If you're like me, you'll probably find the colors of the statue are rather
pale. To make them more intense or 'increase their saturation', choose
Image>Adjust>Hue/Saturation. As usual, make sure the preview option is
turned on. Don't be tempted to adjust the lightness here, for the reasons we
have already discussed. This photo doesn't need a 'hue' (tint) adjustment, but try it
anyway to see what it does.
Save the adjusted photo into your folder, then open a new copy of the
original photo for we are going to try an alternative to the Curves adjustment
called Levels. Once you have finished experimenting with the curve
control, undo any changes that you have made so that you can try the alternative
technique that follows.
Another method to try on the original image is to adjust the levels.
This is especially good if you notice that extremely dark or extremely bright
tones are missing from your image. Photoshop has an auto-levels item in
the Image>Adjust menu but this will not lighten this particular image (try it
if you like....). Instead, choose Image > Adjust > Levels
and make sure that the Preview option is turned on. You will probably see
something like this:
The right side of the graph shows that much of the picture is very bright
(the sky). Although the left side of the graph shows that there are large dark
areas, we notice that complete darkness (blackness) is missing. Almost all
pictures should include the full range of brightness from black to white so you
should drag the left triangle slightly to ensure that the darkest parts of the
picture will be truly black. Of course, this has the effect of making the entire
picture slightly darker, as we see in the preview, so we must also drag the
center triangle to adjust the overall brightness. Here are the adjustments that
look best to me:
Save your work in your folder before moving on.
With two good ways of adjusting brightness (curves and levels),
you may wonder which you should usually use. In the above exercise, only the
curve adjustment allowed us to lighten the statue without lightening the sky, so
that may be the better tool. On the other hand, the level control is better for
ensuring that your picture contains a little pure black and a little pure white,
so here is my last word of advice:
First, use the level control just to ensure that your
picture contains some pure black and pure white, by moving the two outer
triangles if necessary. If your picture then needs an overall brightening or
darkening then do this by moving the middle triangle of the level control but if
some parts of the picture need a change of brightness while others do not (as in
the stature exercise), then use the curves control for this.
Decreasing contrast
As promised in lesson one, I will now suggest a good method for
reducing the contrast when necessary. As stated in lesson 1, the use of the
contrast control is not recommended for it will cause your picture to lose any
pure white or black that it contains, making the picture look flat and lifeless.
The better method is to use the curves control introduced above.
Copy this picture (a tiny Japanese drinking water fountain) to
your folder.
Although the overall brightness is OK, the high contrast makes
the picture rather harsh and makes it difficult to see detail in the leaves to
the left of the fountain. Open the picture in Photoshop and display the curves
control with Ctrl-M. To reduce contrast without losing whites or blacks, make a
four point curve like this:
The central part of the curve is less steep than before, and it
is this that corresponds to reduced contrast. If you care to check with Ctrl-L,
the level control, you will find that the picture has not lost its pure whites
and blacks. Save your work.
It should be clear from this lesson that these are powerful
tools that are sometimes hard too use. When you reach the Adjustment Layer
lesson I will show you how you can use the curves and levels controls in such a
way that you can easily return to them later to make adjustments.
to make it so. Notice that is
already a point at each end of the 'curve' - we will usually not touch these two
points. Use your mouse to drag the center of the diagonal line into a new position,
thus adding a third point, and note that it
is possible to brighten or darken the image without losing the pure blacks and
whites in the image. If you want to play, you can try pulling more than one
point on the line (some very weird effects are possible), but if all you want is
a simple brightness correction then a single added point should be enough (if you want
to get rid of a point that you have added then just click it and press the
Delete key on the keyboard).
