Curvemeister Forum

The examples here, all on a "clean original"--first one you can see that I chose an area of the rocks that I thought should be neutral, then upped the contrast.  I'm guessing that my neutral wasn't neutral because upping the contrast re-imposed a lot of blue cast.  Am I right?

Second image:  I moved around the neutral after the first screen shot (without resetting the curves).  Notice that when I raised the saturation, the lighter end of the curve didn't move.  Is this because I should have reset the curve and started over before applying saturation?  There are so many little hang-ups that cause me to lose my grip on trying to use my experience so far.  If I were on my own, I'd have no way of figuring out why the light end of the curve got stuck, and whether it would make a difference to start back from scratch.

Third image, I tried to replicate your solution from a clean original.  My settings are within one point of yours.  I realize you only posted a small part of your image in the solution, but I think mine looks hard and "over processed" and a bit yellow compared to yours. Again, choice of the neutral the critical point for the difference in my image compared to yours?  Still not as much color as your image.  I'm giving up and moving on.

How do you activate the input/output numbers in the channel windows?  I click on the edge of the channel and sometimes I can see the numbers move as I scroll my mouse over the channel and other times I seem to have to click to create a point to activate the numbers.

Again, thanks!

The examples here, all on a "clean original"--first one you can see that I chose an area of the rocks that I thought should be neutral, then upped the contrast.  I'm guessing that my neutral wasn't neutral because upping the contrast re-imposed a lot of blue cast.  Am I right?

Correct...

Second image:  I moved around the neutral after the first screen shot (without resetting the curves).  Notice that when I raised the saturation, the lighter end of the curve didn't move.  Is this because I should have reset the curve and started over before applying saturation?  There are so many little hang-ups that cause me to lose my grip on trying to use my experience so far.  If I were on my own, I'd have no way of figuring out why the light end of the curve got stuck, and whether it would make a difference to start back from scratch.

No the Lightness part will not move in LAB if you change saturation..that is the Power of the color space...It allows color saturation changes without brightness changes.

Third image, I tried to replicate your solution from a clean original.  My settings are within one point of yours.  I realize you only posted a small part of your image in the solution, but I think mine looks hard and "over processed" and a bit yellow compared to yours. Again, choice of the neutral the critical point for the difference in my image compared to yours?  Still not as much color as your image.  I'm giving up and moving on.

Rhonda,
Was my solution posted for Steve's image?  Was it generic or specific to his image??  It looks like you took a curve I created to cure a problem from another posting.  Your #2 posting is pretty solid but you can punch up the color..
Apply the settings as shown in #2 and then up the saturation again...

How do you activate the input/output numbers in the channel windows?  I click on the edge of the channel and sometimes I can see the numbers move as I scroll my mouse over the channel and other times I seem to have to click to create a point to activate the numbers.

The curve window must be active to see the numbers...Just click on the frame edge first and then you should see the numbers...You need not create a point to do that...

Regarding my trying to duplicate your curves--I used your Week 2 "Solutions."

Hmm--setting a black and white point are easy and seem indisputable--you move the edge until you get speckles on the mask.  Setting the neutral seems much more nebulous.  It's also difficult to "read" what the neutral setting ended up being, number-wise.  You can't hover over the neutral setting to see what the results are, and for me, it has been difficult to place a hue clock directly over the neutral point. 

If I choose a place as a neutral, why wouldn't CM convert it to a true neutral, leaving the L channel alone and moving the A and B to 0?  I did use rocks as a gray, but didn't know I had a blue cast until after I moved the saturation sliders.  If the neutral really got set to X00 then that would eliminate the cast and saturation shouldn't cause it to re-appear, would it?

This is very complex!

CM cannot change the L value when setting a neutral.  They are different in that the color is in A and B and Lightness is in L.
If you move the L point on the grid the image will change for brightness.

Selecting a neutral is a highly subjective process.  Have you watched the Abe Lincoln video??  Just know that the rocks can be any color.  Try to find an area that would make sense as neutral and start there.

I LAB a neutral can be any L value with zero A and Zero B. 

If the cast came in when you saturated then you missed the neutral.

Greg