Photoshop-Viz: Setting Up Images for Final Output in photoshop

Setting Up Images for

Final Output

Artists can color the sky red because they know

it’s blue. Those of us who aren’t artists must color

things the way they really are or people might

think we’re stupid.

—Jules Feiffer

Setting Up Images for

Final Output

No question—your job as a photographer is to capture

the image. But in today’s ever-changing digital landscape,

it’s also your job to make sure that the image is the best it

can be. And in order to do that, you need to master the

color and contrast of the image.

This chapter will guide you through understanding the

240

The techniques described in this

chapter are used by the high-paid

color maestros who are responsible

for all of those ever-so-perfect

glossy magazine ads. It will take

you a while to really get the hang

of these techniques, but once you

do, it should take you just minutes

to correct most images.

Figure 7.1 The Brightness/Contrast

dialog.

color and grayscale values within your imagery. You’ll

see the difference between Levels and Curves, while also

learning that grayscale is more than just a desaturation. To

begin, we’ll discuss some of the more obvious variables in

the image-editing process: brightness and contrast.

Brightness and Contrast

Years ago, Photoshop’s Brightness/Contrast dialog used

to adjust the entire tonal range of an image by equal

amounts, which made it difﬁcult to adjust one part of the

image—say, the shadows—without destroying another part

of the image, such as the highlights. However, Adobe has

reengineered the Brightness/Contrast dialog with recent

updates, and turned it into a very useful, very powerful

tonal adjustment tool.

To ﬁnd the Brightness/Contrast adjustment, choose

Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast. The dialog

is very straightforward (Figure 7.1). By sliding the Bright-

ness slider back and forth, you can make the overall image

brighter or darker. In general, the Brightness slider protects

III: Grayscale, Color, and Print

shadow areas—it won’t usually let you underexpose them

too far. Therefore, you need to keep a very close eye on the

highlights in the image. As you adjust the slider, be careful

that you don’t let the highlights overexpose and blow out to

complete white, losing detail (Figure 7.2).

Figure 7.2 As you slide the Brightness

slider left or right, the image becomes

Dan Ablan.)

The Contrast slider increases contrast in an image by

brightening the light parts and darkening the darker areas

(Figure 7.3). The overall effect is an image with more

“pop” and better detail. Too much contrast, however, and

the image can appear muddy. Moving the slider to the left

lowers the contrast, resulting in a ﬂatter image (Figure 7.4).

Brightness/Contrast is not the most reﬁned tool, but it

can be a great place to start if you’re relatively new to

Photoshop.

Figure 7.3 Use the Contrast slider to add “punch” to images. Figure 7.4 Slide the Contrast slider left to pull contrast out

of an image.

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Chapter 7 Setting Up Images for Final Output

Adjusting Levels

Brightness/Contrast is especially useful if you’re new to

performing tonal corrections; for many images, it’s all

the control you’ll ever need. However, Photoshop’s Levels

adjustment (Image > Adjustments > Levels) provides a

more sophisticated tool that offers a much ﬁner degree of

control (Figure 7.5). Levels provides ﬁve different slid-

ers that you can adjust, as well as a histogram (sort of like

a bar graph) that indicates exactly what’s happening to

the image.

Brightens or darkens shades

between white and black

Figure 7.5 The Levels sliders.

Forces shades

to black

Changes black to

a shade of gray

Forces shades

to white

Changes white to

a shade of gray

The Histogram Is Your Guide

You can use the histogram at the top of the Levels dialog

to determine whether the adjustments you’re making are

To reset sliders to their default

positions, hold down Option/Alt

to change the Cancel button to a

Reset button temporarily.

going to harm the image or improve it. The histogram

indicates which shades of gray the image uses and how

prevalent those shades are within the image (Figure 7.6).

The peaks indicate a shade of gray that takes up a lot of

space in the image, and the valleys indicate a shade that

isn’t very prevalent in the image. A histogram that extends

all the way across the space available and doesn’t have tall

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spikes on either end indicates an image that has the full

range of shades available, and is usually a sign of a good

scan or a well-adjusted image. If you ﬁnd a gap in the histo-

gram, you can look at the gradient directly below it to see

which shade of gray is missing from the image.

The height of the bars in a

histogram suggest how much space

the shades take up in an image.

The height doesn’t indicate an

exact number of pixels; instead, it

measures how much that shade is

used as compared with the other

shades in the image. It’s as if every-

one in a room stood up and you

visually compared how tall each

person was (without using a ruler).

You wouldn’t know exactly how

tall anyone was, but you’d have an

idea of how tall each person was as

compared with the others.

Figure 7.6 This histogram indicates that the shades between around 90% and

75% gray take up a lot of space (tall bars), and the shades between around 5%

and 15% take up little space (short bars).

By looking below the left side of the histogram, you can

determine the darkest shade of gray in the image. By look-

ing below the right end of the histogram, you can deter-

mine the brightest shade of gray in the image. In Figure

7.7, you might notice that the image contains no pure

blacks or pure whites. The darkest shade of gray is about

95%, and the brightest shade is about 6%.

Figure 7.7 Look at the gradient bar

directly below the ends of the histo-

gram to determine the brightest and

darkest shades present in the image.

There is no ideal setting for a histogram; it’s simply a rep-

resentation of which shades of gray are most prevalent in

the image (Figure 7.8).

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Chapter 7 Setting Up Images for Final Output

Evaluating and Adjusting Contrast

The brightest and darkest areas of your computer moni-

tor are nowhere near as bright or dark as the objects in

The middle slider moves when you

adjust the upper-right or upper-left

slider. This happens because Pho-

toshop is attempting to keep the

middle slider in the same position

relative to the other two sliders.

So if the middle slider is centered

between the other two sliders, it

will remain centered when you

move one of the outer sliders.

the real world. The difference is even more extreme when

you look at the brightest and darkest areas of a printed

brochure—the paper is actually pretty dull, and the ink

isn’t all that dark. You’ll need to use the full range of

shades from black to white in order to make your photos

look as close to reality as possible.

By adjusting the upper-right and upper-left sliders in the

Levels dialog, you can dramatically improve the contrast

of an image and make it appear more lifelike. When you

move the upper-left slider in the Levels dialog, you force

the shade of gray directly below it and any shade darker

than it (see the gradient) to black. So moving that slider

until it touches the ﬁrst bar on the histogram forces the

darkest shade of gray in the image to black, which should

give you nice dark shadows.

