From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

869 Customizing the Auto Color command

From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

Start my 1-month free trial

869 Customizing the Auto Color command

“

- Hey gang, this is Deke McClelland. Welcome to Deke's Techniques. For the last several weeks, I've been chasing new technology running on an iPad. Not so this week. In fact today it's very much back to the basics. And not just A-B-C basics, primitive basics, by modern standards super old-school stuff. You know how Photoshop offers three automatic color correction commands? Under the Image menu, they are Auto Tone, Auto Contrast and Auto Color. Adobe's click data suggests that these three commands rank among the 10 most popular features in the software, which is truly bizarre given that all these commands do is evaluate a photograph's histogram and respond to it in ways that were signed and sealed in the 1990s. You just choose a demand and Photoshop does its thing. The program gives you no control over the process whatsoever. Actually that's a lie. In fact, if you decide to dig a little deeper, you can customize each one of these commands with the help of a levels adjustment layer. At which point something that at first came out as this, which is to say incredibly blue-green murky, can flourish as this. Captured with a common GoPro, cleaned up with a custom application of Auto Color. Here, let me show you exactly how it works. All right here's the original photograph that I captured with a GoPro Hero 7 looking just terrible. And here is the much better version of the photograph, just so you have a chance to see it onscreen. Thanks to a custom application of an Auto Color adjustment layer, something that doesn't actually exist inside Photoshop. All right, just so we have our bearings. I'm going to show you what I'm talkin' about here. Under the Image menu, we have three Auto commands that apparently rank among the most commonly used commands in the software. Auto Tone, Auto Contrast and Auto Color. Now this image has a definite colorcast, so Auto Contrast isn't going to do any good. Notice if I choose it, very little happens, so I'll undo that modification. Another option is to choose Auto Tone, which is going to slightly modify the image on the channel by channel basis, doesn't do much good where this image is concerned either. And then if I undo that and choose Auto Color, we're starting to get a much more desirable effect. Problem is twofold really. It's not good enough. It doesn't measure up to the effect I'm looking for. And secondly it's a so-called destructive modification because I've changed each and every pixel inside this image. I would much rather prefer to work with a customizable and non-destructive adjustment layer. And so I'll press Control + Z or Command + Z on the Mac to undo that change. And then I'm going to go to the Layer menu, choose New Adjustment Layer and then choose Levels. Levels actually houses all of the Auto commands. That's where they were all born in the first place. And so I'll go ahead and choose the Levels command. And because I chose the command, I have a chance to name my layer. I'll just go ahead and call it Auto Color, and then I'll click OK. Now what you want to do is not click on the Auto button, that's just going to come up with yet another meaningless modification. It doesn't look right at all. Instead what you want to do is press the Alt key or the Option key on the Mac and click on the Auto button in order to bring up this dialog box right here. Now notice that we have four different algorithms to choose from. By default, we're enhancing the brightness and contrast which is not what we want. But I want you to see that we've got tool tips for each one of these guys here. Unfortunately because of some bug, they're appearing behind the dialog box, but I want you to see that this first guy if I hover over it gives me Auto Contrast. I can see that in the parentheses, which was the first option we applied. Doesn't do us any good. The second guy gives us Auto Tone as you can see in that tool tip way over there to the right. That'll give us the second effect we saw which is not what I want either. And then this third guy is half of Auto Color. See the words Auto Color in parentheses over inside the Layers panel? That's what we want. And so I'll go ahead and turn that on. Now what that does is it automatically evaluates representative shadow and highlight information in order to neutralize the shadows and highlights, we want to neutralize the mid-tones as well so you need to turn on this checkbox right here, which as you can see in the tool tip in the Layers panel is Auto Color. All right, so I'll go ahead and turn that guy on. Now at this point we can customize things. For example, let's say I want the highlights to be a bit brighter, I'll set this Clip value to a full 1%, which isn't going to harm anything. It will clip some highlights but not across all the channels so we're safe. And then let's say I want to breathe some color into these rocks. I don't want them to be all greenish the way they are now or peach-colored either. I want them to be kind of brownish like they really are. In which case I'm going to click on this gray swatch in order to infuse color into the mid-tones. And I came up with a hue value of 20 degrees, which as you can see in the color field is orange, and then I took the Saturation value up to 30%. And notice as I increase that value, I am making the rocks more colorful. I don't want 'em to be that colorful, so I'll take it down to 30% like so and then I'll click OK. Now notice that we have this checkbox. Save As Default, I'm assuming that you do not want to turn that on because that would change the behavior of these auto functions in the future. So leave that checkbox off and then click OK. Now even though you left the checkbox off, Photoshop's still going to ask ya if you want to go ahead and save those target colors as default. The answer is no, don't get fooled into doing it. Click the No button and everything will be fine. After which point, I'll go ahead and hide the Properties panel and I'll press Shift + F in order to switch to the full-screen mode. And that is how you apply the normally destructive Auto Color command as a non-destructive and customizable adjustment layer. Now the only problem with this technique is that if you change your mind and you Alt or Option + click on the Auto button expecting to see your last applied settings, Photoshop forgets everything and applies the standard composite version of auto levels. Try it and you'll see what I mean. In which case you'll just have to repeat the process all over again. It's a flaw, I hate to say bug, but that's because I like bugs. For those of you looking forward to next week, I'll show you how to stitch together a high res panorama and then fill in the empty regions around the outside edges of the canvas using a variation of content aware fill that's built into Camera Raw 12.0 and later. Deke's Techniques each and every week, keep watching.

Contents