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In this tutorial we will see how we can improve the image colors and add a slight “glow effect”.
Firstly, let’s open our image of example (provided by Andrea - here the original image on flickr) and following the first tutorial, Black & White point balancing.
Now place a third control point, as indicated in the following image, add one control point for each color channel and try to reduce the bluish overall look of the image.

  • Example picture - credits Andreacontrol point setuphow to set curves

Done this we have achieved a better colors balance, let us try to improve the image.

Increase the color saturation

  • Let’s go to image > mode > lab color, and choose to “flatten” the image.
  • choose lab colorthen choose to flatten the image
  • We add one smart filters levels.
  • add a new smart filters levels
  • With “levels” filter open, go in channel > lightness and modify the values as indicated in the following image
  • how to set lightnesstry to increase lightness
  • Now go in channel > a and change the values as indicated in the following image
  • go in channel - Aa - channel setup
  • repeat to b channel

Glow effect

  • Let’s go to channels tab and click on lightness to make it active
  • lightness channel active
  • By pressing command key (on mac, or ctrl key on win), we click in the thumbnail area.
    By doing this we have created a new selection of the brightness area.
  • copy brightness area
  • With the active selection go on edit > copy (command+c on Mac or Ctrl+C on Win).
  • Reselect the lab channel, go on layers and paste the selection on a new level.
  • paste the new light level
  • with the level selected go on filters > glow > gaussian blur and set a value between 20 and 30.
  • set up the gaussian blur effect
  • set at this point the blending mode of our level as soft light with an opacity value of 60
  • set the blending mode - soft light
  • Here the final result, hope you enjoy it!
  • final image