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III: Grayscale, Color, and Print

When you move the upper-right slider, you force the

shade that appears directly below the slider and any shade

brighter than it to white. Moving the right slider until it

touches the last bar on the histogram forces the brightest

shade of gray to white, which should give you nice white

highlights.

By adjusting both sliders, you make the image use the full

range of shades available to a grayscale image (Figure 7.9).

If you move the sliders past the beginning and end of the

histogram, you’ll get even more contrast, but you risk los-

ing important detail in the process.

Figure 7.9 The shades that are

beyond the upper-right and upper-

left triangles on the Input Levels

histogram become pure black and

pure white, as shown on the Output

Levels gradient.

Threshold Mode to the Rescue

To achieve maximum contrast without sacriﬁcing detail,

Adobe created a hidden feature in the Levels dialog. It’s

known as Threshold mode. This feature allows you to see

exactly which areas are becoming black or white, and it’s

the key to ensuring that you don’t sacriﬁce detail. To get

to the hidden feature, hold down the Option/Alt key

when you move the upper-right or upper-left slider in the

Levels dialog.

When you move the upper-left slider with Threshold mode

turned on, the image should turn white until the slider

touches the ﬁrst bar on the histogram; then small black

areas should start to appear. These are the areas that will

become pure black. With most images, you shouldn’t force

a large concentrated area to black, so move the slider only

until small areas of black appear. You also want to make

If you’re in the market for a new

scanner, be sure to compare the

Dmax specifications for each

scanner you’re considering. Higher

Dmax specs indicate a scanner

that’s capable of capturing more

shadow detail than you’ll get

from a scanner with a lower Dmax

spec. If you can’t find the Dmax

specification on the manufacturer’s

Web site, there’s a good chance

that it’s too low to mention. It’s

often worth the extra money to

get a scanner that can deliver good

shadow detail.

sure that the areas that are becoming black still contain

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Chapter 7 Setting Up Images for Final Output

detail. Detail will show up looking like visual “noise,” so

make sure that those small areas also look noisy. Repeat

this process with the upper-right slider to get optimal

contrast (Figures 7.10 to 7.14).

Figure 7.10 The original image.

Figure 7.11 Here, the upper-left slider

is adjusted much too far.

Figure 7.13 Now the upper-left slider

is adjusted correctly.

Figure 7.12 With the upper-left slider

adjusted as shown in Figure 7.11, large

areas of the image are losing detail

and becoming pure black.

Figure 7.14 Small areas become black

but still contain detail (noise).

Three things might cause an image to have large areas of

black or white from the start:

 The image was scanned in, and the scanner wasn’t

capable of capturing good shadow detail.

 The image simply didn’t have any detail in the shadows.

 The image has been adjusted without using Photo-

shop’s Threshold mode.

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III: Grayscale, Color, and Print

The Histogram Gives You Feedback

After applying an adjustment to an image, you can see an

updated histogram by choosing Image > Adjustments >

Levels again. Notice that after you’ve adjusted the upper-

right and upper-left sliders, the histogram stretches all the

way across the area available. It’s just like stretching out a

Slinky—you remember, “It walks down stairs, alone or in

pairs” (Figure 7.15). As you pull on the ends of a Slinky,

the loops stretch out and start to create gaps. The same

thing happens to a histogram—because Photoshop can’t

add more bars to the histogram, it can only spread out the

ones that were already there. And remember, gaps in the

histogram mean that certain shades of gray are missing

from the image. So the more you adjust an image using

Levels, the more you increase the possibility that you’ll lose

some of the smooth transitions between bright and dark

areas (Figure 7.16).

If you see large spikes on either end of the histogram (Fig-

ure 7.17), it’s an indication that you’ve lost detail. That’s

because you forced quite a bit of space to white or black

by using Levels. But you’d know you did that, because you

used the hidden feature, right? Or maybe you couldn’t

control yourself and used that Brightness/Contrast dialog,

where you can’t tell if you damaged the image! You might

also get spikes on the ends of the histogram (Figure 7.18)

if you scan an image with too high of a contrast setting, or

a brightness setting that’s too high or low, or if the image

was scanned in and your scanner isn’t capable of capturing

enough shadow detail.

Figure 7.15 A Slinky®.

Figure 7.16 After you adjust the top

two sliders, the image should use the

full range of shades available.

Figure 7.17 Spikes on the end of a

Figure 7.18 Noise.

histogram usually indicate lost detail.

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Chapter 7 Setting Up Images for Final Output

Adjusting Brightness After Contrast

After you have achieved good contrast, the image might

look too bright or dark. The middle slider in the Levels

dialog can ﬁx that. (Techies call this slider the gamma set-

ting, but we plain folks call it the midpoint.) If you move the

middle slider to the left, the image becomes brighter with-

out messing up the dark areas of the image. Black areas stay

nice and black. Or you can move the middle slider to the

right to darken the image without messing up the bright

areas. White areas stay bright white (Figure 7.19). This is

Figure 7.19 Effects of the middle

slider.

To see a histogram that changes

continuously to reflect any modi-

fications you make to the image,

choose Window > Histogram.

the one setting in which you must use your own judgment,

based on how bright or dark you want the image to be.

If you want to know what this adjustment is doing, just look

directly below the middle slider; the shade of gray there

will become 50% gray. Moving it to the left brightens the

image because you’re shifting what used to be a dark shade

of gray to 50% gray. Moving the middle slider to the right

darkens the image as you shift a bright shade to 50% gray.

If you look at an updated histogram of the image, it will

look like you stretched out a Slinky, and then grabbed one

side and pulled it to the middle (Figure 7.20). Some bars

get scrunched together, others spread apart.

Spikes that show up after an image

has been adjusted with Levels don’t

indicate noise. Let’s say you try to

squish 20 bars on the histogram

into a space that’s only 15 pixels

wide. Five of the bars have to disap-

pear. They’re just going to pile on

top of the bars next to them and

248

make those bars about twice as tall.

When this happens, you get evenly

spaced spikes across part of the

histogram.

Figure 7.20 The adjustment shown on the left results in the histogram shown

on the right.

III: Grayscale, Color, and Print

Prepping for Print

If images are going to be printed on a commercial print-

ing press, chances are that they’ll end up looking a lot

darker than they did when you viewed them onscreen. This

is known as dot gain. Fortunately, Photoshop allows you to

compensate for dot gain. You can tell Photoshop ahead of

time how you intend to output the images, and the soft-

ware will adjust the onscreen appearance of the image to

look as dark as it should be when printed.

