Week 1: Example 5

[leeharper_admin]

In the notes for week 1, it mentions that this image can be approached in the same way as is demonstrated in the 'Fat and Sassy Color' tutorial - so before attempting the dandelions I followed that tutorial, which really helped me with my CMYK curves for example 5.

I am uploading curve files and comparison images which demonstrate what I was able to do with each color mode. My final version is a combination of several versions, so I will upload that in the next post with a description of what was blended together.

The aim of my correction (in each color mode) was to increase the saturation of the flowers, darken the background, and accentuate the blue areas of the background (to provide colour contrast with the dandelions). Each color mode except HSB allowed me to move the image in this direction - so, to save bandwidth, I won't upload the HSB version here.

Lee.

[leeharper_admin]

When comparing the different versions together I reordered the Photoshop layer-stack so that my preferred versions were at the top. By toggling layers on and off I decided that I liked the RGB correction more than the Lab correction; the CMYK correction seemed better than the RGB correction; but the colour in the Man from Mars Lab correction (although too strong at 100%) was more exciting than the colour in the CMYK version. What's a novice to do? I decided to blend them together...

I felt that the background of the CMYK version had greater depth than the RGB correction, but I liked the richness of colour in the flowers (in RGB), so I converted my PSD into Lab mode and used the Blend If B channel (Underlying Layers) slider to combine the CMYK and RGB corrections together.

To this combination I applied the Man from Mars correction (in Color mode) at 50% opacity. I also tried doing this to a version of the CMYK layer that I had not combined with the RGB dandelions, but I preferred the more complicated blend.

(I know that we aren't really supposed to be considering colour this week, but I'm having such fun with CurveMeister that it's hard to stop!

Cheers,
Lee.

[ggroess]

Lee,
I feel like you are holding down the color for fear of losing the details in the highlights of the yellow flowers.  You can Mask them using a step from the Picture Postcard workflow that Dan Margolis created.  You can make a mask out of the L channel and blurr the heck out of it. 

Try this out and see if you can push the yellow a bit harder.
www.curvemeister.com/video/greg/Week_1_Flowers_R_channel_enhanced.pdf

Greg