I'm not sure what you mean by jpeg compression... SOOC these are high pixel count but low res 22" or so wide but 72 ppi... KWIM?
It's mostly that you're attaching a low-rez version. Where do you host your photos online, or do you? An online photo place like smugmug, pbase, or others is good because you can post your images inline. See the link in my signature for more information about posting.
Thanks for the feed back David and John it definitely helps.
I'm not sure what you mean by jpeg compression... SOOC these are high pixel count but low res 22" or so wide but 72 ppi... KWIM?
Right now I'm cropping to 4x6 300 ppi to work.
Then for web I change image size to 72 ppi and save as to jpeg. Is there a better way?
When you save to JPEG, most software asks you for a JPEG compression level. In Photoshop, it's a number from 1 to 12. 12 is low compression and preserves maximum detail, producing the largest file size. 1 is high compression and loses lots of fine detail because of the compression. In near solid colors like skies and sometimes facial tones, this loss of detail often shows up as botchiness in colors which is often referred to as JPEG compression artifacts. The image you posted is approx 500x800 pixels and 40k. That looks to me like pretty high compression and thus produces some noticable loss of detail and some blotchiness, particularly in the skin tone. While the high compression is friendly for people on dial-up connections, it's a noticable loss of quality vs. an image of the same number of pixels that was saved at a little higher JPEG quality level and ends up around 75k.
WOW love the pop thing.....
This is not the best photo but I thought it would be a good candidate. David thanks for this post....I learned something new! Let me know what you think.
I would be interested in feedback after following the suggestions for getting an image to pop!
Is the sail a bit too dark after adjusting the curves?
I love the photo and what you are doing to enhance it. A couple comments.
IMO, I'd love to see the sailboat not go to black here. It would even be neat if it could be lightened a bit from the original rather than getting darker. But, this is personal preference. as it's certainly an acceptable composition to just have a silhouette of the sailboat.
If you want to print this, I think some of the yellows in the sunset and most of the dark blue is out of gamut for a typical inkjet CMYK printer. I'm not an expert on that yet, but I've been bitten by it before and when I load your image into Photoshop and look at the CMYK values for the sky or yellows, they show an ! by them which I believe means they are out of gamut. Out of gamut means they won't print this way (some print ink limit has been exceeded and the printer may not be able to make that color). It may get toned down to something you still like, but it will likely not look quite like you see on screen.
You may want to level the horizon. It's at a 1.1 degree angle which is noticable.
You may want to experiment with a different crop. Ideally, you would not have the horizon right in the center of the picture. Most people tend to favor pictures with the horizon on a 1/3 boundary (the rule of thirds). You have plenty of room on both top and bottom to experiment with different crops.
You may want to experiement with a crop that doesn't put the sailboat right in the left/right center. For this one, it's often nice to have it a little to the right of the center. This puts more emphasis on the sunset on the left side of the photo and gives the sailboat some visual room to move into (in the direction it's going). The eye can then go from the sailboat to the sunset.
I would be interested in feedback after following the suggestions for getting an image to pop!
Is the sail a bit too dark after adjusting the curves?
Thanks
I think the sail looks great in silhouette. The major move, increasing the contrast in the ocean, makes this a dramatic improvement. Now, if you really want to bring back some detail in the sail, copy to a new layer and use Shadow/Highlights, preferably to the lightness channel after converting to lab. It's going to lighten the sky as well, which you really don't want, but pulling the white anchors of your Underlying Layer blending sliders to something like 19/35 will kill the effect in the sky, and painting a mask with a big soft brush will keep the ocean's contrast.
But it looks great as is.
There are two ways to slide through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both save us from thinking.
—Korzybski
Thanks David. I actually just linked here... but I can post to my personal space and get better res. This digital stuff is still new to me... I'm starting to miss my old film camera.
Ahhh John you're right I used 6 for smaller file size when I saved that for here... I'm going to keep playing and try again! Thanks so much for all the help.
