Example 2: Children's Drawings - kessi

[kessi]

Children's Drawing
The image looks flat, underexposed and there are shiny bits and highlights which stem from the plastic covering the drawings.
I wanted to make sure that I can keep the white papers the kids drew on as white as possible without losing detail and without blowing out the whites but not to let the plastic sheen intrude.

My LAB mode attempt:
I find using the wizard initially gives me a structured approach so I set the highlight and shadow using that tool. After that I worked on
the lightness and colour spaces independantly.
I couldn't get the blue cast away on the three-headed monster, so I set a neutral. This made the white of the dolphin and pig picture frame go orange-yellow. I added another point on the b colourspace and moved it until the paper was nearly white. I quite like it now.

In the RGB mode the papers are white which I wanted, but the colours are not so vivid.

kessi

[ggroess]

Kessi,

It looks like you are fighting the shadow and highlight settings a bit.
Here are two versions of the same idea for getting the shadow and highlight right. 

http://www.curvemeister.com/wiki/index.php?title=Thresholding_Using_Highlight_and_Shadow_Points

http://www.curvemeister.com/wiki/index.php?title=Highlight_and_Shadow_Thresholding

The issue with the whiteness is also causing you to have trouble with the text.

Greg

[kessi]

My second attempt at the Children's Drawing.
see my screenshot

kessi

[ggroess]

again...much better....

While this may seem to be an ordinary image to work on it really does help to have to fix the text...

Greg