Silky

Here's a technique I came up with on enhancing faded, poorly lit, or just any photograph you want make look great!
I've included 3 techniques here to give your photo different looks, or feels: 1-enhanced lighting and color tones, 2-warm glow, and 3-enhaced sepia tone.
This technique is quite simple.
For technique #1, open any a crummy photo. (here I used a pic of my sister when she was little) Next, dupicate the layer which your photo is on, and set the "blend mode" to either "soft light" or "overlay", depending on your image. You will see a big difference right away! After that, you can also go to Image>Adjustments>Variations to get the color just right.
For technique #2, repeat the steps in technique #1, but on your duplicate layer go to Filter>Blur>Guassian Blur and fittle with it untill it looks good to you. After that you can also-(to your duplicate layer)-you can press Ctrl+U to bring up hue and saturation, check the "colorize" box and adjust the hue to about -30. This makes it look kinda like the movie "Sky Captian"; The vintage 70's sci-fi look. (if you've seen it you'll know what I'm talking about)
For technique #3 Duplicate the layer your photo is on. Then take your original layer, and set the "Saturation" to about -50. Next take your duplicate layer and check the colorize box and set hue to whatever you like. (the green kinda out there)
Well thats it. Ultimately, it's up to you to mess around with adjustments and just have fun. I always like tweking with everything possible to see what I come up with.
Hope you liked the tut

huma

Another good variation of this technique is to copy the green channel and paste it as a layer above the poor photo layer. Set the blend mode to Luminosity. Soft Light or OverLay can also work.

Silky

Hmmm, green channel, eah? Gota try that.
Oh, and when I have a really grainy photo, the way I get it out is by using "smart blur" and "unsharp mask" filters. If you know another way please tell me.

The Coach

You want to know another way? Buy a product like NeatImage or NoiseNinja. Serious, when it comes to removing noise you need intelligent programs like these to get a descent result without blurring the original. This is just one of these areas in which every Photoshop technique fails miserably, that is if you're serious about getting top quality results.

Silky

Hey thnx Dont got the mula right now to buy such programs, just wonder'n if any body knew an easier way in PS. \:]
Thnx anyways. 8))

Joy Foraker

That's clever and simple Moth - ...I think I can remember how to do that without looking through the files for tuts-- thanks.

Good Tips Patrick - I know what you mean about expensive applications - And you are really buying a future liability, every year or so there is an the cost of an upgrade. One of these days, digital artists should revolt and boycott these expensive upgrades. Now days many of the big companies won't let you pay upgrade price if you are two versions behind, forcing you to upgrade at least every other version.

Elaray

Neat Image has a free demo version. It doesn't expire, you just don't get some of the whistles and bells of the paid version, like you can only save them as jpgs and not tiffs... etc. it is the best program I have found so far that's free.

Here's another trick I've used for selective blurring out noise, although it doesn't work on every picture.

Duplicate your layer
Filter> Noise> Median and adjust your blur to suit the image.
then Press Alt while clicking on the 'add layer mask' icon
It should give you a black filled layer mask on the dup layer
Press D then X to use your brush.
Then use that mask and a soft opaque brush to clear the noise away.
use X to toggle back and forth to paint back anything you've overdone.
Works really slick on digital images taken with a dirty CCD.

I'll see if I can find a grainy/noisy/dirty picture and post an example.

Elaray

It worked well on this picture because it has a shallow depth of field.
This was a quicky but gives you an idea of what you can do!

Elaray

Sorry for the triple post folx. 8} Hope that's big enough to view. I couldn't find a happy medium, kept telling me it was too big. that's what I get for trying to think at 2:30ish a.m. [bustagut]

Here is a link to a larger view

http://www.imgmag.org/images/sasheba/PSG2.jpg

Silky

Hey thnx, thats great Sheba, looks nice, gota try it. 8))
I agree with Joy, we should boycott expensive upgrades } And, did you know, PS upgrades are accually full versions, and when you install them u dont need a previous version installed on your comp. You can stick in an older PS cd and it thinks you already have it. That sux, full version is just a rip off. [slick]