When we talk about the Levels dialog in Elements, we generally stick to the default mode of adjusting the shadows, midtones and highlights of the overall image in order to correct and boost the existing tones. There is far more to the Levels adjustment, however, as we’ll find out in the following tutorial.

In addition to the composite RGB, we can alter the component colour channels (red, green and blue) individually to change the colour of an image with far more accuracy than we can with tools such as Hue/Saturation. Here we’ll be working on an image of a silver trophy; first changing it to gold, and then to bronze.

Something to note: although the trophy is not on a separate layer, the white background is never affected. This is because we are only working on the midtones; white is pure highlight. The same would be true of a pure black background. If it had a colour or photographic background we would first need to select and copy the trophy to its own layer.

1. We’ll begin by creating a new Levels Adjustment layer. We can do this by either clicking on the New Adjustment Layer icon in the Layers panel then choosing Levels from the pop-up menu, or by going to the Layers menu and selecting New Adjustment Layer > Levels. This is preferable to simply using the stand-alone Levels dialog as it never alters the original image and we can always go back and make changes later on.

2. In newer versions of Elements (9 & 10) the dialog for the adjustment layer appears in the Adjustments panel. Earlier versions display the dialog in a pop-up window as it would if you used the standard Levels command. There is no difference in the way the controls function; it just makes it more convenient and is tidier.

3. Gold contains a large amount of red, so we’ll begin by selecting the red channel from the drop-down menu. We could also use the keyboard shortcut cmd/ctrl + 3. Drag the midtone slider to the left to increase the amount of red. Around 2.40 should be sufficient; we can always tweak this later if necessary. The trophy now has a slight pink hue.

4. Next we’ll add some green – this pushes the colour into the warmer tones. Select the green channel from the menu, or with the shortcut Cmd/Ctrl + 4. Drag the midtone slider slightly to the left to increase the amount, around 1.10 is enough; it’s a subtle change but is enough for now.

5. The last part of the colour change process is to alter the amount of blue in the image. Select the blue channel (Cmd/Ctrl + 5). This time we’ll be subtracting the colour from the image. Drag the midtone slider over to the right; as we do so we can see the gold hue building up. Take it down to around 0.20. This is effectively the same as adding more green but it’s easier to gauge when the adjustments are made in sequence.

6. Go back to the composite RGB control (Cmd/Ctrl + 2). Drag the midtone slider to the right slightly. This increases the midtones of all channels, adding to the effect by making the colour richer. This completes the colour change and we’ve got a really good result.

7. The advantage of using adjustment layers is we can always go back and make changes if required. We can also make more drastic alterations. Here we’ve created a bronze effect by decreasing the red and green midtones slightly and added in a little more blue. We’ve increased the overall shadow and midtone content to give the trophy a more matt appearance.

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1) if I can keep my editing within Lightroom I maintain a completely non destructive workflow and continue working with all the RAW image data for the best results

2) While Photoshop is the answer to more complex editing requirements, not everyone has the luxury of owning both pieces of software.

In today’s tutorial, I would like to show how simple it is to change the background colour of a studio shoot. Below shows the before and after images

Take an image with nice clean lines between subject and background

Open the Develop module and Choose the Adjustment brush icon in the top right of the screen (shown below). Make sure to select the Auto Mask option (also shown below) so that when we paint the background mask, the Lego man is not painted.

Pressing the letter O on the keyboard allows us to see the mask as we paint it. At this stage the effect settings for the adjustment brush do not matter as we are only creating a mask to be used later.

Using a large brush size around the edges of the image and reduce the size of the brush as needed when painting the details close to the subject. Using the ‘[' and ']‘ keys allows you to change the brush size quickly and easily.

Once you have painted the mask, it is always worth going in for a closer look. Use the Z key to zoom in to the image and fine tune your mask.

Once you have made sure that your mask is as accurate and as clean as possible it should look like this.. (Pressing the Z key again returns you to the full size view)

Now the fun begins..

At this stage the mask is displayed and not any of the adjustment effects. To turn off the mask view, press the letter O again to toggle the mask off.

