Blowing It Out (Photoshop Elements)

Blowing it out? I know, that’s a funny title, and you may wonder what on earth I’m going to talk about today! Recently, one of my favorite things to do is “blow out” a photo, which basically means I’m going to overexpose it to give it an “artsy” feel. This tip is so simple and easy to do that I know you’ll be giving it a try…or at least I hope so!

Step 1) Start with a good photo

I love to use this technique with a photo that tells a story all by itself. The story may be obvious, or it may just be a photo that means something to you. Here I have two photos: a pumpkin in our garden, and a photo of my husband and daughter sharing a kiss (my favorite.)

Step 2) Adjust the Exposure

• Click on the Adjustment Layer Icon on the Layers Panel, and choose Levels.

• Adjust the sliders under the histogram. I typically move the white one to the left to overexpose the photo, then the black one to the right to add some shadows back. Keep adjusting until you have the look you are wanting to achieve. There are no rules here! Sometimes I make it more dramatic than others–it just depends on the photo and the feel I want to give it. When you are finished with your adjustments, you can close the Adjustments panel by clicking on the dark gray bar to the right of the Adjustments tab. (In other versions, click OK to close the dialog box.)

Step 3) Merge Down

Open the Layers Panel fly-out menu and choose Merge Down, or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl E (Mac: Cmd E). (If you have PSE 8.0, you may find it hard to see where to click to open the fly-out menu. I have circled it below.) This will merge the adjustment layer with the photo layer, and now you are ready to move this photo to your page.

What a difference this can make in the feel of a photo! Here are my “before” and “after” shots.

And here are the pages I created with my two “blown out” photos. Although I don’t typically like to use just one photo for an entire page, sometimes one dramatic photo does the best job of telling the story. I hope you’ll try this technique this week and post your layouts to the gallery–I will be watching for them!

Credits: Tutorial and pages by Jenny Binder, www.HeirloomScrapbooks.com. A Precious Moment page: Paper and embellishments from Doreen Stolz, You Are So Beautiful kit; fonts are Artistamp Medium (precious), Bickham Script Pro (A, moment), and CAC Shishoni Brush for journaling. Grow On Me page: Swirl by Susan Bartolini (ScrapKitchen), Happy Harvest Kit, October 2009 Scrappers Guide Premier Kit; Font is Century Gothic.

Download a PDF version of this “Blowing It Out” tutorial.

Windows: Right click on the link and choose “Save Target As” or a similar command.
Mac: Click on the link to download the file.

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