Amateur in the making. Constructive feedback always welcome.
I think the sail looks great in silhouette. The major move, increasing the contrast in the ocean, makes this a dramatic improvement. Now, if you really want to bring back some detail in the sail, copy to a new layer and use Shadow/Highlights, preferably to the lightness channel after converting to lab. It's going to lighten the sky as well, which you really don't want, but pulling the white anchors of your Underlying Layer blending sliders to something like 19/35 will kill the effect in the sky, and painting a mask with a big soft brush will keep the ocean's contrast.
But it looks great as is.
Thanks for the suggestions, where do I find the optionto select the underlying layer blending sliders?
woodpecker using tutorial
i applied the tutorial from David about making the picture's "pop" to this image. I also tried something else.... I did the reverse of what the tutorial says to do by using the "white" and doing the reverse ( ex. bringing the line the other way and choosing the "brighest" part..... I have no clue if what I did adds or subtracts or is even a recommended thing to do but I did it anyway. ( maybe the effects cancel each other out?)...yadda, yadda - let me shut-up now!
Thanks for the suggestions, where do I find the optionto select the underlying layer blending sliders?
Thanks
Check out http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=21648. This is Rutt's summary of Chapter 8 of Dan Margulis' Lab Book. You'll get a good overview of how the sliders work and when to use them.
Double-clicking on the layer palette to the right of the layer name will bring up the dialogue. In a nutshell, the sliders allow you exclude ranges of information based on different channels. For example, if you wanted an adjustment to affect only highlights, you could use your blending sliders for the lightness channel to exclude shadow detail. There are two sets of sliders, "This Layer" and "Underlying Layer." In the above example, using "This Layer" would exclude shadow detail as it appears in the existing layer. "Underlying layer" would eliminate information in the existing layer based on shadow detail in the image information below the existing layer.
There are two ways to slide through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both save us from thinking.
—Korzybski
Well, Windoze, I really like THAT woodpecker shot.
I have been using that white thing for a long time, off and on. Now I know how to be more accurate, from the tutorial, too. And how to use the black one.
I used it on my bridge. It looked really good.
However where I used the white it was blown. And that has been my experience. I get a shot just right in RAW, then I would bring it to RGB curves and use the white thingy, the shot would look good, but on further inspection, the numbers would put the white at 255 (not good). So maybe backing up a bit is the answer, I really don't know.
Yours looks great! How are your numbers? Anyone else had experience with this??
ginger (I know I should be asking this on Shenanigans, but I only have strength for so much typing, intermittantly, too.)
Well, Windoze, I really like THAT woodpecker shot.
I have been using that white thing for a long time, off and on. Now I know how to be more accurate, from the tutorial, too. And how to use the black one.
I used it on my bridge. It looked really good.
However where I used the white it was blown. And that has been my experience. I get a shot just right in RAW, then I would bring it to RGB curves and use the white thingy, the shot would look good, but on further inspection, the numbers would put the white at 255 (not good). So maybe backing up a bit is the answer, I really don't know.
Yours looks great! How are your numbers? Anyone else had experience with this??
ginger (I know I should be asking this on Shenanigans, but I only have strength for so much typing, intermittantly, too.)
Ginger - u understand 1000% more about this than I do! I have no clue about the numbers, I dont even understand why and what I did, im totally "brain dead" when it comes to post processing. BTW, wasnt it you that asked when you use David's tutorial - what do you select if you bring the graph all the way to the left and there is no "blackish" area"? if there is more than one what do you do??
Im so lost when it comes to this stuff, its like ever try to buy a simple tripod and ballhead -> completely overwhelming but a BIG THANX for the nice words about my image!!
Nice job Troy. The added curves really do make it pop. Although I think what may be more important is that you started with a very good image. Nice sharp eye, catchlight and a good composition.
what do you select if you bring the graph all the way to the left and there is no "blackish" area"? if there is more than one what do you do??
troy
Troy, just don't drag it all the way over. What you're looking for is the darkest part of the image. Your darker part may be much lighter than black...which means that you can't move the curve over so far, because you'll bypass it. Just ease off until you find that darkest point.
