Oreilly Photoshop CS5 The Missing Manual_4 pot

371  :     Quick Fixer-Uppers 9. Turn on the “Save as defaults” checkbox and then click OK. Since the settings listed here are good for almost every color correction, you can tell Photoshop to use them as its defaults. That way you don’t have to reset all this stuff every time you use one of the auto correctors or a Levels or Curves adjustment (both discussed later in this chapter). 10. Close the Adjustments panel and throw away the Adjustment layer. To close the Adjustments panel, click the dark gray bar at the top of the panel. Since you created the Adjustment layer just to get at the target color settings, you can throw it away by selecting it in your Layers panel and then pressing Delete (Backspace on a PC). Once you’ve set your target colors, you’re ready to start using the correction methods discussed in the next few sections. Tip: A handy way to get rid of distractions so you can focus on fixing your image is to go up to the Ap- plication bar at the top of your screen (see page 14), click the Screen Mode icon, and choose Full Screen Mode With Menu Bar. You can also press the F key repeatedly to cycle through the screen modes. Fixing Color If your image looks flat (like it has no contrast) or has a noticeable color cast, give the following methods a spin. And if your image is in pretty good shape to begin with, the following tools can fix its color in no time flat: • Auto Color. If your image has a noticeable color cast (everything looks a little green, say), this command can help. When you run it, Photoshop hunts down the shadows, highlights, and midtones in your image and changes their color values to the target colors you set earlier. You can also use this command to tone down oversaturated images, where all the colors look too intense. To run it, choose Image➝Auto Color or press Shift-�-B (Shift+Ctrl+B on a PC). This command works only on images that are in RGB mode, so if the menu item is grayed out, choose Image➝Mode➝RGB Color first. Tip: You can run Auto Color nondestructively as an Adjustment layer by following steps 1–2 in the previ- ous section. If you’d kept the Adjustment layer hanging around when you finished setting your target colors, you would have applied the Auto Color adjustment to your image. • Variations. Besides using a Variations adjustment to add color to black-and- white images (page 355), you can also use it to fix color (see Figure 9-2). Choose Image➝Adjustments➝Variations and then click one of the six previews—More Green, More Yellow, and so on—that represent various changes in color bal- ance, contrast, and saturation (your current pick appears in the middle). Your 372 P CS: T M M Quick Fixer-Uppers clicks have a cumulative effect: Each time you click the More Red preview, for example, Photoshop adds more red to your image. As you click the previews, Photoshop updates all the images. To adjust the brightness, click either the lighter or darker preview on the right side of the dialog box as many times as you need to get the lighting you want. Tip: In Photoshop CS5, the Variations adjustment doesn’t work in 64-bit mode, so don’t panic if you can’t find it. The fix is to switch to 32-bit mode (see the box on page 6) and then it’ll reappear in the Image➝Adjustments menu. Since you can’t use Variations as an Adjustment layer (meaning it’ll affect your original image), it’s a darn good idea to duplicate your original layer by press- ing �-J (Ctrl+J on a PC) before you apply this adjustment. Better yet, select the image layer and then choose Filter➝“Convert for Smart Filters” so the adjust- ment runs on its own layer instead (this method also creates an automatic layer mask!). See page 634 for more on using Smart Filters. Figure 9-2: A Variations adjustment is a very visual way to fix your image, though it works only on 8-bit images (see the box on page 45). Click one of the six color previews on the left side of the dialog box as a starting point and then use the Fine to Coarse slider to change the intensity of the adjustment (Fine lowers the intensity and Coarse in- creases it, which makes you wonder why the slider isn’t named Intensity instead). Moving the slider one tick mark doubles the strength of the adjustment. If you choose Shadows or Highlights and then turn on the Show Clipping checkbox, Photoshop indicates the clipped areas of your image (page 385) with funky neon colors (they won’t show up in the printed version of the image). 