Well there are many threads here on soft light layer methods to dodge/burn to get even tones.. I can use these techniques to get very even bw tones say using a desat image as a reference..

The resultant color shifts depends on what you use as a reference though...

Then the colors are no longer even.. How do you then even out the hues and saturations??

Hi delic,

I hope I understood your question rightly ....

What you ask is how to correct the colour shift which is an undesired result from balancing/evening out tones in the luminosity of a picture .... is that right? :happy:

You are absolutely right ... The resultant color shifts depends on what you use as a reference though... ... meaning, if you:

* duplicate your image,
* desaturate the duplicate,
* use Levels, Curves, Brightness/Contrast, Dodge or Burn to balance the tones in your desaturated duplicate
* change the Blending of your desaturated Layer to blend it in with your underlying colour background, .... you will experience colour shift in most cases ....

In my experience, once the colour shift is there, You can try to correct it using Hue/Saturation, Color Balance, Selective Colors etc, but I find it very difficult and, usually, I'm never really satisfied with the results ....

From Photoshop CS onwards, you have the Shadow/Highlights Adjustment Option .... which, in 95% of the cases, does a wonderful job in balancing the luminosity of an image while offering the chance to adjust the colours .... but, in some cases, I'm not really satisfied with the outcome... That's why I'v been trying to find a way to get there minimizing the colour shift.... I'll write a short Tutorial on it and let you know as soon as it's up.

In my attachment, you can see the original image, the luminosity corrected image presenting the dreaded colour shift, the luminosity corrected image 'my way' ... :happy:

thanks for the reply flora.. I will try to expand on what I am after..

In order to get a nice polished look on a glamour type photo many use a softlight layer to get even tones in each channel to get that nice polished look.. If you do this in RGB usually the R channel is fine.. So if you go to the g and b channels and dodge/burn to get even tones you throw the hue/saturations off..

So my main question is how do you polish the channels without throwing the color off.. I have messed around with Lab color and using the A and B channels but have yet to be successful.

just brainstorming I am thinking something like editing in Lab.. Editing the lightness channel to even tones.. Then adding a hue layer and sat layer and switching to blend modes to hue and sat respectively. then roughly paint in constant hues and saturations so even out the colors..

Just poking around to see if anyone has successful techniques to do similar things..

Hi delic,

In order to get a nice polished look on a glamour type photo many use a softlight layer to get even tones in each channel to get that nice polished look.. I must admit my ignorance in glamour retouch :o: .. but, in my experience, when adding a Soft Light Layer all I get is a deepening of shadows and colours and a lightening of highlights .... If I blur that Soft Light Layer I get what I think is called 'Soft Focus' look ... (is that the polished look you are talking about?)... and if I desaturate the Soft Light Layer I keep increased lights and shadows, but I get a substantial decrease in colour...

If you do this in RGB usually the R channel is fine.. So if you go to the g and b channels and dodge/burn to get even tones you throw the hue/saturations off.. As far as I know, whenever you tweak the channels individually you throw Hue and saturation off... meaning if you darken an area of the green channel, you'll get a (stronger) magenta tone on that area ... etc...

So my main question is how do you polish the channels without throwing the color off.. I have messed around with Lab color and using the A and B channels but have yet to be successful.... There is no way I know to 'polish' individual channels without 'throwing the color off.. ' What you could try is to polish the individual colours on the RGB (all three channels involved) image using Selective Colors... where, for example, by decreasing the 'black' on the individual colours you can see not only a lightening/fading of a particular colour but also a lightening/fading of the darker areas in its corresponding channel.

If an image has strong chroma noise, what could be done is the following:

* Duplicate your layer
* run Hue/Saturation adjustment on the duplicate and either increase or decrease the saturation lightly
* Lightly blur you duplicate
* Change its blending to color.

or:

* Change to LAB
* slightly blur a and b Channels

just brainstorming I am thinking something like editing in Lab.. Editing the lightness channel to even tones.. Then adding a hue layer and sat layer and switching to blend modes to hue and sat respectively. then roughly paint in constant hues and saturations so even out the colors..I've never tried that ... I'll give it a go