Lab Color Editing

[evil4blue]

Not sure how many of you are familiar with Lab Color and its uses in photoshop, but it seems to be developing a small army of disciples. There's a lot of talk about this new methology of photo editing over at dpreview, but most of the examples that are shown over there are a bit garish and are really overdone.

The book that's sparked all this interest is this one:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/032...books&v=glance

I bought it as a light read, just to see what everyone was clammering about. I was completely wrong about it being a light read. I'm still reading it and am about 85% through. I have to read and reread alot of stuff just to figure out what the heck was going on. I'm pretty good with photoshop, but this book turned my use of photoshop completely upside-down. Let me warn you all that this book is not for the light hearted, and it's not easy reading like most photoshop how-to's. There is a lot of theory and explination of why things are the way they are in photoshop.

Once you get through all the hazy stuff, there are some very powerful tools in this book, and I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to be serios about retouching. Here's an example of what you can do. This may not be the greatest example, but let me preface this by telling you I made all the corrections in this photo without any masks, filters, or auto tools and the total time it took was 10 seconds...seriously, 10 seconds.

The original:


The color corrected:


And just for comparison, this one was the original auto leved:


If you have a few hours to kill and don't mind feeling beat down afterwards, this is a great book. It should also work in Elements.

[engstrom]

I once read an online article about using curves in Photoshop with different colorspaces. I was amazed at how much you could change the look by using different colorspaces/channels with the curves. If this book does a good job explaining the interactions of the Luminosity/A/B colorspace I'll definiately get it.

[evil4blue]

Originally Posted by engstrom

I once read an online article about using curves in Photoshop with different colorspaces. I was amazed at how much you could change the look by using different colorspaces/channels with the curves. If this book does a good job explaining the interactions of the Luminosity/A/B colorspace I'll definiately get it.

You'll know more about Lab after reading this book then you ever wanted to. The only problem I have with the book is that you really need to understand a chapter before moving to the next. The author assumes you're an expert in a topic once he's introduced and explained it. A lot of the work he demostrates is cumulative and builds on prior techniques, thus the reason for rereading chapters over and over again.

[CaptainTom]

would it be worth while for a PS idiot like me, or do you need aprevious PS background.
i don't mind the heavy study, but if he assumes I know about PS it might be frustrating.

[evil4blue]

Originally Posted by CaptainTom

would it be worth while for a PS idiot like me, or do you need aprevious PS background.
i don't mind the heavy study, but if he assumes I know about PS it might be frustrating.

The book requires a basic knowledge of PS, and you should be comfortable using curves.

The book is setup kind different then most PS books in that in the first 6 chapters and split into 2 parts. The first half is the nitty gritty of the chapter, and the second half is the theory behind it. The author openly advises people to not read the second half of the chapters if they're not interested in the theory or don't want their brain scrabbled.

I'm a glutton for punishment though and have been reading it through, word for pain-staking word. I don't want to make it sound like only the best and smartest will understand this stuff, but you'll find yourself asking "why am I reading this" a lot, but then you flip the page and there is some miraculous transformation staring you in the face and trudge along.

The correction I preformed above it very basic, everything I did is covered in the beginning of thos first 6 chapters.

The last 10 chapters cover more advanced topics and techniques. The author is very good at explaining himself, and he tries to write in a more humourous tone, but in the end this is a text book. OBTW, I just finished the section on "Making men from Mars". You'll have to get the book to see what that's all about, its too long to explain here.

[jeffkohn]

I got most of the way through the book but have to confess I didn't finish the last couple chatpers, not because it was too difficult, but rather because it was stuff I really didn't see myself wanting to do and it was getting a little boring.

I do think it's a worthwhile book though, even just reading the "recipe" portion of the first several chapters would be well worth your time if you do much photoshop work at all.

There's a lot of talk about this new methology of photo editing over at dpreview, but most of the examples that are shown over there are a bit garish and are really overdone.

I agree, and in fact I would say the same is even true for many of the examples in the book itself. For instance while the the tip about sharpening the Lightness channel is useful, I think he oversharped most of his images giving them that "digital" look I don't like. Some of the color adjustments he made also went a bit far IMHO.

[evil4blue]

Jeff,

I agree with you on all this, but I also think for 35 bucks there are some good tools I would never have known about unless I read this book.

As for going to far with your edits, that is completely up to the user. The tools are there, do what you will with them.

My favorite lesson so far is where he shows you how to seemlessly covert one color into another without selections or masks. That was pretty cool.

[sbug_adam]

heh, i've been using lab color and curves for a couple years now

Adam

[jeffkohn]

I agree with you on all this, but I also think for 35 bucks there are some good tools I would never have known about unless I read this book.

Oh I agree completely, the book was well worth the price of admission just for chapter 1. Steepening the a/b curves to bring out the color variations in images that have "flat" color is extremely useful for certain types of images and can't be done nearly as well in RGB. It also prompted me to try some things I might not have otherwise tried. For instance I've found that for noisy images I can get better results by manually blurring the a/b channels and then running Neat Image on the L channel, as opposed to running Neat Image on the RGB image and letting it do everything.

I just wouldn't go as far some of the people on DPR who rave about this book as if it was a life-altering experience. Some of these people act as if they've found a new religion or something. :)