AV News 191 - February 2013
Note adjustment to your own image may
need an entirely different setting to the one
used here. Leave the output slider at its
default settings of 0 and 255. A little tip here,
to see areas clipped when making
adjustments to 'levels' press and hold the
'Alt' key while clicking on and moving either
the 'Black Point' or 'White Point' adjustment
arrows. Under normal 'levels' adjustment try
to avoid clipping which loses detail.
Our next image shows the new
adjustment layers palette of CS6, the red
arrow at top right indicates the icon of the
newly added 'Color Look Up Adjustment
Layer'. To the left of this palette is the
properties control panel which opens
automatically when adding any of the
sixteen adjustment layers, CS5 had only fifteen. The 'Abstract' menu has
been chosen by clicking the middle of three radio buttons. From its ensuing
drop down menu the 'Gold-Crimson' option has been selected. This option
produces tones similar to sepia and are better suited to the desired mood of
our example image. Eight pre-set colour look-ups exist in this 'Abstract' menu
along with the choice to load your own abstract profile, if created and saved
previously, the method of which we may cover in a future article.
Now to adjust the brightness, again we ensure that our selection is active,
and then click on the next
desired 'Adjustment Layer'
icon, i.e. Brightness. An
adjustment of the Brightness
slider to about minus 50 will
'dull' the background and
leave the foreground figure
just that bit more prominent.
Don't confuse this with
darkening the mid-tones as
per the previous 'Levels'
adjustment, as these are
distinctly different effects.
There should be no need to
adjust the 'Contrast' slider, although feel free to try all adjustment controls to
ascertain their effect.
Another little tip, to see the before [