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In this lesson you are going to learn how to increase and decrease both the contrast and the brightness of your image. This feature can be used to create some interesting moods in your shots.

Step one, as always, is to open your image in Photoshop.

With your workspace set to default view (window / workspace / default workspace) you will notice that there are ‘layers’ on the right side of your screen. We are going to be working with those layers.

Right now with your image open you will only see one layer called ‘background’ which is your original image.

At the bottom of your layers block you will find a little circle that is half white and half black. Clicking on it will bring up a list of options. From that list – select ‘brightness/contrast’

A new layer will now appear. This layer is a copy of the original image with the option of increasing or decreasing your brightness and your contrast levels. When you open this layer a little box appears on your screen. This box has the slide bar for both brightness and contrast settings. You can now play around with the levels and see how bright or dark you want to make your image. Depending on the mood you are trying to create.

When you have the settings as you want them you can accept your changes and the little box will disappear.

You have now completed your brightness and contrast edit.

Now you want to save the file without losing your original image (you want to keep it incase there are other changes you want to make) If you click ‘save as’ now the program will automatically try and save the image as a .psd (a photoshop file) because there is more than one layer making up the image. You need to tell the program to save it how you need it saved.

So you select ‘save as’ (file / save as) once you have selected where you want to save the file (desktop or my pictures or a folder you have made for your photoshop images) you can select a name for your picture in the ‘file name’ box. Underneath that you find a ‘format’ box with a drop down list containing a number or options. Select the format you want to save you image in (the most common format would be jpeg)

Then simply hit the Save button.

If you get interrupted in the middle of your editing you can just hit save and leave the file in .psd format so that you can come back to it and continue editing in photoshop at a later state. Once you have saved your file as a jpeg the layers will be merged.