Just as a guitarist needs to tune his guitar before he begins to play, so we, too, in Photoshop need to dial in a few settings before we start to work on our photographs. And that's what we're going to do here in this chapter. In this initial movie, we'll take a look at how we can dial in our color settings. Let's go ahead and navigate to the Edit pulldown menu, and then near the base of this menu, you'll see an option for Color settings. Let's click on that in order to open up our Color Settings dialog. You'll notice we have the default settings selected.
What's so interesting to me about these settings is that here we have Photoshop, one of the greatest tools for working with photographs, yet the default settings, well, they just won't cut it. We need to make a few changes to these settings. You notice that the working spaces for RGB, this color space is sRGB. This is kind of like the lowest common denominator. In other words, this color space has a smaller gamut. It gives us less access to different colors and tones. So we need to crank this up.
There are a couple of options that we might want to consider. Typically, photographers will either use Adobe RGB (1998) or ProPhoto RGB. Now, this choice will really be dependent upon what other applications they use. Let's say that you also use Lightroom in conjunction with Photoshop. Well, in that situation, you'd want to choose ProPhoto RGB. In other situations, let's say you just use Bridge and Photoshop together, well then you'd want to choose Adobe RGB (1998). Well, that's going to be our workflow in this course, so I'll go ahead and make that choice here.
The next thing we want to do is change our Gray: Dot Gain. We're going to change this to a Gray Gamma of 2.2. Here, you can see we now have settings which are custom. We'll probably want to save these out in a moment. Well, what about our color management policies? Well, it's critical that we leave these three options on, preserve these embedded profiles. In other words, if we open up a document, we want that profile which is attached to that document to be preserved. Now, if there is a profile mismatch, we want it to ask us when opening these or when we're pasting an image from one document to another.
What are profiles, and why did these matter? Profiles are really critical. In a sense, it's this color information which is tagged or which is included with the image. And what profiles allow us to do is to more accurately view, represent, and eventually reproduce the color of a photograph. So when we're working with color profiles, one: we want to preserve all the embedded profiles, and then two: we want Photoshop to ask us how we want to handle these if there is a profile mismatch. Now, later in this course, we'll take a look at these mismatches.
Yet here in regards to our color settings, we just want to turn these options on. Well, now that we've made these really critical and important changes, one of the things that you might want to do is save these settings out. One way that you could do that is to click on the Save button here. I'll go ahead and save these. I'm just going to name this co-photography, and then I'll click Save. Now that I've done that, we can save these. And in this pulldown menu we can have access to these Color settings. You can see I can simply choose those in order to make sure that I'm working with the appropriate settings.
Well, in order to apply these settings, all that we need to do is to click OK, and now Photoshop is tuned up in regards to our Color settings, and we're now ready to move to our next step.
Author
Released
4/26/2012The course details the features and techniques behind enhancing and retouching photos, preparing them for print and online publishing, and much more. Chris demonstrates how to make basic edits in Camera Raw, develop and save color profiles, work with layers and selections, tone and sharpen, and retouch images while retaining their natural character.
Chris also shares some creative tips and project ideas, such as converting a photo to black-and-white and enhancing a portrait with hand-painted masks. The course also covers workflow details, such as organizing images in Bridge and Mini Bridge, optimizing Photoshop preferences, and calibrating your monitor.
- Getting started with Bridge and Mini Bridge
- Setting up color and performance preferences
- Calibrating your monitor
- Improving images with the basic controls in Camera Raw
- Creating, aligning, and organizing layers
- Using masks for removing or blending images and for sharpening
- Working with vibrancy, hue, and saturation controls
- Enhancing color and tone with Levels
- Using Curves and masks to enhance brightness, color, and tone
- Mastering the art of blending modes
- Correcting and replacing color
- Burning and dodging
- Converting to black and white
Skill Level Beginner
Duration
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Introduction
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Welcome55s
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1. Strategies for Learning
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2. Getting Started with Bridge and Mini Bridge
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Adding metadata and keywords4m 47s
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Renaming images1m 45s
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Working with Mini Bridge4m 36s
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3. Color Settings and Preferences
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Modifying zoom preferences4m 20s
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Changing HUD brush options3m 41s
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Opening up documents in tabs4m 11s
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Choosing cursor preferences5m 14s
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4. Foundations of Color Management
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Introducing color profiles5m 17s
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Setting up your studio1m 59s
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5. Getting Started with Photoshop
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Introducing the Tools panel4m 53s
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6. Understanding Digital Images
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Introducing image resizing3m 42s
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Resizing images effectively3m 48s
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7. Working in Camera Raw
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What is Camera Raw?2m 47s
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8. Utilizing Layers
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Introducing layers2m 22s
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Working with layer opacity3m 29s
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Aligning layers1m 32s
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Creating new layers4m 53s
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Organizing layers2m 31s
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Adding layer style effects5m 28s
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Creating a clipping mask6m 50s
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Targeting and moving layers2m 13s
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9. Making Selections
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Using the three lasso tools4m 56s
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10. Using the Masking Panel
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Introducing masking1m 14s
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11. Adding Custom Borders
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Using prebuilt borders4m 13s
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12. Improving Your Images with Adjustments
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13. Using Levels to Correct and Enhance
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Working with auto levels3m 36s
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Creative tip: checking in2m 38s
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14. Making Color and Tone Adjustments with Curves
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15. The Art of Blending Modes
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Using blending shortcuts2m 4s
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16. Correcting Color
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17. Enhancing Colors
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Creative tip: shoot more1m 37s
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18. Burning and Dodging
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19. Converting to Black and White
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The power of black and white4m 14s
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20. Working with Filters
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Introducing Smart Filters3m 36s
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Applying Smart Filters6m 20s
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Working with Tilt-Shift Blur3m 52s
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21. Removing Noise
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22. Basic Image Cleanup
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Basic portrait retouching3m 15s
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Brightening the eyes2m 30s
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Retouching selected areas5m 27s
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23. Correcting Distortion and Perspective
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24. Combining Multiple Images
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25. Sharpening Your Images
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Working with Smart Sharpen6m 17s
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Using Unsharpen Mask4m 49s
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26. Getting Your Images Online
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Sharpening for the web3m 5s
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Creating a web gallery5m 49s
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27. Desktop Printing
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Adjusting printer settings3m 43s
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28. Working with Video
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Exporting a project2m 15s
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Conclusion
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Goodbye35s
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Video: Setting up your color settings