Week 4: Exercise 1 - Dog

[leeharper_admin]

And so I learn another fantastic aspect of CurveMeister  ;D

Contrast pinning is a great feature - although it's very sensitive, and easy to overdo it. I tried this exercise in both Lab and RGB, but could not get anything competitive out of RGB (the colour shifts were small, but large enough to damage the image).

I threw away my first Lab adjustment, as I felt that I had gone too far (and had damaged some of the fur), so the version that I am uploading might seem a little conservative. I think that with an image like this I would ordinarily heighten the contrast via sharpening anyway, so I'd probably use a fairly light touch when contrast pinning - but it is nice to be able to rotate the two points... I haven't sharpened the file I am uploading, so that you can zero in on the effect of the L channel moves.

I tweaked the a and b curves a bit. With the exception of the dog's nose (which initially measured slightly cyan) there was nothing wrong with the initial colour, but I like what I've done with it  :)

Cheers,
Lee.

[ggroess]

Contrast pinning is a great feature - although it's very sensitive, and easy to overdo it. I tried this exercise in both Lab and RGB, but could not get anything competitive out of RGB (the colour shifts were small, but large enough to damage the image).

You have done a fine job on this...the color looks better overall and you are right about the color shifts...

We actually use this to our advantage later when we add contrast to a single channel...Think Green Stuff and color contrast...It just might come out of you...

You can create a contrast pin manually by clicking on a point on the curve as though you were going to adjust it...then Ctrl-Clicking another point.  This will set up the "linked" pins and allow you to rotate the curve as well as move it in any direction.  Up, down, left, right....

At first you might ask Why??  Why would I move the curve that way...the Idea is to be able to move it in a united fashion as a "chunk"  it can be another tool in the box when you need it...

Greg