Project 8: Altering Colour with Hue/Saturation

After experimenting with the image of a steam train (supplied on the OCA disc), I opened one of my own files in order to make some changes using the hue, saturation and brightness sliders. I realise that the course was written with Photoshop Elements, rather than the full version, in mind - therefore the vibrance slider was not mentioned. I have therefore restricted myself to using the three sliders above for this project.

Here is my original image, of West Bay in Dorset:

Here is the new version, after altering the H,S and B values:

I have tried to keep it natural, and I think I have succeeded - the bottom version looks closer to the scene I saw in person, indicating that perhaps the camera didn't capture the full dynamic range of the scene. To achieve the second image, I made the following alterations:

Master hue - kept the same. Master saturation - increased to 18. Master brightness - made a feathered selection of the bottom half of the image, and increased to 11.

Cyan slider - increased saturation to 25, changed hue to -5.

I realise that it is possible to make more dramatic changes using these sliders - having peeked ahead in the course notes, I see that this is covered in the 'strange food' project. Even though this is jumping the gun a bit, I love playing around with colours, so here is an osteospermum flower that I have manipulated. I firstly isolated it on white, then I boosted the saturation to deliberately give it a bright, hyper-real feel:

Then I had fun playing with selections and the hue slider:

It took aaages, but I really enjoyed testing out my Photoshop skills and learning new techniques, so in my humble opinion, it was worth the effort. :)