Using Design Workspace to Improve Contrast/Saturation

Using Design Workspace to Improve Contrast/Saturation Sometimes you like a picture you made but it's a tad flat or you want to crop it. Now you can fix your pictures for free in Design Workspace. First let's start with my working image so you know what we will be working with Open Design Workspace On the left menu, under Workspace , click on Design You should see something like this. Choose Your Image Click on New Project . You will see your Project page There are 3 ways to get an image into your project Upload an image Choose an image from your assets Generate an image I clicked on From Assets Now the image is in my Project Space Working with the image : Click it to Select it Clicking on the picture selects it and pops up a menu. You will see a blue line around the picture when it's selected. Also when selected, you can also move the picture wherever you want on the project page. You can edit the image. Remember as you edit, Control Z does work to undo your last action. Control Y will redo your last action. Adjust and Crop are free. The other options (Remove Background, Upscale, Expand, Remover, Edit, Style) cost various amounts of credits. Adjust Under Adjust , you have several sliders. After Adjusting, click Save. It will save the pic to your asset library. Brightness Contrast Saturation Grayscale Sepia Brightness: Default is 100. Left is darker, Right is lighter I am demonstrating higher Brightness at 144% to make brighter obvious. Contrast: Default is 100. Left is less contrast, Right is more contrast Less Contrast (Left) Less contrast means tones will go more towards middle tones, you will have less darker shadows, less brighter lights. In my opinion, lower contrast makes the image grayer, more washed out, more pastel. I am demonstrating lower Contrast at 20% to make it the lesser contrast obvious. More Contrast (Right) High contrast tends to increase dark areas and light areas and saturate colors more. It gives the illusion of making an image look sharper. I am demonstrating higher Contrast at 20%. Saturation: Default is 100. Left is less saturated colors, Right is more saturated colors Less Saturaton (Left) Less Saturation means you are taking colors out, they will become greyer. In fact if you go all the way down to 0%, you will have a monochromatic image. I am demonstrating lower Saturation at 0%. More Saturation (Right) More Saturation means you are increasing the vividness of the colors like taking a pastel pink and moving it to neon pink. Be careful here because it can take out the gradations of colors. For example, say a flower shades from pale yellow at the center to bright yellow towards the tips; a highly saturated image will lose some of those pale yellows so you can lose details in color areas. I am demonstrating higher Saturation at 200%. Now this image had low saturated colors to begin with so it may not be the best demo picture. But you can see how it saturated the colors without increasing the contrast. Greyscale: default is 0%, if at 100% monochromatic Greyscale is like Saturation sliding to the left. The default for Greyscale is 0%. When you slide the slider to the right, it takes color out, makes the colors look more greyed out. At 100%, it is a monochromatic picture. There are subtle differences with Saturation at 0% and Greyscale at 100% so if you're going to make your image a monochromatic image, try both to see which you like better. Grayscale at 100% Sepia: default is 0%, if at 100% light goldenbrown toned sepia monochrome Similar to Greyscale except it will be sepia-toned, a light goldenbrown color, like vintage photographs. Tip: Sepia adds yellow. Blue and Yellow are opposites so if you add yellow, you are taking away blue. So if your picture has an overall blue tone, add a little sepia 10-20% and it should take a little blue out. It also lightly desaturizes your image so you may need to add saturation to counter that. I've also noticed if I do Sepia at 10% and increase saturation and contrast a little, on my steampunk images, gold, brass and copper seem to pop a little more. I'm not sure why. Sepia at 100% Combining Sliders Most of the time you will combine sliders. Black & White photo: Grayscale at 100% + Increased Contrast Here I have Grayscale at 100% and Contrast at 117% Sepia photo: Sepia at 100% + Increased Contrast Here I have Sepia at 100% and Contrast at 117% Improving Contrast & Saturation Contrast at 118% + Saturation at 113%. Before and After Comparison Save the Image to Asset Library Once the picture is the way you like it, click Save. It will save the image to your Asset Library. If you think you're going to work with the image later, title your project. You can also download the image. Save the Project If you want to work with the image later, save the project Conclusion I hope you find this useful in improving your images through the Adjust sliders in the Design Workshop.