Man From Mars - discussion

This board is for the January 2008 Curvemeister 101 class
mikemeister_admin
Posts: 4927
Joined: Fri Sep 20, 2013 8:29 pm

Postby mikemeister_admin » Fri Feb 22, 2008 3:45 pm

I've got a bit hooked on playing with different Mars effects and I've never tried it on colourful images before and I've been able to bring so many colours out in the dragon (which one? - I'm still on the roof!), but...

I have a number of points I would like to raise for general discussion as I am having difficulty equating what we are doing with what Dan originally suggested.  I've numbered them so that it is easier to reply to the different points I am raising.

1 Dan's Man from Mars technique is not about colour saturation, but colour separation or explosion - finding colours to add to the image at pretty low opacity.  It is not a formula that will produce consistent results, but a visual tweaking.

2 The white K mask is the same (exactly?) as changing the Opacity of a layer - and unless one gets the 'correct' result the first time, it is (at the moment, because the Mask is not saved) difficult to re-do the adjustment.

3 Dan's Mars uses asymmetric curves and although he does not explain why, I assume it is to explode the warm colours more than the cold ones.  These Mars curves are on top of 'normal' curve adjustment.

4 Unless you are an good Curver (I'm not), it is difficult to do two steps, basic colour saturation and explosion, at the same time.

5 I have a gut feeling that one will get different results Curving twice, rather than once - because of integer arithmetic and also with two curving one has more control over exploding colours and also one can go over 75-100% (which is the limit of a single curving) and therefore start to use the lab impossible colour effect.

6 Dan's Mars does not, necessarily, use the same point in both colour channels, or the Lightness channel.  The Lightness channel is also curved in a particular way.

7 Both methods are a recipe about how to go around adding coloured texture to an image and one needs to adjust it to suit the image - just having an Opacity slider does not give enough control - I frequently use the easy BlendIF sliders to effective give me 4 colour masks (in order to modify the result).

8 Lastly I find it hard to adjust the K mask horizontal line - sometimes it picks up and sometimes not, but there does not seem to be any visual clue when it will/not work.

I would therefore suggest that this useful CurveMeister technique is called the "Man from Saturn" to differentiate it from Mars and also to imply that CM can run circles around Photoshop!



-default
Posts: 1916
Joined: Thu Mar 26, 2015 1:53 am

Postby -default » Fri Feb 22, 2008 4:09 pm


I've got a bit hooked on playing with different Mars effects and I've never tried it on colourful images before and I've been able to bring so many colours out in the dragon (which one? - I'm still on the roof!), but...

I have a number of points I would like to raise for general discussion as I am having difficulty equating what we are doing with what Dan originally suggested.  I've numbered them so that it is easier to reply to the different points I am raising.

1 Dan's Man from Mars technique is not about colour saturation, but colour separation or explosion - finding colours to add to the image at pretty low opacity.  It is not a formula that will produce consistent results, but a visual tweaking.

Yes, it's a subjective adjustment, which is unusual for Dan.  It's main advantages are that it is fast, and capable of producing very interesting color variation.

2 The white K mask is the same (exactly?) as changing the Opacity of a layer - and unless one gets the 'correct' result the first time, it is (at the moment, because the Mask is not saved) difficult to re-do the adjustment.



3 Dan's Mars uses asymmetric curves and although he does not explain why, I assume it is to explode the warm colours more than the cold ones.  These Mars curves are on top of 'normal' curve adjustment.

The temple dragon more or less uses this technique, to get the maximum saturate from each individual color before fading back.

4 Unless you are an good Curver (I'm not), it is difficult to do two steps, basic colour saturation and explosion, at the same time.

This is true, and there's nothing wrong with multiple passes.  In particular, I find that exploding the colors is a dangerous proposition if there is a color cast to begin with - the whole image may change to variations on a single color.

5 I have a gut feeling that one will get different results Curving twice, rather than once - because of integer arithmetic and also with two curving one has more control over exploding colours and also one can go over 75-100% (which is the limit of a single curving) and therefore start to use the lab impossible colour effect.

There is a lot of quantization when the curves get steep.  I don't think though that it's necessary to curve twice, though I would recommend using a much larger curve than is used on the videos.

6 Dan's Mars does not, necessarily, use the same point in both colour channels, or the Lightness channel.  The Lightness channel is also curved in a particular way.

Yes, he ctrl clicks on an interesting color, and uses that as the pivot point.  It may not be anywhere near neutral (hence it can differ greatly between a and b).  I don't discuss the lightness channel much, if at all. AFAIK it is just curved in whatever way accentuates the colors - usually to make them brigther.

7 Both methods are a recipe about how to go around adding coloured texture to an image and one needs to adjust it to suit the image - just having an Opacity slider does not give enough control - I frequently use the easy BlendIF sliders to effective give me 4 colour masks (in order to modify the result).

Absolutely use this if it is available.  The Blend If sliders are a powerful addition to this technique that is not available in Elements, so I leave it out of the class.

8 Lastly I find it hard to adjust the K mask horizontal line - sometimes it picks up and sometimes not, but there does not seem to be any visual clue when it will/not work.

A number of people have run into this problem.  Maybe the following will help.  If the K channel is set to pure white (with GCR: no black), then only the upper/white end of the mask curve needs to be moved - the horizontal line is not needed, since everything has the value 255.  If you have Photoshop, you can do a fade operation after the fact, or curve a layer, as you generally do, and change the layer transparency.

I would therefore suggest that this useful CurveMeister technique is called the "Man from Saturn" to differentiate it from Mars and also to imply that CM can run circles around Photoshop!

LOL Good one.

-default
Posts: 1916
Joined: Thu Mar 26, 2015 1:53 am

Postby -default » Fri Feb 22, 2008 4:23 pm

If the K channel mask is causing problems, try the following instead:

1) dupe the image to a new layer
2) create the Man from Mars colors on that layer
3) adjust the layer opacity

ggroess
Posts: 5342
Joined: Wed May 24, 2006 2:15 am
Contact:

Postby ggroess » Fri Feb 22, 2008 4:25 pm



4 Unless you are an good Curver (I'm not), it is difficult to do two steps, basic colour saturation and explosion, at the same time.



Chris,
I would say you are better than average at this little sport we are learning...Don't Sell yourself short.  You bring loads of tools to the table everytime you adjust an image.

Greg


Return to “January 2008 Curvemeister 101”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Bing [Bot] and 6 guests