In the adjustment effects panel, there is a little rectangle labelled color. Click this to bring up the colour box

Now select a colour for the background, such as Blue shown above. As the background is currently quite bright, it is possible that the colour will be very faint. This can be adjusted using the adjustment sliders for exposure and brightness as shown below.

as you can now see, we have changed the background colour and luminosity to create a dark blue background. Now that the hard work of creating the mask is done we can change the background colour whenever we want.

From a subtle yellow

to a more vibrant and bold green.

There are quicker and more accurate ways of achieving this within Photoshop, but sometimes Photoshop is not the answer.

Two things to consider when using this technique. First is that the more accurate your mask the better your results, and second that the more you push the Exposure & Brightness sliders, the more noticeable your mask edges will be.

I hope you’ve found this useful and have fun trying it for yourself. One more little tip, Don’t think that this technique is just about colour.. you can now use any of the adjustment sliders to affect just the background

If you’d like to see how I created the DIY mini studio used to create this Lego photo, check out my latest Zooming Feet Blog

As always, Questions and comments are welcome below

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To start – download the hands-on files here (images ©Richard Harrington)

A professional photographer can spend a good part of a day waiting for the perfect sky and weather conditions. You, however, may not be as lucky (or patient).

Skies will often be washed out and appear missing due to overexposure. One solution is to take pictures of the sky when it looks its best. I have found the desert or the ocean to be the best place to shoot the sky. This is often because the amount of environmental and light pollution is greatly reduced. Don’t worry if this isn’t an option for you, just keep your eyes out for a great day with beautiful skies and remember to shoot some still plates for your collection. These can then be combined with your landscape photos to create new composite images.

1. Open the file Fix_Sky.tif from the download.

2. Use the Color Range command (Select > Color Range) to choose the sky region.

3. Subtract any stray selections in the lower half of the photo by using the Lasso tool and holding down the Option (Alt) key. Alternatively, switch to Quick Mask mode for more detailed touch-up of the selection. Or try the Refine Edge button in the toolbar.

4. Double-click the Background layer to float it. Name the layer Boat and click OK.

5. Invert the selection by choosing Select > Inverse or by pressing Shift+Command+I (Shift+Ctrl+I).

6. Click the Add layer mask button to mask the sky area.

7. Choose File > Place and select the file New_Sky.jpg from the downloads folder. Press Return (Enter) to apply the placed photo.

8. Drag the sky photo behind your masked image. Use the Free Transform command (Cmd+T or Ctrl+T) to scale and position the clouds. There will likely be fringe on the edges that will need touching up.

9. Select the Layer Mask thumbnail and adjust the Feather slider in the Masks panel.

10. Click the Mask Edge button and refine the mask as desired.

11. Touch up any problem areas on the Layer Mask. Use the Smudge tool set to Darken mode to touch up the area around the trees on the right of the frame. You can also touch up the Layer Mask by using a paintbrush and black set to 20% Opacity. Brush over areas that need to be blended.

12. Blur the sky slightly so it better matches the depth of field in the image. Use the trees for guidance. You can use the Gaussian blur filter (Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur) set to a value of 4–6 pixels.

13. To make the colors match better, you can place a second copy of the sky on top. Be sure just the blue sky is covering the photo. Set the blending mode to Overlay or Soft Light and lower the Opacity of the layer.

The completed image, Fix_Sky_Completed.tif, is in the downloads folder if you’d like to examine it more closely.

Here’s a how-to video, one of 65 that’s included with the book, Understanding Adobe Photoshop CS5.

Replacing Skies

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Let’s look at this image for instance. Granted, it doesn’t have a terrible color cast, more of a slightly yellow haze, but it’s definitely not all it could be. Color Balance lets you adjust the primary colors, the additive primaries, red, green and blue, and the subtractive primaries, those made by combining the primaries: red + green =yellow; green + blue= cyan and red + blue=magenta. Color Balance is a little like a non-destructive version of Variations, with the extra added benefit of you being totally in control!

