When you take a picture on the spot, you can’t instantly pick out exactly what you want and make it stand out exactly how you want. That’s where image editing takes over. In this tutorial, we will teach you how to place emphasis on certain objects to make them stand out vividly. This includes adding brightness/contrast to certain colours on the focal point, adding obvious factors to improve your visualization to your audience, and other techniques, natural or artificial.

1.First we will start with the basics. You need to first pull out the focal point of the piece/picture/artwork. This is important so that we can work explicitly on the focal item that we are adding emphasis to.

2.Using the picture provided as an example, we will begin. Start by selecting the Magnetic Lasso Tool & and wrapping the item that we want to place emphasis on. For the sake of this tutorial, I will be pulling the most obvious thing on this image; the breakdancer.

3.One the item is selected, Copy & Paste the person in the picture, creating a new layer. Now we have a person to work with. When the person is pasted, it should appear as if the person is still in the same position in the image.

4.Now it is time for us to place emphasis on this object to make it stand out. We can do a number of things now that our focal point is separated from the rest of the image. First I will do some basic lighting techniques to begin to separate the person from the rest of the image. I plan on making the focal point on this image stand out as if he were gleaming. We will achieve this by first selecting Image>Adjustments>Brightness/Contrast, setting the Brightness ~8 & Contrast ~25. These are my settings however, you can make these settings whatever you like as long as you get the brightness you want. NOTE: this is all done on the copied layer.

5.Now we will go into layer styles and apply a glow to the border of the breakdancer to make him obviously standout from the crowd. You can get to this area by double-clicking the copied layer or clicking the “f” at the bottom of the layers tab. We select “Outer Glow” and use the settings below. As said before, you can use the any type of setting you’d like but for this image, I chose these settings because they seemed to fit the breakdancer’s skin better.

6.Now create anew layer as we are going to apply some gradients in order to lead the background out slowly. Make sure these layers go between the copied layer and the original image. Now, once done, apply a black gradient to the bottom and set the layer’s opacity to 12%. This will give the background a subtle darkness, further adding to the emphasis effect.

7.Again, create a new layer, right above the last gradient layer, and apply another gradient, this time from the light perspective. We are going to try to add more emphasis to the breakdancer, making him stand out with obviousness. This time, I used a more yellow-ish color to further push the breakdancer out, seperating him from the rest of the crowd.

8.From this, you can add, fire to his legs, or any other type of special item to place emphasis on the breakdancer. With so many possibilities, it’s hard to say what you’re actually limited to doing. This is particularly good for video editing.