Colouring Help!!

[moes_tavern]

Okay so I need some help.
I have PS7 by the way.
I have been editing my pictures with the tutorials on here and I try them out and all my pictures are turning out way too dark.
I try to mess with them to get them to do what I want and it just looks unprofessional and not very good quality.
So what I am asking is if I could get anyhelp or tips or

Comments

[neatmonster]

did you try the curves layers??

if you send me a couple of pics where you want to get a coloring like this maybe I could help you ;)

[moes_tavern]

i havent messed with the curves layer that much because it kind of freaks me out lol
but here is one of my pictures

[cerberusk]

usually what i do for my photos is duplicate the layer, set it to screen, and then select all, copy merged and set that to softlight. then mess around with opacities. Sometimes, I'll up the saturation on one of the layers or play with the color variations, just try different things.

Example:
before

[moes_tavern]

yeah that does help and make sense and it helps out a lot.
Im a noob to photoshop still. so any help is good help. thank you very very much ^_^.
People like you make my life much easier lol.
Ill try it out and then get back to you later i have to go to work in 20 minutes. but thank you! =D

[cerberusk]

awww, no problem, i'm glad i helped.
oh, and just doing the basic screen, and copy merged softlight layer with your skittle image you get this.

[moes_tavern]

yes! this is almost the look i was trying to get. welll yeah.. pretty much the look i was going for. lol
This is awesome. thanks soooo much for the help! =D

[evitaporter]

Is this something similar to what you are looking for?

[photoholic62]

Really, it looks like your photos just need a little basic color correction. A common thing with those of us (ok, me!) who shoot digitally. The set up takes a bit of time the first time, but you only have to do the set up once, then you save it. Then it only takes a few seconds on each photo. I pretty much do this on all my photos. (Always some exceptions, yes?)

Anyway, instead of writing a tutorial, I found one for you. This is on an image fresh from your camera, before you've done anything else to it.
Scott Kelby knows his stuff!Often though, I have troubles when you get down to finding the midtones. (Around step 14 in the tut.) At that point, if I try a few times and don't get anything that makes me all warm and fuzzy, I leave off from the tutorial, add a saturation adjustment layer (usually around 10 to 20 depending on the image) and then a brightness/contrast adjustment layer (usually around 10 on Contrast and -5 to +5 on brightness, although brightness is often left on 0 for me

[moes_tavern]

yeah this is kind of the look i was going for but not so bring. more glowing and softer ya know? but thank you for helping anyways. =D Ill still use this. for sure.

[nitanitachan]

curves and nothing else XD

http://community.livejournal.com/icon_tutorial/10049943.html#cutid1
found that in the tags, didn't read it, but browsing gave a good impression. it should help you understand how the curves work

I usually use only the RGB setting, seldom the other chanels. and all I do is usualy 3 dots; first and lowest draged down a bit, last and upper dragged up a bit and the middle depends on the picture but usually I drag it down too

hope that helped ^^

[moes_tavern]

well thank you for that. Its alot of help actually because i have tried to mess with the curves setting before but i failed miserably and it went to hell lol. so thank you very much.

[neatmonster]

alright, here my results:

[moes_tavern]

goddd... that first image is starting to piss me offff. lol its such a shitty image. but the second one works and thank you much for the psd it helps alottt! =D