Ramble: Masking with Equalize — OZONE Asylum, home of the Mad Scientists

Ramble: Masking with Equalize

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Your Text: Insert Slimies » Insert UBB Code » Close Last Tag \| All Tags UBB Help	In case you couldn't tell, I like Linear Light. Why? Because it's uber easy to understand. It starts at 128 and the fall-off is linear. No funky curves or conditionals involving the substrate. Easy. I will be talking about saturation. The kind of saturation that I will be talking about is the kind that is used by Photoshop in HsL. Now, what I want to talk about next is something that seriously gets under my skin. This is something that gets under my skin far more than quarter-brained tutorials on Displace. Good chance I'll be coming off a bit angry. Even if I let this cool, revisions would still be angry. Let's talk about contrast and saturation. One day I was cruising around reading random tutorials about sharpening. Came across a tutorial that went something like this: - copy photograph to new layer - High Pass to taste - set blending mode to Linear Light The author then went on to say something about how LL will over-saturate with HP like this. His answer? Change the blending mode to Hard Light. Ugh! Jackass! But it was just one tutorial and I didn't fret over it. Then I read another tutorial that went something like this: - Unsharp Mask to taste - Edit > Fade to Hard Light (or something like that) Ugh! Again! You might be considered a guru by others, but don't you dare call yourself that around me. I hate memes that suck [i]beep[/i]. Okay, WJ, take a deep breath. In... out... What is contrast? Finding difference and exemplifying it. What is saturation? Formulatically, something like this: Sat = Max(RGB) - Min(RGB) Sat is just simple difference. The higher the saturation, the greater the difference. The lower the saturation, the lower the difference. Saturation is based on the seperate R, G, and B channels. If you increase saturation, then you are increasing the contrast between the individual R, G, and B channels. What does this mean? This means if you manipulate R, G, and B channels seperately, then there is a good chance that you will lower Min(RGB), raise Max(RGB), and thusly increase saturation. When you use High Pass in RGB, then you will raise saturation where it already exists. This is also why Curves, Levels, and Brightness/Contrast can increase saturation so dramatically as well. The answer? Add or subtract the exact same value from R, G, and B. In this way, the difference, or saturation, will stay the same. How do you do that? The easiest way is to extract Lum, sharpen that, and then put it back in (Lum blending mode). * I also hate people that say that you can't sharpen RGB without over-saturating like you can sharpen Lightness in Lab without over-saturating. Whatever. "Oh, I sharpen in Lab mode to avoid to over-saturating. And then I convert back to RGB mode." Guess what, numbnuts? You can do the exact same thing in RGB without over-saturating. You are wrong with a capital F. Breath in... breath out... Another way to sharpen without over-saturating is with Linear Light. - copy image - Edit > Fill to extract Lum - High Pass the Lum - set HP Lum to LL and reduce opacity to taste Since you are running HP on greyscale, the resulting frequency will be greyscale. This means that the exact same value will be added to each RGB channel. Saturation stays the same. Ta-[i]beeping[/i]-da. Okay, I'm not telling the whole truth. 1. If you use Lum to sharpen, you might reduce saturation in the highs and lows. Largely unnoticable. 2. If you use HP to sharpen on greyscale, you might shift hue a little bit in the highs and lows. This might cause noticable shift if you are working with a lot of bright hues. This goes for some of the other blending modes as well. That's good and all, but the name of the game is contrast. Saturation is a form of contrast, and we can take advantage of that. If you are trying to pull more detail out of shadows, then let RGB > HP do it's thing and increase saturation. Why stretch data in only one channel when you can have all three? Increase contrast like this, increase contrast like that, and let it all build up. You just might be amazed at how quickly different kinds of contrast add up, even if you take it easy on the different kinds of contrast. Just know the data and how to pull it around. Try this. In the midtones, sharpen using Lum. In the highs and lows, sharpen using RGB. Imma take a breaka for a fewa. [img]http://cablespeed.com/~jlhalmich/ozone/koopaisgreater.gif[/img] Loading...
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