Pop Tutorial: New and Improved

[DavidTO]

I've reworked the POP tutorial, take a look at it here.

And use this thread for any discussion or questions!

[Andy]

Folks, this is by far the #1 thing any of you can do to improve your photos. If you learn nothing else, learn these basic moves

[saurora]

Hi David...I'm going through the new tute and attempting to work on an old image as I go. I have never used Image>Adjustment>Threshold before...pretty cool. I've always just slid the curves over to opposite sides and worked them back gradually. Anyway.....after setting the points, etc. in curves when I choose "ok" and leave curves my image is still in the black and white screen. I have attempted it 3 times and I can't figure out what I'm doing. I use CS by the way.

[DavidTO]

Originally Posted by saurora

Hi David...I'm going through the new tute and attempting to work on an old image as I go. I have never used Image>Adjustment>Threshold before...pretty cool. I've always just slid the curves over to opposite sides and worked them back gradually. Anyway.....after setting the points, etc. in curves when I choose "ok" and leave curves my image is still in the black and white screen. I have attempted it 3 times and I can't figure out what I'm doing. I use CS by the way.

Thanks for debugging my tute!

My bad. Don't OK the threshold, just cancel. You're just using it to see the threshold, not set it.

I'm on my way to fix it.

[saurora]

Ah! Thanks David! Glad I asked before driving myself nuts!

[DavidTO]

Originally Posted by saurora

Ah! Thanks David! Glad I asked before driving myself nuts!

Let's see how it worked out!

[Stustaff]

Feedback - working through this and it could use a tiny bit of clarification I have higlighted in Bold below from your text, It says "In the curves dialog" which one? I have two already one for black and one for white!
You need to add "Open another new curves layer you will see that there is a line running at 45... etc"

"Again, click OK in the curves dialog, and save the new target colors as default.

It's looking much better, eh?

What we've done so far is to make sure that this image is using the full range of values that are available: from black to white.

But we can do better.

In the curves dialog there is a line running at 45°. This is the curve. When it's straight it's telling you that what goes in, is what comes out. The curve is not changing any values.
"

yes folks, davidto has the nicest tutes I've ever seen-

[Stustaff]

After following tute, what do you think?

Before


After

[DavidTO]

Originally Posted by Stustaff

After following tute, what do you think?

I think you've got to be more careful about where you set your black and white points.

[Stustaff]

Originally Posted by DavidTO

I think you've got to be more careful about where you set your black and white points.

Ok can you clarify a little, where would you set them?

[DavidTO]

Originally Posted by Stustaff

Feedback - working through this and it could use a tiny bit of clarification I have higlighted in Bold below from your text, It says "In the curves dialog" which one? I have two already one for black and one for white!
You need to add "Open another new curves layer you will see that there is a line running at 45... etc"

I tell you to open the curves in the next pane. In this pane, I just want you to look at the curves I've got there for you. I'll think about how to make that clearer.

Thanks!

[Stustaff]

Ah I see it now, just me reading too quickly I think.

[DavidTO]

Originally Posted by Stustaff

Ok can you clarify a little, where would you set them?

Well, personally, I think this shot already has a black point. That is, I think that the area that IS black is significant to the shot, so you don't need to go shopping for another, lighter point to set to black.

And for the smoke, you need to find a brighter target in it, because wherever it was that you set the white point in there, it lost detail in the highlights.

Ultimately, with this shot, i think that you can skip to step 3, which is adding contrast with the "S" curve. Your black and white points are already pretty good. Whatever you do, you have to be very careful of those highlights in the smoke, because they are definitely significant to this shot. Don't blow out the detail there!

Make sense?

[Stustaff]

Originally Posted by DavidTO

Well, personally, I think this shot already has a black point. That is, I think that the area that IS black is significant to the shot, so you don't need to go shopping for another, lighter point to set to black.

And for the smoke, you need to find a brighter target in it, because wherever it was that you set the white point in there, it lost detail in the highlights.

Ultimately, with this shot, i think that you can skip to step 3, which is adding contrast with the "S" curve. Your black and white points are already pretty good.

Make sense?

Perfect. cheers

[DavidTO]

Originally Posted by Stustaff

Perfect. cheers

One clue to that is that when you open the threshold dialog box on that original image, the histogram goes from all the way on the left to all the way on the right...you're already using the full spectrum of values.

Look to practice on shots that obviously need it, to start.

[badtz]

Just one question, whats the advantage to setting the white and black point via multiple layers as opposed to copying a new layer and using levels? Otherwise nice tutorial, thanks for writing it up.

[DavidTO]

Originally Posted by badtz

Just one question, whats the advantage to setting the white and black point via multiple layers as opposed to copying a new layer and using levels? Otherwise nice tutorial, thanks for writing it up.

You're always better off using adjustment layers instead of copying the whole layer. And yeah, you could use Levels if all you're doing is setting the black/white points, but I just never use Levels. They're too limited. But in this case, yes, there would be no difference.

[Duffy Pratt]

Originally Posted by DavidTO

You're always better off using adjustment layers instead of copying the whole layer.

There is an exception to that rule. If you make a move in RGB, and you want to limit it with "Blend if..." in LAB, you will have to make the change on a duplicate layer because the adjustment layer won't survive the color space change.

Also, I think he was asking why you used different adjustment layers for both the white and the black point. And for that, I think the only answer is for clarity in the demonstration. You can just as easily set the white point and the black point in a single layer. If you want, you can set white point, black point, and write the curves all within the same adjustment layer with no difficulty at all.

Duffy

[DavidTO]

Originally Posted by Duffy Pratt

There is an exception to that rule. If you make a move in RGB, and you want to limit it with "Blend if..." in LAB, you will have to make the change on a duplicate layer because the adjustment layer won't survive the color space change.

Also, I think he was asking why you used different adjustment layers for both the white and the black point. And for that, I think the only answer is for clarity in the demonstration. You can just as easily set the white point and the black point in a single layer. If you want, you can set white point, black point, and write the curves all within the same adjustment layer with no difficulty at all.

Duffy

True on the first point. You can most often, however, set the blend-if on the underlying layer, so an adjustment layer is still preferable in that case.

On the second, it can go either way. Sometimes for the white point, especially, I want to back off on the correction it's made, so having it in its own layer where I can adjust the opacity is a good thing.