Peter Bergdahl's Personal Blog

Ok, so in this 3.5 minute video tutorial i’ll show you a super simple way to boost the local contrast without “overcooking” the global contrast in an image.

Here’s a condensed step-by-step guideline in written form:

• Go to Filter -> Sharpen -> Unsharp Mask
• Set Amount to 20
• Radius to 50
• Threshold to 0
• Click OK and you’re done!

You can experiment with Amount from 5-20 and radius from 20-300 pixels.

Let me know your opinion by making a comment to this post.

Just moments ago i discovered by accident a simple trick with Photoshop that makes a photograph look like a glass painting.

Photo edited in Photoshop to look like a glass painting

I used the following steps when i edited this image taken in Da Nang at Furama Resorts.

1. Select background layer, right click and select “Duplicate Layer” to make a copy
2. Select the copy of background layer
3. Select blending mode “Darken”
4. Select “Filter” -> “Blur” -> “Gaussian blur”
5. Change the “Radius” until you get the wanted effect
6. That’s it

A lesson I learned and would like to convey in this post is to trust your first instinct.

Me and my friend Stefan were in Hoi An in central Vietnam a few days ago and we passed a small ponds with some flowers. The flowers and the pond looked ordinary so I walked past the pond and the flowers. Something nagged me however so I walked back to the pond and quickly snapped a couple of close up images of one of the flowers. At first it looked like the image was over exposed when i looked in the LCD screen but I didn’t care, i just walked up to Stefan who waited for me.

Once i was back home in Hanoi I opened up the image in Photoshop CS and i was amazed by the colors. I’m no flower expert but i think it’s a water lily or a lotus flower.

Water Lily or Lotus Flower

So something that looked ordinary turned out to be so beautiful. I really love the colors that almost look like painted.

Close up of water lily or lotus flower

In this close up the colors are even more amazing and can you see the small fly in the image?

Is it a Water Lily or a Lotus Flower?