Post Processing #5 - Camera to JPG, Quickly

IanD posted this image, and I did some quick & dirty improvements. IanD kindly allowed me to use his image for this tutorial. Thanks!

Here's what IanD posted:

Another excellent tutorial. Thanks.

nice and thorough.

i like using curve adjustment layers instead of levels but that's just me.

Scottes:

You could sure save me a lot of trouble if you'd just buy the house next door that's for sale. Really wonderful stuff.

Tom

Is that a funny-looking dog or a wolf?

---Bob Gross---

He be a wolf.

How about giving us a hint on how to do this? Every time I've tried curves for contrast I get screwed up - LOL!


BTW, I'm trying to go simple for now. Many people have some of the basics and Photoshop can very easily get confusing. I'll get more advanced as I go along, and go back and do more particular things a better way. For instance, comparing the simple Levels to a more complex but better Curves.

Any time someone feels like showing us a better way to do something, feel free! (hint hint)

Any wolves in the desert?

Well, I guess you'd let me borrow lenses now and again....

Other than me, there aren't many.

And yes, you can borrow my lenses anytime in exchange for tutoring.

To adjust contrast in curves:

- Open the curves dialog (usually as a layer adjustment).
- Set a point at the midpoint (128,128) of the 45 degree line - which you are going to make into a curve.
- Set a 2nd point on the upper half of the line (say 192,192); push it up and to the left -- not too much. This increases and compressses tonal values in the highlights.
- Set a 3rd point on the bottom half of the line, now a curve, (say 64,64); pull it down and to the right -- not too much. This decreases and compresses tonal values in the shadows.

While making these changes, keep your eye on the image to get your desire contrast.

You hopefully have made a sigmoid, or "S" curve. The input/output points might be: 64,47 - 128,128 - 192,204

You can vary this by first setting your "midpoint" and moving it up or down to make the image lighter or darker before adding the additional points to shape the contrast.

With practice, you don't really need the midpoint. Just shape the curve with the two other points.

On a curves adjustment layer, you can play with setting the blending mode to luminosity, color, saturation or hue to get different contrast effects.

Sounds a bit complicated but it becomes second nature quickly. Honest.

*bangs on desk* Show us a Picture! *bangs on desk*

OK, so I've seen - and done - this S-Curve thing before, and I guess I have problems because it never shows me what I'm aiming for. With Levels, I can
"see" the current Black and White points in the Histogram. I know that I'm just setting the new black and white points, and I know that everything between them will be stretched out. The Levels trick where you hold down Alt while moving the sliders is fantastic - I can immediately see where I'm going to blow things up or out.

But it's always seemed to me that contrast via curves is very subjective, and I feel that this is a step that should be at least somewhat more scientific.

This makes no difference. Most Windows applications, including Internet Explorer, are not ICC aware, so they'll ignore the sRGB ICC profile that's embedded in the image. Just leave the box unchecked to make the file a bit smaller.

Thanks for the tip about the Shadow / Highlight adjustment tool - I've never used that very much before.

Uh uh. Contrast adjustment is subjective, not scientific, although degrees of contrast adjustment certainly can be quantified (e.g. 1+, 2+, etc.).

When you change contrast, you change tonality (image brightness levels) and shift colors (both hue and saturation). You create a new version of the image.

When adjusting curves, keep an eye on the global effect while targeting specific elements of the image (e.g highlight or shadow area) to get the final effect you want. You know you've gone way too far when you start seeing posterization.

Usually you want to increase contrast (very subjective) while maintaining good shadow and highlight detail. That's the tradeoff and why judgement is necessary.

The usual workflow is to correct white balance, set white/black points (levels), adjust brightness (levels or curves), adjust contrast (curves), and then tweak color/saturation (hue/saturation). If you don't do it in the right order, you can wind up going around in circles.

Tip with curves dialog: Clicking on the image will show the corresponding point on the graph in the curves dialog.

Well I tried playing with the original wolf and Curves and I still didn't get it.

I personally would love if you took Ian's wolf pic and curved it, and showed us the curve or at least the values. You're a hell of a lot better at this than I am, and I'd love to get this one figured out.

Your editing looks terrific. I'll get a similar result through a different route.

I copied the image directly off the web. This image is tricky. Is the wolf gray or red? In Photoshop, if you assign an sRGB profile to the image, it looks washed out - gray. If you assign Adobe RGB, there's more color and red tones in the coat!

1. If you loaded it into Photoshop with a working space of Adobe RGB and then "converted" it to Adobe RGB, then you kept all the color numbers intact (i.e. there was no actual conversion). The image will have more reddish tones.
2. If you loaded it into Photoshop with a working space of sRGB and converted to Adobe RGB, then you get an sRGB (gray) looking image but you would be editing in the larger gamut of the Adobe space (giving you more editing range in the cyans and greens).

Judging by your final result, I'm guesssing you did #1. I chose to assume it was a sRGB image and worked with it in sRGB space. Thus, I had to make a gray wolf look more like your final reddish wolf. Also, I'm working with Photoshop 7, so I don't have the benefit of the powerful Shadow/Highlights adjustment of PS-CS. Here's what I did:

- No levels adjustment. I didn't want to clip the few levels in the darkest shadows and lightest highlights. My curve adjustments will affect these levels.

- Curves adjustment layer (curve points)
Midtones: 77,71 and 155,177
Open shadows: 32,39
Pull back highlights: 211,219
Still not what I want. So change blending mode to Soft Light. Reduce opacity to 80%.

Contrast now OK but the fox looks yellow/gray
- Hue/Saturation adjustment layer
Master: saturation +10
Yellows: hue -8 (shift towards red), saturation +10

- USM: r=1.0 amount=100% threshold=2

I really think this wolf started off in Adobe RGB and got lost in sRGB space.

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