Photoshop Tutorial: From IPhone image to DSLR effect

Image quality is never 100% perfect, and it just gives us headache. Even with an investment on expensive cameras and gadgets, it is still nowhere near to a flawless picture. It may be awesome, just not perfect.

I stand by Photoshop being the greatest way to fix pictures on your own and make them perfect for posting on the web, sharing with friends, or printing out and framing. So in this tutorial, I will list down certain techniques i used to improve image quality of my photos.

1) Auto Contrast:



To use the auto contrast simply go to Image>Adjustments>Auto Contrast. This quick tool will automatically fix the contrast in your image. Sometime contrast can make a great deal in improving your photo, it just gives the "edgy" and "HD" feeling to me.

2) Auto Levels:



Levels are the amount of specific colours in your image. To apply the auto levels, go to Image>Adjustments>Auto Levels. Levels, which is like brightness is also very important. By improving the levels, it just makes the picture comes out more lifely!

3) Auto Color:



This one is my personal favorite because it never fails to fully correct all colours in your image. Again, go to Image>Adjustments>Auto Colour. If your camera is failing to get you the correct colour of your image, this tool will correct everything!

4)Gaussian Blur filters:



The next line of correctors is the Blur/Sharpen tool. Sometimes your images can be too blurry or too sharp and a simple tweak will fix the problem.

When your image is too sharp, all you need to do is blur your image slightly. This will make your picture much more eye-appealing in the end. To apply the Gaussian Blur, go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian blur. This tool is a little more complex because you'll have to use your best judgment with minimum human error. When you click the last part, a menu will pop up with a display menu and a slider. Now you need to choose the radius of pixels you want to blur. Start with 0.5, and work your way up if you need to.

5) Unsharp Mask:



The Unsharp Mask, despite its name, does the opposite of the Gaussian Blur. This will sharpen images that are too blurry. This is slightly more complex than the Gaussian Blur, but it's still easy. T

o apply the Unsharp Mask, go to Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask. Again a window menu will pop up letting you choose different settings. I suggest started with Amount: 75%, Radius: 0.5, Threshold: 0. Go up if your image needs more sharpening.

I guess it works like a department, your camera being a producer, Photoshop being your designer, so whatever your camera produce, Photoshop will be there to do some serious image editing to correct/beautify your picture. With this, I could easily turn the pictures taken with my IPhone 5, and made it to the same picture effect that comes from the pricy DSLR.

Till then.