Basic colour correction - a tutorial

[Mark Thomas]

I recently threw together a basic colour correction tutorial for members of a local forum and thought i'd put it here for download. It's a pdf document. I thought it might be too simple for most people but surprisingly plenty of people said it was too advanced.

Here is a link to the file: http://www.outdoorphoto.co.za/forum/...p?t=296&page=1

Maybe Jay can embed it here as I can't 'cause it's 650k

Please let me know if it helped you.

Cheers

[Neil]

Cheers Mark,

I'm sure everyone will appreciate you sharing this; I certainly do!!
I haven't had a chance to go through it all yet, and perhaps I know most of it anyway - but what I think really matters is that the information is here. If everyone who has such things to share puts them onto this site, it will soon become a wonderful source of data!

[Mark Thomas]

Thanks. As I said it's simple and will probably be below what most people need, but it might help a newbie out a lot, without being too difficult to follow. It was posted on a beginner forum.

Cheers

[Neil]

No problems - I know where you're coming from; and I'll still look over it with an open mind - I don't care where I learn new things: if there are things for me to learn in your tutorial, then I'll learn them!!

[CyberPet]

Where's the pdf? I only saw a lot of posts in a forum and no pdf files from markthomas. I must be blind. (Read, I get easily confused when I get linked from one discussion forum to another and have no clue why I don't get the info I was looking for "straight away").

[Neil]

Originally Posted by CyberPet

Where's the pdf?

It is hard to find!! Try this: http://www.outdoorphoto.co.za/hedrus...n%20screen.pdf

[Mark Thomas]

The second last post on the page - by Hedrus reads


Here is a very nice tutorial Mark has prepared for you.
He shows you an easy way to work with curves.
You can download it here, it is a PDF doc.

Click on the here and it will download

[timjon]

Interesting document - I'm curious, what's the reason you set white and black points to 245 / 8 luminance respectively? Won't that just decrease the overall dynamic range of the image? I'd have assumed 255 and 0 were a better choice...

Cheers,

Tim.

[Mark Thomas]

Good question Tim. Different folks like to use different settings. Scott Kelby suggets 240 and 20 in one of his books. To me 245 and 8 seems to leave detail in the shadow and highlight areas. When you pull down the middle point of the curves to darken the midtones you also darken the shadows - leaving some leeway is a good idea. The other thing is I come from a design background and we know there must be dot in the shadows and highlights.

You can use 255 and 0 if you want, but try other settings and see for yourself.

Cheers

[timjon]

I did wonder if it was to do with printing - I know the gamut of CMYK is much lower than pure RGB. I generally use 255 and 0, but that's because almost all of my work is for the web, where absolute black and white aren't a problem. Thanks for the explanation.

[paulhodson]

Originally Posted by Mark Thomas

The second last post on the page - by Hedrus reads


Here is a very nice tutorial Mark has prepared for you.
He shows you an easy way to work with curves.
You can download it here, it is a PDF doc.

Click on the here and it will download

But you get a "The requested URL /hedrus/Stuff/Colour correction screen.pdf was not found on this server." if you do

[Mark Thomas]

I've contacted the administrator - they have upgraded the server and the link was lost they'll fix it. I'll keep you posted.

Cheers

[Mark Thomas]

The kink in the link has been fixed. Here it is anyway:

http://www.outdoorphoto.co.za/hedrus...n%20screen.pdf

Cheers