To select or enter dot gain settings, choose Edit > Color

Settings. In the Working Spaces area of the Color Settings

dialog, use the Gray pop-up menu (Figure 7.21). Ask your

printing company what settings to use; otherwise, you’ll

just be guessing and you might not like the end result. If

you don’t have time to ask your printing company, you can

use the settings in Table 7.1. After you’ve speciﬁed the Dot

Gain setting that’s appropriate for your printing condi-

tions, choose Image > Mode > Assign Proﬁle, and select

TABLE 7.1 Dot Gain Settings

FORMAT SETTING

Newspapers 34%

Magazines and brochures 24%

High-end brochures 22%

If the dot gain setting you need isn’t

listed in the Working Spaces area,

you’ll need a custom setting. Select

Custom from the settings at the

top of the dialog, and then choose

Custom Dot Gain from the Gray

pop-up menu.

the Working Gray setting. That will set up Photoshop to

preview the image properly for the speciﬁed conditions.

Figure 7.21 The Color Settings dialog.

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Chapter 7 Setting Up Images for Final Output

Figure 7.22 The farther the copy from

the original image, the more detail

lost in the brightest part of the image.

Preparing for a Printing Press

Take a close look at the black-and-white image in Figure

7.22, and imagine that you took that image to your local

copy shop and made a copy of it (copy #1). Then you

copied copy #1 to make copy #2. Then you took copy #2

and ran it through the copy machine in your ofﬁce, making

copy #3. At this point, you held copy #3 next to the original.

Would you expect them to look the same? Of course not. In

fact, the tiny dots that are in the brightest part of the image

would have begun to disappear and become pure white—

because every time you make a copy, you lose some quality.

The same thing happens when you hand over an image to

a printing company; the ﬁnal printed version is three levels

of copying away from the original. The original is used to

create a piece of metal called a printing plate (copy #1).

The plate is put on a big roller on the printing press and

ﬂooded with water and ink. The oily ink sticks to the plate

only where the images and text should be; the water makes

sure that it doesn’t stick to the other areas (following the

principle that oil and water don’t mix). Next to that roller

is another one known as a blanket; it’s just covered with

rubber. The plate comes into contact with the blanket so

that the ink on the plate will transfer over to the blanket—

that’s copy #2. Finally, the blanket transfers the ink onto a

sheet of paper to create copy #3 (Figure 7.23).

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III: Grayscale, Color, and Print

Ink roller

Water roller

Plate

Blanket

Paper

Impression Cylinder

Figure 7.23 Three copies are made before the image turns into a printed page.

Each time a copy is made, you lose some of the smallest

dots in the image. Until you know how to compensate for

this loss, you’re likely to end up with pictures of people

with big white spots in the middle of their foreheads.

Before you learn how to compensate for the loss of detail

in the bright areas of the image, let’s take a look at what

happens to the darkest areas, since you’ll have to deal

with them as well. When you print with ink on paper, the

ink gets absorbed into the paper and spreads out—just

like when you spill coffee on your morning newspaper.

This spreading of ink causes the darkest areas of an image

(97%, 98%, 99%) to become pure black. If you don’t

adjust for this potential, you’ll lose detail in the shadows

If the image will be displayed only

onscreen or printed on a desktop

printer (such as an inkjet), change

the setting in the Gray pop-up

menu to the gamma choice your

monitor uses. Most Macs are set to

1.8 and most Windows machines

are set to 2.2.

of the image.

Most printing companies create a simple test strip that

prints on the edge of the job in the area that will be

cropped after printing is completed. This test strip con-

tains shades of gray from 1% to about 5%, to determine

the lightest shade of gray that doesn’t disappear on press

and become pure white. Of course, the folks in the print-

ing industry don’t just use plain English to describe this

technique; instead, they invented the term “minimum

highlight dot reproducible on press.” The test strip area

also contains shades of gray from 99% to about 75%, so

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Chapter 7 Setting Up Images for Final Output

252

TABLE 7.2 Common Minimum

Highlight Settings

FORMAT SETTING

Newspapers 5%

Magazines and brochures 3%

High-end brochures 3%

TABLE 7.3 Common Maximum

Shadow Settings

FORMAT SETTING

Newspapers 75%

Magazines and brochures 90%

High-end brochures 95%

To measure the minimum highlight

and maximum shadow settings

for an output device that you own,

try the highlight/shadow test at

www.digitalmastery.com/test.

Figure 7.24 The bottom sliders reduce

image contrast to compensate for the

limitations of the printing press.

the printers can see the darkest shade of gray that doesn’t

become pure black. For that one, they came up with the

term “maximum shadow dot reproducible on press.” Your

printing company can usually tell you exactly which set-

tings to use. In case you don’t know who will print your

images, or you don’t have the time to ask about settings,

Tables 7.2 and 7.3 give you some generic numbers to use.

But ﬁrst, let’s ﬁnd out how to adjust for minimum high-

light and maximum shadow dots. By moving the lower-

right slider in the Levels dialog, you change white to the

shade of gray to which the slider is pointing. Move this

slider until it points to the minimum highlight dot—that is,

the lightest shade of gray that won’t disappear and become

white on-press.

You don’t want to eyeball this setting; instead of just look-

ing at the shades of gray, use the Output Level numbers

in the Levels dialog. There’s one problem with these

numbers, though: They range from 0 to 255 instead of 0

to 100%! This is because you can have up to 256 shades

of gray in a grayscale image, and Photoshop wants you

to be able to control them all. When you’re using this

numbering system, think about light instead of ink. If you

have no light (0), that would be pitch black; if you have as

much light as possible (255), you could call that white. So

that you won’t need a calculator, Table 7.4 provides the

conversions.

By moving the lower-left slider in the Levels dialog, you

change black to the shade of gray to which the slider is

pointing (Figure 7.24). Move this slider until it points

to the darkest shade of gray that won’t solidify as black

(known as the maximum shadow dot).

At ﬁrst glance, this stuff might seem complicated, but it’s

really quite simple. All you do is use the numbers from

the tables or ask your printing company for settings. If you

always print on the same kind of paper, you’ll always use

the same numbers.

