Pro tricks for mastering colour
22 The Professional Photoshop Book
HUE AND CRY
ADJUSTMENT ACTION
“I generally use the Hue/Saturation adjustment on a
specific portion of an image,” says Jon Westwood.
“For more significant changes, I’ll tend to use a Hue/
Saturation adjustment layer [Window>Adjustments]
in order to work non-destructively, or the Selective
Color adjustment. Hue/Saturation can be a powerful
tool for dramatically changing a specific area of
colour in a work like if the skin tones aren’t as
vibrant as I want them to be, or if a sky isn’t muted
enough. Another application is in adding richer
colour variation to a piece. Often I will work in a base
layer which defines preliminary colours, a“Selective Color is one of my favourite adjustment
layers in Photoshop,” says Jon Westwood. “I use it
mainly for post processing on large areas of a
painting or the whole painting. It differs from Hue/
Saturation because it allows me to add hues to
specific values from colour channels rather than just
adjust hues on their own using a single colour
channel. It can be used to change the temperature of
a painting by adding a slightly warm or cool tone to
the darks or lights in an image. It can also be used to
add some vibrancy to a specific colour without the
harsh clipping that is sometimes produced from
Hue/Saturation.”
Blend modes are also useful. “Even on a painting
where the subjects are mostly in shade,” says
Westwood, “I will have a layer which defines a subtle or
strong core shadow on the subject depending on the
environment. The environment also dictates what
colour the core shadow will be, and how vibrant that
colour will be. That layer is blended with the Multiply
mode onto the base layer before rendering to allow
those shadows to interact with whatever value they’re
sitting on while keeping colour intact.”pre-beauty layer which defines tone and other
details, and a beauty layer which blends and renders
details and linework. Saturating and lightening the
pre-beauty or base layer makes colours shine
through to the gaps in the beauty layer and adds
more colour and value variation and a little bit more
interest in the object being rendered.”
But all of Photoshop’s tools are for nothing if you
don’t know what you want the colours to do in an
image. In Strange Sunset, your eye is “greeted by
the vibrant magentas of the rocks in the close
midground, as it moves up to the reddish pinks inthe background. One role of complementary
colours (colour opposite each other on the colour
wheel) is to help establish a clear distinction
between objects. I wanted the dichotomy of light
and shade to be particularly visible, so as the reds
of the midground transition to yellow, they’re
stopped abruptly by the complementary purple
rocks in the midground which brings forth a
distinct difference in atmosphere. The eye then
moves down to the riders in the foreground,
accented with purple-blues to provide something
of a split complementary colour scheme.”© Jon Westwood© Jon Westwood016-027 Colour Feature.indd 22 06/10/2015 16:08