Curvemeister Forum

I started this one without even cheating!  I remember learning the trick of using B curve to remove colour casts in shadows which has stuck with me for my own photos.  But for some reason, I started in LAB and found it quite straight forward.  I was genuinely surprised when I saw the solutions and other posts which made me re-evaluate my approach.  Again, spent too long on it and I think my final stage blew the highlights on the drums skins.

V1
RGB for neutrals
LAB for skins

V2
RGB for neutrals
RGB for skins (using a skin mask)
RGB for neutrals (using an inverted skin mask) - one hindsight I think I would have accepted a slight blue to the shadows to protect my highlights.

Question  I've read in Jays (?) post that you can use hue clocks as a stand alone in PS - I didn't know you could do this, can some one explain how or point me to the right page in the manual?  I do use Chris / Zog's 'watch colours' but would like to use my full battery of tools!

Thanks Mandy

version 2

In V1 your B curve has effectively removed the blues from the image. They need to be there...please put them back... :-

For V2
It looks like you did not adjust the skin mask at all.  You have to adjust the curve to make the mask have any effect.  The Skin mask needs more contrast to hold back the changes from the rest of the image.

Shot 1 is just the mask as opened without changes.  The gray areas allow a blending effect...
Shot 2 is the mask with the adjustment shown

Greg

Question  I've read in Jays (?) post that you can use hue clocks as a stand alone in PS - I didn't know you could do this, can some one explain how or point me to the right page in the manual?  I do use Chris / Zog's 'watch colours' but would like to use my full battery of tools!

There's an executable in the CM install directory that gives a single, stand alone hue clock which you can put in the corner of your screen. I think it appears in the CM entry in the Start menu. I'm not at a Winders machine right now so I can't be sure - you'll have to look for it!

That would be correct...missed that one...
The item is a hue clock found under Start>>Programs>>Curvemeister.com>>Hue Clock

This hue clock shows you the screen pixels and not the image pixel values.  There will be differences from your actual file and the Stand alone hue clock.  It's really more of a quick and dirty tool for assessing images on the fly.

Greg

Thanks Derek and Greg!