III: Grayscale, Color, and Print

TABLE 7.4 Percentage Conversion

PERCENTAGE OUTPUT LEVEL PERCENTAGE OUTPUT LEVEL PERCENTAGE OUTPUT LEVEL

100% 0 66% 87 32% 174

99% 3 65% 90 31% 177

98% 5 64% 92 30% 179

97% 8 63% 95 29% 182

96% 10 62% 97 28% 184

95% 13 61% 100 27% 187

94% 15 60% 102 26% 189

93% 18 59% 105 25% 192

92% 20 58% 108 24% 195

91% 23 57% 110 23% 197

90% 26 56% 113 22% 200

89% 28 55% 115 21% 202

88% 31 54% 118 20% 205

87% 33 53% 120 19% 207

86% 36 52% 123 18% 210

85% 38 51% 125 17% 212

84% 41 50% 128 16% 215

83% 44 49% 131 15% 218

82% 46 48% 133 14% 220

81% 49 47% 136 13% 223

80% 51 46% 138 12% 225

79% 54 45% 141 11% 228

78% 56 44% 143 10% 230

77% 59 43% 146 9% 233

76% 61 42% 148 8% 236

75% 64 41% 151 7% 238

74% 67 40% 154 6% 241

73% 69 39% 156 5% 243

72% 72 38% 159 4% 246

71% 74 37% 161 3% 248

70% 77 36% 164 2% 251

69% 79 35% 166 1% 253

68% 82 34% 169 0% 255

67% 84 33% 172

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Chapter 7 Setting Up Images for Final Output

Figure 7.25 The original image.

Figure 7.28 Result of adjusting the

middle slider.

Figure 7.26 Result of adjusting the

upper-left slider.

Figure 7.29 Result of adjusting the

lower-left slider.

Figure 7.27 Result of adjusting the

upper-right slider.

Figure 7.30 Result of adjusting the

lower-right slider.

Brief Recap

Here’s a quick list of the steps for adjusting each of the

sliders in the Levels dialog:

1. When the original image is ready (Figure 7.25), choose

Image > Adjustments > Levels to open the Levels dialog.

To see an updated histogram after

adjusting an image, you must first

apply the adjustment and then

reopen the Levels dialog (Image >

Adjustments > Levels). You can

also choose Window > Histogram

to see before-and-after histograms

overlaid on each other.

Move the upper-left slider in the dialog until it touches

the ﬁrst bar on the histogram, to force the darkest

area of the image to black. Use the hidden Threshold

feature—hold down Option/Alt—to go as far as pos-

sible without damaging the image (Figure 7.26).

2. Move the upper-right slider until it touches the last

bar on the histogram, to force the brightest area of

the image to white. Again, use the hidden Threshold

feature—hold down Option/Alt—to go as far as pos-

sible without damaging the image (Figure 7.27).

3. Move the middle slider until the brightness of the

image looks the way you want it (Figure 7.28).

4. Move the lower-left slider to make sure that the shad-

ows won’t become pure black on the printing press

(Figure 7.29). Use the tables in the previous sections

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III: Grayscale, Color, and Print

for settings, or ask your printing company for more

precise numbers.

5. Move the lower-right slider to make sure that you don’t

lose detail in the highlights when the smallest dots

in the image disappear on the printing press (Figure

7.30). Use the previous tables for settings, or ask your

printing company for more precise numbers.

6. When you’re happy with the settings, click OK to apply

them. You can usually adjust all ﬁve sliders before click-

ing OK.

Post-Adjustment Analysis

When you adjust an image, you run the risk of introduc-

ing artifacts, so let’s take a look at what can happen to an

image after applying Levels. (Don’t worry—there’s usually

at least one “ﬁx” for every artifact.)

Low-Contrast Onscreen Appearance

If you’ve adjusted an image that will eventually be repro-

duced on a commercial printing press, the results most

likely look rather ﬂat onscreen (lacking contrast). This

problem is temporary, since the image will gain contrast

when it’s printed on a press (dark areas become darker

and bright areas become brighter). You may want to adjust

only the top three sliders in the Levels dialog to get an

acceptable image, and hold off on adjusting the bottom

two sliders until you’re done working on the image in Pho-

toshop. That way, the image will have good contrast for the

vast majority of the time you work on it. Just before saving

the image as a ﬁnal version, adjust the bottom two sliders,

so that the image is ready to be reproduced on press.

Recognizing and Eliminating Posterization

Looking at an updated histogram, you might see wide gaps

in the histogram between a bright area and a dark area—

this posterization (Figure 7.31) happens when you should

have a smooth transition between areas and instead you see

a drastic jump. Some people call this banding or stair-stepping.

As long as the gaps in the histogram are smaller than three

pixels wide, you probably won’t notice it at all in the image.

If your scanner is 30-bit or higher

and the scanning software contains

a histogram and has the same

adjustment controls available as

in the Levels dialog, you can make

adjustments within the scanning

software. Most scanners can deliver

a histogram without gaps because

they can look back to the image

and pick up extra shades of gray

that would fill the gaps. These days,

almost all scanners are 36-bit or

higher. If your scanner is capable of

delivering a 16-bit grayscale image

to Photoshop, the only adjustment

you need to make during scanning

is to make sure that highlights and

shadows still have detail. If the his-

togram in your scanner has spikes

at the ends, lower the contrast

setting and rescan until you don’t

get the spikes.

Figure 7.31 Gaps in a histogram

indicate posterization.

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Chapter 7 Setting Up Images for Final Output

Adjusting the image usually causes these gaps. As you adjust

the image, the bars on the histogram spread out and gaps

start to appear. The more extreme the adjustment, the

wider the gaps. If you see huge gaps in the histogram, the

posterization probably is noticeable enough that you’ll want

to ﬁx it (it usually shows up in the dark areas of the image).

Here’s a trick that can minimize the posterization. You

have to apply this technique manually to each area that

is posterized. Although it might take a bit of time, the

results will be worthwhile. (Don’t use this technique on

every image—just on those that have extremely noticeable

posterization.)

Figure 7.32 Turn off the Preview

check box to see the edges of the

posterized area. Then turn on the

Preview check box and increase the

Radius setting until the posterized

area appears smooth.

If you don’t have the time or

patience to apply the technique

described here to eliminate poster-

ization, consider choosing Filter >

Noise > Add Noise and using a

setting of 3 or 7. This approach can

help to reduce posterization, but

won’t be able to help in cases of

extreme posterization.

