Tutorial 1:
automobile advertisement
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The following tutorial will demonstrate a simple way to revive extremely underexposed photos such as the one shown to the left. It is just one of the many great tutorials that was demonstrated in the classed I attended at "Photoshop World" this year. |
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I will use a "curves adjustment layer" - the half black/half white circle located at the bottom of layers pallette. The reason it is necessary to use an adjustment layer for this is that you will need a mask to cover some of the areas in the photo that will be altered with curves. It is important to edit the curves for this photo in RGB color mode. The reason being, RGB provides a much larger color spectrum and therefore is a lot more useful when editing color. LAB color mode is also very effective when editing colors in a photo, but for this tutorial I will only be demonstrating the use of RGB. So, if you open curves and find that it is set for CMYK color mode, adjust to RGB now. |
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I am going to alter the curves one channel at a time. Start first by switching to the "red" channel as is shown to the left. Next, you will notice that as you move the mouse over the image, an eye dropper icon appears. Also notice that as you move, the values shown in "Output" and "Input" change. Find an area in a shadow of the image - an area that needs to be brightened. Apple+mouse click in that area. Notice that an anchor point appears on the curve. This sets the "Input" for that channel. Now, I will change the "Output" to a level closer to what I want it to be. |
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Looking at the image, I have found one area, circled to the left, where the colors are closer to what I want the rest to be. I will use this area as a guide while I edit the curves for each channel. Dragging the eyedropper over this area, I have determined an average value that is closest to what I want to change the "Output" value to be. Type this new value in the "Output" box and you will see the red values in the entire image change. This same process will need to be done with the green and blue channels before the image will look how I want it to look. |
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The following (Input 33/ Output 111) are the values that I used on the red channel.
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Green Channel. Input 19/Output 74.
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Blue Channel. Input 13/Output 44.
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It is at this point that I will mask out the curves adjustment on the areas of the photo that have been brightened too much, such as the background curtains.
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Although the curves adjustment has helped this photo a great deal, I am going to adjust two more things for this photo - Hue/Sat & Levels. Make sure these adjustments are created through the use of adjustment layers so that sections of them can be masked off if necessary. Adjustment for "Reds" in Hue/Saturation of +9 "Hue" and +7 "Lightness" removes the excess red in the skin and creates more of a natural skin tone.
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Finally, a levels adjustment may be necessary to brighten the overall image. Simply sliding the "Highlights" slider (farthest one to the right) slightly to the left, in this case to a value of 168, will lighten the photo significantly. You will notice, which I haven't shown here, that this also brightent the background curtains to the point of being completely white. Simply copy the layer mask that is being used on the Curves adjustment layer onto the Levels adjustment layer.
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