Books by Dan Margulis

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Well, to maintain the thread,

With Margulis, one must get the mood I think.  Apart from his tendencie to lets us feel he is smart and that it is going to be easy, one has to (heurg...) ... work at it :-)
I am thinking of lab colors like when I paint  (losing control) in a way that color has no value.  Maybe it is a beginner habit.

A question comes up. What about all theese subtel color on a print? In sRGB?

The technical details are deceptively simple.  A few points added to a curve, and a paragraph of explanation may seem like nothing much was done.  It is important to use the images from the CD, and recreate what Dan describes.  Then the big test is applying that knowledge to your own images.

Subtle colors are an issue for Lab, which is a very coarse color space.  RGB is in the middle, with sRGB being the most subtle color space of all.  CMYK allows very fine adjustment of color, and was the original reason for writing the Curvemeister plugin.  I was very surprised that Lab became so important.

[BBushe]

well, I've just acquired a 2nd-hand copy of professional photoshop, and the LAB book will be next. It's my birthday soon so feel free to send me amazon vouchers...

I found after the curvemeister lessons I do most of my work in LAB, as it's so quick and I like the results. I really had little succes with wgcymk so maybe I should spend a bit more time looking at that.

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well, I've just acquired a 2nd-hand copy of professional photoshop, and the LAB book will be next. It's my birthday soon so feel free to send me amazon vouchers...

I found after the curvemeister lessons I do most of my work in LAB, as it's so quick and I like the results. I really had little succes with wgcymk so maybe I should spend a bit more time looking at that.

For many, Lab is the "best and brightest" color space.  I find myself using it most of the time.

WgCMYK was added to Curvemeister to allow techniques from Dan's books to be used on RGB images, without losing any of the colors.  These techniques include adjusting the black generation, the unwanted color, and fine adjustment of skin tones and other relatively subtle colors.  WgCMYK will be included in the intermediate class.

Mike

[BBushe]

intermediate class?

[mikemeister_admin]

intermediate class? Sounds great  ;D

    I have Dan,s recent book as well as an older copy. I read them both and I worked with both of them, by no means do I understand most of what I read. They is more information than most beginners or intermediate users can understand. Saying that, I enjoyed them ( with frustration) and learned from them. I do not find LAB the best to use on all photos, but my intent was to learn about colour. Mike's beginner class, of which I took twice, was also a great help.  That is why I was happy to see signs of an intermediate class.
  Barry

[BBushe]

I've read a fair bit of Professional Photoshop now, and it is illuminating. The LAB book is on it's way from the US, as I could order it half price (compared to UK).

BarryP, I didn't mean to imply LAB was best for all photos, just I get results I like very quickly. I am looking more into the other colourspaces now, using the Prof PS book and know I need to look a lot harder, but life and work all gets in the way :)

I'm very happy to see signs of an intermediate class!

[BBushe]

I have read Professional Photoshop now, it's still very relevant despite being written for PS7. Colour hasn't changed that much since then :)  I think I need to read it again, as I was mainly on planes and in hotel rooms when I read it, and couldn't work through any of the examples at the time. The book is heavily cymk orientated, no matter what Dan says!

I have also just got the LAB book, and have started to read that. Looks good.

[j2e4a8n]

I am still ... (at least I work hard ) ... reading Margulis on LAB.

I am trying to find back in the book where he talks/writes  on why using auto level for the A or B channel?

Somebody can help me on this?

[j2e4a8n]

I found it in chep9  page191

Auto levels is use to increase contrast, because the color channels usually does not have big contrast (because wcmk and rgb have only a small part of the LAB gamut) and are thus not very good for mask.

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Yes!  Congratulations on finding this!

The a and b channels are often useful for distinguishing objects that may differ in color, but not brigthness.  Using the a or b channel, combined with auto-levels, can result is a mask that gets the job done cleanly and without any hand work.

BTW - Curvemeister's "Copy Channel" command is useful for mask shopping - you can quickly find the channel you want to use (generally this will be in the RGB, Lab, or HSB color space, copy it to the clibboard, and use it in Photoshop as the start of a layer mask.

Mike