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In this tutorial, I am going to teach you how to use adjustment layers in Photoshop in order to color correct and further develop your photograph.  This method will allow you to fine tune and tweak your image better than using the image > adjustments > auto contrast/color/levels.  For this tutorial I am working with a 300 DPI file at 3008 * 2000 pixels.  Scanned images from film or other media are fine as long as you can retain the resolution.

Step 1: Create your adjustment layers.

Adding Adjustment Layers. Click for Bigger.

Begin by opening your file and unlocking the layer by double clicking it.  Head over to the layers palette, create a new adjustment layer,  (half circles)  and create two curve layers, and a hue/saturation layer.  Double-click on the text “Curves 1″ and name it color adjustments.  For “Curves 2″, rename it to contrast.  Click where it says “normal” in the layers palette and select “luminosity” from the dropdown.

Step 2:  Add Contrast with the “contrast” layer.

Lets add some contrast to this photo! Double click the half circle for the “contrast” layer to bring up the curve dialog box.  Basically you are going to add shadows, highlights and adjust the midtones until you are satisfied with the end result.  Click on the diagonal line towards the bottom, and drag it down slightly to the right to create a rich black.  Now click on the line towards the top right and drag it up to the left slightly to add powerful highlights.  Add mid tones by selecting the middle of the diagonal line and bring it slightly to the left. The rest is up to you.  You can tweak this line as much or as little as you like.  When you are happy with the result click ok to set the changes.  *TIP* If you have already “set” the adjustments you can click on it again to add additional adjustments.  If you are unhappy with the new changes, just click cancel and it will revert to your previous adjustments!

Step 3: Adjust the color balance.

Double click the "background" layer to unlock the image

This photo needs some color balance! Double click on the “color adjustment” layer to bring up the curve dialog box.  This is very similar to how you adjusted the contrast, except we will be going into specific color channels.  Typically you will want to create a white balance for your image, but by all means, feel free to experiment.  For this example image, click the drop down called “channel”, and select red.  Click the diagonal line in the middle and bring that up just slightly.  The green channel is alright, so we will skip to blue.  It’s very close to being fully white balanced, just bring the diagonal line slightly down.

Step 4: Hue/Saturation fun.

We’re in the home stretch of the edit now.  Double-click the hue/saturation layer and bring that dialog box up.  This is all a matter of personal preference here.  You could desaturate the full image to make it a black and white image.  Increasing saturation subtly by +10 or so will make the image pop, but could look wonky when printed.  This part is all up to you.  Play with the sliders and have fun.

Step 5: Yay an edited Photo!