To begin, select the Magic Wand tool, set the Tolerance to

0, and click an area that looks posterized. Choose Select >

Modify > Border, and use a setting of 2 for slight posteriza-

tion or 4 for a moderate amount of posterization. Now

apply Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur until the area looks

smooth (Figure 7.32). Repeat this process on all of the

posterized areas until you’re satisﬁed with the results.

If a large number of your images end up with post-scan

posterization, look into getting a scanner that’s capable of

delivering 16-bit images to Photoshop. A typical grayscale

image contains no more than 256 shades of gray, which

is technically known as an 8-bit image. That’s sufﬁcient for

most images, but extreme adjustments will cause posteriza-

tion. One way to avoid posterization is to use a scanner that

can produce images containing thousands of shades of

gray, which is technically known as a 16-bit image. Most scan-

ners are capable of capturing more than 256 shades of gray

from a photograph, but few are capable of actually deliver-

ing all those shades to Photoshop.

Working with Color

If you surveyed hundreds of Photoshop users, you might

ﬁnd that the majority of them perform color correction

by picking their favorite adjustment tool (Color Balance,

Hue/Saturation, Curves, or the like) and then using a

somewhat hit-or-miss technique. They blindly move a

few sliders back and forth in the hope that the image

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III: Grayscale, Color, and Print

onscreen will improve. If that approach doesn’t work,

they simply repeat the process with a different adjust-

ment option. Those same people often ask for “advanced

color-correction techniques” because they’re frustrated

and don’t feel like they’re really in control of the color in

their images. If this describes the way you’re adjusting your

colors, you’ll be pleasantly surprised when you learn about

the science of professional color correction, where 95% of

all guesswork is removed and you know exactly which tool

and what settings to use to achieve great color.

First we’ll look at a general concept that will help you to

color-correct an image. Then you’ll walk through a step-

by-step technique you can use to get good-looking color in

Photoshop.

Use Gray to Fix Color?!?

For now, try to wipe out any thoughts you have of color.

Seriously—this approach really works, so stick with it. The

color we call “gray” is made up of equal amounts of red,

green, and blue. With that in mind, open an image and

ﬁnd an area that you would call “gray.” Then look in the

Info panel to see if it really is gray in Photoshop (Figure

7.33). Don’t trust your monitor or your eyes! If the RGB

numbers in the Info panel aren’t equal—no matter what it

looks like on your monitor—it’s not gray. If it’s not gray, it

must be contaminated with color. But could that color be

contaminating more than the gray area? Most likely.

How do contaminating colors get in there? Here are a few

potential culprits:

If you have a color print or transpar-

ency that will be reproduced as a

grayscale image, scan the original

as color and then convert it to

grayscale in Photoshop. Check out

Chapter 8, “Color Manipulation,”

to learn how to produce a higher-

quality grayscale conversion.

Figure 7.33 Unless the RGB numbers

are equal, the selected area is not gray.

 A mixed lighting situation that confused the automatic

white-balance mechanism of your camera

 Choosing the wrong manual white-balance setting

 The temperature of the chemicals used to develop the

ﬁlm being too hot or too cool

 Inappropriate ﬁlters used in a photographic enlarger

when your prints were being made

 Aging bulbs in a scanner that might shift the colors dur-

ing the scanning process

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Chapter 7 Setting Up Images for Final Output

 Diffused light from surrounding elements such as trees,

buildings, sky, and so on mixing together, making it

nearly impossible to ﬁnd complete gray

We’re going to use the Curves dialog to make an adjust-

ment. But don’t worry, you don’t have to remember every-

thing from Chapter 3, “Layers and Curves,” to use this trick.

For what we’re trying to accomplish, here’s what you need

to know:

 Command/Ctrl-clicking the image will add a point.

 The Input number indicates what you’re changing.

 The Output number determines the end result in the

area you’re changing.

To get started, download the image RonaldWalk.jpg

(Figure 7.34) from www.danablan.com/photoshop (or use

one of your own images). Even if you skipped the chapter

on Curves, you’ll still be able to color-correct images. (At

Figure 7.34 The original image.

Even though you’ll deal with

RGB settings while you learn this

technique, Photoshop can translate

from RGB to CMYK numbers once

you start performing the steps

listed in the “Professional Color

Correction” section of this chapter.

Look at the CMYK area of the color

picker to see what you’d get in

CMYK mode.

this stage, we’re going to adjust a curve manually. Later,

you’ll learn a much faster and easier method.)

Start by putting your cursor on the gray sidewalk. Now

glance over at the Info panel and write down the RGB

numbers—initially, they should be approximately 114R,

111G, and 102B. (If the Info panel isn’t open, press F8

or choose Window > Info.) To make that sidewalk a real

gray, you’ll need to make those RGB numbers equal.

But you don’t want to change the brightness of the side-

walk. To prevent that from happening, grab a calculator

and add the three RGB numbers together to ﬁnd out

the total amount of light that’s making up the sidewalk

(114 + 111 + 102 = 327, for example). To keep from chang-

ing the brightness of the sidewalk, you’ll keep the total

amount of light the same, but using equal amounts of red,

green, and blue. To ﬁgure out the exact numbers to use,

just divide the total brightness of the sidewalk (327 in this

case) by three (327 ÷ 3 = 109). Round off the result so you

don’t have any decimals. Now that you know your starting

number (from the Info panel) and the number you want

to have (from the calculator), you can adjust the image.

Choose Image > Adjustments > Curves and set the Channel

pop-up menu at the top of the dialog to RGB. In the Curves

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III: Grayscale, Color, and Print

chapter, you learned that if you then Command/Ctrl-click

the image, you’ll place a point on the curve at that tone. If

you move that point up or down, you change red, green,

and blue in equal amounts, which would just change the

brightness of the image. But for this example, you want to

work on the individual colors separately. To have Photoshop

add a point to each of the red, green, and blue curves, hold

down Shift-Command (Mac) or Shift-Ctrl (Windows) and

click the sidewalk. To see these individual points, open the

Channel pop-up menu again and select the Red, Green, or

Blue channel. You should ﬁnd a new point on each of those

curves. The position of each one of those points is based on

the numbers that showed up in the Info panel. All you need

to do is switch between the red, green, and blue curves and

change the output numbers for each one so that they match

the number you calculated (109 in this case) in the Info

panel. After you’ve done that, take a peek at the image to

see what you’ve done. The sidewalk should be gray. If it’s

not, and you’re quite sure you followed the steps correctly,

your monitor may need calibration.

