Week 4: Exercise 5 - Irish Boy

This is the forum for posting to the June 2010 CM 101 Class
mikemeister_admin
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Postby mikemeister_admin » Wed Jul 07, 2010 11:12 am

Two sets of curves for this one: RGB for the cast correction, and HSB for brightening it up and adding some saturation.

I created a lot of hue clocks around the image to try to ensure that the pavement was as close to neutral as I could get it. I also put a couple of clocks onto the boy's skin, to make sure that it was falling into the lunchhour position. I used positions on the pavement for the midtone/highlight neutral clocks, and the drain for the shadow and three-quartertone readouts (I had more trust that the shadows within the drain were neutral than the shadows in the boy's shorts).

In HSB I used a Saturation channel mask to help me brighten the boy's skin without flattening the texture in the pavement. I could have used the Skin mask, but the saturation channel was a bit brighter on the wall behind the boy, and I liked how the curves were effecting the wall. I raised the shadow endpoint on the mask channel to ~50, so that the pavement got a bit lighter (the background looked a bit weird when the correction was completely masked out).

As I was saying before, there are probably far more points on my RGB curves than necessary, but they were the least that I could get away with to knock the colour into shape. I'd love to see how they compare to other people's curves.

Lee  :)

P.S., I couldn't get the Smart Filter thing to work (might be a CS3 thing ???). The curves were applied as a Smart Filter, but when I double-clicked 'CurveMeister' to re-edit the curves, CurveMeister (or more likely Photoshop) reset the curves, and my previous adjustments were lost.
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ggroess
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Postby ggroess » Wed Jul 07, 2010 3:02 pm

Lee,
I just tested this in PSCS3  I was able to access the Smart filter correctly...

My process was create a background layer copy.
Make it a smart object
open CM on the layer and adjust.
check the scroll
verify the scroll check
click apply in CM
Return to PS and I have a smart layer. 

If you check the scroll before the adjustment it does not stick.  Check the scroll after the adjustment before the apply button.

Greg
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ggroess
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Postby ggroess » Wed Jul 07, 2010 3:16 pm

Lee int he RGB I am curious about the point you have at about 200 in the screen shots I have attached...It looks like you are adjusting the cement behind the boy.  When I make this point neutral it does fix the pavement and does not effect anything else in the image which is good but it appears that you are actually adding a cyan cast to the image at this point with your  adjustment here...in the second shot I have made the changes....

Your thoughts...

Greg
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mikemeister_admin
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Postby mikemeister_admin » Wed Jul 07, 2010 3:35 pm

Ah - I didn't know that I had to click the scroll (I didn't see that in the notes).

I'm not in Windows at the moment, but as soon as I am I'll check that - though I'm sure that it works.

As for the adjustment point ~200, I was trying to adjust the pavement to the right of the boy and the skin hue clock (as I recall). It's awkward that my Mac keyboard doesn't have a Print Screen button - I'd take a screenshot with my hue clocks if I had. I know that you mentioned an application that you use for screenshots; I must install it!

Again, when I get back into Windows I will verify what I was up to, and tweak if I can. One of the things that my HSB curves did (although not to a very large extent - because of the mask) was to desaturate the less saturated areas within the image, which did make the path a tad more neutral.

Lee  :)

ggroess
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Postby ggroess » Wed Jul 07, 2010 4:39 pm

The reason I ask is that if I adjust the points I can make the cement neutral but you seem to have intentionally pulled them out and introduced a Cyan cast.  It was as if you were trying to remove a magenta/red cast from the concrete...I guess it would work but it appeared counter productive.

I set out to remove the "extra points" but found the red cast after I removed these..I reloaded the curve and started to play...hence my question...

It might come down to a better neutral or possibly a neutral in each brightness range.  See if the floating neutrals will work here..no one has really tackled it that way but it should be possible...

Otherwise he looks pretty good overall...maybe a tad under saturated...HSB can be a shortcut to neutral....

Greg

mikemeister_admin
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Postby mikemeister_admin » Thu Jul 08, 2010 2:24 pm

you only have so much rope...


That got me thinking... The RGB curves that I wrote in my first attempt all moved a significant distance from the curve baseline. Why did I have to move them so drastically? Because the cast was so severe. Now, moving the curves so far would have been fine if I had more rope, but because I didn't I found that certain points in one channel were acting against/competing with points on other channels. This made it difficult to manage the curves properly.

So, if I don't have enough rope what to do? I decided that I needed to cut the cast before I got to CurveMeister. Apply Image to the rescue. I decided that the Blue channel was far too light, and the Green channel was too dark. So:
1. Apply Image - Green Channel into Blue Channel (Darken) 90%
2. Apply Image - Green Channel into Green Channel (Screen) 5%

From this better starting point, I had much more control of the curves when I got to CurveMeister.
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mikemeister_admin
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Postby mikemeister_admin » Thu Jul 08, 2010 2:38 pm

When I got into CurveMeister I set (in RGB) two neutrals in different ranges of the image. This got the pavement close. I've tweaked the curves to get things even closer. I couldn't nail every single hue clock, but I got most of them, and the ones I missed were only by a unit or two - and those left the pavement slightly warm - which I thought was the best compromise.

In a separate pass I masked the skin, and got it into the correct part of the hue clock. I then used HSB to boost the saturation of the boy's jumper (and cut it further in the pavement), and to brighten the image (version 2). In Photoshop I applied the Green channel in Luminosity mode (60%).

In comparing version 2 with version 1, I felt that the new version was too dark. Version 3 is version 2 with 60% of the Luminosity from version 1.

It's still taking me a lot of moves to get from point A to point B, but I'm sure that I'll eventually be able to do more with one set of curves, and I'll get gradually quicker.

Let me know if you think either of these is better than my first attempt.

Cheers,
Lee.

P.S., CurveMeister is working fine as a Smart Filter - thanks for the tips.
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