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[hitzusin]

Hello! I was wondering if anyone has a tutorial, or knows where I can find one on how to lighten up really dark screencaps? I've been using curves and the good old screen method, but it seems even on HQ images the quality gets lost because they're so dark, and I'd really like to do something with them? Or maybe a tutorial on how to use dark

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[applepips16]

Okay, for some reason, my first comment was marked as spam so here I am, trying again.

With caps like these, its best not to lighten them too much. Since they are so dark already, lightening them too much makes them terrible. The best thing to do is work with the way the cap is. I will uploading the PSD in addition to this because I know my reasoning is terribly vague

From this, to this.

First up, a Curves Layer to lighten this without washing it out.

Secondly, a Selective Colouring layer where you mess with the blacks in the Neutrals and Black section.

Thirdly, a Levels layer so that we can sort of mattify the area and make it even. Play with the first two sliders from the left hand side on the RGB section.

Fourthly, we open up a blank layer and pickign a colour from the cap itself we paint the areas around Stiles' face completely. Then we gaussian blur this paint layer (using a high value of 57.8 so that the paint gets evenly spread out). After this, leave the layer mode on Normal as it is and just play with the opacity of the layer.

Select all, copymerge, paste as a new layer and voila, we have a cap that is lightened without loss of quality (mostly).

I hope this was somewhat helpful. I am linking you to the PSD too. :)

[hitzusin]

I unspammed it! I have no idea why it does that either. :| And thank you for the tut and psd! I'll be giving it a try tomorrow when it's not so late. xD