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From:  rabecka |
Date:
July 2nd, 2008 08:10 pm (UTC)
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Thank you. I wish I could give you some good references, but I'm afraid I don't really have any. Thing is, I was a programmer working with digital images, cameras and scanners for some 20 years. (Yup, back to when getting 16 shades of gray on a monitor was an amazing breakthrough .) I've just had a long time in the profession to learn how to do this.
In a general sense, you'll want a book that concentrates on photographic images, and getting the best quality out of them. Look for at least one good size chapter on restoring degraded images. A lot of the images, esp from Torchwood, ain't easy to work with. It's getting bad when I find myself wanting to scream at Jack "Get some @#%^& lightbulbs!!".
Um... I'm also forced to point out that it matters which image processing app you have. I use Photoshop, but that's a tad pricey for occasional playing. (And if you're rich enough that price doesn't matter, I take donations .)
Edited at 2008-07-02 08:30 pm (UTC)
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From: rabecka |
Date:
July 2nd, 2008 08:55 pm (UTC)
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Oh, you're off to a great start having Photoshop. As to the book, I generally find the Dummies books pretty useless. Seems like any time they get near something I'm interested in, they say "but this is beyond the scope...".
I'll give you some quick tips on tools. The ones that I use a great deal for the icons, are not always the obvious ones. So...
1. Shadows/Highlights dialog, for bringing up background detail on those dark images.
2. Selective Color dialog. Incredibly useful for bringing in fleshtones. In a huge number of images, the fleshtones are the only elements that fall into the "red" category, and you can use this dialog to lighten and color them without affecting anything else.
3. Always have the Info window up. When dealing with fleshtones, look at the CMYK values. You want Cyan lowest, with Magenta and Yellow significantly higher, and Yellow highest (ex: 20%C 45%M 55%Y is in the ballpark).
4. Learn all about the Paintbrush, and NOT in Normal mode. It can be used to change colors, raise or lower saturation, and a host of other things that are really useful if you need to separate areas that are too similar.
I also use the obvious tools like Levels and Brightness/Contrast. And sharpening is critical (use the Smart Sharpen option). NEVER sharpen, though, until your image is at it's final size, and all other processing is done. Whew... Going back to RL now.
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