Technique for Desaturating Darks/Shadows?

[mcmorrison]

Hello,

I find that for some ETTR images I must bring the Black slider up a ways. When I do this, I find the shadows become over-saturated. I wonder if there is a clean way to desaturate these areas?

Thanks!

Michael Morrison

[Richowens]

Michael,

Try "Fill Light" or negative "Vibrance". Also on the parametric curve pull the "Darks" slider to the positive side.
If it is a specific color you can use the saturation slider for that color in the HSL panel to desaturate.

Another thought is to use the brush in desaturation to seloectively desaturate local areas.

Rich

[digitaldog]

I don’t know if this well help, but George Jardine showed me a tip that I think works really well in general; leave Blacks alone, tweak the Shadows slider instead. Its definitely not the same, but I find it provides the rendering I’m trying to produce instead of using the Black slider.

While a lot more work, a technique that works really well for handling these shadows is to build a grayscale mask for Photoshop that targets only shadows. Load that and use Hue/Sat. You can actually build a really good mask in Lightroom that targets just shadows, convert to B&W and render. That iteration will have three identical RGB channels you can use to load into the original RGB file (Load Selection). In the past, the trick was to make a dupe of the master (duplicate), convert to CMYK and use the black channel as the mask to load for shadows, usually after pulling curves or Levels. The idea is to produce a grayscale single channel file (or one of the composite channels) that only has white on the image for the shadows, black (protect) for everything else.

Simpler but less effective is Color range, Target shadows. Desaturate what it selects (but its a crude selection).

[mcmorrison]

Hello,

I'll give the shadow slider a try, thanks! I have thought of using PS (though not all the methods you describe, thanks!), but am hoping for a pure LR solution. . .

Thanks!

Michael

Update:  The darkening the shadows with the shadow slider seems to increase saturation about as much as using the blacks slider. . .

[jrsforums]

I don’t know if this well help, but George Jardine showed me a tip that I think works really well in general; leave Blacks alone, tweak the Shadows slider instead. Its definitely not the same, but I find it provides the rendering I’m trying to produce instead of using the Black slider.

While a lot more work, a technique that works really well for handling these shadows is to build a grayscale mask for Photoshop that targets only shadows. Load that and use Hue/Sat. You can actually build a really good mask in Lightroom that targets just shadows, convert to B&W and render. That iteration will have three identical RGB channels you can use to load into the original RGB file (Load Selection). In the past, the trick was to make a dupe of the master (duplicate), convert to CMYK and use the black channel as the mask to load for shadows, usually after pulling curves or Levels. The idea is to produce a grayscale single channel file (or one of the composite channels) that only has white on the image for the shadows, black (protect) for everything else.

Simpler but less effective is Color range, Target shadows. Desaturate what it selects (but its a crude selection).

If you are going over to Photoshop, you may want to use Luminosity Masks...

http://goodlight.us/writing/luminositymasks/luminositymasks-1.html

John

[aduke]

I don’t know if this well help, but George Jardine showed me a tip that I think works really well in general; leave Blacks alone, tweak the Shadows slider instead. Its definitely not the same, but I find it provides the rendering I’m trying to produce instead of using the Black slider.

Thanks Andrew, this worked really well in both of the images I tried it on.

Alan

[Rhossydd]

leave Blacks alone, tweak the Shadows slider instead.

"Shadows slider" ??

[francois]

"Shadows slider" ??

In the tone curve pane of either ACR or Lightroom, see attached screenshot.

[Rhossydd]

In the tone curve pane of either ACR or Lightroom, see attached screenshot.

That took a wade through the help files to re-activate those options, I'd assumed they'd been dropped in V3

[francois]

yes, sometimes the obvious is not obvious!

[JohnKoerner]

That took a wade through the help files to re-activate those options, I'd assumed they'd been dropped in V3

What did you have to do, exactly?

Those sliders are not in my 3.4 version by default

Thanks.

[francois]

What did you have to do, exactly?

Those sliders are not in my 3.4 version by default

Thanks.

You can control-click (or right-click) on the right-side panel. A pop-up menu will allow you to choose the active sections.

[Richowens]

  The small box in the lower right of the curve panel, with the line through it, will switch between parametric curve and point curve.

 Just click on the box.

Rich

[JohnKoerner]

 The small box in the lower right of the curve panel, with the line through it, will switch between parametric curve and point curve.
 Just click on the box.
Rich

That did the trick, thanks Rich.

(Thank you too, Francois, I just had to click that lower right box.)

All right, one more question ... sorry it is so basic, LOL ... but how do you guys save your screenshots of programs (such as LR or PS) to be displayed like that?

Jack


.

[wolfnowl]

Don't know about anyone else, but on my laptop I press fn + prt sc to make a screenshot; I then paste the image from the clipboard into a graphics program.

Mike.

[JohnKoerner]

That will do it--thanks Mike!

[schrodingerscat]

All right, one more question ... sorry it is so basic, LOL ... but how do you guys save your screenshots of programs (such as LR or PS) to be displayed like that?

Jack

If on a Mac, at least in 10.6, there's a built in app called Grab. It allows a screen capture of the desktop, a window, or a selection. I keep it in the dock, very handy.

[kikashi]

If on a Mac, at least in 10.6, there's a built in app called Grab. It allows a screen capture of the desktop, a window, or a selection. I keep it in the dock, very handy.

There are also the very old favourites, cmd-shift-3 to snap the whole screen and cmd-shift-4 to draw a marquee on the screen and snap that. After cmd-shift-4, you can also position the cursor over a window and hit the spacebar to select the whole of that window.

Jeremy

[francois]

There are also the very old favourites, cmd-shift-3 to snap the whole screen and cmd-shift-4 to draw a marquee on the screen and snap that. After cmd-shift-4, you can also position the cursor over a window and hit the spacebar to select the whole of that window.

Jeremy

I usually use the classic commands cmd+shift 3 or 4 but Grab allows to get a delayed screenshot which can be useful. There's plenty of enhanced utilities that will allow different manipulations (like blurring areas, adding arrows, lines, rectangles etc.  Ex: LittleSnapper) but the basic stuff provided by the OS will do for most users.

[Rand47]

Here's what I often do, assuming the shadow areas are not too complex in shape.

• I simply take the painter tool set to null, with the "O" key activated so that I can see the mask I'm painting.

• Use my Wacom to paint a mask of the shadow to be desaturated.

• Toggle the "O" off and reduce the saturation slider to taste.

Done.

A tip.  I often paint my mask w/ the "auto mask" off, then clean up the mask edges using the erase w/ auto mask back on.  Learned this from Jeff Schewe and Michael Reichmann, works well.