This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Using a Color and Vibrance adjustment
The image could still benefit from additional saturation, but adjusting saturation can be difficult when using Curves. You could use the Hue/Saturation adjustment, but the Color and Vibrance adjustment can be easier to control, so you’ll try that.
You may find that the best values for your image are different than ours; it depends on how the image looks after your edits in the previous section.
In the Single Adjustments section of the Adjustments panel, click Color and Vibrance. A Color and Vibrance 1 adjustment layer appears in the Layers panel. The Properties panel comes forward and shows Color and Vibrance options.
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B. White Balance eyedropper (color sampler)
C. Use older method to adjust Vibrance and Saturation
If you think the overall color balance is still a little off, adjust the values for Temperature and Tint. Temperature adjusts color balance along a blue/yellow axis, and Tint adjusts color balance along a green/magenta axis.
Adjust the Saturation value as needed to control color intensity. Watch for colors that become garish or unrealistic; when you see that happen, reduce the value. We increased Saturation to +10.
If needed, adjust the Vibrance value. Vibrance adjusts saturation at different rates depending on the color, to help prevent skin tones from oversaturating and to minimize clipping of color detail. That means you can increase Vibrance further than Saturation before colors become unrealistic. We increased Vibrance to +15.
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You might notice that the White Balance option wasn’t used. White Balance offers a color sampler (eyedropper icon) that’s similar to the gray point color sampler you used in the Curves panel: You can use it to color-balance the image by clicking the sampler on an area that should be neutral gray. You already did that in Curves, so there was no need to do it again in Vibrance.
This image started out as a scene that didn’t look very warm or bright. You’ve edited the image to have the sunny, colorful appearance it deserves.
Choose File > Close and save changes if asked.
You’ll use different images for the next exercises.
REAL-WORLD PHOTO RESTORATION
As owner of Gawain Weaver Art Conservation, Gawain Weaver has conserved and restored original works by artists ranging from Eadweard Muybridge to Man Ray and from Ansel Adams to Cindy Sherman. He teaches workshops internationally as well as online on the care and identification of photographs.
Find out more at gawainweaver.com.
The tools in Photoshop make restoration of old or damaged photographs seem like magic, giving virtually anyone the power to scan, retouch, print, and frame their photo collections.
However, when dealing with works by famous artists, museums, galleries, and collectors need to preserve original objects to the greatest degree possible despite deterioration or accidental damage. Professional art conservators are called upon to clean dust and soiling from print surfaces, remove discoloration and staining, repair tears, stabilize prints to prevent future damage, and even paint in missing areas of a work.
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“Photograph conservation is both a science and an art,” says Weaver. “We must apply what we know about the chemistry of the photograph, its mount, and any varnishes or other coatings in order to safely clean, preserve, and enhance the image. Since we cannot quickly ’undo’ a step in a conservation treatment, we must always proceed with great caution and a healthy respect for the fragility of the photographic object, whether it’s a 160-year-old salt print of Notre Dame or gelatin silver print of Half Dome from the 1970s.”
Many of the manual tools of an art conservator have analogous digital versions in Photoshop:
An art conservator might wash a photograph to remove the discolored components of the paper, or even use a mild bleaching process known as light-bleaching to oxidize and remove the colored components of a stain or overall discoloration. In Photoshop, you can use a Curves adjustment layer to remove the color cast from an image.
A conservator working on a fine-art photograph might use special paints and fine brushes to manually “in-paint” damaged areas of a photograph. Likewise, you can use the Spot Healing Brush tool in Photoshop to spot out specks of dust or dirt on a scanned image.
A conservator might use Japanese papers and wheat-starch paste to carefully repair and rebuild torn paper before finalizing the repair with some skillful in-painting. In Photoshop, you can remove a crease or repair a tear in a scanned image with a few clicks of the Remove tool.
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“Although our work has always been first and foremost about the preservation and restoration of the original photographic object, there are instances, especially with family photographs, where the use of Photoshop is more appropriate,” says Weaver. “More dramatic results can be achieved in far less time. After digitization, the original print can be safely stored away, while the digital version can be copied or printed for many family members. Often, we first clean or unfold family photographs to safely reveal as much of the original image as possible, and then we repair the remaining discoloration, stains, and tears on the computer after digitization.”
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