One of the most useful tricks I’ve learned is a great way to make your photos snap in Photoshop. I learned this in the era of the first digital cameras. With the first digital cameras no matter how great your camera was it would look flat. Since most people aren’t professional photographers, their photos lack the contrast and saturation needed to make it look great. This quick little trick will help fix this problem in many cases.

Note: This works better on RGB images, but will work in CMYK.

1. Go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Curves
2. In the New Layer pop-up select Mode: Soft Light. Press OK.
3. On the curve select the left point (lower left). Make the values Input:0 and Output:62
4. Now select the right point (upper right). Make the values Input:255 and Output:193
5. That may be ok, but if it still isn’t quite what you want, you can add a point to the middle and move it up or down. This will lighten or darken your photo in a much more realistic way.