File Under... Photoshop Geek-out

Legacy Hue/Sat and Curves Palettes

A lot of retouchers, and Photoshop pros I know have a hard time switching from CS3 to CS4 because they feel limited by the new palettes. Initially, my biggest sticking points were the curves palette and the hue / saturation palette. Like everyone, I use curve and hue / sat adjustment layers more than anything else, and the new palettes really interrupted the flow of my work. I didn't like the fact that they're open all the time and I really don't like the little hand / slider thing. The good news is there's a way to use the CS3 legacy palettes for curves and hue / saturation in CS4. Right now, its kind-of an oblique work-around, and hopefully this is something that the good people at Adobe will add to the next update of CS4, but for now it can be done using specialized actions.

**If you want to skip the "how-to make the actions" part, I'm adding a link to download the actions themselves. Be sure though tho read the "how-to use the actions" section.

How-to make the actions. Here's the funny thing. The actions have to be made in CS3. It works because the action step that does the trick isn't available in CS4 but will magically work there if it's part of an action. So, in CS3, make a new action group. Call it "Legacy Palettes". Now, make a new action. Call it "Curves Pallete". From the action palette pull-down menu, choose "insert menu item". Now, under the main navigation pull-down choose, Layer > Change Layer Content > Curves. That does it for curves. Now do the same thing for hue / sat. Make a new action. Call it "Hue Sat Pallete". From the action palette pull-down menu, choose "insert menu item". Now, under the main navigation pull-down choose, Layer > Change Layer Content > Hue/Saturation. Save the action group.

Now switch to CS4.

How-to use the actions. Load the actions into the actions palette. Set one of your unused function keys to each action. Let's say shift F12 for curves and shift F11 for HueSat. [See my earlier post about Speed Keys for more information on this part. Note: be sure none of your OS function keys are over-riding the F-keys in Photoshop.] Make a new curves adjustment layer. Press shift F12. You should be seeing magic - or at least the legacy curves palette. Press shift F12 again. Magic again - it disappears. Make a new hue sat adjustment layer. Press shift F11. Legacy hue sat palette. Shift F11 makes it disappear.

The reason why I recommend using shift F12 and shift F11 is because I use F12 to make a new curves adjustment layer and F11 to make a new hue sat adjustment layer. So pressing F11 then shift F11, makes a new hue sat adjustment layer and then opens the legacy palette.

Now, this method has one big problem. Because these actions use the Change Layer Content step, you have to be careful about what layer you are on when you use them. If you are on a curves adjustment layer (or any other adjustment layer) and use use the shift F11 hue sat palette action, it will turn that layer into a hue sat layer. So, until this is something that the Adobe people add into Photoshop, just be careful.

Here's the link to download the actions pre-made. Enjoy.

File Under... Photoshop Geek-out

Speed Keys

Depending on how you use Photoshop, this idea may not be all that important, but for anyone who uses PS professionally or regularly, using "speed keys" will make your work-flow twice as fast. You'll be surprised. And beyond that it will give you the opportunity to stop focusing on all the little drop-down menus and focus more on the tool itself and the image at hand. It's an easy thing to do, and it helps you customize Photoshop to better suit the way you work.

The idea is simple. Assign F-keys to perform tasks that you do often. That's it. When I say tasks, I don't necessarily mean a long series of filters or anything like that, but more simple tasks like making a new adjustment layer, or making a 50% gray layer. All you have to do is make a new action and assign an F-key to it.

It's possible to customize the keyboard shortcuts in Photoshop as well, but the keyboard shortcuts are a little harder to organize and not quite as customizable as actions. I also find it easier to have a set of actions that I can change as my work-flow changes or carry around with me if I'm working on another computer. If you'd like to borrow the set I use, here's a link - help yourself. I recommend though that you make a set for yourself based on things you do on a regular basis, so that your speed keys build off of your own work-flow.

The one thing you will have to be sure to do though is turn off any keyboard shortcuts in your system preferences that might over-ride the F-keys assigned to your actions.

