The Key To Lively Images – Midtone Contrast – And How To Get It

Technique - Color  Comment
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Contrast catches the eye. When looking at images short of an exciting subject and a dynamic composition, nothing does more to grab and hold attention. More contrast, more energy. Contrast is life.

Contrast is not as simple as one slider – thankfully. There’s real control here and so near infinite creative possibilities. Equally beneficial for both black-and-white and color images, there are many ways to enhance contrast, and every tool produces different qualities of life. Master these tools, and you’ll craft visual statements that speak with more confidence and complexity.

Let’s move through our options as we would in a classic workflow, from coarse to fine control.


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Masking Curves In Lightroom & ACR Is More Important Than You Might Realize

Video - Adobe Lightroom, Video - Adobe Photoshop  Comment
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“Finally, we get curves in masks in Lightroom. Learn why this is important. Colin Smith teaches you how to use Curves in masks to target tones and take absolute control over color grading.”

00:00 Intro
00:21 Create Mask
00:45 5 adjustment zones
01:03 Adjust the tones
01:48 Making a Background mask
02:27 Adjusting Foreground with recovery and Curves
03:33 Curves Color Mode
04:10 Understanding Color Channels
06:08 adding color to tonal regions
06:48 Adjusting the color on the Background
08:010 Adjusting the Intensity of the adjustment

How To Mask Curves In Adobe Lightroom Classic

Video - Adobe Lightroom  Comment
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“Adobe added Curves to the masking tool in Adobe Camera Raw, but has yet to add the same feature to Lightroom Classic. Here’s how to cheat and apply Curves using the masking feature in Lightroom Classic.”

How To Add Color To Highlights With Curves In Photoshop

Video - Adobe Photoshop  Comment
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“How to add colored reflections and catchlights in Photoshop. Colin Smith shows you how to switch curves into colored mode to create the most powerful colors and add then to the highlights in an image. Using curves this way opens a world of possibilities in Photoshop.”
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The One Feature You Don’t Want To Miss In Adobe’s New Camera Raw 15 & Lightroom

Video - Adobe Photoshop  Comment
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“Such a simple thing, like a curve inside a mask, seems minuscule, but this is HUGE!
Watch this video to learn about the new features in ACR 15.”
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00:00 Intro
00:54 Content-Aware Remove Spot Removal Tool
02:33 Refresh Button in Spot Removal Tool
03:13 What’s new in Masking
04:17 Curves in the Masking Section
09:22 People-Specific Selections
11:10 Your Turn! Experiment and Enjoy!
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2 Ways To Match Colors Exactly In Photoshop Using HSB & Curves

Video - Adobe Photoshop  Comment
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Learn how to match the colors of one object to another by matching HSB values using Hue/Saturation or RGB values using Curves. There’s more than one way to make magic happen.
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6 Ways To Get Better Shadow & Highlight Detail In Your Photographs

Technique - Color  Comment
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You want your photographs to glow - right? So what’s better than one kind of glow? How about three?

You can get there by not succumbing to the classic temptations to clip shadows and/or highlights to produce a more obviously dramatic but a less lively, nuanced, and expressive tonal scale. Instead, hold the full dynamic range with a real black and white and also create gorgeous separation in the values nearest to them.

So many times we give the lion’s share of the contrast to the midtones. Midtone contrast is really important. But that doesn’t mean we have to sacrifice the light in highlights by making them too hot to look at comfortably or in shadows making them so dark they turn to murky mud. You can hold separation in these extreme ends of the tonal scale and produce beautiful qualities of light that complement not just contrast. Here’s how.


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The One Simple Trick I Use To Improve All Of My Images With Photoshop

Color - Adjustment  Comment
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Before

After

Curves offers more precise tonal control than any other tool. So when I need precision dodging and burning (about 80% of the time) I use Curves, which means I use Photoshop (PS).

I look forward to the day we can make local adjustments with Curves in Lightroom and Camera Raw. But currently, Lightroom (LR) and Camera Raw (ACR) don’t have this feature, yet. But can’t you do something similar in Lightroom (LR) or Adobe Camera Raw’s (ACR) using the six Basics sliders (Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Whites, Blacks), in combination with the Adjustment Brush, Graduated Filter, or Radial Filter, even in combination with Color, Luminance, or Depth Range Masks? If close is good enough, yes. If you want to make your images really shine, no.

 

Is it hard to dodge and burn with Curves in Photoshop? No. It’s easy.


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