GT5 Photomode Tutorial - The Lab Method [All Secrets Disclosed]

Original


Lab Edited (with Levels adjustments; saved in Lab mode)


Original


Lab Edited (with Levels adjustments; saved in Lab mode)


Original


Lab Edited (with Levels adjustments; saved in Lab mode)


Original


Lab Edited (with Levels adjustments; saved in Lab mode)

(Click on any of the images for full-sized comparisons).​

Step 1 - The Base Image

Looks a bit dull, doesn't it? Of course it does.

Step 2 - Level adjustments

A quick way to get your shot back to it's original state.

Step 3 - Gaussian Blur and Soft Light Blending

This is a technique that highlights, or rather, boosts the light and dark tones of the image all while softening the image at the same time. I tend to use Soft Light more as opposed to Overlay simply because Overlay tends to bring too much of the darker tones out. It works great if you're going for a surreal mood, or you steadily decrease the opacity; I have the opacity set to 32 there so the advantages aren't as apparent as I would have liked, but as I said before, this is a relatively low-light image, so I had to tone some of it down. Unfortunately.

Step 4 - The Lab Method

You didn't think this would go without a mention, did you? What do you think this thread is about? Read the title, fool!

Step 5 - Lab Balance

Lab Balance? What the heck is that, stop making stuff up! I assure you I am not. You're simply adjust the color balance while in Lab mode. The difference being, unlike in RGB where you have a separate Red, Blue, and Green channel, in Lab mode you have Green and Magenta (on one slider), and Blue and Yellow (on the second and last slider). This is a great way to cast an artistic color tint/tinge on your image and bring out colors that aren't as pronounced as you'd want them to be. Again, avoid extremes, otherwise it'll look like you threw a wad of C4 into the ocean and it exploded... Next to several fish. And that's just...that's just cruel.​

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Part 1 - Levels



Once again we start with the base image, and once again, all forthcoming images have a full-sized redirect - just click on the image and BOOM, full-sized. So, we have our base image, now what do we do? First off, take a good look at your keyboard. Now, blow a kiss at it... you know you want to, and don't make this weird either... just blow a kiss at it. Now that that's out of the way, hit "Ctrl+L" to bring up the Levels adjustment window; from here you'll be able to tone the image to mirror it's appearance when you originally took the photo. It takes a bit of practice to get it just right, and not only to get it just right, but to know where the ideal places are for the three tone adjustments and knowing where to avoid.


(Image on the left is the original, and this will continue throughout the remaining two examples.)

First up, we have the white eyedropper (to the far right, I forgot to circle it!). This allows you to boost (or thin, depending on where you click) white levels. Where I clicked is outlined by the black arrow and you'll notice, compared to the base image, that there's now a slightly apparent blue (or is that magenta?) tinge, and that's perfectly fine. That's what we want... for the white eyedropper to boost/highlight tones that have been dulled out in translation coming from GT5, to your flash drive, and to PS.



Now we come to the black eyedropper (to the far left, once again I forgot to circle it!). This allows you to boost (or significantly darken, depending on where you click) black levels. It also has to potential to thin out black levels much like the white eyedropper, however, it needs to be pointed out that exactly like the white (and gray) eyedroppers, if you click anywhere that is not immediately white, black, or grey, then one of two things will happen:

1. In the case of the black eyedropper, the surrounding tones will become significantly darker - as in, if you were to mistake black for what is actually dark gray.

2. Alternatively, if you click on an area that's on the lighter side of the spectrum (i.e. white) the surrounding tones will, well, explode - as if, once again, you were somehow able to take a picture of the sun whilst it was exploding. What is with you and the sun?! Stay. Away. From the sun.

Where I clicked is outlined by the black arrow, and now you'll notice the surrounding tones have darkened up a bit (look at the grass or the tree). This is also good.



