Curvemeister Forum

Here is a little warm up image for you all to work on...

An interesting image Greg,

My immediate reactions was "what's wrong with it".  I think in my old age I would accept this without further processing!

But on further inspection I think the colours are a little off, but then I do not know the real colour of these instruments, let alone the lighting conditions - presumably inside under tungsten or tube.

I took it into CM, Lab mode and applied quite a large shift to the b channel, moving zero to -31 (using the flesh as a guide) - no other change to the other channels.
I then applied a couple of layers of LocalContrast.  First at 2 pixels and then at 50 pixels (both from the CM layer as the base)
This, of course, over emphasied the contrast, but I knew I wanted a fuller bodied image with richer colours and needed this to prepare for the final change.
That was a blur of 8 pixels and the Opacity reduced to 60%.

I shall be interested to see how OTT and mad my change is compared to others!

The idea was to keep a nice wood tone  yet separate the crome,brass-gold.Final layer was a smart sharpen at amt 20,pixels 20,opacity 30.GregM

The wood in the original is really very blonde maple.  It is actually quite close in color of the actual floor.  The horn on the other hand needs some help.

The lighting was window light reflected off the ceiling and some daylight crossing.  No artificial lights...
The wall reflected in the horn is a Dark Green.  The skin tones in the hands are a key to this image.
The pearl keys can also help you since they are fairly neutral...

Chris you are in a good place with the body of the horn but the keys are chrome ; the floor is trouble...

Greg

Ok..
Here are the steps I took to enhance this image.  I would say that overall it is not a bad image to begin with.

1) This is a Photoshop correction.  It can be done in Elements but it is harder to accomplish.

2) Copy the background to a new layer and switch to channels.  Open each channel and inspect.  Open CM on the Red and Green channels and using the Zone system pins pin the shadow to zone 0 and the highlight to zone 10.  Adjust the mid tone areas of the curves to your contrast liking...Apply changes in CM

3) Apply the Green channel to the blue channel in PS and set the layer to Luminosity mode. Flatten the image.

4) copy the background to a new layer and open CM on the layer to do a By the numbers color correction on the image.  Apply the changes in CM and then set the layer to color mode.  This preserves the tones from the original with the colors from the BTN correction.  Flatten the Layer.

5) Create another background copy on a new layer and open the image in CM.  This time we are gong after color enhancement.  But I have stated that the floor is pretty close to where I want it so I need a mask to protect the floor and most of the horn from the color boost I am going to do in CM.  Shot 1 attached is the Blue channel Mask I created to cover those areas of the image. 

With the blue mask in CM protecting the floor and major parts of the horn I set a hue clock on one of the keys as shown in shot 2 this will be my color anchor for the color boost moves to follow.  I want a point that should not change too much and is fairly close to neutral.  After I adjust the A and B Channels I want to move the curves adjustments until my hue clock numbers look the same as they did when I started. 

6) Find a point in the image where there is color you want to enhance that appears to be weak.  In this case I chose a place that was reflecting some of the skin tones but also had some other colors close by.  Using the Right click functions of CM set a contrast pin.  Then using the Contrast pins "twist" the A and B curves as shown in shot2.  This will add a ton of color to the image so make sure to go slowly and try to keep the image in the realm of real colors.  Because only the areas shown in shot 1 as white or grey will see the color change you need to watch closely and use the compare button frequently to check your choices.  Apply the changes in CM and return to Photoshop.

7) I used smart sharpen on the image and adjusted the opacity of the sharpen layer to my taste.

Final image is a compare with the original as posted.  I think I might have held the floor in check just a bit more but overall the color of the horn down in the keys is better and the bell of the horn is not getting too much color. This is a modified "Picture Postcard" type workflow.  The steps I took are Luminosity, Color, Color Boost with controls.

Greg

I applied the same ROC filter to this picture.

Art does the image look cool in color to you??  It seems to be just a bit cool from my monitor...Can you tell me more about the ROC filter...

Greg, it occurred to me after I posted the image that I didn't use CM to check for color tints.  I just used the ROC filter and left it at that.  The ROC filter can be found here  http://asf.com/products/plugins/rocpro/pluginROCPRO/  I've had this filter for some time now, and I think it was a lot cheaper back when I got it.(I think I got it when I was still using Windows 98....that was three computers ago.)  You can download a trial version at that site,  but it plasters text across the picture to let you know it's a trial version.  At least you can see how it works.

When I get a picture that has a lot of color cast to it, I"ll use the ROC filter first, just to see what it can do.  It doesn't always give good results, but many times it does a good job. 

I originally got the filter because it was advertised as being able to remove the reddish cast that old photographs seemed to develop with age.  Since I was always scanning old photographs, I ran into that reddish cast a lot, so I figured I'd try out this filter.  It did an excellent job with the reddish cast, but I began trying it on every picture that had any type of color cast, and I was surprised to find out that it worked on a lot of them.


Just to add.....the company that created the ROC filter is called, Applied Science Fiction (ASF), and I guess their filters were good enough that they were bought out by Kodak.

Thanks Art...

I'll have a look a the plugin...
Greg