Great tutorial. worked Great for me. One Addendum would be to Do the curves adjustment as a layer or on a Duplicate layer. This way you can adjust the effect with either the fade tool or going back into the Curves layer.

Or you can just use Velvia.

Nice Tutorial. I haven't done much work with Lab Color. Very interesting.

nice. I've been playing with lab color recently and this is a great addition.

Nice!

I was having no luck with this entire series of shots taken of these unique cacti until I tried this. What a difference! Thanks!

Interesting stuff, I'll be experimenting with this as soon as possible!

great tutorial

I've tried your technique and it certainly does work. My question is, what advantages does this offer over the simpler approach of using the saturation slider within the Hue/Saturation adjustment function?

Great tutorial...Can someone please post a quick crash course on lab color? What is it good for? when should it be used? I generally use RGB on my photos, and CMYK on work that goes to press. Come to think of it, most photo labs use die-sub printers to print out digital photos. Does it make sense to use the CMYK model in that case?
Thanks in advance.

Great!! Another fun thing to learn! Thanks Dave!! So...when's the book coming out?

Tried it and it works great!! Thanks for this Tutorial.

Just the thing I have been looking for!

Wow Tracy, that's a stunning yellow! And I like the frame - nice shot. Book? Maybe someday. I downloaded Booksmart and started messing around with a book template - check out www.blurb.com/ - anybody can publish photos and text with this thing.

@Wingnut - if you're really interested, check out this reading group - and order Dan Margulis' book on Photoshop LAB color on Amazon. That's what I did - no regrets. Awesome colorspace!

@Mike Cohn - I don't have all the answers, but Margulis writes: "There is a whole world of LAB that is not so widely known, and which offers really, really better results than any other method." Simple answer, LAB color space has broader gamut. You get complete control of color correction. I'll never go back!

Ahh this is truely a great great tutorial. thank you so much. I find myself using this technique now for many many many photos lol. This is just too great of a technique to pass up on any photo for me. Ahh i just love it.

wow this is so cool ... my compact cam suffers from the inability to get the color saturation right ... looks like I'm going to be using this a lot ... thanks matey!

Thanks for the pointer Macaddict! This certainly opens up a whole new avenue for me.
Thanks again

Another good thing to do with LAB is to take the A channel and go Apply Image > Overlay to itself., then do the same with the B. This will push the colors as well. If you invert the channels while doing it, you'll neutralize the image. Sometimes if there's a cast, I'll neutralize it to get the cast out and then apply in overlay without inverting to push the colors that are left, but this only works sometimes.

Moving just one of the edges of the curve the way Macaddict describes gives a colored cast over the photo. So if one wants to adjust blue independently of yellow, one marks a gray point in the 'b' curve. It gives a little more freedom.

thanks so much!
i just have been practicing ur tutorial and it works great!

Hmm, sounds like a great tutorial, but I dont know if this needs to be done via lab colours? I always just use Control M and I adjust the curves as in image 4 (2ndlast image). This seems to give me the same effect as what you describe. My colours almost always pop. Maybe even too much for some :)

I will try it out though, Im curious to see what difference there is between this and only adjusting curves.

Thanks!

Before and after

@Wingnut - Believe it or not, many pro inkjet printers do better with RGB files than CMYK. It depends on the RIP software (Raster Image Processor) that converts digital image data into instructions for the physical jetting of ink. It must convert CMYK files as well as RGB. You'd think CMYK would translate better, but that's not necessarily the case with photos.

before




after



i have a question: this lab color techninque seems to take a primary color and make it more strong in that direction, is that right? i suppose i'll have to read about it.

anyway it looks like flickr's color profile issue is worse here. my edited version in firefox on my color calibrated powerbook g4 looks closer to the tiff file of my "before" viewed in photoshop. they're all sRGB IEC 2.xxxx i guess flickr must strip profiles or firefox ignores them or something.

haha! great. Althought inside I hear a voice screaming to agree with wirehead...

