Snoopin’ with the Snoop

Since I’m getting back into sports photography, I’ve been playing with photoshop again, this time referencing Photoshop LAB Color: The Canyon Conundrum and Other Adventures in the Most Powerful Colorspace. Best photos to edit in LAB mode are those that are washed out. For example, I edited a photo I entitled “missed — drowned rat” from my time out on Hutchinson Island in Florida spring 09. Unusually, there were massive amounts of kelp in the water; most of the time the water is teal blue, but the waves were mostly green.

The original:

Original as photographed

The final after editing curves in LAB mode:

Final as edited in LAB mode

Since I enabled the History Log in Photoshop (CS2), I’m adding that as reference here. For a quick recap, after converting to LAB mode, I cancelled out of Image>Adjustments>Threshold to not make any changes, but to determine that darkest and lightest points on the photo. Then  I increased the slope of the curves in the Lightness channel around my face so as to make it pop out of the shadow, and adjusted both the a and b channels to bring out both the turbulent green waves and the calmer blue troughs. After an Unsharp Mask on the Lightness Channel and a conversion back to RGB, I completed a brightness/contrast adjustment, saved and voila.

2009-12-06 20:53:08 File IMG_2043.jpg opened
Convert Mode
To: Lab color mode
Curves
Curves
Adjustment: curves adjustment list
curves adjustment
Channel: lightness channel
Curve: point list
point: 0, 0
point: 22, 37
point: 39, 70
point: 88, 115
point: 255, 255
curves adjustment
Channel: a channel
Curve: point list
point: 13, 0
point: 238, 255
curves adjustment
Channel: b channel
Curve: point list
point: 14, 0
point: 239, 255
Select lightness channel
Show a channel, b channel
Unsharp Mask
Unsharp Mask
Amount: 206%
Radius: 1.2 pixels
Threshold: 76
RGB Color
Convert Mode
To: RGB color mode
Brightness/Contrast
Brightness/Contrast
Brightness: 10
Contrast: 7
Save
As: JPEG
Quality: 12
Matte: none

Since all my sports photos will be manual and b/w, I’m not sure how extensively I’ll use LAB mode, but it is fun to play with.

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.

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