Snoopin’ with the Snoop

About a year ago, maybe less, maybe a bit longer, I purchased a book called Photoshop Lab Color: The Canyon Conundrum and Other Adventures in the Most Powerful Colorspace. Though I’ve played with it, a bit here and there, I haven’t really progressed through the book as much as I might like to, if I had many fewer activities. For me, and my crazy skip-to-skip-around personality, the best thing about the book has been the introduction to the fact that Lab Mode actually exists in Photoshop. I use version CS2, and since I don’t need it professionally, I don’t see the need to upgrade. I’m not sure how the color mode exists in other versions, both since and previous.

When I first started looking at the color space, I quickly became aware that many of the filters were grayed out and unusable in the color space. Today, I found out that if I go to the channels tab, and select the Placed this channel, the filters come back full force. The differences between using a filter on the Lightness channel and Lab Mode and using a filter regularly in RGB Mode are slight. But to my eye, I prefer the Lightness channel. What do you prefer? (You can also apply filters to the a and b channels, but these bring on strong color alterations.)

For today’s post on my second blog, temporarily called Visual Snoopin’, I chose an old photo of some sweet peppers from my garden in 2006. I wanted to spice it up a little bit, so I decided to apply a filter. And then I found that I could use filters in the Lightness channel in Lab Mode.

Below, I’ve posted examples of the difference between using filters on the Lightness channel in Lab Mode (Left) and RGB Mode (Right). You can view my final selection at Visual Snoopin’ if you wish.

lab bas relief	rgb bas relief
lab chrome	rgb chrome
lab dark	rgb dark
lab diffuse (full size at Visual Snoopin’)	rgb diffuse
lab glow	rgb glow
lab ink	rgb ink
lab knife	rgb knife
lab pencils	rgb pencils
lab plastic	rgb plastic
lab poster	rgb poster
lab sponge	rgb sponge
lab under	rgb under