Welcome to Tutorial Tuesday! Sarah of Naptime Momtog and I will be bringing you a new challenge every week, to stretch your shooting and editing skills. This week, I was inspired by Paper Heart Camera…specifically, Courtney Kirkland’s recent tutorial on creating the matte effect in Photoshop. In case you missed the tutorial, be sure to click HERE for all the details.

Interestingly enough, I have been using this technique on my images for a while. I think I remember asking someone about a year or two ago “how do you create that airy look in your images?” Matte sounds much more professional. Anyways, here is my SOOC shot to the left.

As Courtney explained in her tutorial, creating a “matte” look can be quickly and easily done by using your levels adjustment layer. But first you’ll want to run a clean edit (I’ll show the clean vs. matte in a moment). With that said, here’s what my levels looked like (to the right). You’ll want to pull the little black arrow on the bottom bar – where it says output levels – to the right. On the other hand, if you want to darken your image (helpful if you’ve overexposed your image), just pull the right side of that bar to the left.

Quick and easy…right? Here’s my clean edit on the right (using Coffeeshop Blog’s Perfect Portrait 3) and my “matte” edited image on the right.