything but the sky. I adjusted the opacity and painted in some clouds.
Now let’s see yours! Save your before and after pic files in a small for-the-web format. Then email them to me, or post them to the myJanee.community!
