best way to darken photo for web background img?

Forum|Forum|9 years ago
December 15, 2016
2 replies
4745 views

im a total photoshop noob

i see that many background images are darkened out in order to make the words brighter/easy to see

is there a standard way these images are being darkened? whats the best/most popular way

This topic has been closed for replies.

sishamIAGD

Community Expert

Another suggestion:

I sometimes just add a new layer and fill with black and then change the opacity of the black layer to say 20%...? This way you don't adjust the image at all just the layer above.

:-)

Trevor.Dennis

Community Expert

My goodness. There so many answers to that. A curves adjustment layer is probably favourite, because it lets you target exactly the tonal range you want to centralize on. A big curves adjustment like below will tend to boost saturation, and not necessarily in a nice way, so we usually set the Curves layer's blend mode to Luminosity.

Trevor.Dennis

Community Expert

For the sake of demonstration, I have made the text the same colour as part of the background here, so you can't see it.

By double clicking the type layer to open Layer Styles, I can give it a contrasting stroke to delineate the text from background

Or an Outer Glow which allows us to be more subtle. In this case I sampled that same colour of the mud, and then made it a wee bit darker and kept it soft.

I like to use a levels adjustment layer, because it is a one stop shop with lots of options. You can bring the white 'output' slider in to darken the whole image

Or something you see a lot on websites is the converse of that, dragging the black 'Output' slider in the knockout the blacks and lighten the image. you can make the image barely noticable as a background doing this. Note that the levels layer is below the text layer so does not affect it. Also note that I have made the text black now because we are making a different point.

B

ButtabrainAuthor

Known Participant

whats the main reason u would use that level curve instead of just going to layer >new adjustment layer >brightness and contrast and then just lowering the brightness?

when u say " curves adjustment layer" i assume u just mean going to layer >new adjustment layer > curve and not creating a new layer or anything

im mainly trying to create image effects similar to those shown here https://www.templatemonster.com/properties/features/premium-templates/?page=12

oh yea and how do i set the lumonisty

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