136 Chapter 3 Layers and Curves First, you can apply Curves to the active layer by choosing Image > Adjustments > Curves. Immediately after apply- ing Curves, you can choose Edit > Fade Curves and set the Mode pop-up menu to Luminosity (Figure 3.108). The Fade command limits the last change you made (Curves, in this case) to changing only the brightness of the image. (Luminosity is just another word for brightness.) It won’t shift the colors or change how saturated they are. Your other choice would be to apply Curves to more than one layer by clicking the Curves icon in the Adjustments panel. Then you can change the blending mode in the Layers panel to Luminosity (Figure 3.109). An adjustment layer affects all the layers below it but none of the layers above it. It’s also a nonpermanent change, because you can double-click the adjustment layer thumbnail in that layer to reopen the Curves dialog and make changes. There- fore, any Curves techniques you use for adjusting grayscale images will work on color images if you use the Luminosity blending mode (Figure 3.110). Figure 3.110 With a Curves adjustment layer, you can make non-destructive changes to an image. Color shifts aren’t the only problems you’ll encounter when adjusting color images with Curves. The mode your image is in might have an adverse effect on the adjustment. RGB color images are made from three components (red, green, and blue). A bright green color might be made out of 0 red, 255 green, and 128 blue. When you fi rst open the Figure 3.108 Choose Edit > Fade Curves to limit changes to the bright- ness of the image. Figure 3.109 You can quickly apply a Curves adjustment as a separate layer by clicking in the Adjustments panel. 137 II: Production Essentials Curves dialog, the pop-up menu at the top of the dialog is set to RGB, which will cause any points to affect the same R, G, and B values. Clicking that green color in the image displays a circle at 165 on the curve, which will affect all the areas that contain 165 red, 165 blue, and 165 green. Equal amounts of R, G, and B create gray. Simply clicking the curve of a color image usually causes the colors to shift in an unsatisfactory way, because the circle that appears when clicking the image will not accurately target the area you clicked. While working in RGB mode, all color areas shift because their RGB mix changes as the Curves dialog shifts the RGB values in equal amounts. Ideally it would affect only the exact mix of RGB from which the color is made, but Curves doesn’t work that way in RGB mode. The solution to this problem is to convert the image to LAB mode by choos- ing Image > Mode > Lab Color. In LAB mode, the image is made from three components: Lightness, A, and B. When you adjust the image, the Curves dialog automatically sets itself to work on the Lightness information, which prevents the adjustment from shifting the color of the image and makes the circle show up in the correct position for accurate adjustments. When you’re done with the adjustment, you should convert the image back to RGB mode, because many of Photoshop’s features are not available in LAB mode. You may not use LAB mode for every color image; reserve it for those images that are troublesome in RGB mode. Quick Recap To verify that you’re ready to move on, make sure that you understand the general concepts of Curves: . Flattening a curve reduces contrast and makes it more diffi cult to see detail. . Making a curve steeper increases contrast and makes it easier to see detail. . In the 0–100% system, up means darker and down means brighter. . In the 0–255 system, up means brighter and down means darker. The word LAB in LAB mode is an acronym for what color channels it controls: Lightness, A, and B. Don’t say “lab,” say the letters: “L-A-B mode.” 138 Chapter 3 Layers and Curves The Histogram Panel Used properly, the histogram that’s displayed behind the curve in the Curves dialog can help you to make sure that your adjustments don’t get out of control and end up harming your images instead of improving them. Photo- shop’s Histogram panel also can help you to ensure that you don’t push your edits and adjustments too far. Now that you have an idea of how to think about Curves, let’s fi gure out how to use these two tools to help with edits. To display the Histogram panel, choose Window > Histogram. As you learned earlier, a histogram is a simple bar graph that shows the range of brightness levels that make up an image and the prevalence of each of these shades. When you look at the histogram, imagine that a gradient is stretched across the bottom of the bar graph, with black on the left and white on the right just as in the Curves dialog (Figure 3.111). If the histogram shows a bar above a par- ticular shade of gray, that shade is used somewhere in the image. If there’s no bar, that brightness level isn’t used in that image. The height of the bar indicates how prevalent a particular brightness level is compared to the others that make up the image. The Histogram panel shows the same histogram but with a bonus. When you start to adjust an image, the Histogram panel overlays a histogram that represents the current, adjusted state of the image (black) above the original his- togram that shows what the image looked like before