Could someone show me...

03FatBoy

How you went from the before photo of the bridge to the after photo of the bridge from this help page?

http://www.smugmug.com/help/washed-out

I am so-so with photoshop cs, but I have never been able to figure out the curves so I just leave them alone.

I do want to get better, so I will be buying the book mentioned on that page.

But in the mean time, could someone show/explain to me how they got the after photo outta that before??

AZsnapper

Curves
The book shown at the end of the story, Professional Photoshop - get it. I think there is a more current version out now. You want the 5th edition.

It's a tough read, but it started to open my eyes. About all I ever did with curves is make a S curve in the master channel. Now I am using the curves in the individual channels, learning when to adjust an image in LAB, etc...

03FatBoy wrote:

How you went from the before photo of the bridge to the after photo of the bridge from this help page?

http://www.smugmug.com/help/washed-out

I am so-so with photoshop cs, but I have never been able to figure out the curves so I just leave them alone.

I do want to get better, so I will be buying the book mentioned on that page.

But in the mean time, could someone show/explain to me how they got the after photo outta that before??

03FatBoy

AZsnapper wrote:

The book shown at the end of the story, Professional Photoshop - get it. I think there is a more current version out now. You want the 5th edition.

It's a tough read, but it started to open my eyes. About all I ever did with curves is make a S curve in the master channel. Now I am using the curves in the individual channels, learning when to adjust an image in LAB, etc...

Thanks. Just purchased the book a few moments ago from amazon.com.

Duffy Pratt

I don't think there is any way to go from the first bridge to the second using a master curve. So to that extent, the article is a bit misleading. You could probably do it with RGB curves, but I'm not sure exactly how I would go about it. With LAB curves, its pretty easy. It took me about 3 minutes to get the start of a match and thats from the really low res version on the site. So, to learn this particular type of thing, I would recommend Margulis LAB book, The Canyon Conundrum. It's well worth reading both, several times in my case.

The shot on the site has even more contrast and is a bit warmer and more saturated in the sky. I'm pretty sure I could get there if I was starting with a higher res image and put a bit more time into it. But I'm also positive that the correction on the site did not use any of the techniques that the article mentioned.

Duffy

03FatBoy

Duffy Pratt wrote:

I don't think there is any way to go from the first bridge to the second using a master curve. So to that extent, the article is a bit misleading. You could probably do it with RGB curves, but I'm not sure exactly how I would go about it. With LAB curves, its pretty easy. It took me about 3 minutes to get the start of a match and thats from the really low res version on the site. So, to learn this particular type of thing, I would recommend Margulis LAB book, The Canyon Conundrum. It's well worth reading both, several times in my case.

The shot on the site has even more contrast and is a bit warmer and more saturated in the sky. I'm pretty sure I could get there if I was starting with a higher res image and put a bit more time into it. But I'm also positive that the correction on the site did not use any of the techniques that the article mentioned.

Duffy

That's pretty amazing.

Thanks for the heads up on that book. I just ordered his other book, the newest one (classic guide - 5th edition). I'll poke thru that one first. Not sure if it covers any lab work, but one at a time I guess.

Duffy Pratt

Professional Photoshop has one chapter devoted exclusively to LAB, and uses LAB techniques very often after that chapter. Margulis is very agnostic about color spaces. One of the main things that he stresses is that there are advantages to each of the color spaces (RGB, CMYK, and LAB), and a good editor should be comfortable with all three so he can use whichever is best for the picture -- sometimes all three.

Duffy