Bright background makes Photos look dark...

Kevin from Georgia, USA, using Photoshop 7.0 with Mac OS9, writes in with:
[Quote:] I am doing some furniture ads for a friend.
> My backgroud colors are very bright, and when I put pictures on the bright backgrounds the photos are very dark. Yet when I try to change the pixels the photo just enlarges. is there a way to get these photos more crisp on the page?
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Optical illusion, believe it or not!

You'll have to balance that photo a bit. Changing resolution won't help.

The problem is all color is affected by its surrounding colors. Photos that may look perfectly good alone will suddenly appear to darken or even change color balance completely when placed on a brightly colored background.

The best remedy for this is to increase the brightness of the photo, and perhaps tone down your background a bit.

In your photo, go to Image > Adjustments > Levels

Slide the input highlights arrow (on the right of the levels histogram) to the left
Be careful, not too much

The middle tones slider (center) should slide along. Adjust it slightly to the left if necessary

Your photo will now be brighter, and may not suffer quite as bad against the bright background.

Take this advice: all colors react to their environments. If the furniture in the ads is not very bright, with bright colors, then don't put them on a brightly colored background. You should not introduce elements into a design which will have the effect of making the product look dim or dull. You want to compliment it, not kill it. That is if you plan to keep the account.

Select a prevalent color in the furniture with the eyedropper tool.
Reduce its saturation and use that for the background... or:

Select a 'cool' color, reduce its saturation and use that to really pop the furniture off the background. (Cool colors recede!)

If you want an example, send us your furniture photo.

Comments

[jessica]

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[narayan Shrestha]

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[Jackie]

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[Michele Vigna]

Backgrounds don’t match.
Michele from New Jersey using Photoshop 7.0 under XP-OS

I’m trying to put a transparent logo into a Quark document. The Quark document is a black & white ad with a black background and white text. I used the standard CYMK black that is provided in Quark for the background and when I bring in my transparent logo the blacks don’t match. The logo has a darker black box around it. How can I get this to work? Michele

Yo, Michele...

Thanks for the question... see:
Blacks Don't Match!