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Known Participant
December 15, 2016
Question

best way to darken photo for web background img?

  • 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

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    2 replies

    sishamIAGD
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    December 15, 2016

    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
    Community Expert
    December 15, 2016

    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
    Community Expert
    December 15, 2016

    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.

    Known Participant
    December 15, 2016

    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