LAB colors might do wonder for your pictures

This weekend has been a wake up in some regard. I have been exploring certain areas in Photoshop that I never have used before like LAB colors.

One can say that I have worked in a basic way before with all of my photos. I can do wonders in Adobe Camera Raw but I have never really worked with the picture in Photoshop. The only thing I have used Photoshop for is to apply some sharpness, reduce the size of the image so it fits for the web and then convert the picture to jpg before I save it. Sometimes I have worked with curves to get better contrast but that was all.

So I’ve had a wake-up call and now I understand that I must learn to use Photoshop much better. Mask, layers, blending modes etc. So many things that I never used before but that I now know I must learn.

One of the easier things I’ve tested is LAB colors. I won’t get into any technicalities but one can say that you get new palette of color to use. It is more diverse than the RGB that I usually work with but it isn´t a color range that will work wonder on all types of pictures.

I have tried it on 6 different pictures that I present here and the conclusion is that LAB is at its best when you have a picture with a color range of similar type like the bark of a tree or a sunset etc.
LAB really brings out the sun to its maximum in this picture taken in Botswana last year.

I have tried to do this in Adobe Camera RAW but I have never been able to do the sunset this beautiful. It was so easy to do this using LAB.

I choose this picture from the Okavango to see if LAB could bring out the different green colors in the picture. This is a more subtle way of using LAB but I must say that I am pleased with the end result because the picture was a bite dull from the start.

It has been most exciting to see the potential at hand and too see how I can work with pictures that I thought where useless like this picture of an Owl in Moremi Game Reserve.

I have worked with masks, layers and LAB in this picture. They hardest was to get rid of the excessive noise on the Owl. With a mask and some noise reduction in the different RGB channels I gave myself a good foundation to do some sharpening before I took it to LAB colors. Not the best picture for LAB but I did it to see what would happen with the picture. It gave it a certain shine to the Owl that I like.

I will certainly explore LAB more but I also need to work with all the other things in Photoshop.

Photo Gallery: LAB colors might do wonder for your pictures