(Editing) MULTIPLE COLOR ADJUSTMENTS

Some images may need some color adjusting of some sort. Maybe contrast or brightness, or hue or gamma, etc... If you go and make some adjustments and then attempt to make even more adjustments by re-entering the Color Adjusting window OR clicking the APPLY button in the Color Adjusting window more than once, then you have the potential for losing image quality.

The section describes how to get maximum detail and quality from your Color Adjustments. For Example: If you...

CLOUD PROBLEM EXAMPLE:

Step #1: Adjust image brighter

Step #2: Apply changes

Step #3: Adjust image darker

You will notice that any highlights (clouds are a good example) that got burned out (solid white) DO NOT COME BACK when you make the image darker in step #3. This is because at the moment in time you are darkening the image, the highlight areas are SOLID WHITE. So, if you make solid white darker, you will end up with some shade of gray. Any details that WERE in those highlight areas before step #1 obviously can NOT be gotten back.

WHY DOES THIS HAPPEN?
Each pixel in an image can only have a brightness value ranging from 0 to 255. 0 is black and 255 is white. If you have a bunch of CLOUDS in your pic and you add a bunch of brightness or contrast to the image, most likely the clouds will turn solid white. That means every pixel for the clouds will have a value of 255. The TRUE calculations for the clouds produce could produce values like 280, 285, 290, 270, 260, 300. So the differences in brightness between different parts of the clouds are retained during the calculations. BUT ONCE the adjustment is APPLIED, all the values over 255 are CLIPPED. So you wind up with 255, 255, 255, 255, 255, 255. Thus you see solid white for the clouds. Then when you go back and try to reduce the brightness of the pic, the cloud area values of 255, 255, 255, 255, 255, 255 could get reduced to 220,220,220,220,220,220. As you can see, all the areas of the cloud ARE darker, but you don't see any brightness difference between the various areas of the cloud. Theoretically, if the CALCULATED values from step #1 were somehow retained somewhere (280, 285, 290, 270, 260, 300), then the darkening function could have produced a darker image of (230,2235,240,220,210,250). This WOULD HAVE brought back the detail in the clouds. So, the real problem is not in how brightness or darkness or any adjustment is made, the problem is that images can only keep a value between 0 and 255 for each pixel's brightness. So, with a certain amount of trickery and lots of spare ram and extra processing time, there could be a way to get around this problem. You will find that most if not all image editors do not take the time or the memory to get around this inherent problem. In fact, I know of no editor that allows for this.

HOW TO APPLY SMARTLY:
Okay, so now you know that since an image gets clipped at the 255 top end and clipped at the 0 bottom end, each time you APPLY, you need to "think" about how you want to adjust your images to get the best quality and detail in the final adjusted image. Here are some things to consider.

Apply a particular type of adjustment only ONCE.

If you are adjusting contrast, gamma, brightness, then make sure you do them all in one adjustment. Don't spread them out over several adjustments. Otherwise, you could end up with the problem discussed above with the clouds.

Give some thought as to the ORDER in which you apply changes. For example: If you want to apply some contrast and some gamma. You MAY want the gamma to be performed BEFORE the contrast is performed. Or you may want it the other way around. Typically, you would want to keep the default order. Another example of order priority is this. Let's say you have a Yellow flower and you want to apply a lot of contrast and also do a HUE change. Well, if you do the contrast first, it will brighten the yellow flower. Then if you do the HUE, then it will change from a bright yellow flower to a bright blue flower. BUT, if you do the HUE first, then the flower turns blue. And as we all know, blue has a lower intensity to the eye. And as such, when you do the contrast to the blue flower, it's brightness is then LOWERED. See, contrast brightens the bright areas and darkens the dark areas. So, in the end, the flower would NOT look the same using the two different orders of priority. There are numerous other combinations that warrant thought as well. You can play with the "Order Of Processing" and see which way you like the best.

ORDER OF PROCESSING:
This section describes how you can change the order in which the various image adjustments take place. For example: If you think about it, if you are adding a lot of Brightness and checked the Negative Image, you can see that depending on which function is performed first, the resulting image can be very dark or very bright. See, if you add the brightness first, then the resulting image will be very DARK. Think about it.  Now that you know order can be important, you have the ability to CHANGE the order. Just click on the "Order Of Processing" panel. This panel contains all the numbers from 1 through 12 indicating what adjustment is done in what order. Once you get into the "Order Of Adjustments Processing"  window, you can make the adjustments get executed in any order.

NOTE: If you are making "minor" changes, or just small changes to brightness & contrast, then you don't need to mess with the order of processing.

HINT: There may be situations where you may not see much if any difference between various orderings you may choose. An EASY way to know which operation should be done before another is to take your two or more adjustments and more the sliders to a more EXTREME position. Some position that is not close to the default position. Then any variations in the resulting images can now be easily spotted. You will/should then know which order you like best.

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