Before You Color Correct Anything, Do This First


Before You Color Correct Anything, Do This First!

Before you color correct even a single photo, you need to consider a couple of settings that can affect the results you'll get. It's important to note that the changes you make will remain as your defaults until you change them again, and that (particularly with Color Settings) you may change your settings from time to time based on individual projects.

Step One

From the Edit menu, choose Color Settings (or press Control-Shift-K).

Step Two

In the Color Settings dialog, choose from the four options: No Color Management, Always Optimize Colors for Computer Screens, Always Optimize for Printing, or Allow Me to Choose. To a large degree, your choice will depend on your final output; but for photographers, I recommend using Always Optimize for Printing because it reproduces such a wide gamut of colors using the Adobe RGB profile (if your photos don't already have a profile assigned), and it's ideal if your photos will wind up in print. Note: Unfortunately, color management is beyond the scope of this book. In fact, entire books have been dedicated to the subject. So for now, just switch your Color Settings to Always Optimize for Printing and let's move on.

Step Three

Now we're moving to a completely different area. Press the letter I to switch to the Eyedropper tool. In the Options Bar, the Sample Size setting for this tool (Point Sample) is fine for using the Eyedropper to steal a color from within a photo and making it your Foreground color. However, Point Sample doesn't work well when you're trying to read values in a particular area (such as flesh tones), because it gives you the reading from just one individual pixel, rather than an average reading of the surrounding area under your cursor.

Step Four

For example, flesh tones are actually composed of dozens of different colored pixels (just zoom way in and you'll see what I mean); and if you're color correcting, you want a reading that's representative of the area under your Eyedropper, not just a single pixel within that area, which could hurt your correction decision-making. That's why you need to go to the Options Bar, under the Sample Size pop-up menu, and choose 3 by 3 Average. This changes the Eyedropper to give you a reading that's the average of 3 pixels across and 3 pixels down in the area that you're sampling. Once you've completed the changes on these two pages, it's safe to go ahead with the rest of the chapter and start correcting your photos.



The Photoshop Elements 4 Book for Digital Photographers
The Photoshop Elements 4 Book for Digital Photographers
ISBN: 0321384830
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 201
Authors: Scott Kelby

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