Also, like Variations, you can work on the Shadows, Midtones and Highlights independently of each other, but with a much better all-around result.  You can adjust the tones in whatever order you like, just keep in mind that if you switch to another image and come back, for whatever reason, the program switches back to the default, Midtones. It’s a good idea just to keep an eye on that setting.

All you do with Color Balance is move the sliders to the left and right and discern which adjustments look better to you. That’s it! You can go back and do more whenever you like, unless you access the Color Balance panel through Image > Adjustments > Color Balance, or Ctrl/Cmd +B. In that case you need to make a duplicate layer specifically for the adjustment as it’s destructive and works on the image itself, and you can’t go back and readjust later.

­­Talk about a simple adjustment! What could be easier? But there’s something else that can make it even better, a good old Curves Adjustment! Here’s another image with a slightly green cast.

Make the visual adjustments as before:

Then add a Curves Adjustment, using the black and white eyedroppers on the darkest and lightest points. If it’s too bright, bring the opacity of the Curves layer down to between 50 and 75%. This image now looks like it was taken today!

Now we know it works great on light color casts, but what about heavier casts? This image has a heavy red/yellow cast. Let’s see what Color Balance can do for it.

First, go through all the tonal adjustments. A heavy cast may take a step or two more, so don’t worry if it’s not perfect. Just go for a decent visual adjustment.

Now add a Curves Adjustment, using the black and white droppers on the darkest and lightest points.

If it’s too bright, which this is, and here’s the beauty of adjustment layers, go back and tweak the Color Balance adjustments!

Yet another color correction tool to try, Color Balance is sure to be a keeper in your digital restoration took kit!

Below find a small before/after gallery of images lightened, brightened and corrected using Color Balance:

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Let’s start with the stone texture. We’ll begin with a new document, 800×600 pixels, and use the keyboard shortcut “D” to set the default colors to black foreground and white background. Then, choose Filter > Render > Clouds.

Next, press Ctrl-F (Cmd-F on a Mac) several more times to keep changing the clouds until you get something that looks interesting.

Now, with the clouds in place, choose Filter > Stylize > Emboss. Set the Height to a low number (we used 3) and the Amount to a high number (we maxed it out at 500%).

This creates a nice stone texture, albeit a grayscale one. Time to add some color. Press the keyboard shortcut “U” to bring up the Hue/Saturation adjustment, check the option for Colorize, and adjust the color to taste – here are the settings used for this example: Hue = 30; Saturation = 35; Lightness = 0.

Now, we’re ready to add some text. Start by creating some text on a new layer. This is a font called Dwarven Stonecraft, free from Dafont.com.

Now, we don’t need the text, but we need a selection of the text. Control-Click (Mac: Command-Click) On the text layer thumbnail to load the text as a selection, then choose Select > Save Selection… and name the selection “Text.”

Now, a few steps in succession:

1. Press Control-D (Mac: Command-D) to deselect.
2. Turn the text layer visibility off.
3. Then, go to the Channels panel (Window > Channels) and click on the Text Channel to make it active.

Here’s what you should see:

Now, we’ll rough up the text a bit. Choose Filter > Brush Strokes > Spatter and set the Radius to 10, and the Smoothness to 5.

Now, a few more steps to be done in precise order:

1. In the channels panel, Control-Click (Mac: Command click) the Text channel thumbnail to load it as a selection.
2. In the channels panel, click the RGB channel to go back to the composite view.
3. In the Layers panel, click the Background layer with the stone texture.
4. Press the keyboard shortcut Control-J (Mac: Command-J) to copy the selection to a new layer.

Here’s what we have now. You can’t see the new copied layer just yet – but you will:

With the new copied layer selected, let’s add some layer styles. Click the stylized “fx” icon at the bottom of the layers panel, and choose Bevel and Emboss. Change the settings as shown. Note the settings for the Highlight and Shadow Mode color settings – the colors were sampled from some of the lighter and darker areas of the rock texture. Don’t close the dialog yet.

