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Color Film
Color Tab
Create Output in a New Layer above Current
Applying a filter with this option enabled renders your image in a new layer above the working layer (in Photoshop and Elements only). Note that switching filters within Exposure disables the output in new layer feature. If you want to apply a filter in a new layer, make sure you start with the filter you plan to apply. Also, Create Output In New Layer Above Current is unavailable when recording actions in Photoshop. Clear this checkbox when recording actions.
Overall Intensity
This slider appears below the New Layer checkbox. Any value less than 100 reduces the effect of the filter. This feature essentially mixes the filtered image with the original image. Overall Intensity provides an easy way to tone down an effect without having to touch a bunch of sliders. Be warned, however, that if Overall Intensity is left at a low value, you may wonder why Exposure isn't doing much to your images. We recommend you leave this slider at 100% most of the time.
Filter Color and Filter Density
Use these controls to simulate adding a colored filter to the lens of the camera. This alters the hue of the scene. The farther the Filter Color is from white the stronger the effect will be. Increasing Filter Density also increases the filtering effect. Use these controls for odd color casts. If you simply want to warm or cool the scene then use the slider below.
Warming/Cooling
Changing the light temperature of a scene is the most commonly needed type of color filtering. Warm scenes appear more yellow, cool scenes more blue. Move this slider to the right to warm the photo or to the left to cool it.
The top third of this photo has been cooled. The bottom third has been warmed.Preserve Luminosity
Enable this option to ensure sure that the filtering operations do not darken your photo. When this option is off, color filtering is more physically accurate. Preserve Luminosity affects both the Filter Color and Warming/Cooling features.
Saturation Controls
The Master Saturation slider simply increases or decreases the intensity of all colors in the photo. The Red, Green, and Blue sliders modify subsets of color.
The most common use of these controls is increasing saturation in nature scenes. However, you can also desaturate two colors to make an object of the third color stand out.
In the right half of this photo, blue and green were reduced, making the red car stand out.
Tone Tab
Curve Editor
The curve editor displays how input brightness is converted to output brightness. The horizontal axis represents input brightness, and the vertical axis represents output brightness. By default, black is in the bottom left corner and white in the upper right corner. If you prefer to think in terms of density rather than brightness, you may want to flip the curve. To do that, click anywhere in the gradients on the left or bottom of the curve.
Channel Pop-Up Menu
The Color Film curve editor has separate curves for the red, green, blue, and RGB channels. Changes made to the curve editor or the sliders below it affect only the selected channel. The RGB curve affects all channels and is applied after the individual channel curves. Switch between these curves using the Channel pop-up menu at the top of the Tone tab.
Editing Control Points
Changing contrast, brightness, shadows, and highlights involves adding, moving, and removing control points in the curve editor. To add a control point to the curve, click anywhere there isn't already a point. To move a control point, simply click on it and drag it while the mouse button is down. To be more precise, select a control point by clicking on it and then edit the numbers in the Input and Output text boxes. To delete a control point, drag it out of the curve area. You can also or select it and then click on the Delete button.
Black/White/Gray Points
Use the three eyedropper buttons to easily set the black, white, and gray points of your photo. These can quickly expand the dynamic range of your photo or remove a color cast. After you click one of these buttons, the cursor becomes an eyedropper. Click anywhere in the preview to select a color. Note that the color selected will come from the original photo, not from the filtered version.
Black Point
To select the black point, click on the leftmost of the three eyedropper buttons and then click on the blackest part of your image in the preview. This will set the leftmost control point in the individual Red, Green, and Blue curves. The point you selected will become pure black after filtering.
White Point
To select the white point, click on the rightmost of the three eyedropper buttons and then click on the whitest part of your image in the preview. This will set the rightmost control point in the individual Red, Green, and Blue curves. The point you selected will become pure white after filtering.
Gray Point
The gray point eyedropper tool is designed to help remove a color cast and is only enabled in the Color Film filter. To select a gray point, click on the middle eyedropper button and then click on a pixel of your image that should be any shade of neutral gray. This will set a middle control point in the individual Red, Green, and Blue curves. The point you selected will become neutral gray and any color cast it had will be removed. All other non-white and non-black pixels in the image are adjusted accordingly.
In the top of this photo, a color cast was removed using the gray point tool.The Sliders
Many people are scared of the curve editor found in Photoshop. Therefore, we provide four sliders that perform the most commonly needed curve transformations. When you move one of these sliders, a blue transformed copy of the curve is displayed in the curve editor. This blue curve is the one that affects your photo.
Contrast
Increasing this slider brightens highlights and darkens shadows. Increasing contrast will usually make a photo more dramatic at the expense of detail in highlights and shadows. In some cases, you may be able to recover detail in photos that have harsh shadows or highlights by decreasing contrast.
Shadow
This slider brightens or darkens only the shadows. If your shadows are blocked up, you might be able to recover some detail by increasing this slider.
