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Dramatic Color Effects

 

How to jazz up your photos with dramatic color effects.

Corey Barker

Corey Barker is Executive Producer of PlanetPhotoshop.com and is an Education and Curriculum Developer for the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. Corey has also made numerous appearances on the highly rated podcast, PhotoshopUser TV, and is co-host of Layers TV.

9 Comments

  1. Jay Waltmunson said on — March 28, 2008 @ 10:07 pm

    Corey, you have a great teaching style! I hope we can see more of these. Well paced and I learned a few tricks along the way (e.g., copying the channel to its own layer). One suggestion would be to supply the photo so that someone could ensure your exact steps, comparing to the before and after.

  2. Julie said on — March 31, 2008 @ 12:46 pm

    I tried to follow your instructions but I use Photoshop Elements 6.0. I got stuck when trying to use the channels after adding the Vivid Light Background copy. Can you post the same article using ELEMENTS?
    Thanks so much
    julie

  3. Corey Barker said on — April 23, 2008 @ 2:35 pm

    As this effect requires the use of channels, it can only be achieved in full version Photoshop. Elements doesn’t allow access to the color channels.

  4. Paulo Jordao said on — April 23, 2008 @ 6:50 pm

    Great tutorial… fun to watch you working.
    Thanks

  5. sasa said on — May 3, 2008 @ 12:56 pm

    very cool, quality tutorials

  6. Kayla said on — May 3, 2008 @ 11:48 pm

    How can I reset my channels back to normal, its stuck at grey… and i can no longer use colors!
    HELP!
    thanks,
    Kayla

  7. Venkatx5 said on — May 8, 2008 @ 2:19 am

    Cool Tutorial..
    Kayla : After Duplicating the Red Color Channel, you’ve to select the Top Most Channel which shows all Channels. :D

  8. Evie said on — May 29, 2008 @ 9:44 am

    Great tutorial.

    Lots of help jazzing up photos in my digital photography class.

  9. Zen said on — July 6, 2008 @ 9:00 am

    i enjoy all your tutorials, they’re amazing and easy to follow…nice one mate

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Once You’re In CMYK Mode, Stay There

You’ve read some techniques in this chapter that require you to be in either RGB mode or Lab Color mode; however, if for any reason your image is already in CMYK mode, do not (I repeat, do not) convert to RGB or Lab mode for any reason. Once you’ve converted to CMYK mode, the data loss from the conversion has already occurred, and switching back to RGB mode won’t bring back those lost colors. What’s worse is, if you switch from CMYK to RGB (or Lab), when you convert back to CMYK mode, you’ll go through another CMYK conversion and damage your image even more. The moral of this story is-once you’re in CMYK mode, stay there.

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