What you're talking about is an indication that your image is very gray in the blacks.
also, be very very careful with the highlight tool (setting the whites), as especially with birds, you can quickly blow out the highlights, which is a no-no :nono
David and co.
what clues does one look for (by eye only) to determine if the black point is correct/relatively close, on a given shot..
I took this shot at ISO 800 and Aperature at 22... with the goal to get both in reasonable focus and of course was looking for a happy medium (exposure) for both...
I feel that I was fairly close, but ended up with a tad to much app or to little shutter...hence the black dog is almost a black Blob!
I am reasonably pleased with the white dog and dissapointed with the black dog
-Anyway, by your eye...how close/far of, is the black point in this photo?
-How important is a correct Black Point, in relation to a properly exposed photo?
(photo was resized only)
Thanks to all posting on this thread, as starting from ground zero on this subject, I have learned a great deal!
what clues does one look for (by eye only) to determine if the black point is correct/relatively close, on a given shot..
I took this shot at ISO 800 and Aperature at 22... with the goal to get both in reasonable focus and of course was looking for a happy medium (exposure) for both...
I feel that I was fairly close, but ended up with a tad to much app or to little shutter...hence the black dog is almost a black Blob!
I am reasonably pleased with the white dog and dissapointed with the black dog
-Anyway, by your eye...how close/far of, is the black point in this photo?
-How important is a correct Black Point, in relation to a properly exposed photo?
(photo was resized only)
Thanks to all posting on this thread, as starting from ground zero on this subject, I have learned a great deal!
I think you really nailed the exposure on this one. This is a hard one to get right and you have the best compromise possible. You have captured good detail in both the white dog and the black dog. Only a little way one way or the other with the exposure and you would lose detail in one of the dogs with blown highlights or plugged shadows.
The easiest way to tell in Photoshop whether you are setting the black point appropriately is to see the histogram when you are setting the black point. The pixels to the left of the black point when you set are going to be smushed to black and any detail in them will be irretrievably lost.
The easiest way to tell by looking at your image is to see if you have any dark points in your image where all detail has been lost. Sometimes the loss of detail may be a little subtle because it may just be one color channel that has been clipped by the black point.
The scientific way to tell in Photoshop is in the Levels dialog where you have the histogram and Photoshop will actually show up which parts of the image you are losing when you set the black (or white) point triangles. To do this in Photoshop, you just hold down the Alt key while setting the black point. Photoshop will then highlight for you in the image, which pieces of your image you are clipping detail in. It will even show you which channels you are losing the info in.
As best I can tell in the image you posted, you have a pretty good black point. Even the darkest spots of the image still have pretty good detail. You would know you had gone too far if that black points looked "plugged" - a term that means there's no detail in them, just blobs of black. You would know you had not gone far enough in setting the black point if there were no good black points in your image, the darkest things were just gray. The challenge in this image is that it's got important detail in the darkest parts of the image and important detail in the brightest parts of the image. And, digital sensors in digital cameras do not deal with that situation as well as film did (they can record less dynamic range).
Your picture looks good to me as it is and this is probably as good as you can get "out of the camera" without employing any special post processing techniques. So, in that sense, you've done a great job so far.
If you want, there are ways that you can make more detail in both dogs visible to the naked eye with post processing. What this involves is lightening the darkest tones a bit and darkening the lightest tones a bit (essentially compressing the range of the photo so that the darkest detail gets lighted a bit to where we can see it better and vice versa for the highlights). Since you're trying to move these two tones in opposite directions, this is not an just an exposure adjustment.
