Increasing contrast without changing saturation
I'm just editing the photo shown below. And like usual I would like to increase the contrast a little bit. Graduation curves did a great job at my photos developed in the past. But this time I can't work with it.
The color temperature is very warm and it's a challenging balance act to find a correct adjustment. By raising the contrast with known tools saturation also increases and the colors get much to jazzy.
So I searched different contrast editing methods which are easy to handle. They only use layer blending modes and adjustment layers.
Here are the results:
The first possibility uses a Photoshop basic: The layer blending modes. Just copy your original layer. Set the blending mode of the new layer (on top) to screen (it's "Multiplizieren" in the German version of Photoshop). Your picture will be richer in contrast which can be adjusted by the opacity of the top layer. But the picture also gets darker and more saturated. Knock out!
The way I'm used to is the second one. I create a new curves adjustment layer (Gradionskurve in German) and put the curve to an "S". But how I already told in the introduction: more saturation is unavoidable.
The channel mixer is also an adjustment layer. I found this tip on lenslightlove.de. Choose black and white in the presets and use Diffuse Glow (what is called "Weiches Licht" in the German version) for the blending mode. The result is quite good. But especially in the fog and near the sun you can see an increase of saturation.
Almost disappointed I had one more chance: Calvin Hollywood. He is famous for his freaky photo editing methods. And it will become strange also this time: He uses the adjustment layer "Hue / Saturation". I put the saturation slider to -100 and set the layer blending mode of the adjustment layer to Diffuse Glow. The result is exactly what I was looking for. More contrast with the same amount of saturation.
So this is the final photo:
I hope you like the result and this tutorial can help you by similar photos. Don't be afraid to ask any questions.