Locking a colour area

Curvemeister pins are like a memory bank for colors. Discuss techniques and applications for pins. Find out about new pin files here!
derekfountain
Posts: 251
Joined: Fri Jan 26, 2007 1:24 pm

Postby derekfountain » Sat Jul 28, 2007 9:42 am

I've not used CM for some months now - too busy! But I came back to it this morning, and it appears I've forgotten how to use it.  :-[

I have an image of a couple of birds, the long legged type that walk on the ground. These are on grass, and the image is correctly exposed so the grass looks good. What I want to do is boost the red, purple and blue feathers in the birds' darkish plumages without effecting the grass colour.

Do I use a colour pin for that? Pins are for changing colour aren't they?

If not, what technique should I be looking to use? I'm sure it'll all come flooding back when someone points the basic idea out to me.

PS. Is there a forum on here for questions about using CurveMeister? I couldn't find the best place to post this question...

derekfountain
Posts: 251
Joined: Fri Jan 26, 2007 1:24 pm

Postby derekfountain » Sat Jul 28, 2007 10:16 am

While trying to work this out, I stumbled upon what is probably a basic technique that I wasn't previously aware of. In Lab mode I Ctrl-clicked on an area of grass, which put a point in each of the curves. Boosting up the saturation slider then saw the grass locked at the same colour with all the other colours increasing in saturation.

The CM help describes a Ctrl-click as having the action "pins to the clicked on color in the image" which doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Could someone explain why this technique apparently does what I want?

-default
Posts: 1916
Joined: Thu Mar 26, 2015 1:53 am

Postby -default » Sun Jul 29, 2007 9:09 am

A pin is a request to set the hue, saturation, and/or brightness of a location on the image to match a particular color. 

When you ctrl-click a point on the image, the pin value is set to the current color value.  This locks in (or pins) the color so that it does not change when you modify other parts of the curve.

Another way that I use to lock in green is to first adjust the green if necessary, then use the "Pin Grid" command to freeze the green half of the a curve in place.  Then I am free to modify the magenta half of the a curve, without changing the green color.

Using ctrl-click, as you did, is also a good technique.  It has the added advantage that it will work in the other color spaces.

derekfountain
Posts: 251
Joined: Fri Jan 26, 2007 1:24 pm

Postby derekfountain » Sun Jul 29, 2007 5:43 pm


Another way that I use to lock in green is to first adjust the green if necessary, then use the "Pin Grid" command to freeze the green half of the a curve in place.  Then I am free to modify the magenta half of the a curve, without changing the green color.


Ah, that's a great tip. I pinned the green half of one curve and the yellow half of the other, then was free to make the blue and magenta parts of the curves almost vertical. For this image it worked a treat.  :)


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