Yup yup, great tutorial! thank you very much macadict!

Before:


After:

Thank you! Thank you! I'm still practicing so these aren't perfect, but they are certainly a lot better than SOOC. Great tutorial-and SO easy to follow.

Going with the rose theme:




And fixing indoor lighting:

i guess flickr must strip profiles or firefox ignores them or something.

Every browser ignores colour profiles.

On topic though, I have to say thank you for this tip! I've been using it with great success for a week or so now, and it works wonderfully. Like cbszeto, I've also discovered the nice side effect of easy colour caste correction as well :)

Why do I love the technique group? Because of tips like this. This is AWESOME! Thanks!

niiiiice

Where in the workflow do you recommend doing the Lab Color process? For example, before or after other RGB mode adjustments such as levels, curves, etc.?

Thanks macaddict! I think I'm going to start using it on most of my pictures. I just tried it on various photos (indoors, outdoors, with flash or not) and it enhances most of them.
Actually, when I look at the photo before it was edited, it just seems dull and grey.

I even did a script in Photoshop CS to automatize the process. My steps:
-Convert to Lab
-Duplicate current layer
-Draw 2 points on the a and b curves channels, respectively +100/+127 and -100/-127
-Set opacity of the top layer to 50% (Too much color popping seems unrealistic to me)
-Convert to RGB and flatten

and POP!

Is there a reaoson you use layers and opacity instead of adjusting the a and b curves to get a more realistic "pop" altermativ?

I can always go back in the history and change the opacity easily.

Messing with the curves is just not my thing, the interface doesn't seem to work as I want it to (try inputting "-100" in the input box of the 'a' curve to understand what I mean).

But you're right, it can be done with similar results =)

Seriously effective. Thanks for posting this.

I tried recording recording an action in PS CS2 for this process, but it didn't work. Is writing a script and recording a action the same thing?

As I answered to Bakari (check your messages), I shared my action on an upload site. It might not be around for long ( I think it gets deleted after 7 days of inactivity), but here it is:

www.sendspace.com/file/w4lyrc

this is why i need photoshop.

my god this is like a life saver to many dull pictures..thanks macaddict :)

Wonderful tutorial ! Thanx a million for sharing !!!

WOW. I went throught and did this just as you said and I can not even believe the color difference. Its a bit much but im sure with some practice I will be using this all the time Thank you so much WOW>

Thanks a lot for this tutorial! I posted this before I found this thread:



This is the same butterfly (yet not the same picture), but with this technique applied:

Great! now if this only works in Elements....

@usathyan, get the curves plug in for elements, google is your friend...or search elements group here on flickr, they have a link to the site. Peace
BTW the LAB tutorial also works with B/W

The L*a*b color model separates color and luminosity completely. This allows us to
isolate tone and color manipulations. Neither RGB nor CMYK can do that. All of the
luminosity in L*a*b is captured in the Lightness channel. The color channels are the “a”
and “b” channels, with the “a” channel placing a color along a magenta/green axis and
the “b” channel along a yellow/blue axis. Peace
from www.thelightsright.com

@usathyan
www.flickr.com/groups/pse/discuss/72157594215930966/
get your curves and layers through this group for PSE

This is just excellent...thank you.

Wow,,thank u

To all the PSE users I read in the PSE group that there are snoobs out there..if you don't have CS2 you ain't a real whatever. I hope noone feels that way here. If there is anything I can help with I'll try.
It is not how big your pixel is but how you manipulate it.
Not how much your program is worth but how much joy/bliss you produce with it. All the programs are tools. The biggest computer is your brain and you are only limited by your imagination/software. Peace/Paz/Skennen

Very cool lesson. Thanks!

Only now I gotta get some chinese food.

The results of this look good but I'm a bit of a numbnutz when it comes to colour spaces. If I send these for printing e.g. online, would it still come out alright?