File Under... Photoshop Geek-out

Warp Transform (again)

This is something that's been driving me crazy ever since the Warp Transform function was added to Photoshop.

When using the standard transform tool, you can immediately transform something else in exactly the same way with "Transform> Again". It's very helpful especially if the piece you need to transform is spread out over several layers or if there are masks in other places related to the transformed piece that need to match.

I love the Warp Transform function. I use it all the time. But I find it so frustrating that there's no "Warp Transform> Again" function. I learned today that it can be done. Here's how you do it:

Just before you preform the Warp, record a new action. When you're finished warping stop recording the action. Now, to "Warp Transform> Again" all you have to do is play the action on whatever you want to match. It's elegant in it's simplicity. The nice bonus is that you don't have to perform the Again part of it immediately after, like you do with the standard Transform function. Since it's an action, you can play it whenever you want.

Thanks to Tom for this one. (Thanks Tom!)

File Under... Photoshop Geek-out

Solar Curves:

I guess people started calling these things "solar" curves because they can make an image seem "solarized". Its not really what they're used for though.

The idea is to make a curve that racks the color information of an image so much that it exposes parts of the image that you don't normally see. I have two different curve presets that I use regularly. One I call "Solar" and one I call "Dusted".

You can download them here.

"Solar" is a wild curve with a very regular wave pattern and "Dusted" has an irregular wave pattern.

Notice how "Solar" turns some areas black and "Dusted" turns those same areas white. Also notice how one pushes the neutral background toward magenta, and the other pushes it toward green.

The biggest benefit of using these curves is that they make retouching mistakes very apparent. Note the poorly retouched hair edges. They're also helpful to expose things like lens dust, patterns, or irregularities in gradients and very dark or very light areas.

If you use both curves together, it makes the image very dusty looking. Which other than a nod to Guided By Voices, is where the name "Dusted" comes from.

Another easy way to get a similar effect is to set a curve adjustment layer to exclusion blending mode - and maybe add an invert adjustment layer above it.

File Under... Photoshop Geek-out

I've decided to start posting some of the out-of-the-ordinary Photoshop techniques that I've picked up over the years. I'll try and limit them to techniques that are actually useful.

Here's the first:

Saturation Maps:

You've probably noticed that it's pretty simple to make an additional channel in Photoshop using one of the existing channels in your file. For example, if you're working in RGB it's simple to make a copy of the blue channel which can then be used as a mask. It's possible (and common) to make channels from the Red, Green, Blue, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black, and even the L, a, and b channels. But have you ever tried making a channel from the saturation values of HSB? There's not a straight-forward way of doing it since these channels don't have a preview in the channels palette.

My favorite way to make a channel from the S values of HSB is using a Selective Color adjustment layer.

Here's how to do it:

Create a new selective color adjustment layer. Make sure that the relative / absolute toggle is set to absolute. Go through each color and set the black value slider to -100. Then under the white, gray, and black sections set the black values to +100. That's it. Areas of high saturation look white and areas of low saturation look black with gray values representing the range between. Using an adjustment layer in this way is quick and very flexible. If you save a preset of the selective color settings you can quickly load it when you need it and can save the time it takes to set all those values.

This can be a very helpful tool to use especially when retouching high-end beauty images where skin tones need to be very finely adjusted. It can also help point out problem areas where saturation values drop off too quickly in shadow or highlight areas which is common in some digital images.

Here's another way:

Adobe provides a special plugin that will convert RGB files to either HSB or HSL color information. But this plug-in doesn't come with the Photoshop install disk. The download of this plug-in can be found here:

Legacy Optional Plug-Ins

After installing the plug-in (dragging it into the plug-in folder and restarting Photoshop) you can run it through the filters menu under "other".

The channels palette will still be labeled RGB, but you'll notice that the RGB channels have been replaced with information relating to their respective HSB/HSL values. It works well, but it's not the most flexible or efficient way of working for me, and I don't really use it.