Making Your Photos Worthy of Framing

Let's make a photo into a piece of art that is worthy to be framed. Below is the undoctored version of the photo I'll use for this tutorial.

I first want to start by adjusting the quality of the colors so I start with Levels and move the center arrow over to .66. As you can see, there is now more color to work with.

I then apply Curves to brighten and darken areas of color.

I used Color Balance to adjust the color structure of the photo. Initially I selected Midtones and made the adjustments on the sliders.

I then clicked on Shadows and made some more adjustments on the sliders.

And finally I selected Highlights to tweak the lighter areas of the picture.

Here is the result so far. Looks a lot better.

I then wanted to make the picture more vibrant by using the Hue/Saturation option for the picture. I made a slight adjustment to Hue, Saturation, and Lightness.

I then applied Paint Daubs with the settings of 4, 0, and Light Rough. This will give the photo a painterly quality.

Press Shift+Control+F to open Fade and reduce Opacity to 40%.

The photo now has a slight softness and glow to it giving it a dream like quality ready for framing.