essential photoshop tool you may not have noticed

I have alot of small business owners as clients. Inevitably, they don’t have very good images for their websites. Overwhelming shadows is a common problem. A seminar speaker at the recent flash forward conference in Austin pointed out a tool that was introduced in Photoshop CS, that I – and probably you – totally overlooked.

Here is the shadow/highlight in action…

Before Image – terrible contrast – bad shadow cast

To find the shadow and highlight tool in Photoshop CS and above, go to Image > Adjustments > Shadow/Highlight…. The standard tool will adjust most images, but if you check “Show more Options” you will see something like this…

After a quick tweakwith this shadow-highlight, and a few color adjustments, and cropping the important part of image (my nephews), I have a much more usable photo.