Photo Plus - UK (2020-04)

The Canon Magazine 85

CONTROLLING COLOUR

ith Raw files, you can

correct the colours

• or manipulate
  them – when you work up an
  image in Raw processing
  software. As well as making
  global colour adjustments
  that affect the whole
  picture, such as increasing
  or decreasing the
  saturation, or tweaking the
  white balance, you can make
  selective adjustments to
  specific colours.
  For example, any Raw
  processor worth its salt will
  include a tool for fine-tuning
  the Hue, Saturation and
  Lightness (HSL) of individual
  colours. In Canon’s Digital
  Photo Professional, you’ll find
  this under ‘Color adjustment’
  in the tools palette.
  I use HSL regularly,
  increasing the lightness of
  orange a little for portraits of
  people with pale skin in order
  to lift the skin tones, for
  example, or increasing the
  lightness of yellow and green
  to help separate elements in a
  landscape shot.
  HSL adjustments – or the H
  and L elements, at least – are
  also useful when working on
  black and white images, as
  they can help to add contrast
  where there perhaps is none
  when the colour is removed.

You won’t be able to do this

in Digital Photo Professional

if the Picture Style is set to

Monochrome. Instead, select

a colour Picture Style, click

‘Monochrome’ at the top of the

‘Color adjustment’ palette, and

then adjust the Hue and

Lightness sliders.

One thing to consider is that

although these adjustments

target specific colours, they do

so across the whole image. So

you need to make sure you’re

not altering the colour of an

object in another part of the

shot that you hadn’t intended

to change. For more selective

changes, you can use the

adjustment brush for targeted

WB and saturation changes.

W

Fine-tuning colours in Raw

Use the HSL controls to change Hue, Saturation and Lightness

MAKING RAW TWEAKS

School tip RGB histogram display

Check that your colours aren’t too dark or too bright

IF COLOUR is a vital ingredient to the

success of a shot, it’s worth switching

the camera’s histogram display from

‘Brightness’ to ‘RGB’ – you can do

this in the blue Playback menu. This

way, you’ll be able to check the colour

channels that make up the image

• Red, Green and Blue – are being
  exposed correctly. If any of them are
  against the right of the graph then

that colour will be oversaturated in

some areas – you may need to alter

the WB, reduce the exposure or

choose a less punchy Picture Style.

Remember, the histogram is

based on a JPEG using the current

settings – if you shoot a Raw then

you’ll have more image data to work

with and you may be able to fix the

over-saturation in post.

WB

SET AF

ISO

Before^

After^

Selective colour

Here, I’ve used Digital Photo

Professional’s Colour

adjustment palette to lighten

the orange, yellow and green of

this image and give it more (^) pop