Re: Week 1 images : Silver Balls

[mikemeister_admin]

Here's another image.

[ggroess]

Art,
One of the very nice effects of LAB is the ability to sometimes have your cake and eat it too.  Again, here the L curve comes to the rescue.  If you look at your image detail as posted  you can see that the highlights get blown out by the adjustments.  I want the details..I live for highlight details...  It returns the shape and tonality to the right hand side of the balls.

In Shot 1 I have brought them back into your image using the L channel in LAB and a moderate lizard tail.

Greg

[mikemeister_admin]

But see Greg, how do you know where to place the anchor points on the curve?  I played with anchor points....moving them around, but I didn't know where to place them....or how many....or how far to move them....or in what direction.

[ggroess]

Great question...

If you look at the Curve widow while the mouse is over an image you will see the "color worm".  This is another CM feature that helps you figure stuff out.  The color worm shows you the "range" of the pixels on the curve grid. 

See Shot 1.

This range tells me where to work on the curve.  when I place the mouse over the area of the balls I want to adjust I can see the worm near the bottom left.  It is hard to see because the tone of the worm is also shown.  In a future release Mike is going to make this more visible but for now I'll point it out to you.  See Shot2.

When I click on the end of the color worm on the L channel grid I select the point on the curve and move it up to darken it. See shot 3.

Shot 4 shows the result of that move. Shot 5 shows that in close up.

To restore the rest of the image you again use the color worm to help you find the range of the adjustment. 
I'll post those next.

Greg

[ggroess]

To restore the curve I find the new range for my adjustment by placing the mouse on the curve line where I want to save the highlight detail I just adjusted and I select the highest point of the range.  Shot 5 shows the new range between the blue lines.  Select the highest point and adjust from there..

Shot 6 shows the selected point.

In shot 7 I adjust the curve back down until the end point of the curve line touches the center line of the curve grid again.

This process can be used on both ends of the L channel.  I also use the color worm to find out where on the curve I need to work when I am adjusting in color.

Great question and I will explain more if you need me to...Keep asking...

Greg

[mikemeister_admin]

Greg,don't forget to mention that your boxes are set up with lightest on the left.If he just copies the curve he could be in for a surprise.GregM