Step 5 - Add contrast to the channel

Great, so we got the color channel selected and now we're going to add contrast to the channel. By adding contrast, the colors will look more intense. Now there's many ways you can increase contrast:

• Curves - For Photoshop gurus who are very picky about results
• Levels - For skilled Photoshop users who want more control
• Brightness/Contrast - For most people, including Photoshop experts, who want to save time.

Load the tool that you want to use. For this tutorial, we're going to use the Brightness/Contrast tool (Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast). Really, it's good enough for most situations. I recommend that you start with the Brightness/Contrast tool and if that doesn't give you the precise results that you want, undo and switch to the Levels or Curves tool.

Now with the tool you're using, increase the contrast.

• If you're using the Brightness/Contrast tool, well that's simple, you just play around with the contrast slider.
• If you're using Levels, move the black and white input sliders closer towards the middle.
• With the Curves tool, start by adding a point in the middle of the line and moving it around.

As we increase the contrast, the colors start to look more vivid but it also starts to off. That's because there's two color channels (remember?) and we're only editing one of them.

Step 6 - Do the same with the b channel

Now we have to increase the contrast on the other channel as well to make them both even. Select the b channel in the Channels palette and do the same contrast increase you used previously.

After I did that, here's the results. The colors look a lot more vibrant now but notice that the skin tones and lips look normal. You may think you're done, but I'm sorry to tell you that you're not. There is something extremely important to do that we haven't done yet. We need to change the image mode back to RGB color! I you remember how we changed the image mode to Lab color, you should know how to change it back to RGB color; choose Image > Mode > RGB Color. And there you go, we're finally done.