Adobe Photoshop Image Restoration Tutorials
Basics / Auto Button/Levels Dialog Box
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Subtitles of the Movie (Adobe Photoshop Image Restoration / Basics / Auto Button/Levels Dialog Box)
This is lesson two of what I guess I should call our starting point for any project that you are going to undertake in Photoshop, and folks, a word of warning, I am the only human being on planet earth that would tell you to do what I am about to tell you to do. Alright, every other book that I have read, every book author, every tutorial author, every "expert" on Photoshop will tell you to stay away from the process I am getting ready to show you. Now I am going to demonstrate to you that it is a very valuable tool and there are times it will save you an unbelievable amount of work and will really kind of give you a result that I am not sure you could achieve on a manual basis. So here is our first image, this is the familiar shot of the rainbow over Half Dome in Yosemite National Park. We have already discussed the technical deformations on this particular shot, but let's demonstrate it; we go to image, we are going back to our histogram now, okay, image - adjustments - levels, I purposely shoved that out of the way so you can see what is going on, but again we have our histogram. We are not going to do anything with these controls, we are going to move this over here and this is what I want to show you, see this auto button here, you click on the auto button and what is happening is that Photoshop is looking at your image and is making the corrections that it thinks it ought to make. So we click it and here is the result. Looks better than it did. Okay, not perfect, not anything that I am going to keep, but it looks better than it did. In this particular case it improved the photograph but it did not really bring it to its full potential. So we are not going to use it, we are going to dump out of it, but at least it gave an opportunity to see what it can do. People will tell you to stay away from this control and I don't know why, I am getting ready to show you some great stuff. Now here is our familiar photo of Leah, it is obviously very, very dark, looks like it might be a good candidate to see what the auto button can do. Auto levels, I guess, is the proper term for that button, I just call it the auto button. We click on it, nothing happens. Do not ask me why, because I do not know. Nothing happens, so it did not correct this particular photograph. And you will see that a lot, it will not correct every single photograph that you bring in. Look at our next one, now this is another familiar shot of our bricks in Fresno and we are going to go up here to image - adjustments - levels, click on it, and look at that, I can live with that, that is a keeper. Click on the button and we get exactly what we are looking for. We showed you before how adjusting these histogram controls would give you a corrected image, but when you can click one button to get the same result, which would you rather do? So when you begin every photograph, click on this auto button just to see what will happen. Now prepare to be amazed, you are not going to believe these last two images of what it can do. Now to give you a background on this, this is a scan of a negative on a flat-bed scanner. Now I have told you a hundred times, do not do that. I did it only to see what would happen, what kind of a result you will get out of a flat-bed scanner, and it was awful, but I got to tell you this image is not the result of the flat-bed scanner. This is a photograph that was shot in 1976, I believe it was, and it was kind of a last-minute trip, so I ran to the drugstore and I bought this cheap private label film that has been sitting on the shelf for six years, you have seen it, and when we took the pictures I took them in to get them processed and to complicate matters, I am telling you the chemicals that they used to process this film were totally one hundred percent exhausted. I mean the prints were awful, the negatives had this green look to them and this was the result. Now here we are, fast forward to 2003, you are in Photoshop and you are thinking to yourself, man am I going to have to bring down the greens, I am going to have to boost the reds and I am going to do something to the blues and we've got this ocean, we've got her skin, we've got this sky and we've got all this going on, it is going to take me all night to get this thing corrected. If I had a drum roll I would play it because it's apropos. Watch this, holy mackerel, is that not amazing? I mean I was thrilled the first time I saw it, I could not believe it, I mean I would much rather start my project in restoring this image with this, than I would with this. Does it save you work or what? Obviously this photograph is not way perfect, it's got scratches, it's has all kinds of stuff that needs to be done to it, but I would rather start from here than from the alternative. Great, and here is our last example, again, prepare to be amazed. Control room of WIFE radio in Indianapolis, Indiana where I was a disc jockey and this shot was taken in 1977 when I went to work there and I took a picture of the control room for posterity. The negative is again taken to a drugstore and poor processing and then age further deteriorated it once again, you are going to look at this thing and you are going to say oh dear, I've got so much work to do on this, it is going to take me hours to get this thing just color corrected, forget the rest of it. Again, hang on to your hat, watch this, click the auto button, can you believe that? I mean is that not amazing or what? Sometimes this auto button will just blow you away with what it can do, other times it won't do a tinkered thing to any photograph. Now it needs sharpening, and maybe I am going to dodge this to bring up the detail on the control board and all that stuff, but it is just amazing, it is a short cut, it saves you so much work. When you bring your photos in, at least give Photoshop a chance to see what it can do. Sometimes it will amaze you. The auto button here is an amazing thing sometimes. Do not forget, I am the only guy in the world that will tell you to do this. But you have seen why, you have seen what it can do.
Tutorial Information
| Course: | Adobe Photoshop Image Restoration |
| Author: | Phil Hawkins |
| SKU: | 33473 |
| ISBN: | 1932072705 |
| Release Date: | 2004-01-27 |
| Duration: | 4.5 hrs / 77 lessons |
| Captions: | No |
| Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |
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