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Question

Would it be possible to combine Curves and Selective Color, in one tool?

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
September 14, 2020
3 replies
537 views

Might be a completely silly question, but I have been working as a color grader in photoshop and a large part of my work revolves around colour matching.

Photoshop does a great job, and usually I can match very accurately the settings of images by using either curves or selective colour and if something is too difficult then it's possibly a Hue / Saturation adjustment layer away.

But sometimes, especially when dealing with certain colour profiles, I manage to spot that colour gradients, from their darkest to their lightest gradients they seem to follow different dynamics than the main curves and not do so in a single lightness adjustment that could be "caught" by tweaking the black setting in any colour band, but rather do so in what seems to be their own individual curve. And these colours are impossible to match.

So I was wondering, how can I go deeper in colour handling, if there is no particular tool that would apply "curves" to a color band and not just the color channel itself (since the color channel does not affect color bands in the way selective color does but intervenes more globally, as expected).

Feature request

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Bob_Hallam

Legend

Here's a link to get you started:

https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/how-to-generate-easy-luts-in-photoshop/

ICC programmer and developer, Photographer, artist and color management expert, Print standards and process expert.

thomasandpAuthor

Participating Frequently

Thank you for the link but I prefer to use my own video how to create LUTs because it's more informative

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtpZmdr_oPs&t

But this post is not only about this )

c.pfaffenbichler

Community Expert

Could you post an example?

It may not be sufficient for your needs but have you tried using Blend If-settings?

thomasandpAuthor

Participating Frequently

Here, I tried to explain in this unlisted video - only shown here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnNvNuBvArY

c.pfaffenbichler

Community Expert

Not sure if you know that the handles of the Blend If-settings can be split.

But that would probably still not meet your needs.

You could use a Smart Object with an Adjustment (Layer) as the basis of a somewhat convolted staking wo work as a Layer Mask for a Curves Layer.

That way you could »borrow« the targeting of Selective Color or Hue/Saturation.

Mylenium

Legend

Sounds like you may need to invest in soem extra color mangling plug-ins. What you describe is pretty much common standard in video grading tools, but I'm not up to speed what options may exist that handle similar stuff in a PS environment. I'm sure a quick web search might get you started.

Mylenium

thomasandpAuthor

Participating Frequently

Hi Mylenium, I don't think that it's a common standard in video grading tools. I use both Premiere Pro, After Effects and Resolve. The new Lumetri Curves in Premiere, they do have a glimpse of this idea but not exactly.

To make it simpler as an explanation, I would like a curves tool that would have a red "channel", and that red channel affecting only the red color band but in a curves style (different luminosity adjustment in a different luminosity value).

To say it different, I'd like the color bands to follow their own luminosity curves (it's ok if saturation and hue remain constant, for now, althought it would be a good next step to the idea to include full RGB curve for each color).

The end purpose is to skip selecting color ranges and creating masks in an image as it's (a) too cumbersome (b) forbids exporting a LUT to be used cross platform.

If it was one web search away, I wouldn't be in here asking now, would I?

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