Thanks for the great tutorial. I do most of everything the same, but I have one question. I am unsure how you created the selective color mask for everything that is blue in the last step. How would you select everything that is blue and work on it?

Thank You,

Stephen rash

I just wish the photos were a little larger when clicked on.
Nice photos.

Come visit anytime,
Troy and Martha
We just did a hover fly on a yellow flower,
Click here.
Tuning up for Autumn…Yellows and Reds and Oranges. WOW>
.

I’m not a big fan of using curves for color adjustments. I don’t recommend it, and I don’t use it myself. I’ve found that for most photographers, it’s too easy to get into trouble and make weird results.

First of all, it’s a very coarse adjustment. Color Balance allows much finer control with less effort. (i.e. not having to click on the correct point without moving it, then using the arrows to move the point on the curve in small ammounts.) I did a quick test, and a 5 point correction in Color Balance was only a 1 point move in the X and a 1 point move in the Y axis of Curves. It’s like only being able to add or subtract tablespoons of color instead of teaspoons of color. When I’m making color adjustments in the Color Balance tool, I’m taking it to the point of 1 point differences, and often wishing it allowed half point moves. Adjusting color on curves doesn’t let me do that.

Second, adjusting the end points can change the density and color of the highlights and shadows. If I’ve set my highlights and shadows where I want them, I don’t want a curve on a color channel counteracting that. Also, shadows and highlights usually don’t need much color correction, so the color that can be added by moving curve endpoints is not desirable to me. It’s much more difficult to create these “problems” with Color Balance.

Third, Color Balance has always been able to do what I’ve wanted for global corrections.

This is not to criticize your workflow. Use the ingredients that make things taste the way you want it to taste, and the tools that you like to use. But part of doing these videos is to explain both what I do, and what I don’t do, so that is why I offer my thoughts on this.

The workflow is similar to what I’ve adopted. One difference however is that I use a Curves layer for color balance instead of the Color Balance sliders. By adjusting an individual color’s curve end-points, the color balance is adjusted linearly across the whole luminance range (not just lows or mids or highs). In this example, one may have been able to thus omit the 2 additional layers used to warm the darker areas (trunks, red dogwood leaves). Of course there are many ways to achieve the same thing in Photoshop.

Thanks Rich for the tutorial and the WCI Tango drum scans.