373  :     Quick Fixer-Uppers • Color Balance. This adjustment changes the overall mixture of colors in your image or selection by shifting the highlights, midtones, and shadows to opposite sides of the color wheel (see page 486 for a quick lesson on color theory). It’s also handy for adding color to a black-and-white image (page 357) or for fixing a problem area (like a dull sky) fast. The only drawback to Color Balance is that you have to know which color you want to shift your image toward (which is why color theory comes in handy). That said, Photoshop gives you sliders to adjust, making Color Balance fairly easy to play with (see Figure 9-3). Because it’s available as an Adjustment layer, it’s nondestructive and you can use the layer mask that tags along with it to limit the adjustment to certain parts of your image (see page 113 for more on masks). Photoshop gives you lots of ways to summon the Color Balance controls: Figure 9-3: A Color Balance Adjustment layer can zap a color cast instantly. Dragging the top and bottom sliders toward Cyan and Blue and the middle slider toward Magenta to introduce a little red gets rid of the nasty yellow cast shown at left. Incidentally, PDFPen is a really handy program that lets you fill in and sign PDF forms; if you use a Mac, visit www. smileonmymac. com to learn more about it. 374 P CS: T M M Quick Fixer-Uppers Note: To preserve your image’s brightness values, be sure to leave the Adjustments panel’s Preserve Luminosity checkbox turned on. — Choose Color Balance from the Adjustments panel (click the button that looks like a scale). — Click the half-black/half-white circle at the bottom of your Layers panel and then choose Color Balance from the pop-up menu. — Choose Image➝Adjustments➝Color Balance or press �-B (Ctrl+B on a PC) to make Photoshop apply Color Balance to the currently active layer (your original image) without creating an Adjustment layer. • Photo Filter. To add a tint to your image, you can add a Photo Filter Adjust- ment layer to warm it up with a golden tint or cool it off with a bluish tint. If your image has a color cast, you can neutralize it by adding the opposite color (again, a little color theory comes in handy here). Though it’s much safer to run Photo Filter as an Adjustment layer, you can also run it (gasp) directly on your image by choosing Image➝Adjustments➝Photo Filter. See page 352 for more about Photo Filter. Tip: You don’t have to apply these adjustments to your whole image. If you make a selection ahead of time, the adjustment affects only the selected area. And if the adjustment is available as an Adjustment layer, you can use the included layer mask to keep the layer from affecting areas that don’t need adjusting. For adjustments that aren’t available as Adjustment layers, you can duplicate your original layer, run the adjustment on it, and then add a layer mask (page 114). poWeR USeRS’ CLINIC Fixing Colored Edge Fringe If you see a slight blue or purple fringe loitering around the edges of near-black objects in your image, you’ve got a dreaded edge halo (page 172). They’re especially no- ticeable when the object is on a white background. For example, if you take a picture of a white clock face, you may see a purplish or bluish tinge around the edges of the numbers and hands. Fortunately, you can use the Gaussian Blur filter to get rid of the tinge, though there’s a trick to it. Flip to page 445 for the step-by-step scoop. Fixing Lighting Unless you’re carting around your own light kit with your camera, you’re totally dependent on ambient light, which is less than perfect on a good day. Nevertheless, Photoshop has several tools that can help fix almost any lighting problem: 375  :     Quick Fixer-Uppers • Auto Tone. This adjustment (called Auto Levels in CS3 and earlier) brightens your image, adding a bit more contrast. Auto Tone resets both the black and the white pixels to the target values you set earlier in this chapter—see page 368. (It’s essentially the same as clicking the Auto button in either a Levels or Curves ad- justment—or at least it was until you changed the algorithm back on page 369!) If your image needs a little lighting boost, this adjustment can get it done. You can apply it to the current layer by pressing Shift-�-L (Shift+Ctrl+L on a PC). Better yet, you can run Auto Tone as an Adjustment layer. Click the Levels or Curves button in the Adjustments panel—or click the half-black/half-white circle button at the bottom of your Layers panel and choose Levels or Curves—and then Option-click (Alt-click) the Auto button. Choose the Enhance Per Chan- nel Contrast algorithm and then click OK. • Auto Contrast. This adjustment is an automatic version of the Brightness/ Contrast adjustment discussed on page 376. It increases the contrast in your image by lightening and darkening pixels. It doesn’t adjust channels individu- ally, so if your image has a color cast, it’ll still have one after you make this adjustment. And if your image is flat to begin with, it’ll still be flat afterwards. But if you have a decent amount of contrast, this adjustment can boost it a lit- tle. To run Auto Contrast on the currently active layer, press Option-Shift-�-L (Alt+Shift+Ctrl+L on a PC). To run it as an Adjustment layer, click the Adjustments panel’s Levels button or click the half-black/half-white circle at the bottom of the Layers panel and choose Levels. In the dialog box that opens, Option-click (Alt-click) the Auto button. Choose the Enhance Monochromatic Contrast algorithm and then click OK. • Shadows/Highlights. If you need to quickly lighten the shadows or darken the highlights in your image, this tool can do an amazing job in no time flat. It’s discussed in detail on page 377. • Equalize. This adjustment evens out your pixels’ brightness by turning the light- est ones white (or the color you’ve set as your target white—see page 368) and the darkest ones black (or your target black). It’s handy when some areas of your photo are decently lit. It’s not available as an Adjustment layer, so you’ll definite- ly want to duplicate your original layer by pressing �-J (Ctrl+J on a PC) before you run this adjustment. To apply it, choose Image➝Adjustments➝Equalize. Be careful when you run Equalize, as it can make your image look washed out by lightening it too much. But if you keep your wits and immediately choose Edit➝Fade, you can lessen its effect by choosing Luminosity from the Blending pop-up menu (so it affects only the lightness values, not the color values) and lowering the opacity to about 50 percent, as shown in Figure 9-4 (bottom). 