1. Curve. The king of color adjustment has vast magical powers and endless changes, but in practice, curves are not the first choice. What is your first choice? The first choice is——
2. Color levels. Pulling three sliders is enough to solve most problems, but affinity is well above the curve. For example, if the curve is the marshal, then the color scale is the vanguard.
3. Hue, saturation and color balance, tied for third place.
4. Try not to use the "Image Adjustment-Change" menu. This menu cannot be quantified and cannot be masked. It is reserved for apprentices.
5. Do not use the "Image Adjustment - Brightness and Contrast" menu unless absolutely necessary. The brightness here often brings white shadows, and the contrast is often unbalanced.
6. If you want to do something with the "Image Adjustments - Brightness" menu, you're dead. Remember: what we are talking about here is adjusting color, not shading. Brightness is a 100% bullshit indicator here. If it fails, it will fail. Never ignore it!
7. To sum up, if there is a solution to a color adjustment problem, it can definitely be solved by using the five methods of curve, color level, hue, saturation and color balance. And we strongly recommend that, in addition to these five methods, Don't use any other means.
8. Except for extremely simple adjustments, all adjustment work should absolutely be performed on the adjustment layer (variable mask). There are at least four major benefits to doing this:
a. Every step of color adjustment is irreversible. Using adjustment layers makes the reverse process possible, and historical records are far from comparable.
b. The more time-consuming color adjustment is, the greater the image loss will be. Using adjustment layers can completely avoid this drawback.
c. The operator can compare the effects of each mask one by one through the layer switch, which plays an irreplaceable and important role in summarizing experience.
d. Adjustment layers can be easily reproduced or copied, which is extremely convenient for color adjustments in sets and series. You only need to make one carefully and follow the same pattern for the rest.
9. In short, the variable mask is actually a kind of channel, and it is a relatively advanced kind of channel. In addition, there is generally no need to create any special channels or make any special adjustments in a single channel. In fact, the colors arranged by God are not isolated (to be more precise, I would like to borrow a medical term to say that the colors compensate for each other). Individual adjustments often focus on one and lose the other, which is counterproductive.
10. Saturation is indispensable, but must be used with caution. A fair skin tone is essentially a very desaturated skin tone, but we must not forget that a dead skin tone is also a very desaturated skin tone. Moreover, if the saturation is too low, it can easily lead to a flat picture; sacrificing the level of the picture for the sake of "whiteness" is a taboo in design.
11. Eyes must not be blindly bright. An interesting fact is that bright eyes are not made by increasing the brightness, but on the contrary, are made by reducing the brightness. What you should increase is the contrast.
12. But contrast, like saturation, must be used with caution. One experience is: if the contrast is too high, the eyes will appear black and white, but at the same time it will give people a sense of looking up. The first impression is that your protagonist seems to be looking up to me, the Buddha.
13. Don’t try to solve any problem with layer blending mode. If you study it carefully, you will find that blending mode actually damages the clarity of the picture more or less.
14. Caucasian people have thicker skin. If necessary, you can add a layer to create a soft light effect. But remember not to go too far and make it invisible to others.
15. Some details require special processing. It is the idea of a lazy person and a fool to expect everything to be completed by adjusting the entire picture.
16. A picture is very strange, and sometimes it can be adjusted to the extreme. At this time, you save and exit it, and then reopen it, and the picture becomes clear. Believe me, the devil does exist sometimes.
17. The fastest skin tone adjustment I have ever done took 20 seconds; the most difficult adjustment took a day and a night, and...unfortunately, it still ended in failure.
18. There are tens of millions of true colors. You can create dozens of common macros for adjusting yellow skin color, but there is no macro that can cure all diseases. Color adjustment schemes are as non-repeatable as Go.
19. The knowledge of color adjustment is boundless. Every time I learn something more, I find that I know less.