Hi All!

I got this original from the photographer and he told that he can't use just the lowes qlity of jpg because his camera (not professional) and flashcard aren't able to store multishots so fast during the game. It's ok but I have to make the best result what I can for newsprint the main problem as U see the skin tone and lightness (exactly the darkness) of the skin. I tried to use screen layering and other fast techniques but I wasn't so suprised. If I desaturated the color and changed the hue of it and finaly the lightness it lost a lots of gradation. At newsprinting the skin should consists not so mutch cian because the high dot gain just about 20%max. of the shades of the skin and no black anyway it goes very dark. Could U do someting for it?

saby

There's no quick fix for an image like this. I made a copy and took it into CMYK, the standard SWOP Photoshop default: don't worry about dot gain, dMax, or Maximum black. once you get the color right, you convert to profile and set those values in a custom CMYK conversion. Set dMax for 240 and dot gain for 34%. Then set black generation to light and Maximum black to 80. Do those last two in that order; otherwise the max black will reset to 100. That will give you an image with the numbers rearranged to give the same color within the limitations of newsprint.

You have reds, and you have black in this image, and both are out of whack. I went through a multi-step process using custom RGB channels with the gamma set low to bring out shadow detail and then going into lab where it's easy to separate out blacks and reds using blending sliders. But there are other ways to approach it. Working in CMYK makes sense since that's the space you need for output, and also, you can work with the black channel much more effectively to open the shadows than if you try it in RGB. The downside is that the image is already deficient in Cyan (hot skin always means weak Cyan). Converting to CMYK will produce a Cyan channel that's virtually worthless. One approach is to make a copy of the Red channel before you convert, then blend that into your cyan channel using Image>Apply Image. There is good detail in the Red channel that gets obliterated when it moves to Cyan, because of the dot gain compensation Photoshop builds into the process. Plate blending like this can make your blacks a little heavy in Cyan but a curve can adjust that without ruining the benefits of the blend in the quartertones and midtones.

My attached version was done in CMYK but converted back to sRGB for download to the forum.

Edgework, I cannot see your full-size image. I get a message that it cannot be displayed because it contains errors.

Pierre

I don't have the technical knowledge to prepare an image for newspapers, but I wanted to see if I could make it look better for the web at least. I stayed in rgb space throughout.

I started with shadow/highlight then got rid of the resulting noise with Neat Image.

The light is orange, so I used a 80 cooling photo filter, then I loosely selected the man's skin and added red and blue.

I selected working CMYK as proof setup, switched gamut warning on and decreased overall saturation until the warnings disappeared for the main subject. I used the sponge to desaturate the other warnings locally.

I fininshed by sharpening with high-pass and with smart-sharpen.

Pierre

I just recently got my hands on the book Photoshop LAB color by Dan Margulis and tried just setting the white point in Lab and got this result. Not bad. I'm sure there may be a better way to approach it but this looks better.
LAB color space is a whole new world for me but so far the results are impressive.

Vicki

Nice results everyone. Panpan, you can see Edgework's by right clicking and Save Link As. Your result looks really natural.
Vicki, very nice! Maybe a bit blown out on the sign behind? I'm learning LAB as well. Great fun isn't it!

Cheers

Dave

I'd call that nailed, panpan. Vid on my screen your's look a tad cyan which if I am interpreting right, is the object of removal

I resaved mine, this time converting back to sRGB before downloading so I could keep it at original size and use less compression.

I just recently got my hands on the book Photoshop LAB color by Dan Margulis and tried just setting the white point in Lab and got this result. Not bad. I'm sure there may be a better way to approach it but this looks better.
LAB color space is a whole new world for me but so far the results are impressive.

Vicki

The technique that Dan describes in his LAB book isn't as precise as one he used in an earlier version of his Professional Photoshop. I prefer the earlier version.

Set a curve adjustment layer and open the curves. Sample the cast area. Make certain that the curves have the black/white gradient set with black to left, white to right. Whatever value you read for the area sampled is a measure. I think this banner reads something like -1 a and 5 b. Set a midpoint and in the input/output box plug in the sampled value for input and 0 for output. By definition this pulls whatever color you've sampled to dead neutral. Works without much thought at all, which is why i like it.

Thought I'd try my hand at LAB. Neutralized sign to white, pants to black and railing to grey. Got out my old basketball and matched color as closely as possible.

Cheers

Dave

The technique that Dan describes in his LAB book isn't as precise as one he used in an earlier version of his Professional Photoshop. I prefer the earlier version.

Set a curve adjustment layer and open the curves. Sample the cast area. Make certain that the curves have the black/white gradient set with black to left, white to right. Whatever value you read for the area sampled is a measure. I think this banner reads something like -1 a and 5 b. Set a midpoint and in the input/output box plug in the sampled value for input and 0 for output. By definition this pulls whatever color you've sampled to dead neutral. Works without much thought at all, which is why i like it.

Good point. Mine was too cyan. Gave it another try. Thanks for the tip. Nice job Dave.

Ciao Vicki