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Using Lab to Increase Color Impact

Vivid color can make an image stand up on its tentacles and say "hi!"

When there are no flesh tones or other natural colors in an image, almost anything goes.

In this case we get a quick boost in saturation by steepening Lab's a and b channels.


Move the cursor over the image or curve to see the result of making the a and b curves steeper.
Although you may simply read this tutorial, your time will be better spent if you copy the original image to your hard drive, and follow the example in Photoshop. This goes for all of the examples.
 
To follow along with this example in Photoshop, access the original image and open it in a new Photoshop document.
 

1. Start Curves by clicking on Photoshop's Filters>Curvemeister>Curves menu item . Set your options as shown. Then click on the Lab radio button to edit your RGB image in Lab mode


This menu is accessed by a right mouse click on any curve window. The important options are Black on Left, Color Frames, and Continuous Preview.

Start with the Lab Color space.

 

2. Select the a curve by clicking on its tab. This channel controls Magenta and Green, and everything in between, and our octopuses have plenty of both.


Click the a tab to show just the a curve.

3. Now for the fun. Move the mouse pointer to the curve margin until it changes to the cursor . Hold onto your headgear, you are ready to perform Curvemeister's Curve Scaling operation.

Once you are in the margin, click and hold the left mouse button. Then move the mouse horizontally to the left. This will rotate the curve around its center point in one easy step.


Click and drag in the bottom margin of the curve to
access Curvemeister's Curve Scale functionality.

4. You may, if you prefer, simply move the endpoints of each curve in the usual way. Steepen the a and the b curve so that they look like this:


You may also steepen the curves the old-fashioned way,
by clicking and dragging the endpoints of each curve.
Keep each graph lined up with the center point, unless you crave psychedelic colors.

5. You are done - compare your result to the image at the top of this example.

There is more that can be done to improve this image. For example, you may add even more impact to to this image by setting highlight and shadow points as in Example 1.

Now, try this on a real image. Find one of your own photographs that might benefit from giving its colors a jump-start, and curve away!

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