PSD colour-contrast adjustment technique. Including action.

[dogbone]

I'm real excited because I've just accidentally stumbled upon a totally different way to adjust colour-contrast in an image. This is a world first publication of the DogboneTechnique®

Make a new duplicate layer, set the top layer to Luminosity and bring up the Image>Adjustment>Hue and Saturation box and move the hue slider across the whole spectrum and observe the results.

Here's a rough example. Note there is no masking or any other trickiness.

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EDIT Latest V3 action including built in instructions.

 

[irmongoose]

Let me make sure I have this right... doesn't the adjustment layer have to be linked with the duplicate layer? Because otherwise the blending mode change doesn't do much...

Edit: Wow, this is fun for pictures of the sky, sunset, etc. It's definitely an effect I haven't seen before.
Thanks, I'll definitely be playing around with this!



irmongoose

 

[decksnap]

And how is this new?

 

[dogbone]

EDIT: the action that was in this post has been removed and updated. See post 8 for new version. If you have downloaded the old version, you might want to update to the newer one which has fixed a bug on the B/W that stopped you from making multiple b/w layers in the same file.

Here's an action that performs the whole technique. No need to make a duplicate layer first the original layer remains untouched.. You can keep doing a series of different layers just remember to turn off all other layers and select the background each time.

There are two other actions in the set that end up with a black and white image, one uses the green channel, and one uses the red channel. It also leaves the original untouched but it can't be used multiple times like the colour one because the layers that are turned off somehow come back on.

And how is this new?

Maybe it isn't, have you seen it elsewhere, send me the link.


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Here's another sample of how useful this is. The original is the one where there is a green pattern that disappears into the green shirt and I was very easily able to give the two greens which are very similar, sufficient contrast without causing much grief to the rest of the shot.

I've also tried the B/W action and it has worked really well. See how it separated the two greens. This is far superior to using the channel mixer alone. Try it out yourself using the original shot on the left. The B/W conversion took literally 15 seconds to do.

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[Father Jack]

Cheers Dogbone,
That's a new one for me and I've been using photoshop for about 9 years.
Very useful and yet so simple. Thanks


FJ

 

[dogbone]

UPDATE for Action, V2

I have tweaked the B/W part of the action so you can now apply the B/W effect then turn off the layer reselect the background, and immediately make another same as the colour one works.

So now you can say try the RED CHANNEL B/W, then turn off the b/w and select the background layer again then immediately apply the GREEN CHANNEL B/W and you will have two different b/w versions in the same file. Neat.

Also note that in the B/W technique that the Saturation Slider also has a good effect as well as the Hue slider.


Here is another more practical example using DogboneTechnique®. In this shot the faces are muddy and I can't think of any way to brighten them without making complex selections or using some very complex curves and channel blending. But here I've been able to brighten the faces while improving the clouds in 10 seconds. All I did was set the Hue Slider to 40 and the Saturation to 60. It now actually looks like the photographer knew what she was doing.

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