How to Create a Beautiful, Dark Green Moody look in Photoshop

In this tutorial, I'm going to show you how you can transform your boring images in the masterpiece by adding a dark-green moody look using Photoshop. Today we are going to use only the Camera Raw Filter. Let the fun begins.

The values that I'm going to use today, will only work for this image. If you have a brighter image, then you might need to go a little darker. If you have a darker photo then you need to go a little brighter. It all depends on the image that you are working with. Feel free to use my adjustments as a starting point, but fine-tune so that they apply to your image.

Step 1

The first step is to convert our image to a Smart Object. To do that, right-click on the image and select Convert to Smart Object. Go to Filter - Camera Raw Filter. The camera raw filter allows us to take total control over the brightness and the colors of the image. Because this is going to be a moody photo I'm going to bring the brightness down, by bringing the Exposure about - 1.20. Next, the image is a little bit darker so I'm going to apply some contrast. That means I want to make the darker pixels darker and the brighter pixels brighter. I'll increase in Contrast to around 21. Next, I'm going to darken the Highlights a little bit, around 26. But now that we've made the image darker we lost a lot of details in the shadow. I can bring some of that detail back by making the shadows brighter by dragging the Shadow slider to right about 50. Next, I'm going to increase the Texture of the image to around 26 and increase the Clarity (applies contrast and edge pixels) to 40. It also makes the image stand out and pop.

Step 2

The next step is adding a vignette. I'm going to add custom Vignette. Go to Radial Filter, click and drag on the subject. Then reset the filter by clicking on the Reset Local Correction Settings. Make sure that the Outside is selected, it is located on the bottom of the filter. So that anything that I apply to this radial filter will affect the outside of the circle and not inside. Move the Exposure slider to -1 and decrease the Sharpness, because we want a blurry effect outside of the image, to -30.

Step 3

Next, select the Graduated Filter, click on the bottom of the image and drag up to darken the areas around the subject. Double-click on the Sharpness slider to reset it. Also the Exposure and set to -0.5 and reduce the Shadows to -53. Our image looks more darken.

Now I'll continue working with the Brush Tool, located next to the graduated filter, to make some areas darker. First, reset the Shadow and bring the Highlights up to -35 and make the area around the subject darker.

Step 4

Now it is time to work with colors. Go to the Basic color correction panel. The image looking a little bit cold, so I'll warm it up by dragging the Temperature slider to the right about +16. The image looks too saturated so I'll bring the Saturation down to -20. Go to Calibration Tab (second from the right), we are going to focus on the Green Primaries. I'll shift Hue to the right about +65, Saturation about -23.

Step 5

You can take even more control of the colors of the image by going into the HSL adjustment. HSL adjustment is made of Hue, Saturation, and Luminance. The slider below allows us to control each individual color in the component that we're on. First, I'm going to focus on the green parts of the image, and then on the main subject. In this case in the Hue tab, I'm going to drag Greens to the right so that pushes the Greens found in the image to a darker strong Green, to around +83. Adjust the Yellows just a tiny bit to around +30. Next, I'll work with Luminance, make the Greens brighter, move the slider to +65. Next, Saturation and adjust the Saturation accordingly, reduce the Greens to -40.

Now it is time to work on our subject. In Hue adjust the Oranges to -4, in the Saturation increase the saturation of Oranges to male the subject pop to +36. Also, increase the saturation of Yellow to +24. And Luminaciti, I want to make the subject much more bright than everything else, so I'll drag the Oranges to +50 and some of the Yellow darker too -42. I'll go back into the Luminance tab and make the subject darker. Drag the Orange slider to the left +41.

Step 6

In the last step, I'm going to brighten the subject so that pops even more. Select the Adjustment Brush tool, increase the feather so that the edges are blurrier. But first, reset the filter by clicking on the Reset Local Correction Settings. Brighten the subject up, by sliding the Exposure to the right +0,35, increase the Texture +21, Clarity + 12, and the Sharpness to +20, and just paint over the subject so that really pops.