It has nice contrast, interesting composition -- but what if we want to add a little drama to the picture, have it look like this?

We're going to capture the technique in an action, so open the image you want to work with and begin to record a new action, naming it "Add Drama."  From the Layers menu select "Duplicate Layer," name the new layer "Multiply," and hit OK.  From the Layers menu do "Layer Style, Blending Options..." and select "Multiply" for the Blend Mode.  Leave the Opacity at 100% and hit OK.

This will darken the image considerably, but not to worry.  From the Layers menu do "New Adjustment Level > Levels..." and hit OK.  In the resulting dialog type "185" in the third Input Level box as shown below and hit OK.

From the Layers menu do "New Adjustment Level > Hue/Saturation..." and hit OK.  In the resulting dialog type "20" in the Saturation Level box as shown below and hit OK.

Finally, go to the Layers palette and select the original Background layer.  From the Layers menu select "Duplicate Layer," name the new layer "Blur," and hit OK.  From the Layers menu do "Layer Style, Blending Options..." and set the Opacity at 30%.  Leave the Blending Mode at Normal and hit OK.  From the Filter menu do "Blur > Gaussian Blur..." and in the resulting dialog type "20" in the Radius box before hitting OK.  The blur won't affect the details as much as you'd think, because of the Multiply layer lying above (and the Opacity value of 30%).

We're all done now, so stop the recording.

You might wonder about where the number values came from, and why the Adjustment Layers.  Well, the numbers are from experience, and the Adjustment Layers are for flexibility.  After you run the "Add Drama" action your Layers palette will look like this, and you can easily change the Adjustment Layers in a variety of ways.

Say you don't want any increase in Saturation; you could go into the dialog and set the value to 0, or you could change the opacity to 0, or you could simply delete the Adjustment Layer.  And you can easily make the image darker or lighter by altering the Levels layer, particularly the opacity.

The Blur feature is not quite so flexible, because there's no way to make it an Adjustment Layer.  But we set the radius quite large, and by adjusting the Opacity you can realize quite a broad range of blurring.  You'll find that you almost always want to use some blurring, because the effect is nicely muted by the Multiply level, and you can adjust it however you like.

Here's another example, of a grandfather with his granddaughter, with the same Levels and Saturation settings but a larger amount of blurring:

Try this technique, using different values of Saturation, Levels, and Blur.  You won't use it for every shoot, but I think you'll find it useful!  Of course, there will be many images for which it's unsuited.  Next month's issue will feature "Adding Drama II", a second method that may cover a wider range of images.  See you then!