Based on the device-independent CIE specification from 1976, Lab color is often thought of as a high tech, labor-intensive color space. In many cases, Lab color performs certain types of color modifications more quickly and with better, more effective results than RGB. In Photoshop CS3 Mastering Lab Color, Deke McClelland explores how to use Lab color "to make bad photographs great and great photographs even better." He demonstrates image manipulations that are best suited to Lab, and walks through a typical, non-destructive Lab correction. Deke also shows how to correct lighting, apply selective color modifications, and reverse the effects of color cast.
Your trainer for this library is Deke McClelland. In 1985, Deke McClelland oversaw the implementation of the first personal computer-based production department in Boulder, Colorado. Deke McClelland is a well-known expert and lecturer on Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and the broader realm of computer graphics and design. To date, he has written 85 books that have been translated into 24 languages, with more than four million copies in print. This library is divided into five lessons and runs six and a half hours.
Lesson 1, "What Lab Color Is" begins with defining what Lab color is. Designed decades ago, Lab color has been available in Adobe Photoshop for over 10 years. Unlike the RGB and CMYK color spaces, Lab color is an optional color space but is often overlooked or considered too difficult to use but can save time and can make your images look better.
Here you will learn not to fear the Lab mode, you will learn why color is 3D, how to mix Lab colors, as well as other explanations of what Lab Color is. You will learn about the hue/saturation color wheel, the Lab color wheel, the different channels between the three color spaces, and how channels blend in Lab mode.
Lesson 2, "What Lab Color Can Do", at least according to McClelland, is "blow your mind." It will have a profound effect on your images, it will surprise you with its power, and it will just simply amaze you. This is where you will see how bad becomes great, and great becomes better. You will see how to favor yellow to balance skin tones, drop out the blues, correct a very bad image in Lab, sharpen luminance independent of color, and sharpen for effect and blur away noise.
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