You'll have to convert back to RGB before you can save as JPEG.

That is one awesome presentation of a tutorial!

I'll have to try it sometime.

Really nice tutorial! Thanks!

wow.. thank you for this tutorial! i never knew of, or used, lab colour before... i got some amazing results in minutes that i usually have to work on for an hour.

Here is a great example...
Before:


After:

I love using lab colors! Your tutorial is a great way to create a nice, subtle but effective saturation.

I used lab colors to create super blue skies like this one...

whats the difference or advantage of this to using the saturation and contrast sliders, anyway?

here's the photo i wrote about above that i used this technique on.. i'm really pleased with the results and will use this method on future images.

Speising - there's a huge difference, but it's really difficult to explain (at least for a non-expert like me).
I highly recommend "Photoshop LAB color" by Dan Margulis - I'm halfway though, and it's already revolutionized my workflow.

I used Lab color on this one, too, specifically for its ability to drive the colors to extremes.

Thank you for this great tip - this is my first attempt (I'm a novice). I don't have Photoshop but I used The GIMP and followed the tutorial the same way. I'm really going to do some experiementing with this technique!

@balaclava9 and everybody else: Read this. This will answer why firefox messes with color profiles. Here

The tutorial above is helpful, but sometimes you want to really bring out colors that are very close together to do so follow the tutorial as above, but move the a and b sliders in LAB until they are almost vertical lines around some neutral point you have selected. At this point the image will look insanely brilliant as PS tries to display what are impossible colors for your monitor. Now close out of the curves layer, and tone things down by reducing its opacity to say 10%. You'll now find that very nicely separated colors impossible/very difficult to achieve in any other manner. Here is an example using this technique.

Before LAB:



After LAB:

There was a discussion on LAB color correction on another forum a few months ago. If you are interested have a look at LAB color correction..

I think the true value of LAB is not simply to make your colors go POP, but also to go BUBBLE, SQUEEK or whatever else you want them to do. The real virtue of the colorspace is that luminance is indepedent from hue so you can play with one rather than the other.

Just a comment - there are colour-space aware browsers - if you use a Mac.

www.gballard.net/psd/go_live_page_profile/embeddedJPEGpro...

Safari, Omni Web, and *gasp* IE for the Mac are all colour space aware.

My attempt:

POP!

great tutorial - fantastic results

Wow....great tutorial

TIP: If you want to selectively make a section pop, use Layer Adjustements in Photoshop. Apply your color changes, and then add a mask to the layer adjustment. I mask out the portions of the photo that I do not want corrected.

In the example below, I masked out the building and used the color lab technique on the sky. The blue is less gray and the clouds now POP.

Altermativ, any chance of getting that action posted again? If you can get it to me, I'll host it for others.

Update:
I just learned how to make an action so I made this my first project. I uploaded it to my site to offer to my readers. ( www.freemacphoto.com/making-the-colors-in-your-photo-pop/ )

Thanks again for the great tip!

thanks for the amazing tips!
this is the result :

That's a great photo! Those colors pop! :)

@macaddict: again, thanks for the tutorial. I'm changing some of my previous photos. I found this "color pop" very good for landscapes. I'm not yet ready to move to a 100% color enhance, but I'mk on my way... ;-)

I like the blues and greens here Jose-Miguel. I'm glad the technique is working for you. You're right too, it's not for every shot, but t really does well with sky and field.

Thanks for the tutorial. Worked well on this image...

Before...



After....

my first guess of this cool tecnique :

Incredible tip!! I've always wanted to make my colours pop, so I tried your tut on a dull photo, and compared it to my usual technique of simply upping the saturation. Here are the results:

Original photo:

Increased colours using Hue/Saturation:

Using Lab Colour - Your Technique:




What a difference!!! Thanks for this very very useful tutorial!!!

