PK Color's Effect on Other Colors

[AlanH]

Hi Martin and others,

With regard to the Color Enhance set, I've noticed the following:

When using the lighten green+mask effect on, say, a landscape the saturation of the blue sky changes along with the greens. At first, I thought this anomaly was due to some transparency in the mask. So, I painted with 100%, but the sky stayed the same. However, changing the opacity to 0% for the saturation layer in the layer set returned my blue sky to its former value. Of course, the greens, also, revealed no increase in saturation, now.

It seems that the saturation layer needs the same mask as the layer under it? I realize that blue sky will have a green component that will be affected (in a global sense) by any change to the image's green values, but is there any way to restrict ALL effects to just the color selected...in this case, the greens? I'm no Photoshop expert...could the mask be easily replicated to the saturation layer above?

Bottom line: I want the ability to affect one color in a somewhat restricted color range. IOW, I don't want my blue sky changing because I've lighten up foliage in the foreground!

Please advise.

Thank you.

[Martin Evening]

This was intentional. I did consider masking both layers and therefore having the +mask effect show both masks. But for reasons of wanting to keep the effects looking smooth, I decided to provide the layer structure you see used. As you discovered, the saturation layer is one that you cann simply dial down to 0% to remove the saturation. If you want to mask it yourself, choose the Green lighten effect + mask, run the effect and when finished, Command/Control click the base effect layer, select the saturation layer and then click on the Add layer mask button in the Layers palette.

But I would be interested to see an example of the image in question. I could be persuaded to revise the specification for the color enhance effects in a later dot release if there appears to be a need for more control here. My direct email is: martin@pixelgenius.com. The image should be an RGB JPEG, ideally at least 1200 pixels at the widest or bigger and saved with the highest quality compression please.

Martin

[AlanH]

Hi Martin,

I tried to send an example file to you (about 4MB), but I just kept getting an smtp timeout message from my ISP. Don't know if there's something going on on their end, at the moment, or I've reached/crossed some threshold size for attachments. I'll try again, later. Would a smaller file be acceptable? Or, could I attach it to this thread?

[AlanH]

Martin,

I just found out my ISP's limit on e-mail attachments is ~3.6MB. I was finally able to forward a few files to you, albeit smaller than you requested.

Thank you.

[RonBoyd]

I use "YouSendIt" for large (up to 1gb size) file transfers. No muss. No fuss. No bother.

http://s3.yousendit.com/

By the way, most ISP's limit attachments to less than 5mb in size.

Ron

[AlanH]

Hi Ron,

Thanks for the information; I've noted this site for future use.

The problem is mostly me! I rarely send large e-mail attachments and I always forget what the cut-off is. Then, I get frustrated when it doesn't work!