Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers - Martin Evening [96]
Figure 3.41 This shows the results of an adjustment brush applied using the combination of a–50 Clarity effect with a–25 Sharpness effect to produce the skin softening look achieved here. I applied this effect a little stronger than I would do normally in order to really emphasize the skin softening effect.Model: Courtney @ Storm
Figure 3.42 This shows a before version (top) and an after version (below), where I applied a–100 Clarity adjustment.
Negative Vibrance and Saturation
Not all of us want to turn our photographs into super-colored versions of reality. So it is worth remembering that you can use the Vibrance and Saturation sliders to apply negative adjustments too. If you take the Saturation down to −100, this converts an image to monochrome, but lesser negative Saturation and Vibrance adjustments can be used to produce interesting pastel-colored effects.
Vibrance and Saturation
The Saturation slider can be used to boost color saturation, but extreme saturation adjustments will soon cause the brighter colors to clip. However, the Vibrance slider can be used to apply what is described as a non-linear color saturation adjustment, which means colors that are already brightly saturated in color remain relatively protected as you boost the vibrance, whereas the colors that are not so saturated receive a greater saturation boost. The net result is a saturation control that allows you to make an image look more colorful, but without the attendant risk of clipping those colors that are saturated enough already. Try opening a photograph of some brightly colored flowers and compare the difference between a Vibrance and a Saturation adjustment to see what I mean. The other thing that is rather neat about the Vibrance control is that it has a built-in skin tone protection filter which does rather a good job of not letting the skin tones increase in saturation as you move the slider to the right. In Figure 3.43 , I boosted the Vibrance to +60, which boosted the colors in the dress, but without giving the model too ‘vibrant’ a suntan.
Figure 3.43 Boosting the colors using the Vibrance control in the Basic panel.Client: Clipso. Model: Lucy Edwards @ Bookings
1.
In this example you can see what happens if you choose to boost the saturation in a photo using the Saturation slider only to enrich the blue colors. If you look at the histogram you will notice how the Blue channel is clipped. This is what we should expect, because the Saturation slider in Camera Raw applies a linear adjustment that pushes the already saturated blues off the histogram scale.
2.
Compare what happens when you use the Vibrance slider instead. In this example you will notice how none of the Blue channel colors are clipped. This is because the Vibrance slider boosts the saturation of the least saturated colors most, tapering off to a no saturation boost for the already saturated colors. Hence, there is no clipping in the histogram.
Tone Curve panel
The Tone Curve panel offers a fine-tuning contrast control that can be applied in addition to the Tone and Contrast adjustments made in the Basic panel. There are two modes for the Tone Curve panel. In the Point Curve editor mode you can manipulate the shape of the tone curve as you would with the Curves adjustment in Photoshop. The default setting used here applies a Medium Contrast curve, which kind of matches the default contrast used by most cameras when producing a JPEG image and probably produces the ‘snappiest’ looking results. However, it is just a default and you can turn it off by simply setting the curve to ‘Linear’. The Parametric Curve editor mode provides a new mechanism for editing the tone curve shape where, instead of clicking to add points and dragging them, you use