Next, click on Inner Shadow, but don’t change any of the default settings. Don’t close the dialog yet.

Next, click on Color Overlay, and change the settings to match what you see here. Again, the color was sampled from a darker area of the stone texture. The Opacity is set to a low value (14%) to just add a hint of darkness and smoothness. Don’t close the dialog yet.

Now, click Stroke to add a stroke, and change the settings as shown, to Size: 1 pixel, Position: inside, Multiply blend mode, 60% opacity, and another darker brown color sampled from the image. This just adds a hint of edge definition; you may want to experiment with different opacity settings.

Click OK to finish adding layer styles, and we’re nearly done:

This looks pretty good – but we can take it one step further – to add some additional sense of chiseled stone to the interior of the text (and this may be needed more or less depending on the font), we can select the copied text layer, and choose Filter > Pixellate > Crystallize… and select a low number for the cell size. The preview gives you a sense for the size of the chisel marks you’re creating.

With the interior looking a little more chiseled (this also smooths the interior of the text a bit, we have our finished effect. You can adjust the fill opacity of the copied text layer to adjust the intensity of the chisel effect, if you desire, and here we are:

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Similarly, in Photoshop the HUD allows us to continue looking at our document, while invoking the new color pickers, which help us define the color values we’re using without scanning the toolbar and opening a modal dialog.

Hue Strip
The Hue Strip works on the same principle as the standard Color Picker dialog, with the exception that you cannot manually enter color values. Visually, there is a strip at right for choosing the hue, and a square color ramp to the left that allows you to choose a specific shade or tint for that hue. To invoke the new HUD Color Picker (Photoshop uses the Hue Strip option by default – there is also a Hue Ring option covered below), select a painting tool like the Mixer Brush, then move the cursor over your document. You can also invoke the HUD with other brush tools selected, if need be.

The new HUD Color Picker in Photoshop CS5 (Hue Strip option)

For Mac OS, press and hold Command-Alt-Control and click the document canvas; for Windows, press Shift-Alt-right-click on the canvas.  The new color picker appears over the point you clicked. To use the color picker, release the keyboard shortcuts but keep the mouse button or stylus down. The HUD will then stay in place, so that you can move your cursor.

To change the hue value first, continue to “hold the click” and mouse over to the hue strip, then drag the slider to select your hue. After setting your hue, continue to “hold the click” and drag the cursor over to the square color ramp, then choose the shade or tint before releasing the mouse and continuing with your edits.

If you decide after choosing the shade or tint you like, that you want a slightly different hue, you can do this. Continue to hold the click, then press and hold the space bar. Once pressed you can move the cursor back to the Hue Strip, without moving the selected point on the ramp. You can go back and forth using this method as many times as you like.

When finished just release your mouse button or pick up the stylus to continue with your edits.

The HUD "Hue Ring"

Hue Ring

The new HUD feature also provides access to a Hue Ring color picker. Although it uses the same shortcuts and process, the Ring can make it easier to choose a precise hue because it expands the color spectrum over a larger area. Essentially, it provides a more subtle gradation between each primary and secondary hue.

To use the Hue Ring instead of the default Hue Strip, open Photoshop’s preferences by pressing Command-K (Mac OS) or Control-K (Windows). Under the HUD Color Picker, choose from the three sizes of Hue Ring. Medium usually works well for most purposes unless you have a very small screen. The Hue Wheel (Medium) is shown above; note the size relative to the toolbar. Once you get used to the new HUD Color Picker, you won’t need to use the old dialog in many cases, except when manually entering color values.

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Anyway, I was having a rather vexed morning trying to get some images correct and after another bout of shouty-swearing at the computer (incidentally, this doesn’t help improve the image but it can be quite therapeutic) I started to think about other ways Lightroom helps you to control colours apart from the White Balance sliders. My first thought was to use the Hue, Saturation, Luminance and/or Color sliders. However the fine control of these sliders, which is normally their advantage, was for me a hindrance in this case as the casts are image wide.

