Red Effect Tutorial

June 29, 2008 · Print This Article

This Red Effect Tutorial will explain how to alter your images and add more interest to it.

This effect creates a very extreme, dramatic effect to any image - which can be useful when you need something dramatic. This effect works on all sorts of images and this tutorial will help to improve your knowledge of Photoshop

Once you know how to do this you’ll end up tweaking it to suit your image, and discover new things in Photoshop.

Feel free to request something similar to this Red Effect Tutorial.

Before

After

Red Effect Tutorial - The Steps

I suggest downloading the same image I’m using, only it’ll be bigger than the previews above. You need to download the image without any effects… so download this.

Start off by going into the toolbar at the top in Photoshop and select LAYER, then select NEW ADJUSTMENT LAYER, then select BRIGHTNESS/CONTRAST… a little box should come up asking you to name the layer (note this box might not come up & it might take you straight to the brightness/contrast settings), just click OK. Then set the brightness to +24, leave the contrast set to +23. Click OK.You should notice that your images brightness has now changed slightly.

Download this file and save it to your desktop. Go back into Photoshop and go upto the toolbar again and select LAYER, then select NEW ADJUSTMENT LAYER, then select SELECTIVE COLOR… Like on the last step, a little box might pop up asking you to name the layer, just click OK (note that the box might not pop up for everyone - if it doesn’t, just carry on with the steps). Click LOAD…. and find the file you just downloaded, which will probably be called RoadSC.asv, if you haven’t renamed it. Once you’ve found it, select it and click LOAD. Once that’s done, click OK. Once you’ve clicked OK, you should now notice a huge difference in the colouring of your photograph.

Depending on what you want your photograph to end up like, you can lower the opacity of the selective color layer, if you like it as it is you can leave it at 100%, or you can change it to 70-80%, depending on what you’d like best. I’ll leave you to fiddle with that. You’re pretty much done, if you end up trying this effect on other photographs, bare in mind that it won’t look great on all of them, you’ll probably have to try a few photos until you find a picture that works with the effect. This effect does work well with black and white images.

I hope this has helped you. If you have any questions regarding this don’t hesitate to leave a comment below regarding this Red Effect Tutorial, I’ll happily reply.