you started adjusting it (gray), as shown in Figure 3.112. Achieving Optimal Contrast If the histogram doesn’t extend all the way from black to white, the image has a limited brightness range (Figures 3.113 and 3.114). When that’s the case, you can usually move the upper-right and lower-left points on a curve toward the middle, which will widen the histogram (Figure 3.115). As you do, keep an eye on the histogram. Most images will look their best when the histogram extends all the way across the area available, without pro- ducing any tall spikes on either end. Figure 3.111 Imagine a gradient at the bottom of the Histogram panel. Figure 3.112 The gray histogram reflects the unadjusted image; the black version reflects the adjusted image. Figure 3.113 An image with limited brightness. (©2008 Dan Ablan.) Figure 3.114 The histogram for the image in Figure 3.113. 139 II: Production Essentials Figure 3.115 The result of applying the curve to the image. Two controls make this edit a little simpler. Notice that below the grayscale ramp beneath the curve are sliders for black point and white point, just like the one in the Levels dialog. Moving these sliders is the same as adjusting the points on the end of the curve. Preventing Blown-Out Highlights and Plugged-Up Shadows Because the height of the bars in the histogram indicates how prevalent each shade is within the image, tall spikes on the ends of the histogram indicate that the image contains large quantities of white or black (Figure 3.116). That’s usually an indication of a lack of detail in the bright- est or darkest areas of the image. If the image contains shiny areas that refl ect light directly into the camera (shiny metal or glass, for instance), it’s okay if those areas end up with no detail. But if that’s not the case, part of the curve must have topped or bottomed out. You should think about moving that area of the curve away from the top or bottom so you can get back the detail that was originally in that part of the image (Figure 3.117). The Histogram panel can be used in two different sizes—Compact or Expanded. The Expanded version is exactly 256 pixels wide; most images contain 256 shades of gray, which makes the Expanded version of the histogram the most accurate histogram for the image. You can switch between the two different views on the side menu of the Histogram panel. Figure 3.116 This histogram indicates a lot of black in the image because the slope is heavier on the left. Figure 3.117 After an adjustment, the histogram shows less black and a more even shape. 140 Chapter 3 Layers and Curves Avoiding Posterization If the histogram in the Histogram panel is showing gaps that make it look like a comb (Figure 3.118), keep an eye on the brightness levels directly below that area of the histogram. Gaps in a histogram indicate that certain bright- ness levels are not found in the image, which can indicate posterization (stair-stepped transitions where there would usually be a smooth transition), as in Figure 3.119. That usually happens when you make part of a curve rather steep. As long as the gaps are small (two to three pixels wide), it’s not likely that you’ll notice it in the image. If the gaps get much wider than that, you might want to inspect the image and think about making the curve less steep. The histogram in the Curves dialog doesn’t show these gaps, because it only shows the original, unedited histogram. Figure 3.118 A histogram that looks like this might indicate that the image is posterized. Figure 3.119 The posterized image based on the histogram in Figure 3.118. To better understand posterization, try this: Create a new grayscale document, press D to reset the foreground and background colors to black and white, and then click and drag across the document with the Gradient tool. While watching the Histogram panel, choose Image > Adjustments > Posterize and experiment with different settings—the gaps don’t have to be very wide before you notice posterization (Figure 3.120). 141 II: Production Essentials Figure 3.120 Posterize a grayscale image to get a sense of how wide the gaps can be before you see posterization in an image. You can minimize posterization by working with 16-bit images. Unlike standard 8-bit images that are made from 256 shades of gray (or 256 shades each of red, green, and blue), 16-bit images contain up to 32,767 shades of gray. You can obtain 16-bit images from RAW format digital camera fi les when opening them in the Camera Raw dialog (see Chapter 4, “Using Camera Raw 5.0,” for more details), or from some newer fl atbed or fi lm scanners. You can tell that you’re working with a 16-bit fi le by looking at the title bar for the image. After the fi lename, you should see some- thing like (RGB/16), which indicates that you have a 16-bit RGB-mode image. The Histogram panel usually builds its histogram by analyz- ing an 8-bit cached image, just to make sure that the panel display updates quickly. A cached image is a smaller version of the image with 8 bits of information. If you notice the “comb” look when adjusting a 16-bit image (Figure 3.121), look for the warning triangle near the upper right of the If you notice slight posterization in the image, you might apply a little bit of noise to it (Filter > Noise > Add Noise, Amount: 3, Gaussian), which should make it less notice- able. If that doesn’t do the trick, check out the manual method for eliminating posterization described in Chapter 7. 