High-Contrast Look

The super-high-contrast look is incredibly popular right now, and while there are a number of plug-ins that can give you this look, along with a Camera Raw technique I’ll show you next, I wanted to include this version, which I learned from German retoucher Calvin Hollywood, who shared this technique during a stint as my special guest blogger at my daily blog (www.scottkelby.com). The great thing about his version is you don’t need to buy a third-party plug-in to get this look. My thanks to Calvin for sharing this technique with me, and now you.

Step One:

Open the image you want to apply a high-contrast look to.

SCOTT KELBY AND ©PHOTOART TEXTURES/MARK BRYANT

Step Two:

Make a copy of your Background layer by pressing Ctrl-J (Mac: Command-J). Then, change the blend mode of this duplicate layer to Vivid Light (I know it doesn’t look pretty now, but it’ll get better in a few more moves).