376 P CS: T M M Quick Fixer-Uppers Figure 9-4: Top: Here’s the origi- nal image (left) and the equalized version (right). As you can see, the lighting in the image on the right has been evened out, but it’s also com- pletely washed out. Bottom: After reduc- ing the adjustment with the Edit➝Fade command, the results are more visually pleasing. • Dodge and Burn tools. These tools are useful when you need to lighten or darken detailed areas of your image by hand, and back in CS4 they were both redesigned so they’re not as harmful to your image as they used to be (especially on skin tones). For example, you can use the Burn tool to selectively darken your subject’s eyes and the Dodge tool to lighten deep wrinkles. But unless you duplicate your original layer first, there’s no way to use these tools nondestruc- tively. Luckily, there’s a trick that lets you use the Brush tool so it behaves like the Dodge and Burn tools. Flip over to Chapter 10 (page 447) for step-by-step instructions. Brightness/Contrast Adjustment layers These Adjustment layers do exactly what you’d think: They brighten your image or increase the contrast in it—or both. In days of old, these adjustments didn’t work worth a darn because they adjusted your whole image by the same amount, which usually resulted in nice-looking shadows but blown-out highlights. Thankfully, Brightness/Contrast got a much-needed overhaul back in CS3 so now it’s a use- ful tool, especially on black-and-white images. (Just be sure to leave its Use Legacy checkbox turned off, or it’ll behave like it used to!) 377  :     Quick Fixer-Uppers You can choose Brightness/Contrast from your Adjustments panel (its button looks like a sun) or by clicking the half-black/half-white circle at the bottom of your Layers panel and choosing Brightness/Contrast from the pop-up menu. In your Adjust- ments panel, drag the Brightness slider to the left to darken your image or to the right to brighten it as shown in Figure 9-5. If you want to increase your image’s con- trast, drag the Contrast slider to the right. To decrease it, drag the slider to the left and watch as your image becomes flatter than a pancake (tonally speaking!). Figure 9-5: The revamped Brightness/Contrast Adjustment layers do a much better job of adjusting the lighting in your image than they used to. But since the brightening focuses mainly on the highlights (it leaves the shadows alone for the most part), you need to be careful that they don’t get too light. For a quick lighting fix, though, this adjustment does a fantastic job. Shadows/Highlights adjustments The most useful of all the quick-fix adjustments is Shadows/Highlights. If your camera’s flash didn’t fire and your subject is way too dark, this command can bring your photo back to life by analyzing each pixel and then adjusting it according to the lightness values of neighboring pixels. This is a big deal because even the much lauded Levels and Curves adjust lightness values equally among all pixels, whether they need it or not. You can apply this adjustment by choosing Image➝Adjustments➝Shadows/ Highlights, but because it’s destructive, you may want to duplicate your image layer first (or better yet, convert it for Smart Filters as described in the steps below). At first you see just two sliders in the dialog box that appears: Shadows and Highlights. Because Photoshop assumes you want to lighten the shadows—and you usually do—it automatically sets the Shadows slider to 35 percent (it leaves the Highlights slider set to 0 percent). To get the most out of this adjustment, you need to turn on the Show More Options checkbox at the bottom of the dialog box (the following numbered list explains all your options). 378 P CS: T M M Quick Fixer-Uppers Note: In previous versions of Photoshop, the Shadows slider was automatically set to 50 percent, which is way too much. Thankfully, Adobe decided to lower the factory setting to 35 percent in CS5. (See? They really do listen to customer feedback!) Here’s how to lighten overly dark shadows in your image using a Shadows/Highlights adjustment: 1. Select the image layer and choose Filter➝“Convert for Smart Filters”. Since the Shadows/Highlights adjustment is destructive (it’s not available as an Adjustment layer), it’ll affect your original image. To use it nondestructively, you can either duplicate the layer first by pressing �-J (Ctrl+J on a PC) or con- vert it for Smart Filters. The second method forces Photoshop to make the ad- justment on a separate layer as if you had run a Smart Filter (see page 634). Both methods let you hide parts of your image with a mask, though the Smart Filter method won’t bloat your file’s size as much as duplicating the layer. 