Just a note on his books. Dan has said that he now thinks he has found better ways of achieving some updates and corrections, including the 5th edition referenced above and the LAB book.
That's not be negative, but to point out that his future teachings will probably be even better than before. He's a pretty funny guy in person, but everyone can see some tutorials with him at kelbytraining.com which looks like another goldmine (though somewhat expensive) of PS information.
FWIW, another technique which produces similar results is duping the background layer, changing the mode of the dupe layer, adding a black-filled mask on the dupe layer then selectively erasing the mask to feather in the tonal adjustment where it is needed. Changing the dupe layer to multiply will darken, screen with lighten, and hard and soft light will increase contrast (opacity needs to be reduced for hard/soft light).
I use this method so often I created an action which adds screen and multiply layers. I like it vs using curves because I can easily select where it is applied and see the effect in the edit window as I erase the mask. Its something I learned from a pdf article by Dan Margulis I found years ago. I have his Photoshop of Professionals book and recommend it. Another one of his techniques RGB > Lab channel blending can also do some amazing things, like put more detail in srtong primary colors or minimize things like freckles.
cgardner wrote:
Another one of his techniques RGB > Lab channel blending can also do some amazing things, like put more detail in srtong primary colors or minimize things like freckles.
Chuck
Interesting choice of examples. I saw an image recently, can't remember where, and this guy had shot a woman (his GF?) that had freckles all over her face. His subsequent processing was absolutely horrendous; she looked like she had a disease that would make me run fast and far. i found it not only disturbingly unattractive, but if she saw it she should kick him until he takes it down...
jamesf99 wrote:
Interesting choice of examples. I saw an image recently, can't remember where, and this guy had shot a woman (his GF?) that had freckles all over her face. His subsequent processing was absolutely horrendous; she looked like she had a disease that would make me run fast and far. i found it not only disturbingly unattractive, but if she saw it she should kick him until he takes it down...
Actually I had it backwards about the freckles - accentuate them not minimize them. A while back in the people photo forum someone asked how to accentuate freckles on a fair skined person. I did this example with as close to freckled skin as I had available in the archives: https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/598523/0#5257611 as one way to tackle the problem. I blended the blue channel from an RGB copy of a file back into the L channel of an Lab version, similar to the example on pg. 9-10 of the Margulis Professional Photoshop book. The point being its a book worth reading.
