Amazifying photos in 2 quick steps

Wherever your photo comes from, with whatever camera it is taken, these two simple photoshop effects will give it a strong expression without destroying any of the original image data. No complicated filter-combinations, just two simple operations that will work on photos of any size.

Step 1: Sharpening with the almighty highpass-filter.

Duplicate your background layer. Select Filters > Other > Highpass and set the value in a way that you see only very crisp edges and no colors shining through. Set the resulting layer’s blending mode to overlay and see how your image sharpens gracefully around the edges, but leaves alone everything else.

Step 2: Intensity by blending a black & white layer

Add a new adjustment layer (the half black / half white circle on the bottom of your layer palette in CS3) and choose “black and white”. Pick any setting (you can change the settings later to see which works best). Set the layer’s blending mode to hard light and see how much opacity the effect needs (usually you’ll be fine in the 20% to 40% range, but of course you can go all out to achieve extreme results).

Play around.

The adjustment layer can work better with other blending modes, depending on your picture. Just play around with blending modes and opacity, somewhere along the way you’ll find a look you like.

Optional step 3: Vignette it.

It’s a cheap, old trick, but if you want to draw attention to the center of the image, vignettes just work. On a new layer pick a huge brush with a soft edge, choose black as color and paint around the edges over the less important parts in roughly equal areas from each edge. Then set the blending mode of the layer to linear burn (again, depending on your photo other blending modes may yield better results) and play around with the opacity (something in the 10% – 20% range should work fine).