Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers - Martin Evening [101]
Figure 3.55 This shows an example of a darkening Post Crop Vignette adjustment in which the Color Priority style was used.
The Highlight Priority style (see Figure 3.56 ) tends to produce more dramatic results. This is because it applies the Post Crop Vignette prior to the Exposure adjustment. It has the benefit of allowing better highlight recovery, but this can lead to color shifts in the darkened areas.
Figure 3.56 This shows an example of a darkening Post Crop Vignette adjustment in which the Highlight Priority style was used.
Highlights slider
You will notice there is also a new Highlights slider which can further modify the effect. In Paint Overlay mode, the Highlights slider has no effect on the image. In the two new priority modes the Highlights slider is only active when applying a negative Amount setting and as soon as you increase the Amount to apply a lightening vignette, the Highlights slider is disabled. As you can see in the Figure 3.57 and 3.58 examples, increasing the Highlights amount allows you to boost the highlight contrast in the vignetted areas, but the effect is only really noticeable in subjects that feature bright highlights. Here it had the effect of lightening the snow-covered branches in the corners of the image, taking them more back to their original exposure value. In these examples the difference is quite subtle, but I find that the Highlights slider usually has the greatest impact when editing a Color Priority Post Crop Vignette.
Figure 3.58 In this example I applied a Color Priority Post Crop Vignette style and added a 40% Highlights adjustment to the Color Priority vignette. If you compare this with the above example in Figure 3.57 , you can see how a Highlights slider adjustment can have a more substantial effect on the Post Crop Vignette adjustment in Color Priority mode.
Figure 3.57 In this example I applied a Highlight Priority Post Crop Vignette style and added a 40% Highlights adjustment to the Highlight Priority vignette. In this instance, the Highlights slider adjustment applied a fairly subtle change to the appearance of this Post Crop Vignette effect.
Adding Grain effects
Also new to the Effects panel are the Grain sliders ( Figure 3.59 ). The Amount slider determines how much grain is added, while the Size slider controls the size of the grain particles. The default setting is 25 and dragging to the left or right allows you to decrease or increase the grain particle size. Note here that if the Size slider is set any higher than 25, then a small amount of blur is applied to the underlying image. This is done so that the image can blend better with the grain effect. The exact amount of blur is also linked to the Amount setting; the higher the Amount, the more blur that's applied. The Roughness slider controls the regularity of the grain. The Default value is 50. Dragging to the left makes the grain pattern more uniform, while dragging to the right can make the grain appear more irregular. Basically, the Size and Roughness sliders are intended to be used in conjunction with the Amount slider to determine the overall grain effect. In Figure 3.60 you can see a before and after example of a grain effect being applied to a photo in Camera Raw.
Figure 3.59 The Effects panel showing the Grain sliders.
Figure 3.60 This shows a before and after example of a grain effect applied to a photo.
The most obvious reason for including these new sliders is so that you can deliberately add a grain effect to give your photos a film-like look. However, if this is your aim you will probably need to apply quite a strong setting in order for the grain effect to appear noticeable in print. Even then, this will only work effectively if you are producing a large-sized print output. The thing is, if you apply a grain effect while looking at the image at a 1:1 view and then make, say, a 10 × 8 print, the grain effect will mostly be lost due to the downsizing of the image