Take control of colour with Photo Lab
Discover a new way to adjust hue and saturation with DxO’s powerful image editor.
PhotoLab 3 is the latest version of DxO’s raw processing, lens correction and photo editing software. One of the best photo editing programs on the market, PhotoLab offers all the tools of regular photo editors, but takes a different direction from many of its rivals, putting raw processing and lens corrections front and centre. It can extract extraordinary image quality even from the most humble camera equipment.
PhotoLab 3’s ColorWheel is a new way to manipulate hue, saturation and lightness. Rather than using familiar sliders for each of the colour channels, PhotoLab 3 offers a more visual approach. Here’s how it works…
ALISTAIR CAMPBELL
1
IMPORT YOUR IMAGE PhotoLab gives you a great starting point to work from, improving your image on import with various tweaks to your raw or JPEG file. Taking care of the camera, lens calibration and minor exposure and tonal details means you can quickly get to work on colour to deliver your own personal style and aesthetic. Here I’ve imported an image that contains four different areas of colour: green, yellow, red and some blue.
3
SELECT A
WIDER RANGE OF COLOURS If you go back to the red color selection, you can select a wider range of colour by moving the white circles on the inside of the wheel. I’ve increased it here to include some of the orange tone, plus yellow and some redviolet.
5
EXPERIMENT WITH COLOUR CHANGES Here I’ve selected violet to create an obvious visual difference. Our model and all the other targeted areas have duly become violet. Notice that if we home in on our model’s jeans, though, they remain blue: there is no bleed into adjacent colours as you begin to change them. This is incredibly precise and very powerful work by DxO. Making a person purple may not be something you ever need to do – but now we’re going to reset the image back to its starting point, so that we can have a look at another way to use the wheel for better overall colour management.
2
SELECT A COLOUR CHANNEL Let’s get started by selecting one of the eight predetermined colour channels to adjust, by clicking the dot at the top of the Color Wheel panel. Start with red. You’ll notice that a small section of the wheel is now highlighted by five small white circles. If you continue to click across the rest of the colours at the top of the panel, you’ll notice that not all of their areas on the wheel are the same size. This depends on how much of that colour is in the image. When I select green on my example photo, it covers a much larger area on the wheel.
4
ADJUST SATURATION For the purposes of this tutorial, I’ve increased the saturation to the maximum setting, so we can see which areas are being affected. The white circles on the outer area of the colour wheel can also be moved. This is to determine the transition (or blending) of the adjustments. The wider the range, the more improved blending you will get. Turn the saturation back down to a normal level, and use the final white circle to change the targeted colour to another.
6
MAKE ADJUSTMENTS WITH UNIFORMITY
The ColorWheel includes a Uniformity slider, which can be used to make the colours in the selected range more similar. We’ll initially use the slider by increasing it all the way up to surround our subject with an even green colour (notice that we’ve also extended the range of the green to incorporate some of the yellow that was also present in the background). To conclude our colour adjustments, we’re going to do the same with the red hues, to give a more even look across the clothing and skin.