julie's dark duck week 1

[imported_julie]

Greg
I tried this. When i use rgb things tend to ake on a reddish tinge is that usual or my monitor. I also found I could not crank up the brightness as far in rgb as it tended to make the colours look very strange, especially the rock and lichen near the feet. I prefer the lab result as it seems to have more depth or vibrancy or something.

I have been working since these came out but I have today off and Friday saturday off so I will be doing more later in the week

Julie

[ggroess]

You are close really...both images are a bit hot on the breast feathers of the duck.  They should be white but they should have details.

There are subtle differences in each monitor.  I thought the RGB looked Blue on my screen.  So It might be adjustment of your screen.  Some other things to look at...and...

I have posted my configuration screens here for you...

To get to the config. quickly you can click on the wrench Icon.  see shot7  The green circle is the switch to flip the grid over addressed below under config.

Shot4 is the first screen:  These are basic settings and certainly are not required..I noted your use of the zone system and I too use that in LAB...

Shot5 is the second screen:  I turn on the curve guard and leave the default settings in place.  Curve guard warns you when you are creating curves that are out of Gamut for the color space you are in.  In LAB that is very easy to do.  

Shot6 is the real meat of the config screens...

Note the shadow and highlight target values.  These help you make sure that all of the shadows and highlights are printable.  It acts as a limit on the darkest shadows and the brightest highlights.  Quite useful settings really....

Additional note:  The Sample Size...This is the setting that CM uses to determine the values for the pixels under the mouse pointer.  If yours is set to 5 or above it might be leading you to make different decisions regarding color.  the 5X5 sample uses 25 pixels there could be more blue pixels in the sample and that would make you adjust more red if you set a neutral based on that sample.  I use 3X3 unless I have a specific reason to change.  There are some techniques where we want a larger sample size to help us define the color contrast range...but that is for a later lesson.

Watch the video on neutral "Honest Abe"  might be able to help you with neutrals...It is highly a highly subjective process when there is no clear neutral to define.  In this case the band is quite neutral and then it comes down to sample choice and size.

One other thing to note you have the shadow and highlight sides of your curve windows mixed for instance the LAB setting for shadow is on the Left but the Shadow for RGB is on the right.  It will reduce confusion for you if you are consistent in this setting.  It matters not which you choose and they are easily changed but you might want to be consistent.  just hit the switch circled in green on the first screen shot.