The Uncorrected Image

So, another bout of shouty-swearing at the computer ensued. But this time I accompanied it with head, on table, banging. This may, or may not, have helped come up with my eureka moment which was… Split Toning! Obvious, really.

The Split Toning slider is a tool mainly used on black and white images and it adds colours to the highlights and shadows of an image and you can also adjust the effect to bias either the highlights or shadows. And, strangely enough, this kind of adjustment is ideal for helping correct cross balanced photographs.

The Split Toning Panel

I must make a proviso at this point as the process is not a panacea and it can take some time to get your head around the colour theory involved and correctly identifying the colour of the cast. Talking of colour theory, I ought to go through how that works in the correction process.

First, you have to judge what colour cast is affecting you image, in the image here the cast is greenish so the correction we have to apply is the opposite colour to that. So what is the opposite to green in RGB? Magenta as that is a mixture of the remaining two primary colours. This how the primary and their opposites work in RGB:

Primary – Red, red’s secondary = Cyan (combination of green & blue)

Primary – Green, green’s secondary = Magenta (combination of red & blue)

Primary – Blue, blue’s secondary = Yellow (combination of green & red, which doesn’t seem right but it is actually true)

Because these kinds of colour casts aren’t always specifically one or another of these colours it will take a little playing around to get the correction spot on. With the image here we have added a purplish/mauve colour to get rid of the greenish hue.

The Correction

With the image here the cast is worse in the highlights than the shadows so the strength of the correction, controlled by the saturation sliders, is higher in the highlights than the shadows. The colour used to correct the shadows here is slightly different form the highlight one, but not significantly; in some images the casts can be quite different and if that is the case you can adjust them independently via their respective sliders.

The Corrected Image

The Uncorrected Image

When you have a significant difference between the highlights and shadows the balance slider comes into use. Because photographs generally aren’t just a mess of shadows and highlights you need control of the midtones too. The midtones will be affected by both correction colours but the will not necessarily sit nicely in the middle so the balance slider helps you hone the correction, one way or another to get the midtones spot on.

I hope you find this technique useful and would love to hear if it helps you solve a problem. Looking at the corrected image again it could be a little magenta. Oh well, better start shouting at the computer again.

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So where is the best place to turn your colour image into a mono masterpiece? Well you could use one of the many ways that Photoshop offers to convert to mono. Foremost in my mind would be the Black and White adjustment feature which offers a great deal of control.

But there is a better way to make a great mono image and it harnesses the power of Adobe Camera RAW. Available for users of Photoshop & Lightroom this is an enhanced version of the same Black & White adjustment found in the main Photoshop tool set. Watch the video to discover how it works.

Dont See The Video? Click Here

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In this tutorial we’ll use Photoshop Elements to create an effect similar to Andy Warhol’s iconic pictures of Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor et al. We’ll use layers and blend modes to build up the effect, making it easy to correct mistakes or change the look at a later stage.

1. The first thing we need to do is cut our subject away from the background. Select the Lasso tool from the toolbox. Choose a starting point with the mouse and click to start the selection. Keeping the button held, draw around the subject. The outline doesn’t need to be too precise, as long as it follows the face and hair; in the originals, Warhol used a scalpel to cut out the photo. Once you reach the starting point again, release the mouse to create the selection.

2. Now we’ll create a copy of the selected area onto a new layer. To do this go to the Layer menu and select New > Layer via copy. You’ll see a new thumbnail appear in the Layers panel containing the area you selected. Layers are like pieces of celluloid film, you can build up an image by stacking layers on top of one-another; they can be edited and moved around independently without permanently affecting the rest of the picture.

3. Before we start on the effect, we’ll turn the original background layer off, as it can be distracting. Click the Eyeball icon next to its thumbnail; we’re now left with just the cutout layer showing. Make sure the cutout layer is still selected by clicking its thumbnail in the layers panel – it will be highlighted.

4. We need to remove the detail of the face for the effect to work properly. Go to the Filter menu and Select Adjustments > Threshold. This filter looks at the tones of an image; anything lighter than mid-gray is made white, anything darker than mid-grey is made black. The initial effect is too strong and has too much black; we need to balance it out. Click the slider and start to drag it to the left. You’ll see the black areas begin to disappear to be replaced by white. A value of around 80 works well here.