The absolute simplest way to do this is by using the shadow/highlights tool. You can experiment with the settings you like, but on this image, I find that a shadow amount of 47% and a tonal width of 28% and leave the default radius at 30 px works good for the black dog. Whether or not you do a highlight adjustment to affect the white dog is totally up to you. I liked being able to see a little more detail in the whitest part of that dog with a highlight adjustment of amount=13% and tonal width=32%, but it's really up to you. If you are just starting with the shadow/highlights control, then don't be intimidated with the tonal width and radius sliders. You can start by just leaving them in their default position and adjusting the amount to taste. Because of the subject matter in this photo, this is probably a bigger shadow adjustment that you would normally use, but it seems to work here. The shadow/highlight tool works most effectively when used in LAB mode and applied to the L channel, but if you want to keep things simple here, you can just apply it to your main image in the default RGB mode and it will really help you there too.
Instead of shadow/highlights, you could also apply a curve to this image with the goal of raising the brightness of the dark tones and lowering the brightness of the bright tones. This would essentially be a reverse S-curve. For some images, shadow/highlights works better than the curve and for others, the curve works better and for others a combination is sometimes useful. In this image, it appears you can somewhat do either. The shadow highlights sliders are probably the easiest.
This is what the result looked like after the above shadow/highlight adjustments. What I like about this is that you can now see more detail in the black dog and the white dog's face is more visually separated from the black dog's body.
It's a really good move to the black dog! Brings nice detail out. A couple of embellishments you might want to consider as well—I was playing around with Shadow/Highlights myself on this image and found that no matter what settings I used, I couldn't restrict the move to the black dog. If you compare before/after images you'll see there's been a hit to the white dog as well, which looked pretty good to start with. Applying the move to a duped layer and using the underlying layer blending sliders on the white anchors with settings of, say, 71/102 would spare the white fur the loss of depth.
Also, if you run your sampler over the black dog's face you'll find a decided green cast. It's there in the original and still there after setting the black point. You can see it in whatever space is being displayed in the Info palette. CMYK shows Magenta considerably below yellow and cyan in most spots. RGB shows the Green channel above Red throughout, and LAB readout shows the a channel constantly in negative numbers, which means a green cast where the black fur should be 0, or neutral. Try a Selective Color adjustment layer above the image and add +5 magenta to the blacks. You'll be surprised at the shift. Put the adjustment layer in color mode to keep the detail unchanged.
There are two ways to slide through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both save us from thinking.
—Korzybski
John
thanks for the fabulous detail...with help like this, I may well get the hang of post processing over time!
newbie question: I can't seem to locate the shadow/highlight tool... daaaah! I could not find it in PS for Dummies either!
I assume that you chose the shadow/highlight tool rather than curves OR levels, by simply viewing the original photo?
...there seems to be so many methods, to tweak (a problem spot in a photo) in PS, I assume like everything in life, picking the right tool for a given situation, comes from experience.
I have not really been schooled in Photoshop - relied on books and online tutorials, and have found numerous ways to do the same thing. I used to adjust the contrast, then play with White and Black in Selective color to get my "pop", but this seems to be a much more natural (and subtle) way to get the job done.
My first go with Pop!
This is my first time posting....bear with me! I read the tutorial and worked on a client's photo and this is what I came up with--thoughts?
Comments
I'm not sure what you mean by jpeg compression... SOOC these are high pixel count but low res 22" or so wide but 72 ppi... KWIM?
Right now I'm cropping to 4x6 300 ppi to work.
Then for web I change image size to 72 ppi and save as to jpeg. Is there a better way?
It's mostly that you're attaching a low-rez version. Where do you host your photos online, or do you? An online photo place like smugmug, pbase, or others is good because you can post your images inline. See the link in my signature for more information about posting.