Finally, we come to the gray eyedropper. You have a bit more flexibility with the gray eyedropper because you're essentially aiming for off-white tones, it doesn't have to be gray. Possible spots are outlined by the arrows, but be sure adhere to the two warnings above (in case you feel like experimenting) because they apply here as well, not in the same manner though. Play around with it and see what I mean. Don't worry about unsightly tints because you can uncheck "Preview", find a spot that is off-white, turn "Preview" back on and click there. If that doesn't work, rinse and repeat.

Troubleshooting

Q: I have the Levels window open, but when I click on a white area I see no apparent change. Have I done something wrong?

A: Not at all. You won't always notice a change unless you're attempting to go for an artistic feel and fill the channel with a color that is blatantly not pure white. This applies to the other two channels as well.

Q: Uh... I've clicked on the white eyedropper and it isn't changing anything. I've even clicked on other areas in the image, and still notice there's no change, not even a tint. What am I doing wrong?

A: This happens at times, I think it has something to do with either Photoshop's allocated resources (something has gone awry), or general computational load. All you have to do is cancel out of the Levels window and click on, say, the sky and if it changes to a dark or light blue tint you're back in business. From there you disable preview, find an appropriate white spot, enable preview and click it. Problem solved.

This closes out on Part 1. I'm famished, and need to masticate (I know someone is going to misread that!).​

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Part 2 - Blending and Cleanup



We have our leveled photo but now what do we do? Tell me I need to know! You'll want to hit "Ctrl+J" to duplicate the layer, and then head on over to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur, just as shown in the image above. Did you click it? Click it, fool! The Gaussian Blur window will now come up and you'll notice that your image is already blurred with a radius of 5 (I believe that's the default but I can't be absolutely positive), and that's good because you want a range of 5 up to 10; just enough to blur the image without hiding any of the image's details... as in if you set the radius to 20 - don't do that. I see you eying the slider.

You'll notice I set the radius to 7.5 because I'm a bit reckless like that, and I like the subtlety because even though it's blurred I can still see everything. You can play with the entire range; you can even start from 1 (or 2, not sure there is a '1') and work your way up to the heavier blurring. But remember, going beyond 10 risks the image being too heavily blurred and you losing significant environmental detail.



You have that done and now I bet you're wondering why you have a duplicate layer, aren't you? Of course you are... don't lie. I know. You have that duplicate layer because you're about to perform an incredibly awesome technique, and that technique is called "Blending". Blending? But I don't have a blender, and why I'm blending an intangible object? You're weird... go sit in the corner and put that special hat on. For everyone else, the blending mode in layman's terms is the combination of two images that changes the ways the two layers interact with each other. Cycle through the available blends and you'll see exactly what I mean.

Wowed yet? Good, now go back to "Soft Light" and select that. For this image I didn't adjust the opacity (the adjustment directly to the right of the blend menu) as I liked it just as it were at 100% opacity. Now, merge the two images together by right-clicking anywhere in the selected layer and select "Flatten Image".

You should instantly notice how much livelier your image has become. Fantastic, isn't it? Yes, I know it is.



You'll want to head back over to the Filter menu and this go for Sharpen > Smart Sharpen. I used this in every one of my works. I like the control you have in SS, and you can even identify (and eliminate) Gaussian, Lens, and Motion blur with this sharpening tool. Right now, we'll be focusing on eliminating any access motion blur. Why? To be perfectly honest with you, I don't have a definitive reason; that's not to imply there isn't one... I just don't have one of my own. For the sake of this tutorial (and so you won't be scratching your head afterwards) the reason will be to "smooth" out the motion blur on the environmental details. Let's carry onward...

...Once you've clicked on Smart Sharpen the appropriate window should pop up and you'll be greeted with two sliders, a "Remove" menu (pertaining to three methods of blur mentioned earlier), and a radius line graph (within a circle). What you want to do here is leave the two sliders at the default 100% and 1.0 px (pixels) and focus your attention on the "Remove" drop-down menu. Click on that and select Motion Blur and set the angle to 20-degrees (this is to direct the angle of removal either away from or with the flow of the original blur). Don't forget to tick the "More Accurate" box before finalizing the adjustments. You can use that at your own discretion, but since this particular tool is a bit CPU-intensive, selecting "More Accurate" processes the file more slowly allowing for a greater detail of blur to be removed - hence, "more accurate". You didn't think I'd instruct you to do something without giving you a reason, did you?


