Darken should use selectable colors

[greenmorpher]

I had a problem with a photograph of toast this morning. ell, a breakfast dish on which there was some toast. I needed to darken down the toast a bit. But using the Darker tool even quite lightly, about 20%, added an unwanted gray to the lightest areas of toast. The color I wanted was a light brown. I have come up against this before when PPing pictures -- darkening turns stuff gray instead of just making the current color darker.

The picture I am talking about is here: http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/56506910

Any solutions? Can Darker be given a choice of colors?

And by the way, I can't find a light brown in the color palette.

Cheers, Geoff

[photoken]

I assume that the top image is the effect that you're looking for:

toast.jpg

The Darken tool is not the tool to use because the overexposure of the top of the toast has blown away all colour information.

I used the Painting brush set to a light brown colour and a mode of "Color" in the settings for the brush to paint the new colour over the toast. (I first masked the toast to prevent the painted colour from affecting anything else.)

Finding a light brown is easy -- just double-click on the Foreground colour to open the Color Editor.

[greenmorpher]

Thanks, ken. Yes, that's a lot better, a bit of golden brown toast! But here’s the thing -- I can’t find a color like that in the menu and my menu, the default one, is half the size it was a couple of hours ago! Really!!!

Where id all those colors go?

Cheers, Geoff

[bkh]

But here’s the thing -- I can’t find a color like that in the menu and my menu, the default one, is half the size it was a couple of hours ago! Really!!!

Not sure what happened to your colours – you could try to force-quit PL (which prevents PL from saving the new palette) and hope that they are back when you restart PL.

In my experience, picking a colour from the image is a lot easier – select the brush tool (almost any other tool will do as well) and Alt-click into the image to pick a foreground colour.

Btw., instead of using the brush in mode "colour", you can also use a transparent layer in layer mode "colour" – in this way, you can easily try different colours, or erase any excess colour.

Cheers

Burkhard.

[photoken]

Btw., instead of using the brush in mode "colour", you can also use a transparent layer in layer mode "colour" – in this way, you can easily try different colours, or erase any excess colour.

I like that. It also allows adding adjustment layers to the "colour" layer to target the effect to specific value ranges using the Curves adjustment, for example.

[greenmorpher]

Thanks Burkhard and Ken. Sam ple the color -- of course!!! What was I thinking? Well, the real problem was NOT thinking. You guys are so much ahead of me on this stuff that I almost hesitate to post sometimes!

Cheers, Geoff

[SCX]

I like to use display modes. For darkening I use multyply, combined with a layer mask. Then a adjustment layer Hue/Saturation to add saturation to the toast-colour and maybe darkening it even more with the slider for brightness.

PS: The color list can be saved. If you need one, I could upload my color palette. It is basicly the standard list with only a few added colours. Or you make a second install of PL somewhere, save the color list and reload it in your main installation. I save all lists in which I've added my own stuff frequently.

[greenmorpher]

Okay, I am coming back to it. Looking at everything, I would still like to see delectable colors for Darken. it would simply be easier to users.

just select "Darken", select your color, and go for it. Very smart would be if you could sample the color in the subject then PL could do some kind of darkening of it for you in the same kind of way that it handles color in a gradient.

Cheers, Geoff

[bkh]

Okay, I am coming back to it. Looking at everything, I would still like to see delectable colors for Darken. it would simply be easier to users.

Well, at least in Ken's proposed solution, the toast isn't actually darkened – it's only being colourised (but just increasing the saturation works almost as well). As soon as one knows that, it's quite natural imo to use a brush in mode "colour" or "saturation". A "darken towards a prescribed colour" brush (similar to painting with a low intensity brush) wouldn't have worked so well.

Cheers

Burkhard.

[Hoogo]

This gives interesting ideas how an experimental darken tool could work.
-Sample colours around and treat highlights differently
-Or even create a kind of gradient based on the brightness of found colors, and darken using this gradient.

Btw: Food looks better if you scrap off the mold before taking a picture

[photoken]

I don't think that the Brighten and Darken tools should use selectable colours. That misunderstands the purpose of the tools, and there are other (and better) ways of darkening specific colours, such as the Hue Editor.

This gives interesting ideas how an experimental darken tool could work.
-Sample colours around and treat highlights differently

That is what the current tool's Shadows/Midtones/Highlights targeting does.

-Or even create a kind of gradient based on the brightness of found colors, and darken using this gradient.

How would that be different from the False Color adjustment, which can be applied as a layer using a mode of "Darken"?

Btw: Food looks better if you scrap off the mold before taking a picture

Yeah, the Automatic Lasso tool needs to have an "Anti-mold" setting....

[photoken]

Well, at least in Ken's proposed solution, the toast isn't actually darkened – it's only being colourised (but just increasing the saturation works almost as well). As soon as one knows that, it's quite natural imo to use a brush in mode "colour" or "saturation". A "darken towards a prescribed colour" brush (similar to painting with a low intensity brush) wouldn't have worked so well.

Yes, that's the point I tried to make in my original reply -- the image is so badly overexposed in places that "darkening" won't give the desired effect, only colourizing will.

[Hoogo]

-Sample colours around and treat highlights differently

That is what the current tool's Shadows/Midtones/Highlights targeting does.

No, it always turns white into gray, no matter what colors are around

-Or even create a kind of gradient based on the brightness of found colors, and darken using this gradient.

How would that be different from the False Color adjustment, which can be applied as a layer using a mode of "Darken"?

I guess it would be quite the same, as long as you can somehow grab a matching gradient for the picture. But that's not so easy, at least a semi-automatic color picker for the gradient editor would be fine. One that stores a picked color according to its brightness.

[greenmorpher]

Btw: Food looks better if you scrap off the mold before taking a picture

Ha! that's odd. Apart from the fact that the bread is fresh daily, that artifact is not in my original picture. Wonder where it came from? :

-Sample colours around and treat highlights differently

That is what the current tool's Shadows/Midtones/Highlights targeting does.

No, it always turns white into gray, no matter what colors are around

-Or even create a kind of gradient based on the brightness of found colors, and darken using this gradient.

How would that be different from the False Color adjustment, which can be applied as a layer using a mode of "Darken"?

I guess it would be quite the same, as long as you can somehow grab a matching gradient for the picture. But that's not so easy, at least a semi-automatic color picker for the gradient editor would be fine. One that stores a picked color according to its brightness.

Whatever the process, I really would like to have the Darken add the color I want rather than gray to white areas so they would blend with adjacent colored areas. Sure there are other ways of achieving the result, but giving Darken selectable colors would be simpler.

Cheers, Geoff

[photoken]

No, it always turns white into gray, no matter what colors are around

That's as it should be, IMO. The Brighten and Darken tools are generalized exposure correction tools, directly comparable to increasing or decreasing the exposure when printing a photo in a darkroom, which is why other image editors refer to the tools as Burn and Dodge.

I guess it would be quite the same, as long as you can somehow grab a matching gradient for the picture.

Applying the False Color as an adjustment layer allows using various adjustment layers on that layer, such as Curves, Histogram, etc. One could even create a Luminance Mask for the False Color layer using the image luminance....