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Vibrance
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Vibrance is an an adjustment that was first introduced in Photoshop CS4
and it sure is an improvement over the Hue Saturation adjustment.
What it does is adjust the saturation so that clipping is minimized as
colors approach full saturation. This adjustment increases the
saturation of less-saturated colors more than the colors that are
already saturated.
Vibrance also prevents skintones from becoming over saturated.
If you use Camera Raw then it's an adjustment you may be familiar
with. The advantage now that it's in the normal Photoshop
editor
we know and love is that it can be used as an Adjustment Layer which
gives us
the ever useful Layer Mask.
In portrait photography the vibrance adjustment can be used to make
eyes sparkle and the lips fully saturated.
The adjustment can be used with an adjustment layer and it can also be
used with the ever popular Sponge Tool.
This is a brush intensive kind of adjustment so it is best to use a
Wacom Bamboo or Wacom Intuos4 with the pressure sensitivity set the way
you want it to be. In this case it is probably best to set
the
Size to change with pressure.
Sponge
Tool
The Sponge Tool lives with the Dodge and Burn Tools on the toolbar
(keyboard shortcut is O) and it is used directly on the image so make
sure you make a copy of the background.
To use the Sponge Tool to increase saturation in the eyes or the lips
there are a few settings that need to be set-up in the Options Bar ....
From left to right ...
- Size - self-explanatory
- Toggle - the brush panel on and off
- Mode
- Saturate for
this technique
- Flow
- at least 50%
- Airbrush - off
- Vibrance
- Checked
- Tablet
Pressue -
controls size and overrides the settings in the the Brushes Palette
The important settings are in Bold.
Here's an eye to work on ...
Now this isn't a bad shot for sure! With the Sponge Tool set
as
described, this is what can be done ...
The Vibrance setting on the Sponge tool certainly made a difference,
didn't it? The 50% Flow setting prevented the eye from being
way
too saturated.
The spectral highlights were also saturated because of my careless use
of my Intuos pen so it was necessary to dodge out the spectrals a tad
...
Vibrance
Adjustment Layer
The Vibrance Adjustment Layer is increasing local saturation at its
best. The adjustments are not done on the original image and
there is a layer mask to work with as well.
This pretty kitty has nice eyes now but we can make them sparkle and
here's how with Photoshop CS5 (click to see final image)...
The first step is to add a new Vibrance Adjustment Layer (f you use
this panel then it is the little purply colored one).
With Photoshop CS5 this is the panel that will pop up ...
There are two Tabs (Adjustments and Masks) and two sliders
(Vibrance and Saturation).
The second step is to move the Saturation Slider all the way to the
left in the Adjustments Panel - this will desaturate the photo.
This is what we have now - not a bad black and white, is it ...?
The third step is to click the Masks Tab and click the Invert button at
the bottom of the tab - this will bring all of the color back.
The fourth step is to grab your Wacom pen, make sure the foreground
color is white and paint on the eyes - this will turn them to grayscale
again.
This is how our pretty kitty's eye is looking now ...
The fifth step is to flip back to the Adjustments Tab, move the
Saturation Slider back to 0 and then move the Vibrance slider all the
way up to 100.
And this is how our Pretty Kitty looks now ...
(Click
here to view the original)
Taking
It Further
So let;s do a bit more with the Pretty Kitty - say - add a Black and
White Adjustment layer (gotta love a good black and white photograph).
- Make a new Black and White Adjustment Layer.
- In the Adjustments Panel I moved the Red and the
Yellow
slider to the left which really darkened up the overall picture.
- When I was satisfied with the look of the Black and
White
conversion, I set black as the Foreground color, took my Wacom pen and
painted over the eyes with the brush dynamic set to change size with
pressure.
- The image was then cropped and a Soft Light dodge and
burn
layer was added. I kept the Foreground color black and burned
in
the right side of the picture and some of the white areas on her
chin. Then I changed the Foreground color to white and dodged
out
the nose which lost all detail when the phot was converted to black and
white.
And here's the pretty kitty now ...
There you go - give this excellent adjustment a go. I expect
you will be really pleased with the results.
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Page Links
Sponge Tool
Vibrance Adjustment Layer
Taking It Further
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