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One of the more common issues effecting overall tonality in older photographs is fading.
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A variety of things can lead to the image to fade a little bit, and most
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photographic images in fact will fade over time, and so adding density to an
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image can make a huge impact in many cases.
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Here for example, you can see that everything within the photo looks
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relatively washed out. There is simply not very much information here.
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But much of that information can be made more dense, can be made a little bit
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stronger in the actual image. I'm going to show you a quick and easy
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technique that can virtually, instantly add density to any photo.
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It's important to bare in mind that if there's absolutely no information, for
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example the white in the sky and the top of tent here, that information can't
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magically be brought back. There's simply nothing there.
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It is pure white in the image and it's going to stay that way.
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Unless I manually add texture into that area of the photo.
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But we can dramatically increase the density in other areas of the photo.
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The basic process involves creating a copy of the background image layer.
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I'll go ahead and drag the thumbnail for the background image layer down to the
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create new layer button. The blank sheet of paper icon at the
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bottom of the layers panel. And then I will change the Blend mode for
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the image. The blend mode is found at the top left,
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it's a pop up on the layers panel, and the default is normal.
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With the blend mode set to normal, the background copy is simply hiding the
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underlying background image layer, they're not interacting at all.
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But if we change the Blend mode, we can change that interaction.
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In this case, in order to add density, I want to use the multiply blend mode.
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You'll see that as soon as I choose the multiply blend mode, now the background
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copy is being blended with the background image layer.
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In order to increase density. It will darken up all values in the image
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except black and white. Black of course will simply remain black
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and white is going to remain white because there isn't any information there
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to build up additional values. But all the tonal values in between will
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get a little bit darker, and that can very quickly and easily improve the
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overall appearance of the photo. If the effect is a little bit too strong,
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you can reduce the opacity for the background copy layer.
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Using the control at the top of the Layers panel.
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By reducing the opacity for this layer, we're reducing that overall effect.
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In this case, I think the maximum effect is perfectly fine.
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So I'll leave that opacity up at 100%. So you can see, just by creating a copy
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of the background image layer, and changing the blend mode for that layer to
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multiply, you're able to add density to any photo very easily.