Week 4: Exercise 6 - Fire Engine/Exercise 7 - Yellow Car

[leeharper_admin]

Hi Greg  :)

I've still got two exercises from week 3 to finish, but I thought that I'd get two quick exercises out of the way from week 4 before I get to those...

The fire engine was easy - just invert the a curve in Lab. I liked the effect a little better with a K mask applied, but since that's not what the exercise called for I'm just uploading the image as is.

For the car image, I kept the negative halves of the a and b curves where they were (more-or-less, I did add a tiny bit of saturation to the green grass); I flattened the positive half of the a curve - taking all of the red out of the image; and finished by steepening the positive half of the b channel.

As suggested, I lightened the car in the L channel, which made it look a lot better. Returning to Photoshop, I decided to use the 'Blend If: A' sliders (set to underlying layers) to bring the grass more in line with the uncorrected image. I didn't completely revert it, as I think a slight saturation boost makes the grass look better, but on reflection the colour of the grass created by my (attached) curve did look a bit radioactive, so I wanted to knock that back a bit.

Cheers,
Lee.

[ggroess]

the car is a bit hot as well...if you are going to go further...

On the fire truck it is possible to keep the skin tones in line...up for a challenge??

Greg

[leeharper_admin]

On the fire truck it is possible to keep the skin tones in line...up for a challenge??

Always  ;)

Happy 4th July by the way  :) I hope you're enjoying yourself!

Lee.

[ggroess]

Thanks Lee; I had a fine Day...Went to the history museum here in St Paul to see an exhibit about Ben Franklin.  Very interesting guy...quite the ego...

Greg

[leeharper_admin]

Thanks for the challenge  ;) It was fun having another go at the fire engine, and trying to limit the adjustment to the engine (although in the end I decided to steepen the b channel to add some more saturation to the sky and natural greenery).

It was a really simple curve to write, as there was so much separation between the skin and the engine in the a channel (I've attached the curve in case you want a peek at it).

I also set shadow, highlight, and neutral points, and added a little contrast in the L channel - something that I hadn't done in the other version I posted, so this is also a little snappier.

Lee.

[ggroess]

well done...
These are pretty easy curves to write...as you say...

Greg