142 Chapter 3 Layers and Curves histogram. That indicates that the histogram is being created from a lower-resolution 8-bit image. Clicking the triangle causes the histogram to be redrawn directly from the high-resolution 16-bit fi le, which should eliminate the comb look and therefore indicate that the image isn’t really posterized (Figure 3.122). Figure 3.121 This histogram indicates that the image might be posterized. Figure 3.122 The uncached histo- gram is a more accurate view of the image. Sneaky Contrast Adjustments Flattening a curve is usually harmful to an image because the detail in the area you’re adjusting will be very diffi cult to see. Often you can cheat, however, by analyzing the histogram to determine which areas of an image won’t be harmed by fl attening the curve. Because short lines in a histogram indicate shades that are not very prevalent in the image, those areas usually can be fl attened in a curve without noticeable degradation to the image. Flattening one part of the curve allows you to make the rest of the curve steeper, increasing contrast in those areas and mak- ing the area appear to have more detail. When you see a fl at area of the histogram in the Curves dialog, place two points on the curve, one at each end of the fl at section of the histogram. Here’s how it works: While you’re in the Curves dialog, glance over at the Histo- gram panel and look for short, fl at areas. When you fi nd a fl at area (not all images have them), choose Show Statistics from the side menu of the Histogram panel, and then click and drag across that area in the Histogram panel, but don’t release the mouse button (Figure 3.123). Look at the Level numbers that show up just below the histogram (if Figure 3.123 Show statistics for the histogram and drag across an area. 143 II: Production Essentials you don’t see any numbers under the histogram, choose Expanded View from the side menu of the Histogram panel). Next, release the mouse button and move your cur- sor around the Curves dialog to see whether the numbers at the bottom are 0–100% or 0–255 numbers. If they range from 0–100%, click the Curve Display Options button and change the Show Amount Of setting to switch to the 0–255 numbering system. Now click in the middle of the curve and change the numbers that appear in the Input and Output fi elds at the bottom of the Curves dialog to the fi rst number you saw in the Histogram panel (Figure 3.124). Add a second point and do the same for the second number you saw in the Histogram panel. Move the upper dot straight down and the lower dot straight up until the area between the two becomes almost horizontal (Figure 3.125). Keep an eye on the image as you do this, to see how fl at you make the line without screwing up the image. That should increase the contrast across most of the image while reducing contrast in those brightness levels that are not very prevalent in the image. Just because we’ve talked about the Histogram panel here in the Curves chapter, that doesn’t mean that you use it only when making Curves adjustments. The Histogram panel is useful for performing any type of adjustment and for analyzing an image to determine what types of adjust- ments you might need to consider. Many professional cam- eras offer a histogram view, and the principles are the same. In general, you shouldn’t adjust images based solely on what the histogram is showing. Instead, adjust the image until you like its general appearance, and then look at the Histogram panel for signs that you might have gone too far. If you notice spikes on the ends or a huge comb taking shape, take a closer look at the image to determine if it’s worth backing off from the adjustment. Who cares what the histogram looks like in the end? The visual look of your image is more important. The histogram is just like that seatbelt warning light in your car—you can ignore it, but there’s a reason it’s on. Figure 3.125 Add a second point and adjust to flatten out the curve. Figure 3.124 Click in the curve and enter the value from the histogram. 144 Chapter 3 Layers and Curves Shadows/Highlights If an image needs more pronounced shadows and/or highlight detail, the Shadows/Highlights command (Image > Adjustments > Shadows/Highlights) is a good alternative to Curves (Figure 3.126). In its simplest form, you just move the Shadows slider to brighten the darker areas of the image (Figures 3.127 and 3.128) and/or move the Highlights slider to darken the brighter areas (Figures 3.129 and 3.130). Figure 3.127 The original image. (©2008 Dan Ablan.) Figure 3.128 The Shadows slider brightens darker areas of the image. Figure 3.126 The Shadows/Highlights command is a good alternative to Curves. 