Cynthia Beth Rubin

Modifying Colors in Photoshop

1. Open an Image in Adobe Photoshop

• Immediately Give it a New Name
  
• Go to FILE, down to SAVE AS
  
• Save it as a .psd (leave the suffix in the title: bark.psd)
  
  

2. Adjust the Black and White Levels of your Image:

• Under IMAGE go down to ADJUST and down to Levels (or Curves if you are advanced)

• The best way to change white and black point (darkest and lightest) is in Curves. Experiment with pulling the curve upward, and you will see the image become lighter, while maintaining the darks.
  
  
• Beginners can adjust the grays in Levels.
  
  

  In the dialogue box for both Levels and Curves, you will see eyedroppers Move the middle arrow to adjust the brightness of the grays. Use the black eyedropper to click on the darkest area, to set the black point, and then on the lightest, to set the white point,

  
  

• Work with full RGB (all 3 channels) unless you have a reason not to, or you are experienced in thinking in light.
  

• You can save these adjustments, and apply the identical adjustments to other images.
  Be sure to save in your own folder.
  

  SAVE any time!

  
  

3. Adjust the Basic Colors of your Image:

• Under IMAGE go down to ADJUST and down to Hue/Saturation

• Adjust all of the Colors under "Master" (dialog box opens with this)
  
  
• To adjust just a single color range, hit on "Master" until the names of other Colors appear and select these colors.
  
  
• Once you have selected a Color Range in this dialog box, you can use the eye droppers to select exact colors to shift in the image.
  
  
• You can save these adjustments, and apply the identical adjustments to other images.
  Be sure to save in your own folder.
  
  

• Color Balance
  
• Desaturate (makes the image gray)
• Equalize (changes levels perceptually, works well with greyscale images)
• Contrast (good for beginners; advanced users should change contrast with levels or curves; you loose data with this option)

SAVE

5. Use Selective Color to Correct Prints:

• Under IMAGE and ADJUST you will find Selective Color.
  
  
• This is the best way to make small adjustments in color to correct your print color.
  
  
• SAVE your adjustments to use with other images sent to the same printer.

6. Experiment with Combining Different ways of transforming images.

All of the images below came from the same photograph

Original image	high contrast	desaturate equalize colorize high contrast	desaturate equalize colorize color balance	desaturate brightness colorize

desaturated	equalized