The variations tool in PSCS2 is a
useful tool for beginners who are trying to understand the way in which digital
colour works and for images where a quick fix is all that is needed to correct a
color cast.
Open your photo to the workspace. In
this example the camera white balance setting was accidentally on Cloudy in what
was late afternoon light, resulting in a strong blue cast.
To access variations, make sure your
photo is selected and go to Image> Adjustments > Variations
The variations palette will open. At
the top of the pane it shows your original image and the current pick image
shows the updated changes to your image as you choose them in real time.
Variations remembers the last adjustments you have made to an image and will
apply those to any new image opened. This is useful when you have several photos
that are affected by the same or similar cast. To clear the previous
adjustments, or any subsequent adjustments and revert to the original
photograph, click on the image labelled original.
The Current pick image is also shown
in the centre of the pane surrounded by the variation options of More Green,
More Yellow, More Cyan, More Red, More Blue and More Magenta. As you click on an
adjustment view the current pick image at centre alters to reflect the changes.
At right the pane allows you to
select variations in lightness and darkness, with the current pick at centre.
The Variations tool allows you to
adjust the Shadows. Midtones, Highlights and Saturation individually, by
selecting a radio button accordingly.
You can change the intensity of an
edit, using the Fine/Coarse slider.
Show Clipping is chosen by default.
Its purpose is to show you when and where your chosen changes will result in
clipping (resulting in pure black or pure white tones) in an image. The option
is really only useful in occasional images and therefore it is not generally
necessary to have this option selected.
You can also Save and Load a setting
for later use.
It is generally best to start with
adjusting the Midtones. The commands can be clicked on in any order and any
amount of times. The thumbnails are arranged in a way that complementary colours
are opposite each other. In this image we have too much blue, so to reduce the
amount of blue we need to increase the amount of yellow. Due to the large value
of blue, More Yellow has been selected twice.
To undo a single immediate change,
click on the opposite complementary colour for example, if I had gone too far
and selected More yellow a third time, I could select More Blue to undo the
change.
This photo was taken at sunset so I
want to ensure it has some of the warm red tones to reflect that. As such, I’ve
chosen to add More Red.
I’ve also chosen to lighten the image
to help lighten the skin tones.
By choosing Shadows and then Lighter,
I can lighten the skin tones further.
The dress in the photo, which should
be white, is still far too blue. Choosing more Highlights and More Yellow helps
but because of the degree of cast the correction needed to make the dress white
also affects the sand, making it too yellow. To correct this I will use another
of Photoshop’s Color correction methods.
Before doing so I am going to make a
last adjustment of the saturation by choosing saturation and for this image,
reducing the intensity of the correction to avoid the dress becoming more blue
than it already is.
You can see in the image above the
dramatic difference between the original and current photographs.
With your adjustments complete choose
Okay.
To correct the dress in this instance
I am going to use the Color Range Tool to begin with. This will allow me to
select the dress fairly well without selecting the sand using the color picker
tool.
Choose Sampled Colours from the
Select drop down menu. Choose Selection on the radio button under the preview
pane.
By selecting Quick Mask from the
Selection Preview dropdown menu I can make sure that my selection is even more
precise by selecting add or minus options.
By increasing or reducing the
fuziness slider I can control the range of color selected. Here 78 gives me the
best result.
Select okay to finalise the
selection.
Choose Layer> New Adjustment Layer>
Color Balance, name the layer if desired.
Choose Highlights and push the slider
to increase the amount of yellow in the dress which will reduce the amount of
blue.
Adjusting the Midtones and Shadows
may also be necessary to prevent new color casts
The final result is quite credibly
improved, with more true representation of skin tones and the colours of the
dress.
© Copyright 2003-2005 by Scrapbook-Bytes; & original creator/s of tutorials/articles
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