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In order to bring attention to a certain part of your image, we’re going to do the following.
First, go to the bottom of the layers panel and add an adjustment layer by pressing on
this icon. Select “Curves”. From the new panel that appear, from the center,
raise the line up significantly. Now press Ctrl+I and this will invert the mask. Select
the brush tool and make sure you have the hardness set at 0% and the opacity under 50%.
Having white as the foreground color, start painting on the area you want to brighten
up. In our case it’s the girl and as you see
up top, we’re really making a mess of that nice blue sky. Don’t worry, after you’re
all set, double click on your adjustment layers thumbnail and press on this small icon here.
Make sure you have your mask selected by clicking it. Now drag the “Feather” slider up.
How much really depends on the image size. Now, the light isn’t distorting the blue
sky as much. The second step is to add another curves adjustment layer, but this time make
it darker. Press Ctrl+I to invert it again. Paint with white around the edges of the image
to make a really nice effect. Make sure you adjust your brush size to get the best result.
I always use my square brackets on my keyboard. After that’s set, you can always adjust
both the lightness of the girl or the darkness of the edges by simply double clicking and
moving the line around. Let’s see the before and after. Quite a
big difference and in only a few steps.