MGrayson
Subscriber and Workshop Member
Tom,Thanks everyone, now I know why I am confused by this image! I like the vignette and I like the lightening of the foreground. I have to ask Matt, what do you mean by expand the color space?
Tom
I should have said "expand the range in the color space". If you convert the image to Lab space, you get three channels. L is luminance, and we leave that alone. a and b are two coordinates that determine the color. PS lets you apply level adjustments to any channel, so increasing the contrast of the a and b channels moves the colors further apart. It's supposed to be good when there are a lot of very close colors that you want to make more distinct - canyon walls are the usual example. I think you can see it here in the distance where there are purple horizontal stripes. Or I may be imagining it.
Here's what happens if you go about three times too far. It's not the same as increasing saturation, although it does look more saturated. This was applied to the whole picture. The sky and foreground don't change that much.
Best,
Matt