Now look back at the three curves applied to this image

(Figures 7.35 to 7.37). You measured what was wrong with

the image in the gray areas, but the adjustment changed

the entire image. That’s logical enough, because whatever

is wrong with the gray areas is also affecting the rest of the

image. But when you look at those curves, does it look like

you really changed the full length of the curve? Almost—

but not quite. You didn’t change the brightest and darkest

areas. So, you really haven’t accomplished the color cor-

rection, and you won’t until you’ve taken some more steps.

But from this exercise, you saw that the concept of measur-

ing and adjusting gray works to color-correct the image.

Now let’s see how you can make this process faster and

Figure 7.35 The red curve.

Figure 7.36 The green curve.

Figure 7.37 The blue curve.

easier, and then you’ll move on to adjusting the brightest

and darkest areas.

Realizing that it might feel quite low-tech to be scribbling a

bunch of numbers on a sheet of paper and using a cal-

culator in the face of a multi-thousand-dollar computer,

the folks at Adobe provided a tool that will do 99% of the

work. Choose File > Revert to return the image to its origi-

nal state, and then choose Image > Adjustments > Curves.

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Chapter 7 Setting Up Images for Final Output

Click the middle eyedropper toward the bottom of the

dialog, and then move your cursor out onto the image and

click that gray sidewalk again. With a single click, it should

Curves is equipped to do the same

basic corrections as Levels, but

can also do much, much more. In

general, with grayscale images

you should always start out using

Levels and then move on to Curves

to fix any problems that Levels can’t

handle. Also, use Curves to work

with color.

change to gray. Photoshop is using the same concept you

used when you wrote down the RGB numbers and aver-

aged them; it’s just doing it in a fraction of a second, with

no paper involved. In fact, those eyedroppers will help you

even more if you adjust the full range of shades from the

brightest to the darkest. Let’s see how it works.

Professional Color Correction

Okay, now you can start thinking in color again. Let’s look

at the process of professional color correction in three

parts: balancing colors, adjusting skin tones, and adjusting

saturation. You don’t always have to perform all three parts

of this process, but the more you do, the better the result.

Balancing Colors

To eliminate any color casts in the image, you’ll need

to look for color contamination in the gray areas of the

image and then use that information to help correct the

whole image. Three standard areas of an image will usually

contain a shade of gray: the brightest area of the image,

which is known as the highlight; the darkest area of the

image, which is known as the shadow (on most photos, the

highlight and shadow areas shouldn’t contain color); and a

gray object in the image.

Now that you know which areas need to be adjusted, go

ahead and make the actual adjustment. Start by choosing

Image > Adjustments > Curves. You’ll be working with all

three of the Curves eyedroppers. All three eyedroppers

adjust the area you click, so that it ends up with a balanced

combination of red, green, and blue—effectively removing

any color contamination for that area. The only difference

between the eyedroppers is that the one full of black makes

things really, really dark; the eyedropper full of white makes

things really bright; and the middle eyedropper doesn’t

change the brightness of an area. You’ll use those eyedrop-

pers to adjust the shadow, highlight, and gray areas, respec-

tively. But ﬁrst you have to set up things correctly.

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III: Grayscale, Color, and Print

Double-click the eyedropper on the right to bring up the

color picker. This eyedropper will be used to adjust the

brightest part of the image (the highlight). You don’t want

the highlight to become pure white, because it would look

too bright. Reserve pure white for those areas that shine

light directly into the camera lens (such as light bulbs and

shiny reﬂections). The highlight should be just a bit darker

than white.

When working with gray, the lightest percentage of ink

you can use on a printing press is usually 3% (5% for some

newspapers). Therefore, you don’t want to use less than

3% of any ink in the brightest part of the image; other-

wise, you might lose critical detail. But you’re adjusting the

image in RGB mode, and when you do that, you’re using

a numbering system that ranges from 0 to 255, not 0% to

100%. So let’s ﬁgure out how to create a minimum of 3%

ink in RGB mode.

After double-clicking the eyedropper, set the saturation

setting (S) to 0 and the brightness setting (B) to 100%,

and click the number next to the letter B (brightness).

Use the down-arrow key to change that setting until the

magenta (M) and yellow (Y) readouts indicate at least 3%.

Cyan (C) will be higher, but don’t worry about that. At this

point, the numbers will show you exactly what RGB values

are needed to produce that much ink—in Figure 7.38,

240R, 240G, 240B.

Figure 7.38 A good highlight value is

240R, 240G, 240B.

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Chapter 7 Setting Up Images for Final Output

Now, on to the dark side. You’re going to make the dark-

est area of the image pure black (0R, 0G, 0B) in order to

use the full range of colors that your computer monitor is

capable of displaying. Black wouldn’t be a good choice if

you’re outputting to a printing press (you’d lose a lot of

detail), but you’ll set it up so that Photoshop adjusts the

image automatically if you have to convert to CMYK mode.

That way, no detail will be lost no matter what the output.

So, double-click the left eyedropper and make sure that it’s

set to black. When you click OK in the Curves dialog, Pho-

toshop asks if you would like to save the new target colors

as the defaults. Go ahead and click the Yes button so that

Photoshop remembers those settings and uses them every

time you use the eyedroppers to color-correct images.

Now that you have everything set up properly, it’s time to

start adjusting images. Open any image that needs to be

color-corrected, and then choose a new Curves adjustment

layer from the Adjustments panel (Figure 7.39). Name

your adjustment layer something like Color Correct. Click

the black eyedropper and then click the shadow area in

the image. Remember, the shadow area is the darkest area

of an image—not an actual shadow. Almost all images

have a shadow area, but it can sometimes be hard to locate

because there may be multiple candidates.

Figure 7.39 Use the new CS4

Adjustments panel to add a

Curves adjustment layer.

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III: Grayscale, Color, and Print

Once you’ve done that, click the white eyedropper and

then click the brightest part of the image. That area should

still contain detail. You’ll often ﬁnd it in a white shirt collar

or button, a Styrofoam cup, the whites of someone’s eyes,

or a sheet of paper. In Figure 7.40, for example, the bright-

est white is in the sky.

Figure 7.40 The brightest white in this

image falls within the sky.