Dgrin FAQ | Me | Workshops
When you save to JPEG, most software asks you for a JPEG compression level. In Photoshop, it's a number from 1 to 12. 12 is low compression and preserves maximum detail, producing the largest file size. 1 is high compression and loses lots of fine detail because of the compression. In near solid colors like skies and sometimes facial tones, this loss of detail often shows up as botchiness in colors which is often referred to as JPEG compression artifacts. The image you posted is approx 500x800 pixels and 40k. That looks to me like pretty high compression and thus produces some noticable loss of detail and some blotchiness, particularly in the skin tone. While the high compression is friendly for people on dial-up connections, it's a noticable loss of quality vs. an image of the same number of pixels that was saved at a little higher JPEG quality level and ends up around 75k.
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That's the beauty of the EFS 10-22 at work!
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This is not the best photo but I thought it would be a good candidate. David thanks for this post....I learned something new!
Original:
Shannon, keep playing, and when you're ready...move on up to using LAB to add pop...
Dgrin FAQ | Me | Workshops
I would be interested in feedback after following the suggestions for getting an image to pop!
Here is the picture before
And this is the picture after following the suggestions for using curves
Is the sail a bit too dark after adjusting the curves?
Thanks
- IMO, I'd love to see the sailboat not go to black here. It would even be neat if it could be lightened a bit from the original rather than getting darker. But, this is personal preference. as it's certainly an acceptable composition to just have a silhouette of the sailboat.
- If you want to print this, I think some of the yellows in the sunset and most of the dark blue is out of gamut for a typical inkjet CMYK printer. I'm not an expert on that yet, but I've been bitten by it before and when I load your image into Photoshop and look at the CMYK values for the sky or yellows, they show an ! by them which I believe means they are out of gamut. Out of gamut means they won't print this way (some print ink limit has been exceeded and the printer may not be able to make that color). It may get toned down to something you still like, but it will likely not look quite like you see on screen.
- You may want to level the horizon. It's at a 1.1 degree angle which is noticable.
- You may want to experiment with a different crop. Ideally, you would not have the horizon right in the center of the picture. Most people tend to favor pictures with the horizon on a 1/3 boundary (the rule of thirds). You have plenty of room on both top and bottom to experiment with different crops.
- You may want to experiement with a crop that doesn't put the sailboat right in the left/right center. For this one, it's often nice to have it a little to the right of the center. This puts more emphasis on the sunset on the left side of the photo and gives the sailboat some visual room to move into (in the direction it's going). The eye can then go from the sailboat to the sunset.
Here's an example of some of these concepts:Homepage • Popular
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I think the sail looks great in silhouette. The major move, increasing the contrast in the ocean, makes this a dramatic improvement. Now, if you really want to bring back some detail in the sail, copy to a new layer and use Shadow/Highlights, preferably to the lightness channel after converting to lab. It's going to lighten the sky as well, which you really don't want, but pulling the white anchors of your Underlying Layer blending sliders to something like 19/35 will kill the effect in the sky, and painting a mask with a big soft brush will keep the ocean's contrast.
But it looks great as is.
—Korzybski
Ahhh John you're right I used 6 for smaller file size when I saved that for here... I'm going to keep playing and try again! Thanks so much for all the help.
Totally struggling with the LAB!!!! I'm going to give it another go today.
Thanks for the suggestions, where do I find the optionto select the underlying layer blending sliders?
Thanks
i applied the tutorial from David about making the picture's "pop" to this image. I also tried something else.... I did the reverse of what the tutorial says to do by using the "white" and doing the reverse ( ex. bringing the line the other way and choosing the "brighest" part..... I have no clue if what I did adds or subtracts or is even a recommended thing to do but I did it anyway. ( maybe the effects cancel each other out?)...yadda, yadda - let me shut-up now!
troy
Check out http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=21648. This is Rutt's summary of Chapter 8 of Dan Margulis' Lab Book. You'll get a good overview of how the sliders work and when to use them.