(Don't mind that the display image isn't in Photoshop. I saved it as an external image... for some reason.)

Now, we come to a bonus step. Look at any of the full-sized images; do you notice that nasty bit of pixelized horror underneath (or rather, hugging) a bit of the rear bumper? If you hadn't noticed it before... that's okay, click on the image above and see it. In any case, that's because of the dirt/gravel particles. GT5, or rather, the PS3 has no way of supporting AF (Anisotropic Filtering), so we'll have to clean it up ourselves using the handy-dandy (no, not notebook... this isn't Blues Clues!) Smudge Tool!

Find the Smudge Tool; it's right underneath the Paint Bucket/Gradient Tool, and the default selection is the Blur Tool (looks like a tear/raindrop), click on that and look for the "pointing finger"... that's the Smudge Tool. Click it! You see that area highlighted by the circle? You'll want to take the tool (take note of the settings in the images below) and move it across the affected area - make sure you're holding the left mouse button while doing this - and you'll notice it's going away. It'll take a bit of practice to get it right assuming you don't have steady hands but it's really easy fix (in this image anyway).


And this is what you come up with! Doesn't that look 9,000 times better?

...What's that you say - there's no image above? Ah... That's likely due to me remembering this step after I had already done it! The cleaned up effort is in every single image up to this point.

This closes out Part 2. Tomorrow, Part 3!​

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Part 3 - In Mother Russia you are the Lab Method

An alternative title would have been "The Crystal, er, uh, The Lab Method" but I doubt anyone would have gotten the reference there. Let us carry on with the festivities.



Here we have the titular Lab Method. For the walkthrough see here!



We're going to discuss the final postproduction process now - Lab Balance. You remember me mentioning this some time ago? It's a fairly simple process; while still in Lab mode simply hit "Ctrl+B" and you'll be greeted with the Color Balance window. From here you should take immediate notice of the three available channels (in order from left to right): Shadows, Midtones, and Highlights. These three channels will allow you to adjust the color tones of exactly what the three channels describe themselves as. This is a bit of a trial and error process as it involves tweaking things just right - no more, no less. Feel free to experiment to your hearts content (notice the distinct lack of the traditional Red, Blue, and Green channels as pointed out before), but remember to deselect (and then reselect) the "Preview" box to see your before and after progress to know where you stand, and once you have a good enough idea of what you want, cancel out of the window and hit "Ctrl+B" again to open up a new Color Balance window... or you can just reset the sliders back to "0".

You can begin with any channel you wish. It doesn't matter. There's no method to this madness. You don't even have to use all three channels, hell, you don't even have to use both sliders on any given channel... but we're getting ahead of ourselves, let's stick to the plan. You'll notice I'm beginning with Midtones, and instantly, even without looking at the numbers I've assigned to each slider, you can tell a difference between the last progress photo and this one; the balanced photo has a wider wider range, or rather, a deeper range of colors. The grass/gravel has a darker tone, the headlamps are of a subtle brightness and vibrancy, and sky's reflection off the left-hand side of the rear window is also far more noticeable than it were beforehand. Moving on to Shadows you should now notice that the grass/gravel is now a bit more dark than before, no thanks to the low values used for the shadows. I kept it subtle so I wouldn't end up tinting the image or drowning the colors out in a bleeding outcry. You're definitely encouraged to go further and see what happens, but be sure to record your settings beforehand so you'll know what to fall back on.

The finished image should look like this (for the sake of this tutorial):



That's it, folks. This brings this tutorial to a close. I may return in the future to share more of my tips and tricks, but until then... I bid you adieu.​