Finally, click the middle eyedropper and then click any

area that should be gray in the ﬁnal image—not bluish

gray or pinkish gray, but pure gray (also known as neutral

gray). You might have to really hunt for a gray; it’s not

always obvious. It could be a sweatshirt, a white dress shirt,

or the edge of a book. On the other hand, you might run

across an image that has dozens of gray areas from which

you can choose. In that case, try to pick one that’s not

overly bright or dark, because you’re already adjusting the

highlight and shadow of the image. The closer you get to

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Chapter 7 Setting Up Images for Final Output

a middle gray, the more effective your adjustment will be.

If you have any doubt at all that the area you’ve chosen is

gray, experiment by clicking one area to see what happens;

then press Command/Ctrl-Z to undo the change, and then

try another area. Repeat this process until you’ve found an

area that really causes the image to improve—but don’t try

too hard. Not every image contains a true gray. For exam-

ple, you might not be able to ﬁnd one in a photograph of

a forest. If you can’t ﬁnd a neutral gray, then (of course)

don’t adjust it.

Using the Threshold Command to Locate

Highlight and Shadow

Here’s a way to ﬁnd the highlight and shadow areas with-

out guessing. Choose Image > Adjustments > Threshold

and move the slider all the way to the right; then slowly

move it toward the middle (Figure 7.41). The brightest

area of the image will be the ﬁrst area that shows up as

Figure 7.41 Use the Threshold com-

mand to find elusive highlights.

Using the up- and down-arrow

keys to move the Threshold slider

allows you to focus on the image,

instead of having to concentrate on

being precise with the mouse.

white (you can use the up- and down-arrow keys to move

the slider). You don’t want to ﬁnd the very brightest speck

(that could be a scratch or a reﬂection on something

shiny), so be sure to look for a general area at least ﬁve or

six pixels in size (something that’s easy enough to click

without having to be overly precise). Once you’ve found

the correct area, Shift-click that part of the image to add

a color sampler to that area. (You have to hold down

Shift only if you’re still in an adjustment dialog such as

Threshold.) A color sampler is simply a visual reminder of

where that area is.

Now let’s use Threshold to ﬁnd the darkest area of the

image. This time, start with the slider all the way to the left,

and then slowly move it toward the center. This shows you

where the darkest area of the image is hiding. You don’t

want to ﬁnd the darkest speck (that could be dust), so look

for a general area at least ﬁve or six pixels in size. Once

you’ve located the shadow, Shift-click that area to place a

sample point on top of it, and then click Cancel to get out

of the Threshold dialog. (If you click OK instead of Cancel,

the image will remain completely black and white.) Now

you should have two crosshairs on the image, one for the

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III: Grayscale, Color, and Print

highlight and one for the shadow, as shown in Figure 7.42.

When you use the eyedroppers in the Curves dialog, you

can press Caps Lock to turn your cursor into a crosshair,

which will make it easy to tell when you’re lined up with

those color samplers. You can get rid of the color samplers

by choosing the Color Sampler tool (it’s hidden under

the Eyedropper tool) and clicking the Clear button in the

options bar.

Figure 7.42 After using the Color

Sampler tool, you should see

crosshairs on the image.

Only use those eyedroppers that help to improve the look

of the image. If one of them shifts the colors in an undesir-

able way, press Command/Ctrl-Z to undo that step and try

another area, or don’t use that eyedropper. Just because

a single eyedropper harms the image, that doesn’t mean

that the other two eyedroppers won’t help it, so always try

all three, even if you think they might not help the image.

You’ll be surprised at how often all three can be used.

Now let’s explore two alternative methods for adjusting the

highlight, shadow, and gray areas of an image.

The white eyedropper doesn’t

help images that have desirable

color casts. That’s where you want

the image to look warm or cool.

Examples would be dinner by

candlelight, a fireplace, and sunrise

or sunset.

If none of the eyedroppers seems

to help, check out the techniques in

Chapter 8.

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Chapter 7 Setting Up Images for Final Output

Using Grayscale to Correct Multiple Images

Here’s an interesting trick you can use when you’ll be

color-correcting photographed artwork or a number of

The grayscale correction technique

is appropriate only when you want

to end up with an image that looks

like it was shot under a white light

source. It won’t improve the look of

images that contain desirable color

casts, such as those shot under

candlelight or at sunrise or sunset.

images that will be shot under the same lighting condi-

tions. Stop by a high-end camera store and ask for a

grayscale image, also known as a step wedge or a grayscale

step wedge (Figure 7.43). Then place it in the scene where

you’re about to take a large number of photos (let’s say for

a yearbook or a product brochure) or when shooting any

kind of art. (Alternatively, you can use something like a

digital calibration target from www.photovisionvideo.com.)

Now, this is important—before you start shooting scenes,

take a photograph of the wedge or target under the same

lighting conditions you’ll use for your photos, and using

the same white-balance setting. As long as your settings and

lighting don’t change after that, you can use this ﬁrst shot

as a reference for correcting all of your other shots.

Figure 7.43 A grayscale image from a

high-end camera store.

After the images are transferred to your computer (or

developed, scanned, and loaded into Photoshop), create a

new Curves adjustment layer on the reference image. Click

the white eyedropper and then click the brightest gray

rectangle on the grayscale. Next, click the black eyedrop-

per and then click the darkest rectangle. Finally, click

the middle eyedropper and then click the middle gray

rectangle. These steps should remove any color cast that

was present in the image.

You can apply that same adjustment to the other images

by dragging the Curves adjustment layer from the gray-

scale image and dropping it onto another image that was

photographed under the same lighting conditions. That

way, you can perform color correction with no guesswork,

and quickly apply the same adjustment to a large number

of images.

If this technique changes the contrast of an image too

much for your taste, either use the middle eyedropper

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III: Grayscale, Color, and Print

(skipping the other two), or use a blending mode to con-

trol how the adjustment affects the image. If you applied

your Curves adjustment directly (by choosing Image >

Adjustments > Curves), choose Edit > Fade Curves immedi-

ately after applying the adjustment, and change the pop-up

menu setting to Color. If you used an adjustment layer

instead, change the setting in the Blending Mode menu (at

the top of the Layers panel) to Color. That setting will pre-

vent the adjustment from changing the brightness or con-

trast of the image, but will still allow it to shift the colors.

Auto Color

Photoshop includes a great feature that attempts to auto-

mate the process of color correction: Auto Color (Figure

7.44). It uses the same general concepts we’ve been talking

about in this chapter, and it works well with a wide variety

of images. You can access Auto Color by creating a new

Curves adjustment layer and then clicking the Options

button (hold down Alt/Option and click the Auto button).

