(10 steps, 10 minutes)

Subject is a bronze Buddha in Japan.
(c) 1999 Jim Austin, all rights reserved.
 

Purpose: Understand how you can gain
creative control over
color and change contrast using curves,
hue/saturation, and levels on
adjustment layers that are easy to edit.
Without changing any pixels in the
original image, we can
correct color and contrast, and this uses
less memory than making these changes
directly to a layer.

(*START, STEP 1, STEP 2, STEP 3, STEP 4, STEP 5,
STEP 6, STEP 7, STEP 8, STEP 9, STEP 10,  END **)
 

START) Open any RGB color digital image.
Since the image lacks a full contrast range,
we choose an adjustment layer using
Photoshops CURVES to control and
improve the contrast of shadow and
highlight in the image.

STEP ONE) Click
Layer > New >Adjustment Layer > Curves.
 

STEP TWO) In the curves dialogue box,
Make sure the RGB channel is selected.

We then set 3 points on the Curve by
clicking on the grid in the curves box.

At the lower left we click on the center
of the four squares at the lower left of
the curves grid to set an anchor point
for the 3/4 black tones in the curves
dialogue box. Click again
on the midpoint in the grid to set an
anchor for the greys, and click a 3rd
time on the 3/4 light tones or highlights.

Drag the shadow section of the curve down
to increase the shadows, and lighten the
highlights by clicking on the highlight
anchor point and dragging it upwards as
shown in Figure A below.
 

FIGURE A

STEP THREE) Drag the 3 anchor points
on this curve with the mouse to darken
the shadows and brighten the highlights
for better image contrast, as in the curve
pictured above in Figure A.
Click  >  OK.

FOUR) The moss is too green. To correct the color, or hue
Open a new layer, click on adjustment layer.
In the new adjustment layer dialogue box, change
the name from levels to Hue and click on
Type: Hue/Saturation.

Layer > New > Adjustment Layer >
Hue/Saturation > Type: Hue/Saturation
 
 

STEP FIVE) In the HUE/SATURATION dialogue box
Change the dialogue box EDIT:MASTER
to EDIT: GREEN to select the green hues.
 
 

STEP SIX)   SLIDE the saturation slider bar
by clicking on it and dragging it to the left
(As in Figure B below). This reduces the
saturation of just one color, in this
case green, until that color is
less saturated, so the moss
color appears normal.
CLICK > OK.
 

FIGURE B
 

STEP 7) We now have 3 layers with a background
and 2 adjustment layers named
Curves and Hue /Saturation. To print the image,
we want the darkest area in the picture onscreen
to correspond to the black printer's ink.
We make a layer called LEVELS,
and click with the black eyedropper tool
in the levels box, and then click once in
the picture itself to set the black ink level.
 

STEP 8)
Layer > New >Adjustment Layer >                                                            Name: Levels
Type: Levels.
Click OK.
 
 
 

STEP 9) In the Levels Dialogue box,

Click on the black eyedropper and go to the picture window.
Find a shadow/ black area in the picture.

CLICK the black eyedropper over a black tone in your picture.

In this example the eyedropper sampled from
a shadow underneath the Buddha's chin.

Photoshop's black eyedropper samples
the shadow, changing it to black,
and you get good contrast for printing.

There are now 4 layers:  background,
hue adjustment, curves, and levels
(See Figure C below).
 
 
 

FIGURE C
 

STEP 10)

We then
a) duplicate the image
Image >
        Duplicate

b) click MERGE LAYERS box
which flattens layers.
Give it a new Name, like " seated buddha in grave".
You may wish to save an additional
copy of your file under a new name.
 
 

Figure D
 

END)
Then Sharpen> Unsharp Mask at
at amount, radius, threshold (85, 1, 4)
per Scott Kelby's settings to
sharpen the image for general use,
saving the flattened file to zip or hard drive
(Figure D, above) at the file type
according to your output needs.