5. Now we can start to add some colour to the image. First we’ll bring back the selection area of the cutout. Press and hold the Ctrl key on the keyboard, now click the mouse on the cutout layer’s thumbnail. The ‘marching ants’ outline will appear around the edge of the image.

6. Go to Layer > New > Layer. A dialog box will appear. It’s always useful to name the layers: this one will be for our skin colour so we’ll call it Skin. We won’t worry about the other settings for now. Click OK to create the layer. It’s appeared in the Layers panel but we won’t see any change as yet.

7. Go to The Edit menu and select Fill Selection. The default contents will be the foreground colour but we need a custom colour. Click on the Use menu and select Color. The colour palette will appear. Skin tones are found somewhere between red and orange so drag the arrows down on the Hue bar, then pick a suitable shade from the main window. Click OK to set the colour, and then click OK in the Fill dialog to fill the selection.

8. We’ve filled the layer with our colour but there’s a bit of a problem, we can’t see anything else! This is because the colour layer is on top of the original. We can fix this by changing the layer’s Blend Mode. These change the way the contents of a layer interact with the layer below. To change the mode, click the Blend Mode menu at the top of the Layers panel (it will be Normal to begin with) In this case we’ll use Multiply. This mode only affects areas that are lighter than the current layer and as the layer below is black and white, the black areas are ignored so the colour only applies to the white areas.

9. The next step is to add the detail colours. We could do this on the skin layer but it would be difficult to correct any mistakes so we’ll do this on a new layer above. Create a new layer as before, this time name it Details. Again, we want the colours to show through to the original so we can set the blend mode in the dialog box before we create it. Set the Mode to Multiply and click OK.

10. Grab the Brush tool from the Toolbox. Right-click the mouse anywhere on the image to open the brush picker. We want the detail to have a hard edge so select the Hard Round 19 pixels preset.

11. We’ll be starting with the hair, so we need to choose a suitable colour. Click the forground colour chip in the Toolbox. The colour palette will appear. Choose a vibrant yellow and click OK.

12. Start to paint over the area of the hair. Because we set the blend mode to Multiply, the new colour is only covering the skin tone, leaving the black detail intact. You’ll notice the yellow appears slightly different to the actual colour you chose, this is because it’s mixing with the skin tone as well. Don’t worry about going over the edges; the selection prevents anything spilling out. Continue painting; again, don’t worry about being too accurate around the hairline, Warhol’s original is in block colour and has a very hard edge. If you need to make the brush tip larger you can press the right square bracket on the keyboard (next to the P key).

13. Once the hair is finished we can add the other details. Go back and click the foreground colour chip, this time select a deep red, this will be for the lips. Reduce the size of the brush using the left square bracket key. Now paint over the top of the lips. You can go over the outline slightly to define them more. Switch to a light blue and paint in the eye-shadow. You can also dab the blue on her eyes.

14. In the Warhol original, the white areas (teeth and eyeballs) were left in skin tone. If we want to add the white in on the image, we’ll need to do it a little differently. Painting with white will have no effect on this layer, as it’s set to Multiply. Instead, click on the skin layer’s thumbnail to make it the active layer. Now select the Eraser tool. Using a small brush tip, erase the areas that you want to be white. Basically, what we are doing is letting the original black and white layer show through.

15. We’re almost done. All that remains is to create a new backdrop for the image. We’ll need to remove the selection first, so go to the Select menu and choose Deselect. Click the mouse on the background layer’s thumbnail. Now create a new layer, either from the Layer menu as before, or by clicking the New Layer icon in the Layers panel. A new layer thumbnail will appear beneath the rest.

16. Go to Edit > Fill Layer. The Contents will still show Color but we have to click it again to open the colour palette. We’ll choose a colour for the background, a blue/green will work well. Click OK to set the colour and then click OK again to fill the layer. And that’s the effect completed.

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