Before:


After:

I don't think anyone has answered Mike's question. I'm also curious as to how the third step in the process relates to the normal level/curves adjustments we always do. Is that final curve in the luminosity channel supposed to replace the normal highlight/shadow/contrast adjustments we normally perform at the start of the workflow?

I love this effect! I am palying around with some wedding shots-very cool! Thanks.

I just uploaded my Photoshop actions for doing this; you can download them here. I also made a blog post about it. One thing to be aware of; you're losing detail in the extremely colorful ends of your pictures when you do this. Not often a problem, but it's not a loss-free transformation.

Wilkiecoco: To answer your question I only do luminance and color adjustments in LAB now. I convert back to RGB only save the image and upload.

Nelson: I am not sure why this technique should definitely make you lose detail. What people should be aware of is that LAB is a much larger color space than sRGB. So it very possible to create impossible sRGB colors using this technique so in the conversion back to sRGB you may lose details if you push things too far.

I strongly recommend Margulis' book if people like this technique. The way it is described above is a very poor cousin to what you can actually achieve with a good knowledge of LAB.

In the actions I posted, I clamp 0-10 to 0 and 245-255 to 255 in the a and b channel. Something's got to be lost there, no? It just may not be anything you care about. I agree there's a lot more subtlety possible with Lab colour manipulation. Part of what's appealing about the method posted in this thread is it's a nice simple introduction.

nelson: why do you clamp 0-10 to 0 and 245-255 to 255? I don't really understand this as a and b goes from -127 to +127 in Lab (0 being no color - black/white/grey, postiive a's being magenta, negative a's being green, positive b being yellow, and negative b's being blue). It's very unlikely that any color someone deals with is going to be in the range (127-117) so maxing out at 117 is unlikely to have any effect on the final color range. What you are doing is increasing the slopes of the a and b curves, and so colors much closer to 0 get shifted corresponding further apart, but there is no reason why any colors should definitely max out.

Sorry, I mean to say I clamp 117-127 to 127 and -128:-118 to -128. I don't understand the Lab space well enough to have an intuition about what parts of my photos (if any) are likely to be there. So what sort of damage to the photo could this transform do? Other than making garish colours, that is :-)

Nelson: what I am staying is that it's very unlikely any of your original colors were anywhere near 117 plus/minus so they aren't going to be clipped. LAB is a very large color space. What is more likely is that colors are going to be pushed in places that are not representable in sRGB or CMYK, so when you transform back into sRGB you may well lose information that way, but not from clipping them to 117.

Where this tutorial is from.

www.amazon.com/Photoshop-LAB-Color-Adventures-Colorspace/...

that's probably the best book on the subject.

LAB Saturation Actions
@ this site you can download an action for using lab colors and other action. Peace


Author: Alessandro Di Sciascio


www.atncentral.com/download.htm#lab_sat

Posted: 9/23.2006

Demonstration

I love subtlety in actions, and these actions deliver it. The set contains two actions. One boosts the saturation of all colors through an LAB boost, the other does the same, but protects skin colors by isolating them. Both operate on a layer at 60% opacity, giving you considerable control.

Nelson Minar: If you edit a and b channels using Levels-tool (instead of Curves as in this tutorial) it shows a histogram of those channels. I haven't yet seen a photo where there is anything in the edges of that histogram. So clipping the top and bottom of those channels doesn't really lose any information. (At least in theory. Monitors use RGB and printing CMYK instead of LAB colour. Converting the image back to those modes may lose information..)

@brfuk - right, I produced this tutorial in Comic Life after reading about the technique in Margulis' book. Check out this reading group - and order Dan Margulis' book on Photoshop LAB color on Amazon. That's what I did ~ no regrets.

Other tutorials I have put together.

wow, that's a great tutorial! thanks!

how much different is this from jumping into levels and bringing in the
highs/lows of the individual channels?

There was a discussion on LAB color correction on another forum a few months ago which might be of interest: LAB color correction.

Thanks this is a great technique!
Before:


After: