Shadow/Highlight Tool
After making the full range of tonal adjustments to an image, the result has good overall tone, but the Shadows and or Highlights may have become compressed resulting in flat Shadows or Highlights with little detail. The Shadow Highlight tool is an effective and easy tool that allows you to restore some of the contrast within the Shadows or Highlights without making significant changes to the overall tone that you have carefully adjusted. The Shadows Highlight tool is able to determine the...
Changing Color with the Color Replacement Tool
The Color Replacement tool provides a way to change a color on part of the image quickly by painting over the color. It is a very easy tool for changing the color on a specific object within the image. For the example shown here, I will be changing some of the red weave into orange. 1 Create a new Merged Image layer on which to paint the new color page 24 . If you only have a background layer, duplicate it by selecting Layer gt Duplicate Layer Name this layer for the color edit - here I use...
The Workflow Outline
The complete workflow has dozens of different tasks. To simplify I've broken the overall workflow into a series of stages. Each major workflow stage has about three to six tasks within it, but most can be performed easily in a few minutes. Each major stage also has its own section. This chapter covers in detail the stages Organize the images through Performing Local Adjustments. Photographic Edits is covered in Chapter 5, Advanced Options , and Print Preparation and Print are covered in Chapter...
Accelerators
I'm not going to provide a long list of keyboard and mouse-click accelerators. A list is just not a practical way to learn them. But do learn some of them to make it easier to focus on editing rather than navigating each time through the interface to find a particular command. Many accelerators are easy to find, though, in the Photoshop interface. Use the interface to find the appropriate accelerator, and then use the accelerator instead. You'll quickly get the hang of it. This may sound...
Stage 0: Capture the Image
This is a book about Photoshop, not photography. I don't cover the specifics of digital image capture, but there are a couple points to make about the importance of image capture. First, ensure good exposure in your images. There's a myth that Photoshop can fix any type of problem in digital images. There are definitely many options for fixing problem images in Photoshop, but it's always best to start with a good image. Second, capture a sharp, straight image. Use sharp lenses and limit the use...
Color Correction by the Numbers
Often it is more precise to color correct using numerical values rather than visually. This is especially useful when you have something in the image that should be gray or neutral a color is neutral if the Red, Green, and Blue RGB values are all equal. If you have an image that contains something that should be neutral use this technique. Ideally, you might have something bright that should be neutral like a cloud, or a white dress and something middle toned that should be neutral like...
Using Photoshop's Auto Color
Photoshop provides a tool for automatic color correction the Auto Color option is available on the Image gt Adjustments menu, but this only works occasionally. Here is a more powerful way to use this tool. 1 Examine the image for a color cast. 2 Create a new Curves adjustment layer Layers gt New Adjustment Layer gt Curves, name this the Auto Color layer. The Curves dialog contains a button for Auto Color correction, and a button for Auto Color Correction Options Select the Options button. 3 The...
Resolving Out of Gamut Colors
Quality profiles yield very little color shift with the Relative Colorimetric rendering intent. But no profile can perfectly resolve the printing of unprintable colors that is, out of gamut colors. Out of gamut colors simply cannot be rendered by your print on the target paper - deal with it. If you take the trouble to print with profiles, you should work to resolve out of gamut colors manually 1 Display the out of gamut colors by selecting View gt Gamut Warning. As illustrated, pixels that...
Select Color Range: Highlights, Midtones, Shadows
The Select Color range tool lets you select various tones in your image based on the density. Selecting the Highlights selects the highlight pixels and also makes a gradient of pixels with a density between highlights and midtones. To make a quick density selection, use the Select gt Color Range menu command to open the dialog. Open the Select dropdown to access the options for Highlights, Midtones, or Shadows. Photoshop selects a predetermined range of tones for each of the selections for...