Digital Darkroom: Liven up dull photos

Sometimes, despite your best efforts, what you hoped would be a good photo comes out looking a little dull. In my case it's usually because I wasn't able to get enough separation between the bird and the background, and/or it wasn't in direct light. Fortunately there's a four-step technique you can apply in Photoshop that will restore some life to your image without adding extra noise.

1. Duplicate the background layer. (If your image already contains adjustment layers, combine them all into a new layer by pressing N followed by E while holding down the Shift, Ctrl and Alt keys.)
2. Boost the Saturation by +75.
3. Apply Gaussian Blur with a radius of 5 pixels.
4. Change the blending mode of the layer to Screen and reduce the opacity to 10%. (You can control the strength of the effect by changing the opacity, but don't overdo it!)

Here's a before-and-after example for comparison. Move your mouse over the image to toggle the effect.

Eastern Black Redstart, Palm Bay, November 2011

The beauty of this technique is that you can record these steps as an Action in Photoshop and then apply them to any image with just a single click.

...or you could just download the Action I've already prepared for you here:

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0BySUCOFwHc1Celk1SU5md3NSUzQ

To install the file in Photoshop, go to the dropdown menu in the upper right corner of the Actions palette, click on "Load Actions..." and navigate to wherever you saved the file.

Of course, no amount of digital trickery is going to turn a bad image into a good image; nor is this method a substitute for proper adjustment of Levels and Curves etc., but it is a quick and easy way to improve images which require that little extra "punch".