Curvemeister Forum

Fine.  First a few initial questions

I am on my notebook.  I am using 3.0.12  Mike said that is best for this computer.

I set my default points as 4,4,4  and 250,250,250    for black and white points.  Was that a mistake?  Should I go to 0,0,0 and 255,255,255 

I open with Camera Raw.  For some reason my notebook (they don't like the term laptop) opens jpg only into ACR.  Short term (and long term) I do no adjusting and go into photoshop.  I cannot "open with .." photoshop directly.

Image 1.  Ducks lab
Image 2  Ducks rgb

The lab was more colorful.

Image 3-  Merry go round.  there are a couple of pitfalls here.

Image 4  -  kites.  I used the L curve to open the shadows. 

Fine.  First a few initial questions

I am on my notebook.  I am using 3.0.12  Mike said that is best for this computer.

I set my default points as 4,4,4  and 250,250,250    for black and white points.  Was that a mistake?  Should I go to 0,0,0 and 255,255,255 

These are just fine for most of the stuff we are doing here...All this does is prevent you from Clipping the output values with a curve.  You will always output to these values on the extreme ends of any curve.  Mine are set similar.  You can go even further if you find your prints are too dark or too light.

I open with Camera Raw.  For some reason my notebook (they don't like the term laptop) opens jpg only into ACR.  Short term (and long term) I do no adjusting and go into photoshop.  I cannot "open with .." photoshop directly.

As long as the default settings are all zeroed out you should be fine using ACR to open the image.  Do you have the correct drivers for your camera?  ACR usually opens my RAW files just fine.

I'll comment on the images in a bit..need to have  a look see..

Greg

Image 1 ducks...

The RGB version looks just fine...You will learn later on that there is more we can do but for this image today It looks good.

The LAB version seems to have a yellowish cast on it...It is slight but real...try moving the neutral around a bit and see if you can find a location for it that looks better...
See screen shot.. By lifting the yellow end of the curve a bit I can take out some of the cast.  This also moves the neutral a bit so you can do either lift the the B channel a bit or move the set neutral point.

Greg 

The merry go round Image.

Steve, when you tackle these are you setting a neutral by eye or are you looking for items that should be neutral??  This image also has a slight color cast and it is consistent with the Ducks...once we know what is causing the cast we can account for it or help you adjust your way out...

When you place the neutral you should look to the hue clock on the upper right hand side of the CM window.  In lab you want A and B to be zero.  In RGB you want the values whatever they are to be equal. 

One of the goals for the image is to open the shadows...Using LAB remember that the lightness is separate from color and you can adjust it without introducing a color cast.  You can add what is sometimes called a "lizard tail" to the L curve to open the shadows.  See the screen shot attached. 

Greg

re: Kite Flyers
Steve,
Please read the posting back to Greg M for another possible solution...

This is one of the tougher images to correct in the class...It was a bad placement and we are looking at moving it to another week rather than confusing people too much.
Your image is certainly better than the original and for now please be patient with that. 
We'll be getting into more areas you can use on this image and you can certainly revisit it later. 

Greg

Steve,for the merry go round picture I think of the horses' necks and the little girl's face.Get them right and the rest of the image falls into place.GregM

first pass in Lab to establish shadow,highlight and neutral.The shadow point may seem odd but if you go to the original image(right click and move it around) you'll see it results in the fewest black pixels.The same for the highlight,if you use the white of the horse you blow out the image.The neutral is tricky,there seems to be a lot grey or light greysto choose but move the cursor over them and you get A  and B channel readings of 0,-6:7,-4 anything but the  0,0 of a true neutral.I put an S curve on the lightness curve because the image had lost contrast.

second pass was to add more contrast finishing up with a bit of sharpening.

final result.GregM

Hi Steve,

I wanted to jump in to see whether I can help you with the Adobe Camera Raw issue that you described. This is most likely being caused by the way that the Preferences files on your machine are set up.

My Windows machine has Photoshop CS3 installed, so the screenshots that I've made might look slightly different from what you see, but the process will be the same regardless of which version of Photoshop you're using.

• Firstly, open

Adobe Bridge (if you already have Photoshop open, you can open Bridge by selecting: File > Browse...)

Next, choose: Edit > Camera Raw Preferences.... You should now see a window that looks like 'ACR_Prefs.jpg' (attached).

Make sure that the highlighted checkboxes at the bottom of this window are turned off (strictly speaking, you only need to worry about the 'Always open JPEG files...' checkbox, but turning them both off will prevent you encountering the same problem with TIFF files).

Having done this, you need to:

• Check the

Adobe Bridge Preferences (Edit > Preferences... - select the Thumbnails tab),

And check the Adobe Photoshop Preferences (Edit > Preferences > File Handling...).

Again, I have attached screenshots that highlight the checkboxes that need to be turned off.

I hope that this helps. Please let me know if you continue to have trouble with this. :)

Lee.

I also wanted to answer the question that you had about your Shadow and Highlight point values:

I set my default points as 4,4,4  and 250,250,250 for black and white points.  Was that a mistake?  Should I go to 0,0,0 and 255,255,255

I'm going to suggest (contradict Greg ;)) that it would actually be better to set these values to 0,0,0 and 255,255,255.

Greg is quite right that when it comes time to print an image, you will definitely need to adjust your shadow and highlight values. You will need to make these adjustments to ensure that the printer does not apply too much ink in the shadow regions of your image (which would cause them to block up), and to ensure that a small amount of ink is applied in the very brightest areas of your image. The reason that your highlights should be printed with a slight amount of ink (so slight that you won't actually notice it) is because otherwise a phenomena known as Gloss differential becomes a problem (you can read about it here: http://www.johnpaulcaponigro.com/downloads/technique/technique.php#printing - it is article number 20).

Will your eventual shadow and highlight values be 4,4,4/250,250,250? Possibly - but if you're doing any printing it is worth checking this. A printer evaluation image - and a guide that explains exactly how to use it - is available here: http://www.outbackprint.com/printinginsights/pi049/essay.html.

The point to understand is that whichever values you discover are appropriate for your printer depend upon the combination of printer/paper/inks that you use, and the way that the printer driver is used. If you make your own prints, you may buy a new printer at some point, or you may discover a new brand of paper in the future. If you send your images to somebody else to print the same things will apply - and you may switch printing companies. If you do any of these things then your Shadow and Highlight values will change.

The best way of guarding against all this potential trouble is to create two copies of the files that you consider important enough to print. The image file that contains all of your layers and adjustments, should be saved as a .PSD file (because PSDs will retain all of your adjusments); the file that you send the printer should be a flattened TIFF with appropriate shadow/highlight adjustments - to 4,4,4/250,250,250 (or whatever actual values you need).

Why two files? By creating a master file (the PSD) that doesn't attempt to compensate for printing conditions, you can change printer, paper, or ink without penalty. If you switch to a paper that can handle values of 3,3,3/253,253,253 then you simply throw away the (output specific) TIFF, save a new TIFF from the master file, and apply the necessary adjustments (the 'Output Levels' boxes in the Levels dialog box are designed for exactly this purpose).

Why PSDs and TIFFS? PSD is a great file format for your master file because it retains everything that you have done to the original image. TIFFs are good files to send printers because they don't discard visual information the way that JPEGs do.

I hope that I've helped - if I've just made you more confused, or if you (or anyone else) have any further questions, I'd be more than happy to clarify anything.

Cheers,
Lee.

Steve,
On the merry go round did you also use the CM wizard??
I'm wondering because of the image Julie has posted.  If you did you could be having a similar problem.

Greg