Midtone
This slider brightens or darkens the image, having its strongest effect in the midtones. The result is similar to gamma correction, but is not quite as harsh.
Highlight
This slider brightens or darkens only the highlights. If your highlights are blown out, you might be able to recover some detail by decreasing this slider.
The Buttons
Editing curves can be a lot of work, and a complicated curve is tedious to reproduce. So we thought you might want an easy way to save and load curves. In addition, we have provided a way to reset the parameters of the Tone tab.
Save
The Save button brings up a standard file saving window that lets you save your curve to a file. For the Color Film filter, the curves for all of the channels are saved together in one file.
Load
The Load button brings up a standard file loading window that lets you replace your curve with one from a file. For the Color Film filter, the curves for all of the channels are loaded together.
Reset
To reset all the controls in the Tone tab to their default positions, press the Reset button. This will result in a curve that does not alter the photo. Note that in the Color Film filter, the Reset button resets the curves for all of the channels.
Focus Tab
Sharpening
First a word of warning about sharpening. Oversharpening quickly makes a photo look artificial. As a general rule, we suggest that you reduce sharpening until it is not immediately apparent that the photo was sharpened. When your photo will be printed by a process that causes blurring, you may need to sharpen to a point that looks strong on the screen but will look appropriate in print.
Sharpen Amount
This slider controls the overall strength of the sharpening. Typical usage is a value less than 30. Generally a larger Sharpen Radius will require an even lower value for Sharpen Amount.
Sharpen Radius
This value determines the size of features that are most affected by sharpening. Typical usage is very small, such as 0.5 to 1.5 pixels. Extremely blurry and/or higher resolution photos may require a larger radius. The best effect results from using the smallest radius that still sharpens your image.
Sharpen Threshold
This control restricts the sharpening to areas with strong edges. Increasing this slider leaves smoother areas unaffected. Most people find this control a little esoteric. If you like your tools simple, then just leave this at zero, and you'll be fine.
Sharpen Brightness Only
When this option is enabled, only the brightness of a color photo is sharpened. The hue is unaffected. This reduces obvious color halos and other artifacts. To be honest, we haven't found a situation where we would turn this off. This feature is present only in the Color Film filter.
The right half of this shot was sharpened with Sharpen Brightness Only enabled. Note the greatly reduced artifacts.Blurring
Why would anyone want a blurry photo? A very slight blur can reduce the harshness of a digital photo or reduce the effects of oversharpening. Most of the time, however, a simple Gaussian Blur adds little to a photo. If that blur is very transparent, the result is that familiar, hazy glow found in glamour portraits. This effect is great for making wrinkles and blemishes less obvious.
The left half of this image was blurred to reduce the appearance of wrinkles.Blur Opacity
For a very subtle effect, try values less than 20%. Your subject may not realize that you softened the photo. For an obvious effect, like the photos made at the mall, crank Blur Opacity up to 70%.
A more subtle blur gives the right half of this image an artistic look.Blur Radius
Like Blur Opacity, increasing the reach of the blur will make your effect more obvious. A very high radius will make a photo hazy and lower contrast.
Grain Tab
Background
Real film grain is nothing like the noise feature in today's image editors. Real grain appears selectively in different tonal ranges, is not square like a pixel, and has subtle color variation. We studied grain in archival photos, did test shoots, and used microscopes to examine the structure of film grain. With that knowledge we created a grain generator that is sophisticated and very realistic.
Below are some photomicrographs of some of the films we examined. Notice the irregular shape and random spacing of the grains. You would never blow up an image enough to see this level of detail, but these variations cause the effect we call grain.
Kodak TRI-X is on the left. Ilford Delta 3200 is on the right. The graininess of the high-speed film is very apparent.Below, a photomicrograph of Fuji Velvia 100 shows why modern color slide films have very little grain. Ignore the bubbles. Those are part of a protective layer above the pigment. During development the silver grains were replaced by clouds of pigment. These clouds do not have a sharp edge like the grains in the black and white examples. The result is much less noticeable grain.
In Fuji Velvia 100, the edges of the grain are barely apparent. This is why modern slide films have very little grain.Tonal Ranges - Shadow, Midtone, Highlight
The Shadow, Midtone, and Highlight sliders add grain selectively to the tonal ranges of a photo. Film tends to have more grain in midtones than in shadows and highlights.
Grain appears only in the midtones of the left half of this image, but in all the tonal ranges of the right.Grain Size
Increasing grain size beyond one pixel creates non-square grain. Typical usage is usually less than 3 pixels, especially for a subtle effect. Simulating high-speed film and/or working with a very high resolution photo, however, may dictate larger grain. If you are trying to simulate very large grain, we suggest applying a blur. In huge photo enlargements, details smaller than the grain size are not visible. For a grain size of 4 pixels, a blur of 2 pixels at 100% opacity should do the trick.
Color Variation
This slider controls the amount of color variation the grain causes. We found that real grain is quite colorful, but you may want to tone it down for aesthetic reasons. This slider is only present in the Color Film filter.