145 II: Production Essentials Figure 3.129 The original image. (©2008 Dan Ablan.) Figure 3.130 The Highlights slider darkens brighter areas of the image. If you need more control over the adjustment, click the Show More Options check box to see the full range of set- tings available (Figure 3.131). Start by setting Amount to 0%, Tonal Width to 50%, and Radius to 30px in both the Shadows and Highlights areas of the dialog. The Amount setting determines how radical a change you’ll make to the image. Because you’re starting with that setting at zero, these settings won’t do a thing to the image—yet. If you want to pull out some detail in the dark areas of an image, move the Amount slider in the Shadows area toward the right while you watch the image. Keep moving it until the dark areas of the image reach the desired bright- ness. Now start changing the Tonal Width setting, which Figure 3.131 The Shadows/Highlights dialog offers more advanced controls when needed. [...]... reflects how the image will be rotated when it’s opened in Photoshop (Figure 4.6) You can then press the Enter/Return key to confirm the cropped and rotated version, or simply click the Open Image button at the bottom of the Camera Raw 5.0 dialog to see the cropped and straightened image in Photoshop (Figure 4.7) Figure 4.7 The adjusted image, opened in Photoshop (Looks like we need to do a bit more straightening.)... adjustments similar to those you can do in Photoshop using the Healing Brush and Clone Stamp tools (Figure 4.8) The options allow you to choose from Heal or Clone When set to Heal, the correction works similarly to the Healing Brush tool in Photoshop, except that you “stamp” your adjustments: After copying the data from the source location to the destination, Photoshop blends the copied pixels with the... to the images within Photoshop, or when you really don’t care how large your files become or how slowly your computer runs while you’re working on an image The Size and Resolution settings in the Workflow Options dialog determine the physical size of the image when it’s opened in Photoshop This interpolation is discussed in the bonus video “Resolution Solutions” at www.danablan.com /photoshop Finally, there’s... Photoshop and Bridge, you have access to handy batch-processing mechanisms that can greatly speed your raw-based workflow Photoshop s RAW format isn’t the same as Camera Raw format The names sound almost identical, but Camera Raw files can only originate from a digital camera, and Photoshop cannot change the file at all Camera Raw files are locked because they’re designed to contain only the information... changes have to be saved in a different file format (such as TIFF or JPG) Photoshop s RAW file format, on the other hand, is mainly used to export images so they can be imported into unusual software that can’t handle common file formats (I doubt that you’ll ever have to use this option.) When you attempt to open a raw format image in Photoshop, the Camera Raw 5.0 dialog opens This is where you can adjust... Clockwise Screen Mode Histogram Figure 4.1 The Camera Raw 5.0 dialog opens when you load a raw image in Photoshop 152 II: Production Essentials Across the top of the dialog are a set of tools and rotation icons: Zoom and Hand tools The Zoom and Hand tools navigate around the image, like elsewhere in Photoshop, but I find the following keyboard shortcuts to be more efficient: Hold down Command/Ctrl and... darker when you adjust the Highlights setting, adjust the White Clip setting at the bottom of the Shadows/Highlights dialog With White Clip set to zero, Photoshop is capable of darkening all the bright areas of the image As you raise that setting, Photoshop forces a narrow range of the brightest shades in the image to pure white The higher the setting, the wider the range of shades that Shadows/Highlights... PC and Mac, but occasionally raw formats won’t communicate This situation leaves you frustrated and stuck with a 150 II: Production Essentials bunch of images you won’t know how to handle However, Photoshop CS4 can open your raw files, so don’t worry Raw offers several advantages over shooting in JPEG: Because the files aren’t compressed, you don’t have to worry about the resulting images exhibiting unsightly... filter allows you to refocus the viewer’s attention within an image Most raw files contain 12 bits of information, but Photoshop can deal with 8-bit or 16-bit files That’s like owning 12 cars and having to choose between an 8- or 16-car garage The 8-car garage would cost half as much (in Photoshop, that means half the file size), but you’d have to give up something to use it A 16-car garage might be more... in Photoshop Raw files often allow for recovery of overexposed highlights You read that correctly: The details in highlight areas that have blown out to complete white can be restored When improved raw converters are released, you can go back to your raw images and reprocess them, possibly securing a higher-quality image A raw file is truly like a “digital negative.” When working with raw files in Photoshop . posterization, try this: Create a new grayscale document, press D to reset the foreground and background colors to black and white, and then click and drag across the document with the Gradient tool. While. Shadows/Highlights dialog. With White Clip set to zero, Photoshop is capable of darkening all the bright areas of the image. As you raise that setting, Photoshop forces a narrow range of the brightest. with a 151 II: Production Essentials bunch of images you won’t know how to handle. However, Photoshop CS4 can open your raw fi les, so don’t worry. Raw offers several advantages over shooting in