Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers - Martin Evening [98]
Figure 3.46 This diagram shows a plot of the color gamut of an LCD monitor (the solid shape in the center) compared with the actual color gamut of a digital camera. Assuming you are using a wide gamut RGB space such as Adobe RGB or, better still, ProPhoto RGB, the colors you are able to edit will almost certainly extend beyond what can be seen on the display.
Figure 3.47 In the ‘before’ screen shot view the red flowers appeared flat. I then applied a negative Luminance adjustment to darken the red, orange and yellow colors to produce the improved ‘after’ version.
Tech note
The previews shown here are not simple screen grabs, but were mocked up using fully processed ProPhoto RGB images. You can judge the effectiveness of this adjustment by how well the lower one prints.
Adjusting the Hue and Saturation
The Hue sliders in the HSL/Grayscale panel can be used to fine- tune the hue color bias using each of the eight color sliders. In the Figure 3.48 example, I adjusted the Reds hue slider to make the reds look less magenta and more orange. In other words, this is a useful HSL/Grayscale panel tip for improving the look of snapshot pictures taken with a compact digital camera, where the skin tones can often look too red.
Figure 3.48 This snap shot was taken of my friend Jeff Schewe at a party in New York. Here, I used a positive Reds Hue adjustment to take some of the redness out of the picture to make the skin tones look more natural, but I may have needed to increase the amount used here as we consumed more glasses of wine.
Grayscale conversions
To find out about how to apply grayscale conversions in Camera Raw, please refer to pages 386–389 in the Black and White chapter.
The Saturation sliders allow you to decrease or increase the saturation of specific colors. In the Figure 3.49 example you can see how I was able to use these to knock back specific colors so that everything in the photograph ended up looking monochrome, except for the red guitar in the foreground. Of course, I could have used the adjustment brush to do this, but adjusting the Saturation sliders offers a really quick method for selectively editing the colors in this way. As with the Tone Curve, you can also use the target adjustment tool to pin-point the colors and tones you wish to adjust.
Figure 3.49 In this example, I have shown the before version (top) and a modified version (below), where I used the HSL/Grayscale panel Saturation sliders to selectively desaturate some of the colors in this scene. This can be done manually, or by using the target adjustment tool (circled) to target specific colors and drag downwards to desaturate.
Emulating Hue/Saturation behavior
In Photoshop's Hue/Saturation dialog, there is a Hue slider that can be used to apply global hue shifts. This can be useful if you are interested in shifting all of the hue values in one go. With Camera Raw you can create preset HSL settings where all the Hue sliders are shifted equally in each direction. Using such presets you can quickly shift all the hues in positive or negative steps, without having to drag each slider in turn.
Lens Corrections panel
The Lens Corrections controls can help correct some of the optical problems that are associated with digital capture. If you inspect an image closely towards the edge of the frame area, you may notice some color fringing, which will be most apparent around areas of high contrast. This is mainly a problem you get with cheaper lens optics, but it can even occur with a good lens when photographing