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Enhancing Contrast
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Hi all
Little bit of advice needed please.
1) At the moment I enhance contrast by using curves in photoshop (to make a slight s curve) but its not really all that effective. Any tips please?
2) Genral post processing.My images do seem a little flat sometimes.Certainly not as bursting with colour as some of the pics on here. Im using an Olympus e410
any tips would be much appreciated!Have you tried adjusting the ‘levels’ in whatever application you doing your processing in ?
This reply will demonstrate my lack of PS skills, but…
Contrast. I slide the arrows under the x axis of the histogram to the beginning of the LHS of the bell and where it fizzles out on the right and this seems to work.
Colour, the saturation slider seems to be the fella to tweak here.
Please note, I am very much a PS noobie myself.
Try some of the Photoshop presets in the Curves dialog… Linear, Medium and Strong Contrast… if they are too strong just reduce the Opacity.
AndyL wrote:
This reply will demonstrate my lack of PS skills, but…
Contrast. I slide the arrows under the x axis of the histogram to the beginning of the LHS of the bell and where it fizzles out on the right and this seems to work.
Colour, the saturation slider seems to be the fella to tweak here.
Please note, I am very much a PS noobie myself.
thanks for the replies! Ive actually been using photshop for a fair while…and use levels and the some curves to introduce a little bit of contrast.But Ive never used the histogram. What is it exactly?
Check out these tutorials over at site sponsor Peter Cox’s webiste:
http://www.petercox.ie/tutorials.php
There’s one there specifically about the histogram but I recommend reading/watching them all.. very useful.
J
It’s worth spending the time getting to know how to use curves properly. Anything levels can do, curves can do with much more control. Also, always use adjustment layers, and split the image into separate areas to work on (using layer masks to control each) as you don’t necessarily want the same degree of contrast everywhere. This is one of the main reasons I make the trip into PS these days as opposed to just doing everything in Lightroom
John
JMcL wrote:
It’s worth spending the time getting to know how to use curves properly. Anything levels can do, curves can do with much more control. Also, always use adjustment layers, and split the image into separate areas to work on (using layer masks to control each) as you don’t necessarily want the same degree of contrast everywhere. This is one of the main reasons I make the trip into PS these days as opposed to just doing everything in Lightroom
John
cheers.Yup i generally us adjsutment layers but for the whole image.Ill start splitting them up now using masks.nice tip!
i use curves with two adjustment layers
one for highlights and one for shadows
i use a ayer mask made from the luminosity and invert it for the other
i then dont use an s curve, only use a single point for each layer, it gives less of a colour change than using an s curve
What’s the method for selecting the luminosity only folks? I had it noted somewhere… but can’t find it… t’is a key combo or something right/wrong?
ctrl click on the RGB chanel
if you do one of the colour chanels that selects the luminosity of that chanel only
A method I use in some situations to convert to B&W but has its uses in contrast is:
>Create a fill layer
>Fill with black
>Change layer property to overlay
>Ctrl-click one of the channels then create a layer mask on the fill layer
>Ctril-i the mask (invert)
>Adjust the opacity to around 50%This doesn’t work for all images but what I do find is you originally drop the contrast slider completely down this gives a nice effect in some images.
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