Lab Color

alwayslearning

alwayslearning

Well-known member
Has anyone played around with Lab Color? It is a part of Photoshop CS3 Here I took a photo of a Sea Anemone in a tidal pool near Huntington Beach from my Sony H2 (six MP) two years ago. (An H2 is something between a P&S and a SLR, I suppose). The second photo is the same photo with Lab Color applied.

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1219532265.jpg


Larry
 
Some of DivotDan's work. He gave me permission to use them with Lab Color in Photoshop CS3.

Two sets of Before and After. (I'm brand new to Lab Color so don't judge what it can do based on my work.)

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Larry
 
Did you take that photo of Gary Coleman Jeremy? :)

Ya, just so you know <pt>, when you're done with Lab Color, you can switch the mode back to RGB and do all the normal "stuff" including adjusting saturation of course. Here is an example of the two I took of the Sea Anemone and one, in the middle, with saturation turned down some.

1219532181.jpg


Lab Color version desaturated -35
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1219532265.jpg


Larry, liking the more saturation better in this case
 
Hi LarryR. Lab Color is a Photoshop CS3 thing. I don't know if it is in any other version. Open the image you choose to work on; jpg, tiff, raw ... Then IMAGE -----> MODE -----> Lab Color. You won't see anything change yet. Then IMAGE -----> APPLY IMAGE (may need to click "more options" in IMAGE). The default blend is MULTIPLY. You will see the image change immediately but will likely be too dark. Just change it to OVERLAY. If too strong, try SOFT LIGHT. Also, there is a percent change you can try. If too strong try bringing it down to something like 80%. Oh ya, after opening the file, before anything, it is best to double click the image in the layers pallet so it isn't a locked layer. (Becomes Layer 0) When you get the image how you want it, just go to IMAGE ----> MODE ----> RGB. Save image. If it isn't exactly what you want, just do the regular LEVELS and / or HIGHLIGHTS & SHADOWS, etc.

Hope this helps.

Larry
 
I dont get it... why cant you adjust the different parts of the image seprately with masks? maybe i just dont get what the program does.
 
Lab color is just another color mode to edit you graphics/photographs in. It's been available for quite some time. It's the equivelent to RGB (monitor, additive colors, Red..Green..Blue) or CMYK (print, subtractive colors, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) although I'm not sure what the purpose of LAB is or what channels comprise it. It's the "apply image" that does the magic you are seeing.

edit: oy vey, why bother?! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lab_color_space
 
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alwayslearning said:
I also found this: http://www.infiniteskills.com/training/photoshop-cs3-mastering-lab-color.html

There are several tutorials you can watch free ..... but if I get a spare $100, I think I'm getting the disk.

I was hoping you'd have CS3 so you could try it out. Be sure to post an image or two with it.

Larry
Click to expand...

Do yourself a favor, save up a little more and learn ANY software app, including those lessons you linked to above at Lynda.com

It is worth every penny.
 
Good link egproductions ...

This is from the link and is a pretty good description of the advantage of Lab over RGB and CMYK.

Unlike the RGB and CMYK color models, Lab color is designed to approximate human vision. It aspires to perceptual uniformity, and its L component closely matches human perception of lightness. It can thus be used to make accurate color balance corrections by modifying output curves in the a and b components, or to adjust the lightness contrast using the L component. In RGB or CMYK spaces, which model the output of physical devices rather than human visual perception, these transformations can only be done with the help of appropriate blend modes in the editing application.

Because Lab space is much larger than the gamut of computer displays, printers, or even human vision, a bitmap image represented as Lab requires more data per pixel to obtain the same precision as an RGB or CMYK bitmap. In the 1990s, when computer hardware and software was mostly limited to storing and manipulating 8 bit/channel bitmaps, converting an RGB image to Lab and back was a lossy operation. With 16 bit/channel support now common, this is no longer such a problem.

Additionally, many of the “colors” within Lab space fall outside the gamut of human vision, and are therefore purely imaginary; these “colors” cannot be reproduced in the physical world. Though color management software, such as that built in to image editing applications, will pick the closest in-gamut approximation, changing lightness, colorfulness, and sometimes hue in the process, author Dan Margulis claims that this access to imaginary colors is useful going between several steps in the manipulation of a picture.[7]
Click to expand...

Larry
 
Thanks mcgeedigital, I'll check that out.

egproductions, using my Sea Anemone as a reference, I opened my original, left it in RGB mode and did the APPLY IMAGE. It is no where near as good so using Lab mode is useful.

I'm wondering if you have tried it yet to see if you get the same results either way with perhaps a different image? I'm going to try it with a few different ones.

Larry
 
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