Double-clicking on the layer palette to the right of the layer name will bring up the dialogue. In a nutshell, the sliders allow you exclude ranges of information based on different channels. For example, if you wanted an adjustment to affect only highlights, you could use your blending sliders for the lightness channel to exclude shadow detail. There are two sets of sliders, "This Layer" and "Underlying Layer." In the above example, using "This Layer" would exclude shadow detail as it appears in the existing layer. "Underlying layer" would eliminate information in the existing layer based on shadow detail in the image information below the existing layer.
—Korzybski
I have been using that white thing for a long time, off and on. Now I know how to be more accurate, from the tutorial, too. And how to use the black one.
I used it on my bridge. It looked really good.
However where I used the white it was blown. And that has been my experience. I get a shot just right in RAW, then I would bring it to RGB curves and use the white thingy, the shot would look good, but on further inspection, the numbers would put the white at 255 (not good). So maybe backing up a bit is the answer, I really don't know.
Yours looks great! How are your numbers? Anyone else had experience with this??
ginger (I know I should be asking this on Shenanigans, but I only have strength for so much typing, intermittantly, too.)
Ginger - u understand 1000% more about this than I do! I have no clue about the numbers, I dont even understand why and what I did, im totally "brain dead" when it comes to post processing. BTW, wasnt it you that asked when you use David's tutorial - what do you select if you bring the graph all the way to the left and there is no "blackish" area"? if there is more than one what do you do??
Im so lost when it comes to this stuff, its like ever try to buy a simple tripod and ballhead -> completely overwhelming but a BIG THANX for the nice words about my image!!
troy
My Photo gallery- rohirrim.smugmug.com
Selective Sharpening Tutorial
Making a Frame for your image (Tutorial)
Troy, just don't drag it all the way over. What you're looking for is the darkest part of the image. Your darker part may be much lighter than black...which means that you can't move the curve over so far, because you'll bypass it. Just ease off until you find that darkest point.
What you're talking about is an indication that your image is very gray in the blacks.
also, be very very careful with the highlight tool (setting the whites), as especially with birds, you can quickly blow out the highlights, which is a no-no :nono
Dgrin FAQ | Me | Workshops
what clues does one look for (by eye only) to determine if the black point is correct/relatively close, on a given shot..
I took this shot at ISO 800 and Aperature at 22... with the goal to get both in reasonable focus and of course was looking for a happy medium (exposure) for both...
I feel that I was fairly close, but ended up with a tad to much app or to little shutter...hence the black dog is almost a black Blob!
I am reasonably pleased with the white dog and dissapointed with the black dog
-Anyway, by your eye...how close/far of, is the black point in this photo?
-How important is a correct Black Point, in relation to a properly exposed photo?
(photo was resized only)
Thanks to all posting on this thread, as starting from ground zero on this subject, I have learned a great deal!
I think you really nailed the exposure on this one. This is a hard one to get right and you have the best compromise possible. You have captured good detail in both the white dog and the black dog. Only a little way one way or the other with the exposure and you would lose detail in one of the dogs with blown highlights or plugged shadows.
The easiest way to tell in Photoshop whether you are setting the black point appropriately is to see the histogram when you are setting the black point. The pixels to the left of the black point when you set are going to be smushed to black and any detail in them will be irretrievably lost.
The easiest way to tell by looking at your image is to see if you have any dark points in your image where all detail has been lost. Sometimes the loss of detail may be a little subtle because it may just be one color channel that has been clipped by the black point.
The scientific way to tell in Photoshop is in the Levels dialog where you have the histogram and Photoshop will actually show up which parts of the image you are losing when you set the black (or white) point triangles. To do this in Photoshop, you just hold down the Alt key while setting the black point. Photoshop will then highlight for you in the image, which pieces of your image you are clipping detail in. It will even show you which channels you are losing the info in.
As best I can tell in the image you posted, you have a pretty good black point. Even the darkest spots of the image still have pretty good detail. You would know you had gone too far if that black points looked "plugged" - a term that means there's no detail in them, just blobs of black. You would know you had not gone far enough in setting the black point if there were no good black points in your image, the darkest things were just gray. The challenge in this image is that it's got important detail in the darkest parts of the image and important detail in the brightest parts of the image. And, digital sensors in digital cameras do not deal with that situation as well as film did (they can record less dynamic range).
