{"id":267,"date":"2008-12-12T22:41:04","date_gmt":"2008-12-13T06:41:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/?p=267"},"modified":"2008-12-12T22:48:03","modified_gmt":"2008-12-13T06:48:03","slug":"photoshop-two-step","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/2008\/12\/12\/photoshop-two-step\/","title":{"rendered":"The Photoshop Two-Step"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have a good friend\u00a0who is\u00a0a very fine photographer who hates Photoshop.\u00a0 Not me.\u00a0 I love it and will spend days and weeks on a single image.\u00a0 But my friend hates Photoshop and wants to get done with it as quickly as possible.<\/p>\n

So I showed him a simple two-step approach to Photoshop that gets you a long ways toward a great looking photograph.\u00a0 And I’d like to share it with you now.<\/p>\n

Let’s start with a nondescript image.\u00a0 You may recognize Manley Beacon at Zabriskie Point in Death Valley, California.<\/p>\n

\"Step<\/a>
Step 0 - The Starting Point<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It’s a very low contrast image, one that doesn’t command a lot of attention.\u00a0 Contrast is one of the most psychologically powerful controls you have to work with when preparing a photograph.\u00a0 Contrast adds interest and draws the eye of the viewer.<\/p>\n

Related to contrast is Black Point.\u00a0 What is that?\u00a0 It’s that area of the image that will print as the blackest black your printer, ink and paper are capable of producing.\u00a0 Most photographs can benefit a great deal from a black point.\u00a0 It provides the tonal foundation for the entire image.\u00a0 Now the area that is black has no detail, something we generally try to avoid.\u00a0 So you don’t want large areas of the image toally black, just a few little specks here and there.<\/p>\n

The opposite of black point is White Point.\u00a0 Many images, especially black and white, benefit from a white point.\u00a0 My experience, however, is that color images often do not benefit from a white point.\u00a0 In fact, a white point often detracts from the image, making it look washed out.\u00a0 So most of the time you won’t want to set a white point.<\/p>\n

So how do you set a black point and white point in Photoshop?\u00a0 The\u00a0simplest and most convenient adjustment to use is Levels.<\/p>\n

\"Levels\"<\/a>
Levels<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It displays a histogram of your image and immediately below it are three sliders.\u00a0 The slider to the left, the black one, sets the black point.\u00a0 The one to the right, the white one, sets the white point.\u00a0 The middle one sets the mid-tones.<\/p>\n

So, let’s set the black point.\u00a0 While holding down the ALT key, click on the black slider and slide it to the right.\u00a0 The image will go blank and as you you slide blacks will start to appear.\u00a0 Adjust the slider until you have just a couple of specks of black and release the ALT key.<\/p>\n

You can repeat the same process with the white slider although, as we said above, setting a pure white point in a color image may not be very desirable.\u00a0 Just play around with it until it looks right.<\/p>\n

One last thing to do is slide the mid-tone slider left or right until the overall contrast and tonality looks good to you.<\/p>\n

So when we do that to our image, how does it look?<\/p>\n

\"Step<\/a>
Step 1 - Levels<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Better already, I’d say.\u00a0 You’ll notice besides the image having greater snap, the colors are a lot more saturated.\u00a0 That happens when you adjust tonality.\u00a0 In general, if you darken an area you will also saturate the colors.\u00a0 This leads to the second step.<\/p>\n

In the second step we use the Hue\/Saturation adjustment.\u00a0 With this we can fine tune the colors and give the image a bit more sparkle.<\/p>\n

\"Step<\/a>
Step 2 - Hue\/Saturation<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Hue\/Saturation has three sliders – Hue, Saturation and Lightness.\u00a0 And very important, the drop down at the top allows you to select six colors – Red, Yellow, Green, Cyan, Blue and Magenta.\u00a0 You can adjust each one separately.\u00a0 Master adjusts all colors at once\u00a0but I would never recommend that.<\/p>\n

To use Hue\/Saturation, look a color you want to adjust.\u00a0 In our image, we can brighten up the subject a bit by saturating the yellow.\u00a0 Also, the sun light falling on the Panamint Mountains across the valley can be subdued a bit by adjusting the red.\u00a0 Finally, the blue shadows on the mountains and valley can also be subdued a bit.<\/p>\n

You have three controls.\u00a0 The one I go to first is Saturation.\u00a0 Sometimes you increase saturation; sometimes you decrease it.\u00a0 Hue will shift the color a bit.\u00a0 For example, if you’re working with yellow you can make it a little more orange or more green with the Hue control.\u00a0 The Lightness control is very subtle.\u00a0 I don’t use it very often but sometimes it comes in handy.<\/p>\n

So after applying a little red, yellow and blue saturation, how does our photograph look now?<\/p>\n

\"Step<\/a>
Step 2 - Hue\/Saturation<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So there we have it.\u00a0 Not bad for maybe ten or fifteen minutes of work.\u00a0 Compared to what we started from it turned out quite nice.<\/p>\n

Levels and Hue\/Saturation are two tools in our toolkit, two words in our creative vocabulary<\/a> that add dramatically to our ability to express ourselves through our art.<\/p>\n

You can see more of my work on my website – RalphNordstromPhotography.com<\/a><\/p>\n

(1086)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have a good friend\u00a0who is\u00a0a very fine photographer who hates Photoshop.\u00a0 Not me.\u00a0 I love it and will spend days and weeks on a single image.\u00a0 But my friend hates Photoshop and wants to get done with it as quickly as possible. So I showed him a simple two-step approach to Photoshop that gets … Continue reading “The Photoshop Two-Step”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,64,4,6],"tags":[87,193,192,194,48,43,89],"class_list":["post-267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-how-to","category-how-to-articles","category-journal","tag-death-valley","tag-huesaturation","tag-levels","tag-manley-beacon","tag-photoshop","tag-sunrise","tag-zabriskie-point"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Nl7-4j","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":279,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267\/revisions\/279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}