Thanks to Nadim !!! And to Contrast Masking

Nadim,

thank you for the really effective technique of procesing high contrast pictures in PhotShop.
Who does not know about it, I highly recommend to look here

http://www.dpreview.co​m …010&page=2&mess​age=911535

Today I made a photo of two Amherst's horse police officers. But It was very sunny day and add to that It was noon. So the original picture is here:

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You can do about the same by converting the image to Lab mode and adjusting levels of the lightness channel. It looks more natural too (no gaussian blur halos, see e.g. the wall behind the horse). Here I adjusted lightness gamma to 1.45:

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Yes, the halo is a problem in some cases, but it can be regulated by radius of Gaussian filter. Anyway, sometimes Channel or Layer blending is the only chance to save the picture. Though I have to admit this is extreme case and not fore everyday using.

Hi Andrei and Pekka,

There isn't a right way or a wrong way to achieve something.

The LAB "Lightness" channel adjustements allows the modification of the brightness of an image, without impacting the color components.

The Contrast masking technique's objective is to limit brightness in hi-brite area, and to increase brightness in dark areas... kind of...

Different objectives, different techniques.... Know when to use each. For a flash interior photography, where the background is underexposed, the contrast masking technique will yield better results. In photos where contrast is evenly distributed (outdoor), adjusting the Lightness channel would yield better pleasing results...

Thanks,
nadim

ps - Changing the image from RGB to LAB and vice-versa will impact the image, unlike what you may read in some articles. This is due to the integer implementation of image processing algorithms in Photoshop. Try the following: change the image from RGB to Lab to RGB. Repeat 10 times. You'll start seeing heavy pixellization... color pixellization. I bet no one would be able to see any impact with only 2 modifications, so we're safe so far.