best way to create soft/hard light effect in ps

[kenwood]

After applying the soft/hard light effect via new layer->change bending mode to soft/hard light, to an image, I notice that there are lots of 'holes' in the histogram, meaning that some of the colors are gone. The consequence of losing color is that the color transition in certain part of the image is not smooth. Perhaps there is a parameter I can set something to avoid losing color. Or is there a better technique to create a soft/hard light effect in ps?

[gizmo001i]

Hiya Kenwood,
I've never done what you are trying, but I do know that changing the picture to a 16 bit picture helps maintain more information whilst you are editing the pic. You can then change it back to 8 bit mode afterwards and the information is still kept. It sounds like you are loosing information during your editing, so this may help.
Ian

[mistermonday]

Kenwood, Every blend mode is a mathematical formula applied to the value of the pixels producing resulting pixels of new numerical values. Below, for example is the formula for the Hard Light Blend Mode. The original pixel values are no longer in a linear range. In most cases pixel values that made up the histogram are no longer there and this is why you see the gaps. If you want to mitigate the gaps, you can reduce the opacity of the layer to which the blend mode has been changed. By doing this you will reduce the gaps in the histogram but you will also lessen the effect of the blend mode.
Regards, Murray

[crazyfly1]

Originally Posted by kenwood

Perhaps there is a parameter I can set something to avoid losing color.

Mistermonday, take your image into 16 bit mode and try the same thing, then check your histogram. Let me know what you find.

[JavierT]

Hi Kenwood:

After you have changed the blend mode to soft/hard light or overlay, you can play with advanced blend mode fusion double clicking in the layer and moving the slides to recovery some of the information you have lost and have more control (fine tunning) of the applied efect. I think it helps. Obviously, working with 16bit is the best if you don´t want lose information with the differents moves you do during the retouch.

Cheers....Javier

[mistermonday]

Crazyfly1, there is no question about 16 bit adjustments being better than 8 bit. Normal curve and level adjustments produce smoother histograms. The point I was trying to make is that blend modes like hard light have formulae that act non linearly on the images and effectively eliminate colors / compress the output range.
Regards, Murray

[transoptic]

Blend If controls help a lot.

Also, try your curves or whatever adjustments in hard light mode. Then make a merged layer duplicate, then paste duplicate as a new layer to the original. Put new layer under original layer and switch to Color blend modeif you're having color shift issues.

you may notice a marked improvement.