Apply corrections to a set of photos
Learn how to polish multiple photos in Photoshop so they pop and can look great together in a catalog, presentation, or other project.
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In this tutorial you'll improve the appearance of several images in Adobe Photoshop and give them a uniform look for projects like a presentation, a catalog, or a website.
You'll learn basic photo editing skills using Adjustment Layers that can be applied to editing photographs for any purpose in Photoshop.
To start your project, you can use the sample images available for download on the tutorial page or a few photos of your own.
To open your files, choose File, Open.
Select multiple images by clicking the first image then pressing the shift key and clicking the last.
Click Open.
Click the tab at the top of the tangerine.jpeg image to show it if you need to.
As you can see, this image is a bit dull.
There are lots of ways to improve the appearance of images so they're more to our liking in Photoshop or in Photoshop Lightroom.
I'll show you a few tips for improving your photos in Photoshop.
With the image layer selected in the Layers panel, open the Adjustments panel by clicking the Adjustments tab.
If you don't see it, you can choose Window, Adjustments.
There are lots of Adjustment Layers to choose from, like Color Balance to fine tune color or Black & White to convert a color photo to a black and white photo.
This image needs to be a bit brighter to make it pop, so we'll add a Brightness Contrast Adjustment Layer.
Click the Brightness Contrast button here to add a new layer to the Layers panel called an Adjustment Layer.
The Properties panel also opens, and it's where you'll find the controls for this Adjustment Layer.
With Adjustment Layers, you can change the appearance of a photo, like brightness and contrast, without actually changing the underlying photo itself, and your changes remain editable.
Now let's improve the brightness of the photo.
In the Properties panel, drag the Brightness slider to the right to increase the overall brightness of the image.
We can also adjust the look of an image with more than one Adjustment Layer.
We can choose from any of these different types of Adjustment Layers depending on what we need for our image.
Next we'll add a Hue Saturation Adjustment Layer to change the image by adjusting its color.
In the Adjustments Panel, click the Hue Saturation button.
In the Layers Panel, a Hue Saturation Adjustment Layer is created above the last selected layer.
The Properties panel now shows controls for this Adjustment Layer.
Drag the Saturation slider to the right of it.
The further you drag, the more saturated or intense the colors become in the image.
When you like what you see, click the Properties panel tab to close the Properties panel.
I want to make the same adjustments to the other images as well to create a uniform look across them.
Photoshop lets you drag the Adjustment Layers between documents to copy them.
First we need to see all the images at once.
To do that, choose Window, Arrange, 3-up Stacked.
Click in the tangerine image, and you'll see the Adjustment Layers in the Layers panel.
These photos were all take in the same place under the same light, so we can use the adjustments we made on one of these photos on the other photos to give them a uniform look in our project.
If you have photos taken at different times in different lighting, each photo may need different adjustments.
Click one Adjustment Layer and shift click the other in the Layers panel to select both.
Drag from the Layer name or thumbnail, not this white box called a mask, into another image.
When you see an outline, release the mouse to copy the Adjustment Layers into the image.
Drag the Adjustment Layers to the third image as well.
Each image now has the same adjustments applied as the tangerine image.
Since we used Adjustment Layers, we can now fine tune each image separately if we need.
Switch to the lemon.jpeg by clicking in that image.
This photo is a bit too bright.
In the Layers panel, double click the Layer thumbnail to the left of the Brightness Contrast Layer to edit the settings in the Properties panel again.
Adjust the brightness of the lemon image by dragging the slider, and then click the Properties panel tab to hide it.
Let's gather the images into a single window again just so we can focus on the lemon.
Choose Window, Arrange, Consolidate All to Tabs.
If the lemon image isn't showing, click the lemon.jpeg tab to display that image.
Using Adjustment Layers like this is one option of many in Photoshop for polishing your photos for use in a project.
There are lots of other things you can do to improve photos like these including making corrections on an image-by-image basis.
For example, I notice that this particular photo has a smudge in the background.
So I'll select the spot healing brush tool in the Tools panel.
In the Layers panel, I'll click the lock icon in the Background Layer just so I can make a change to this layer.
Then I'll drag across the dirt smudge on this image to remove it.
With some basic adjustments and edits, we made these photos look better.
But there's so much more in Photoshop you can do.
Explore further and check out additional tutorials about editing your photos at adobe.com.