2. Choose Image➝Adjustments➝Shadows/Highlights. In the Shadows/Highlights dialog box that appears, turn on the Show More Options checkbox (circled in Figure 9-6) so you can see all the settings. Figure 9-6: Left: Here’s an image before (top) and after (bottom) using the Shadows/High- lights adjustment. Right: Turning on Show More Options (circled) gives you a slew of sliders. When you click OK to close the dialog box, you’ll see the adjustment happen on its own layer (shown here at bottom right). By painting with black within the mask that comes from running Shadows/Highlights as a Smart Filter, you can protect certain parts of your image from the effect. Click to edit mask Double-click name to reopen Shadow/Highlight dialog box 379  :     Quick Fixer-Uppers 3. Set the Shadows section’s Amount slider to between 20 and 35 percent. That’s really as high as you want to go, or you’ll start to see noise (graininess) in your image. 4. Leave the Shadows section’s Tonal Width slider set to 50 percent. This slider lets you control which shadows Photoshop adjusts. If you lower this number, the program changes only the darkest shadows; if you raise it, Photo- shop changes a wider range of shadows. The factory setting of 50 percent usually works fine, but you may want to lower it if your image looks grainy. 5. Increase the Shadows section’s Radius slider to between 250 and 300 pixels. Since the Shadows/Highlights adjustment works by looking at the brightness values of neighboring pixels, you can use this setting to determine how big that neighborhood is. Pump this baby up to make Photoshop analyze more pixels. Tip: If your shadows are okay but your highlights need darkening, apply these same settings to the Highlight portion of the dialog box instead of the Shadows portion (they work the same way). Just be sure to set the Shadows section’s Amount slider to 0 percent to turn that section off if you don’t need to use it. 6. In the Adjustments section at the southern end of the dialog box, set the Color Correction field to 0. Lowering this setting keeps Photoshop from shifting your colors and introduc- ing funky pinks into skin tones. 7. Leave the Adjustments section’s Midtone Contrast setting at 0. Photoshop makes dark pixels a little darker and light pixels a little lighter to increase contrast. Since the whole point of a Shadows/Highlights adjustment is usually to lighten shadows, increasing this setting pretty much cancels out what you’re trying to accomplish. To avoid that conflict, leave this slider set to 0. Note: If you need more contrast in your image, you can always add a Curves Adjustment layer (as de- scribed later in this chapter) and change its blend mode to Luminosity—which affects only pixel brightness (page 302)—so you won’t risk a color shift. 8. In the Adjustments section, leave the Black Clip and White Clip fields set to 0.01 percent. Leaving these fields alone keeps your light and dark pixels from getting clipped (forced to pure white or black). Page 385 has the full story on clipping. 9. Click the Save As Defaults button. Photoshop saves your settings so you don’t have to reset everything the next time you use this adjustment. 380 P CS: T M M Quick Fixer-Uppers 10. Click OK to close the Shadows/Highlights dialog box. In the Layers panel, you’ll see a new layer called Smart Filters above the Shadows/ Highlights adjustment (Figure 9-6), indicating that Photoshop ran the adjust- ment as a Smart Filter instead of applying it to your original image. 11. If necessary, hide the adjustment from a portion of your image by painting within the mask that came with the Smart Filter. When you click the Smart Filter mask’s thumbnail to select it, Photoshop puts a tiny black border around it. Press B to grab the Brush tool, press D to set your color chips to black and white, and then press X until black hops on top. Mouse over to your image and paint the areas you don’t want adjusted. Pretty cool, huh? You can think of this technique as Smart Shadows. 12. For a quick before-and-after comparison, turn the Smart Filters layer’s visibility eye off and on. As Figure 9-6 shows, this adjustment does a bang-up job of lightening shadows without introducing a funky color cast. To get even better results, you can run the Shadows/Highlights adjustment on the Lightness channel in Lab mode. It sounds really difficult, but it’s not. Just follow these steps: 1. Duplicate your original layer by pressing �-J (Ctrl+J on a PC). For reasons known only to the Lords of Adobe, you can’t run the Shadows/ Highlights adjustment on one channel if your original layer has been converted to a Smart Object to run the adjustment as a Smart Filter. So to keep this adjust- ment from running in Super Destructo mode, you’ve got to duplicate the layer first. Bummer! 2. Switch to Lab mode temporarily. Choose Image➝Mode➝Lab Color. (It doesn’t matter whether you were origi- nally in RGB or CMYK mode; as you know from Chapter 2, page 46, you’ll usually be in RGB mode.) When Photoshop asks if you want to flatten layers, click Don’t Flatten. If you’ve got any Smart Objects in your document, it’ll also ask if you want to rasterize them; in that case, click Don’t Rasterize. 