Re: Week 1 images

[mikemeister_admin]

As always, I found that just using curves was lacking.  I used Photoshop's Shadow/Highlight filter first (set to it's default settings), then used Curvemeister to finish it up.  Don't ask me what I did in Curvemeister, I don't know.  I played with so many things that I lost track.(Curvemeister has too many buttons to remember.)

[ggroess]

Art,
Shadow highlight is a good strategy for the merry go round.  The goals here are better images.  You certainly have done that. 

It would help Art if you could note what color space you are in.  Possibly take a screen shot of the curves interface before you click "apply" so that I can see the curves you have applied to the image or better yet, save the curves by clicking on the "save" button and saving the curve to your desktop and then post it to the forum with your images.  I have all the images on my PC so I can take your curve file and open it in my copy of CM and see what you have done to the image.

I'm going into the images as posted now and I will have more info for you later today...
Greg

[ggroess]

RE: Merry go round.

Art,
First of all you have done a great job overall on the image. 

My screen shot shows you hue clocks on your posted image.  The only thing I'd like to point out to you is the neutral.  I have circled it in red.  If you use the CM "Set Neutral" command by right clicking on the horse's neck in one of the shadow areas and selecting set neutral all of the RGB values should be the same.  It looks like the image has a slight blue green cast.  this is effecting the skin tones in the image as well.  It is nothing serious but something you need to stay aware of.  The real guts of the first week are setting highlight, shadow, and neutral. 

This simple SHN process forms the back bone of the curve process.  Using "shadow and highlight" can be a very effective tool but I would tone down the default PS settings.  You risk loss of detail data if you hit the image with the PS defaults.  See shot 2 for my default settings. 

The trouble with Shadow and Highlight is you get what you get and you lose adjust ability. If you can adjust the shadow and highlight points to get the results you want you should do that first.  In a more advanced work flow you could do that on a layer set to luminosity so you do not lose any details.  Using the lowered defaults allows you to go in a more measured approach and make sure you only go "far enough".  You can apply Shadow and Highlight multiple times.  PS re-calculates the image values each time; so after a while it does become counter productive.

Greg

[ggroess]

re: Kite Fliers

Art,
Again you have posted a reasonable correction to this image.

As you have seen in the other thread the blue shadows in the shirts are a real problem.  If you want to try to tackle that you certainly can but it is not required.

The real story again here is the SHN.  As you can see from the attached screen shot you have done a good job here.  As I play with your image the only thing I would change at this point is the tonality and to me at this point it is purely subjective.  Since my preferences are no better than yours I can only ask if you played with the mid tones a bit?  If you did great...If not you might want to try moving the mid-point of the RGB master curve a bit to see if you like the tonality any better with different settings.  If you are not able to see the "RGB master" curve let me know and I'll post a screen shot of the setting you need to change to see it.

Greg

[mikemeister_admin]

Hey Greg!  I thought we were just using the Wizard to do the corrections in CM?  That means that I used the LAB color to make the adjustments.

Also, I have no idea what the hue clocks mean or how they work.  I played with one, but the numbers meant nothing to me so I ignored it.

All I did in the images was to use the Shadow/Highlight in PS, then open CM and use the wizard.  If the Shadow/Highlight looked bad, then I didn't use it.....like in the flower and the duck pictures.

[ggroess]

Ok...

Hue clocks are used in CM to show you the color values of the pixels in the areas selected.  In RGB they are on a scale of 0 to 255 0 equals black and 255 equals white.  The notation is 0,0,0 or 255,255,255 where the first number is Red the second is Green and the third is Blue.  At this point we use them to know that the values we set are neutral.

In RGB all of the values need to be equal for the pixels to be neutral.  The result of this process is no color cast in the image.

Later in the course we use Hue clocks to do a by the numbers correction.  It results in much more natural colors and it helps you to identify problems in the image you might not see visually.  The Hue clock itself is based on the Hue value for the color selected.  Since Hue is expressed in Degrees from 0 to 360 it can be shown in a clock. 

It helps us to figure out memory colors like skin tones and greens.  You will find from experience that certain colors fall into certain "times" in the hue clock.  For instance skin tone "should" fall in what we call the "1:00 to 1:30 time frame" it means the hue clock points to some place between 1 and 2 on the clock.  Too close to noon and the skin is cold, too close to 2:00 and the skin is too yellow.  It's fast and easy once you get used to it.

For now I'll keep pointing out the colors using the hue clock.  You should look at the numbers and try to adjust them to make the values equal in areas where the color should be neutral.  SHN are usually good targets the neutral selection should be something that you know is neutral.  Side walks, shadows on a white shirt etc. 

Let's turn off the wizard and try to make a mess of things...
I think you'll learn more when you get your hands messy with this...

Greg