We tend to start off with awkward images, so I thought I throw in a simple one - to me it demonstrates how sensitive one must be while curving.
One could just accept the colour cast because of the low lighting, but I think it might look better with a slightly more natural looking stone.
One of the great features of CM, it that one can made the curve dialog as large as one likes and therefore achieve at more refined curve than using PS.
Class: The point of this is to show off some of the things you will be able to do after taking the class and opening your eyes to the possibilities...
Chris,
Another Zog Easy Image?? lol I think you need some Tungsten to Daylight filters...I'll get you some when you get me a photography lesson....we can exchange for Christmas...
Great image...
For the rest of the class...
My goals for the image were as Zog stated...More natural color for the stone...whatever that really means...it just needs to look better than orange...better shadows and highlights....and as Zog has asked...a subtle control correction.
Well....
First step is to open the shadows and try to save some highlights...For this I used the "shadow/Highlight" tool in PS or PSE it is under the image adjustments menu.
Next step was to go into the LAB color space. For some of you this will be new areas of exploration but many find LAB to be the easiest color space after they get into it a bit. I made no adjustments to the L channel since the first step was to get the shadows and highlights from PS. I did add a neutral to the tops of what appear to be the frosted glass candles in the image. Bright spot at about 4:30 from the red alcove area in the center bottom of the image. This made the image look much better but not quite far enough for the "more natural stones" goal.
I needed to remove the yellow color in the brighter parts of the image so I used the B channel first in LAB. I need to keep the blues so I pinned them using a right click on the center of the grid and I chose the pin to grid option and selected the "upper right" for my configuration yours might be different but we want to pin the blue side of the B channel curve. I placed the mouse in the image in an area of the image that I wanted to reduce the yellow cast and looked at the curve. The color worm showed me where one end of my adjustment had to be located for that area. I then moved the mouse around a bit to see where the other end of the adjustment needed to be. This is very hard to describe but if you want to try it, place your mouse on the image and slowly move it around a bit, you will see a color worm bounce around the curve a bit. Find a place different from your starting point. these two points will set the boundary of the color cast correction on the curve.
Once the yellow was reduced I went to the A channel and repeated. Minor tweaks were added until I liked the "tone" of the stone...I allowed it to be a bit yellow since the color was actually there. But as you reduce the yellow the red part of the light comes out...
Once I was satisfied with the over all color I looked at the shadows again because they were an odd blueish color that would just not do. I re-opened the image in CM and went to the CMYK color space because I just wanted to add some black to the shadows to make them look better. Place the mouse in an area you want to darken this way and look at the color worm on the K channel. place two control points on the curve below where you want to adjust and then move the curve until the blacks look better.
In summary you can get really creative with how you adjust the image... I used 2 color spaces and a few techniques we will get into later in the course. One involves what is called a contrast pin. That helped me reduce the color in the yellow areas by locking two points of the curve together and allowing me to move them to a different value as a pair. the other involved the highlight curve command to help me locate the areas I wanted to adjust. Again we'll get there later.
final image to be posted next...
Greg