Posted by John Lehmkuhl on November 12, 2006 at 5:58 PM
I thought I'd share a photo from a walk with my family yesterday at Tyron State Park here in Portland. This photo was processed with a new Lab Saturation Technique I'm experimenting with that is turning out to be interesting.
I undersaturation in the RAW conversion by -10 and then convert the photo in Photoshop CS2 to Lab Mode and apply a Curve to both the A and B channels. I move the top reference and bottom reference marks in by 2 squares in both a and b. That's it. It seperates the colors and saturates them in a very unique way that using selective color or other tricks in RGB can't seem to emualte.
1/1000s at f1.4 iso100
20D and 50mm f1.4
Posted by Eric Hahl on November 12, 2006 at 6:02 PM
Very interesting John, I'll have to give that try.
Posted by John Lehmkuhl on November 12, 2006 at 6:03 PM
Here's another shot where I used that technique. I'm impressed with what it's doing.
Posted by Darren White on November 12, 2006 at 6:24 PM
That stuff is way over my head!!!!!!
Posted by Eric Hahl on November 12, 2006 at 9:56 PM
Well Darren, You'll just have to join in on the next photoshop gathering.
Posted by Mark Hudon on November 12, 2006 at 10:40 PM
John, get the book, Photoshop LAB Color, The Canyon Conundrum and Other Adventures in the Most Powerful Colorspace by Dan Margulis. You'll cut your processing time in half and up your quality as well.
Posted by John Lehmkuhl on November 12, 2006 at 11:18 PM
Will Do, Mark
Posted by Rick Lundh on November 13, 2006 at 2:10 AM
Lab color does have it's applications. Nice one, John.
Posted by Ned Fenimore on November 13, 2006 at 2:46 PM
Looks great. will have to try... I have the book but haven't delved into it too much..
Posted by Erik Lundh on November 13, 2006 at 11:18 PM
Nice job with the LAB processing. Lab isn't meant for all images. If you apply the A&B curves to an already colorful and saturated image, you have to be real careful. It works better in bringing out the colors in a bland image.
Posted by John Lehmkuhl on November 13, 2006 at 11:47 PM
Yes, hence the desaturation in the RAW conversion. I was really amazing with what it could do with the limited "vividness".... the color seperation is far better than the RGB version. I couldn't get the background to leaf separation to look like the lab one no matter what I tried in RGB.
Discussion
11 repliesI undersaturation in the RAW conversion by -10 and then convert the photo in Photoshop CS2 to Lab Mode and apply a Curve to both the A and B channels. I move the top reference and bottom reference marks in by 2 squares in both a and b. That's it. It seperates the colors and saturates them in a very unique way that using selective color or other tricks in RGB can't seem to emualte.
1/1000s at f1.4 iso100
20D and 50mm f1.4
Kevin