Your picture looks good to me as it is and this is probably as good as you can get "out of the camera" without employing any special post processing techniques. So, in that sense, you've done a great job so far.
If you want, there are ways that you can make more detail in both dogs visible to the naked eye with post processing. What this involves is lightening the darkest tones a bit and darkening the lightest tones a bit (essentially compressing the range of the photo so that the darkest detail gets lighted a bit to where we can see it better and vice versa for the highlights). Since you're trying to move these two tones in opposite directions, this is not an just an exposure adjustment.
The absolute simplest way to do this is by using the shadow/highlights tool. You can experiment with the settings you like, but on this image, I find that a shadow amount of 47% and a tonal width of 28% and leave the default radius at 30 px works good for the black dog. Whether or not you do a highlight adjustment to affect the white dog is totally up to you. I liked being able to see a little more detail in the whitest part of that dog with a highlight adjustment of amount=13% and tonal width=32%, but it's really up to you. If you are just starting with the shadow/highlights control, then don't be intimidated with the tonal width and radius sliders. You can start by just leaving them in their default position and adjusting the amount to taste. Because of the subject matter in this photo, this is probably a bigger shadow adjustment that you would normally use, but it seems to work here. The shadow/highlight tool works most effectively when used in LAB mode and applied to the L channel, but if you want to keep things simple here, you can just apply it to your main image in the default RGB mode and it will really help you there too.
Instead of shadow/highlights, you could also apply a curve to this image with the goal of raising the brightness of the dark tones and lowering the brightness of the bright tones. This would essentially be a reverse S-curve. For some images, shadow/highlights works better than the curve and for others, the curve works better and for others a combination is sometimes useful. In this image, it appears you can somewhat do either. The shadow highlights sliders are probably the easiest.
This is what the result looked like after the above shadow/highlight adjustments. What I like about this is that you can now see more detail in the black dog and the white dog's face is more visually separated from the black dog's body.
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A MUCH better discussion than I could have offered! Great job!
Dgrin FAQ | Me | Workshops
Also, if you run your sampler over the black dog's face you'll find a decided green cast. It's there in the original and still there after setting the black point. You can see it in whatever space is being displayed in the Info palette. CMYK shows Magenta considerably below yellow and cyan in most spots. RGB shows the Green channel above Red throughout, and LAB readout shows the a channel constantly in negative numbers, which means a green cast where the black fur should be 0, or neutral. Try a Selective Color adjustment layer above the image and add +5 magenta to the blacks. You'll be surprised at the shift. Put the adjustment layer in color mode to keep the detail unchanged.
—Korzybski
thanks for the fabulous detail...with help like this, I may well get the hang of post processing over time!
newbie question: I can't seem to locate the shadow/highlight tool... daaaah!
I could not find it in PS for Dummies either!
I assume that you chose the shadow/highlight tool rather than curves OR levels, by simply viewing the original photo?
...there seems to be so many methods, to tweak (a problem spot in a photo) in PS, I assume like everything in life, picking the right tool for a given situation, comes from experience.
Thanks again.
thanks for your input as well
...I will have to search and study quite a bit deeper
I have not really been schooled in Photoshop - relied on books and online tutorials, and have found numerous ways to do the same thing. I used to adjust the contrast, then play with White and Black in Selective color to get my "pop", but this seems to be a much more natural (and subtle) way to get the job done.
You need Photoshop CS or later or you won't have this feature at all. If you do have a recent enough PS, then:
I am a lowly 6.0 version...
..no highlight/shadow tool
I will simply use one of the other methods, to tweak these type of issues.
thanks again!
This is my first time posting....bear with me! I read the tutorial and worked on a client's photo and this is what I came up with--thoughts?
015.jpg this is the before picture
trying to figure it all out