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

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.