I got this old postcard to tinker with. I was just going to retouch it but then I wanted to see if I could sharpen it and change the color around and give PS and LR and me a workout.
I'm pleased with what this is but I would like the arms to be less stunningly light. Brightness/contrast didn't really help.
Where do you go to tweak this, what setting?
use the curves tool, or if you're not familiar with curves use the levels tool. in curves you'll want to pull the white corner (upper right) down, in levels use the bottom tool to lower the whiteness of the whites. keep in mind this will affect the entire image so you may want to use a mask so just the arm is darkened.
Mask the arm. Hmm. I'm not up to speed on the whole masking thing altho I've done a couple of the Russell Brown tutes.
Thanks, I'll have to give that a try. I suspect CS5 is better with masking than 4 so it's something to work at. I did try the curves and levels but as you said, it impacted the entire image.
This might help you out... http://tv.adobe.com/channel/how-to/cs4-tutorials
I attempted to mask but all I could find were tutes on how to lift things from one photo and apply them to another. I couldn't seem to isolate the arm and tweak it by itself. I'm sure it's easy, I just don't know where it is.
Thanks for the suggestion Stuart, I'll look at that when I'm in CS4. Today was a CS5 day since 5 had a big improvement in masking tools. It's worlds better in edges which I didn't need today and actually it was all no help at all for me.
So I went to Lightroom which I like quite a bit better than PS for tweaking color and sort of split the difference. Yes, it impacted the background slightly but the arm isn't ghostly white.
What I do notice is that there is some degree of brightness difference between LR itself and wherever it winds up. In the program the image is lighter/brighter than what we see here. So maybe you need to plan ahead for that and go a little lighter, knowing it will wind up a little darker.
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