The Shadows, Midtones, and Highlights settings use the

same setting that you speciﬁed when you double-clicked

the eyedroppers in the Curves dialog. The only difference

Figure 7.44 The Auto Color Correction

Options dialog.

is that Photoshop attempts to locate the highlight, shadow,

and gray areas automatically. This dialog is interactive—

changes affect the image immediately.

If you set the Shadows Clip value to 0.25% and the High-

lights Clip value to 0.10%, and then choose the Find Dark

& Light Colors option at the top of the dialog, Photoshop

uses Threshold to ﬁnd the bright/dark areas and applies

the eyedroppers to them. Then turn on the Snap Neutral

Midtones check box so Photoshop uses the middle eye-

dropper on areas that are close to being gray.

This automated feature works on a surprising number of

images. But, as with most automated features, you might

have to take over and use the old eyedroppers technique

whenever Auto Color fails to deliver a satisfactory result.

If the highlights in the image become blown out (no

detail), click the White Clip setting and press the down-

arrow key a few times until you see the detail return. You

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Chapter 7 Setting Up Images for Final Output

can do the same thing with the Black Clip setting to make

sure that you don’t lose detail in the shadows of the image.

You can generally use a .10% setting, changing it only

when you notice that you’re losing detail. If you’re usually

satisﬁed with the .10% values, be sure to turn on the Save

as Defaults check box so Photoshop will remember those

settings. With that option selected, you can quickly apply

the new default settings to any image by choosing Image >

Adjustments > Auto Color. If you notice the contrast of the

image changing too much, choose Edit > Fade Auto Color

immediately after applying that command, and set the

pop-up menu option to Color. That setting will prevent any

brightness or contrast shifts.

Adjusting the highlight, shadow, and gray areas of an

268

The more you get accustomed to

using the techniques described

in this chapter, the less you’ll

have to rely on stock photos for

reference photos. You’ll get used

to knowing that the more red you

pull out of an image, the more

tan someone looks, and that the

balance between green and blue

determines how fair someone’s

skin looks.

Figure 7.45 Reference photo from a

Stockbyte, www.stockbyte.com.)

image can dramatically improve the quality of an image.

But even with those adjustments, you occasionally need to

ﬁne-tune any skin tones that might be in the image.

Adjusting Skin Tones

You might be thinking that there’s some kind of magic

formula for creating great skin tones (kind of like what

you did with grays), but if you were given just one formula,

every skin tone would look identical in your images! It’s

much better to learn how to get a unique formula for each

color of skin you might run across—dark skin, olive skin,

sunburned skin, fair skin, and so on. Even better, we can

do all that without trusting your monitor at all. (Of course,

they’ll still look good on your screen, but unless you’ve cali-

brated the screen using a hardware device, you shouldn’t

make critical decisions based on the screen image.)

Any stock photo company will have a veritable treasure

trove of ﬂesh that you can transform into your own

personal stockpile of skin tones. Simply go online to any

stock provider (for instance, www.istockphoto.com) and

download a low-resolution comp image of the person who

has the skin tone that best matches your needs. Using

the Eyedropper tool, click an area of the skin that has a

medium brightness (Figure 7.45). Then click the fore-

ground color to see the RGB formula needed to create

that exact color.

III: Grayscale, Color, and Print

Now let’s ﬁgure out how to use that information to improve

the skin tones in an image. Open the image you need to

correct, and use the Color Sampler tool to click the trouble-

some skin area. Be sure to click in an area with medium

brightness, similar to the level in the other (stock photo)

image. That should give you an extra readout in the Info

panel (readout #1 if you just opened a fresh image, or read-

out #4 if you still have the three used earlier in this chapter).

Next, click the eyedropper icon that shows up next to

that new readout in the Info panel. Choose HSB from the

menu (Figure 7.46), note the brightness (B) setting, and

then set that menu back to RGB. Now, click your fore-

ground color to look at the color from the stock photo

again. We want to use that basic color, but we don’t want to

change the brightness of the image very much. Change the

brightness (B) setting to what you saw in the photo you’re

attempting to color-correct; then write down the RGB

Figure 7.46 Change the sampler

mode to HSB Color to determine the

brightness of the area you’re color-

correcting.

numbers that show up in the color picker (Figure 7.47).

In just a moment, you’re going to use those RGB numbers

to tell Curves how to shift the skin color in the problem

photo to match the skin color in the reference photo.

Figure 7.47 Change the brightness (B)

setting to find the perfect skin tone

setting.

You can also adjust skin tones with-

out messing with HSB numbers.

Copy the RGB numbers from one

But ﬁrst, it’s time to isolate the skin tones in the problem

image and then make your adjustment. You can choose

Select > Color Range to isolate the skin. Once you have a

general selection of the skin (don’t worry if it’s not per-

image and apply them to another.

Just be careful to choose areas that

are not radically different in the two

images; otherwise, the brightness

of the area could shift dramatically.

fect), it’s time to make the adjustment.

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Chapter 7 Setting Up Images for Final Output

Adjusting Saturation

If the ﬁle in progress already contains one or more adjust-

ment layers, make sure that the top adjustment layer is

active before continuing. To start the adjustment, choose

Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Curves. Then, to add

a point to each of the red, green, and blue curves, hold

down Shift-Command (Mac) or Shift-Ctrl (Windows) and

click that same medium brightness area you sampled ear-

lier. Switch between the Red, Green, and Blue curves (use

If the skin tone adjustment was a

little too much for you to handle,

just start off by adjusting the

highlight, shadow, and gray areas,

and come back to this chapter after

you’re comfortable with those.

the menu at the top of the Curves dialog) and type the

R, G, and B numbers you calculated and wrote down a few

minutes ago (the ones you got from the color picker) in

the Output of the Red, Green, and Blue curves. Once the

right numbers are entered, skin tones should look much

better (Figure 7.48).

Figure 7.48 After adjusting for skin

tones, the skin should look similar

to the stock photo version. (Original

Be sure to correct images

separately before blending them

together. That way, you’ll be able to

maintain the color integrity of each

component of your “big picture.”

And save your edits in multiple ver-

sions, always being sure to preserve

the original file.

The Next Step

Even though it has taken nearly a whole chapter to

describe how to optimize grayscale and color in your

photos, keep in mind that the process takes only about a

minute once you’re used to it.