This technique is very popular right now. High-contrast photos look more proffesional, as if they are shot in good studio. But before I show how to do it, let me tell you one thing. To make High-contrast photos, lightning has to High-contrast too. You cannot make a high-contrast photo without light on subjects body. It does not mean that you just blow off your subjects face with flash. I mean some parts of subject should be light and some should be more dark in order to make it more contrasty.
Here's how the image looks after burning. Shadows on his face now look more dark. You can even burn wrinkels or dark lines on the t-shirt.
7. Go get rid of colour problems caused by dodging and burning, change the layer blend mode to Luminosity.
12. To give the finishing touch, press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E to merge all your layers into a new layer. Now duplicate the top layer (Ctrl+J) and change its blend mode to Multiply. It will turn your image into a much darker image.
13. Lastly, click on the Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers panel to add a standard layer mask to your layer. Now, get the Brush tool, and choose a huge, soft-edged brush (this brush should be so big that it’s a little larger than your subject’s head). Press X to switch your Foreground color to black, then take the Brush tool and just click once over your subject’s face,
Source - This tutorial is taken from Scott Kelby's ebook. However, in the ebook, the author used Camera Raw (he started with a raw image) but I modified it for common (JPEG, GIF etc) images.
For this tutorial, I am using the image below -
As you can see, some parts of image are light and some are dark. Using photoshop, we will make darker areas more dar and brighter areas more bright to give the image High-contrast look.
Here is the final image that we'll get after following all the steps in the tutorial -
Here's How To Do It -
1. Create a Duplicate Layer (press Ctrl + J), then go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/saturation and move to saturation slider all the way to left i.e. make the saturation zero.
2. Change the layer blend mode to Luminosity.
You can see how much more contrasty and edgy the photo looks with just this one change.
3. Zoom the image, select "Spot Healing Brush", then click on any marks, pimples, blemishes on the face to remove them.
4. One of the big secrets to this technique is to dodge and burn (brighten and darken) the highlights and shadows already in your photo. You’re actually going to over-accentuate them, which gives the image a more three-dimensional, almost illustrated, look. I always start by burning (darkening) first, so get the Burn tool from the Toolbox (or press Shift-O until you have it). Go up to the Options Bar and, from the Range pop-up menu, choose Shadows, then lower the Opacity to 20%. In Photoshop CS4, dodge and burn tools produce very good results, much better than previous versions.
5. Before, you start burning your image, duplicate your layer (Ctrl+J).
Choose a medium-sized, soft-edged brush from the Brush Picker, then start painting over the dark (shadow) areas of your photo. In our example, I used the Zoom tool (Z) to zoom in so I would have a clearer view, then I started painting over his beard, the dark part of his left cheek, right under the center of his bottom lip, and any shadow areas of his face, his hat, and his neck. The goal is to make the dark shadow parts of this image even darker.
6. Now get the Dodge tool (press Shift-O), go up to the Options Bar, and set the Range to Highlights (so it only affects the highlights), set the Opacity to no more than 20%, then start brightening the highlight areas of his face, hat, shirt, etc., by painting over them. Go through the 
entire image, and everywhere you see a highlight, paint over it to make it more apparent. Here, I’ve painted over the highlights on his cheeks, his hat, the wrinkles on his shirt, and the bright areas on his neck, the left side of his face, etc. Anywhere that’s a little bright—make it brighter. Now, as you paint over these areas, some of them (like the areas on his face) are going to
get an orange color. Don’t worry, we’ll deal with that next.
8. Now again, duplicate the layer (Ctrl+J). Now you’re going to add some really intense sharpening, and when you add this much sharpening, it really magnifies any skin blemishes or spots your subject has, which is why we were careful to remove them earlier with the Healing Brush tool. Okay, for our hyper-sharpening, first we’re going to duplicate the top layer. Then, go
under the Filter menu, under Other, and choose High Pass. When the dialog appears, increase the Radius to around 110 pixels and click OK.
9. When you apply sharpening, the image turns nearly grey. To fix it, just change the layer blend mode to Soft Light.
At this point, the image is little dark. So, we'll use the layer mask to apply sharpening where we want.
10. Press-and-hold the Alt key and click on the Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers panel to hide your high-contrast layer behind a black mask. Now get the Brush tool, choose a soft-edged brush, make sure your Foreground color is white, and paint over detail areas that you want to appear super-sharp and contrasty. I painted over the wrinkles in his shirt, over the inside area of the mic, over his ballcap, his shirt, his hands, his beard, his earring, his eyes, his eyebrows, and his lips—just the high-detail areas (and not the areas we want to stay soft).
11. Some of the adjustments and tweaks we’ve made up to this point have made the color in the photo very vibrant—and in almost every case, too red. So, go to the Adjustments panel and click on the Hue/Saturation icon (the second one from the left in the second row) to bring up the Hue/Saturation options. Choose Reds from the second pop-up menu from the top, and then lower the saturation a bit by dragging the Saturation slider to the left, which removes some of the red and gives your subject’s skin somewhat of a desaturated look (as seen here).
and it deletes the darkening over that one area. It may take five, six, or a few more clicks to reveal the brighter version of your subject on the layer below, which leaves you with the effect you see below in the photo.
Source - This tutorial is taken from Scott Kelby's ebook. However, in the ebook, the author used Camera Raw (he started with a raw image) but I modified it for common (JPEG, GIF etc) images.
you should add a screenshot of the layers area because i was confused as to how many layers you were talking about at one point.
Thank you for this information, pls how can you help me improve my photoshop technique? Thank you sir.
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