For this week I thought I’d cover a couple things, the first is bragging.I have discovered another of my photos has been used on a blog. This time, one of the photos from the Pyramid Brewery party with Minus the Bear was used for a Q&A with the band’s drummer, Erin Tate. I have to say, it looks pretty good.
Secondly, and as promised, I thought I’d offer a quick Photoshop tip for those readers who’ve asked me to provide some tips/tricks. This installment will be focused on lighting & color tones. There are quite a few Photoshop tools that achieve this. The best is to take your photos in RAW format and edit in Camera RAW (or Bridge). However, in order to make this somewhat universal for folks, I will focus on the simplest ways to do this, and skip over these two methods. For this post, you will find all of these tools in the “Image” drop down menu, and then hover over “Adjustments.”
Curves -
Curves can adjust both lighting and color tones. To get to this menu, click “Image,” “Adjustments,” and then “curves.” A windows that looks similar to the image on the left should appear. In the “Channel” section, you can click on the drop down menu to see options for
RGB – which will adjust all color channels, and thus lighting.
Red – this adjusts the red tones
Green – this alters the green tones
Blue – This tweaks the blue tones
To make your adjustments, you can move the sliders on the bottom, or you can click, hold, and move any point on the diagonal line to adjust that point of the spectrum. Move the line up or down on the left end of the spectrum to adjust the dark parts of your photo. Move the line on the right end to adjust the bright sections of the photo. Try boosting the red channel (right slider up slightly), and the blue channel down (left slider to the right). The result should be a slightly yellow look. Have fun and mess around with this. It can give your photo a variety of moods (the below image was achieved through a combination of curve adjustments on a black and white photo).
Color balance -
This tool is fairly self explanatory. It adjusts the mixture of tones in your shadows, midtones, and highlights. You won’t want to go too overboard with this, but it’s a great tool for fixing areas of over saturation, color temperature, etc. Adjust these to taste until you get the look you want in your photo.
The below image uses color balance to enhance the pink and purple tones of the sky while maintaining the green of the grass. This may be an example of going a little too far with the color balance, but you get the idea.
Exposure -
This is potentially the most important tool you can use. Exposure can destroy a photo in a way color tones never could. While this tool can go a long way to correct poor photo exposure (too dark/blown out), it’s not a substitute for poor camera work. It is still critical that you know how to use and set your camera. However, in those rare cases when it just isn’t quite right, this can be valuable. The exposure slider adjusts the highlights and shadows, offset can add or remove that fine haze, and Gamma correction can adjust the integrity of your black tones. Use them wisely. Personally, I like to use Offset to add a little haze to a photo. It’s a style choice. Take the below example for instance.
Hope this helps get you started. Look for more soon, and let me know if you have specific questions or topics in mind.
-Elldub
