Tuesday, June 30, 2009

More Monday Night LIGHTS!

Well, I know I keep writing about LIGHT Photography Workshops but I do have some other stuff in the pipeline, honest, and I will get to it. But, yes, once again, I want to spread the word about MNL from LPW. Every Monday at 6:30 pm Pacific for an hour or more. Costs less than $5 per session. Stunning value for the money. Hal Schmitt, fighter pilot turned photography pilot and amazing instructor. But enough of that.

Last night covered two curves topics I have been anxiously awaiting for a while: adjusting color casts separately for highlights and shadows, and ensuring that white seamless backgrounds in studio shots are white and consistent. This was the third or fourth curves adjustment layer evening, and each has been a revelation on my pathway from Corel's PhotoImpact (that I have used for ten years) to Adobe Photoshop.

We all know about the midtone color adjustment eye dropper in curves and what it can do for color casts. But there is also a technique, although a bit more involved and using the separate color channels that allows color cast correction that differs between shadows and highlights. It involves dropping color samplers onto representative areas of the photograph and then adjusting the curves endpoints for the respective color channels to bring the three channels into equality. Hmmm, a little hard to summarize, which is why tuning in is so helpful.

The other technique covered was the white background issue. Same deal, but this time using the builtin layer mask automatically generated on new curves adjustment layers. Makes perfect sense in retrospect! And produces much more pleasing results.

Well, I'm off to a meeting.

Disclaimer: I am not compensated by LPW.

Travel safe!

Dwight

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