Level: Easy

I want to share with you this awesome technique taught by Deke McClelland in his Adobe PhotoShop - Mastering LAB Color DVD disc that I loaned from the library recently.  This tutorial is about maximum saturation without clipping and using the contrast slider in LAB mode.

Adjusting your image using Photoshop's Brightness/Contrast slider has been considered the worse adjustment tool you can ever use when working in RGB mode as these controls affect the whole tonal range of the image. For example, if your image only requires the shadow part to be lightened up, adjusting the brightness level up would affec the whole image, causing the midtones and highlights to be overexposed. Using adjustment tools such as Levels and Curves can isolate the specific tonal areas without affecting the other, hence the Brightness/Contrast controls are rarely used.

However, when used in LAB color mode, adjusting brightness and contrast become powerful tools for adding contrast and brightness of the COLORS only, without affecting the luminosity of the image or clipping colors. Continue Reading