3. Select the Lightness channel. Open your Channels panel by choosing Window➝Channels and click once to select the Lightness channel. As you learned back in Chapter 5 (page 198), one of the great things about Lab mode is that it separates your image’s light info from its color info. Since you want to lighten the shadows without shifting col- or, you can run the Shadows/Highlights adjustment on the Lightness channel, which makes the adjustment work noticeably better. [...]... 9-11:  See the dotted line around the brush cursor? It indicates the feather amount, which softens the edge of your adjustment to make it blend in with the rest of the image The solid line indicates the brush size, and the crosshair lets you know where you’re applying the adjustment The Flow slider (near the bottom of the window on the right) controls the strength of the adjustment, and the Density... upward (at the foot of your mountains, so to speak) In other words, if there’s a gap between the shadows slider and the beginning of the histogram, drag that slider to the right If there’s a gap between the highlights slider and the right end of the histogram, drag the slider to the left Figure 9-16 should make all this repositioning stuff crystal clear When you move the sliders, Photoshop adjusts the tonal... between the red and green values in skin should be about double the difference between the green and blue value For example, if the difference between the red and green values is 60, the difference between the green and blue values should be around 30 • The fairer a person’s complexion, the closer the RGB values should be to each other • The darker their complexion, the lower the blue value in their... –200 to + 200]) If you want to 388 Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual Correcting Images in Camera Raw see the mask, turn on the Show Mask checkbox beneath the sliders or press Y You can change the color of the mask’s overlay by clicking the little white square to the right of the Show Mask checkbox and then choosing a new color from the resulting Color Picker Turn on the Auto Mask checkbox to limit your... applying changes • Click Done to apply the changes (which you can edit the next time you open the image in Camera Raw) and exit the Camera Raw window If you use Camera Raw’s adjustments in the order they’re presented in this section (which is also the order they appear in the Camera Raw window—how handy!), you’ll be amazed at the results 382 Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual Correcting Images in Camera... with the image shown in Figure 9-17, download the file Bridge.jpg from this book’s Missing CD page at www.missingmanuals.com/cds 398 Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual Using Levels Figure 9-17:  Top: Here’s a trick you can use to find the darkest and lightest pixels in your image: In the Adjustments panel, Option-drag (Alt-drag on a PC) the shadows slider (remember, that’s the one on the left) to the. .. part of the mask, turn on the Erase radio button near the top of the window and then paint that area of your image to remove the adjustment Likewise, to add to the mask, turn on the Add radio button and then paint your image To apply a new adjustment to an existing mask, turn on the New radio button To select the mask, click the pushpin And if you want to delete the mask, click its pushpin and then press... Levels button in the Adjustments panel (it looks like a tiny histogram) or clicking the halfblack/half-white circle at the bottom of the Layers panel and choosing Levels from the resulting list Either way, Photoshop displays a black histogram in the Adjustments panel, as shown in Figure 9-15 394 Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual Using Levels Levels preset menu Panel menu Figure 9-15:  The simplest way... finding the lightest highlights and darkest shadows, as the next section explains Output levels The black-and-white bar near the bottom of the Levels Adjustments panel (shown in Figure 9-15) includes a couple of sliders you can use to control the color of the black pixels and white pixels in your image Drag the black slider to the right to lighten the pure-black pixels or the white slider to the left... to reflect the pixel underneath the cursor 402 Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual Using Levels 2 Grab the Color Sampler tool and make sure the Sample Size is set to “3 by 3 Average” Press I to activate the Eyedropper tool and then press Shift-I to switch to the Color Sampler tool (it lives in the same toolset) Take a peek in the Options bar and make sure the Sample Size pop-menu is set to “3 by 3 Average” . (see the box on page 45 ). Click one of the six color previews on the left side of the dialog box as a starting point and then use the Fine to Coarse slider to change the intensity of the. indicates the brush size, and the crosshair lets you know where you’re apply- ing the adjustment. The Flow slider (near the bottom of the window on the right) controls the strength of the adjust- ment,. adjustments using the sliders at the right of the window even after you’ve used the tool, and use the little + and – signs on either end of the sliders to strengthen or lessen the adjust- ment,