Luminosity Channel Play (Blurs & sharpening)

[Jason B]

Alcina asked me if I would do a tutorial on sharpening the luminosity channel and blurring the color channel of an image. I’m no graphic artist... like you guys I do it for fun. This was all picked in a book “hidden powers of photoshop elements 2.0”. I highly recommend this book to all elements users as it unlocks a lot of hidden powers that are normally only found in the full blown version of photoshop. Anyway, on with it (I snagged one of Alcina’s photos to use as an example).

To benefit the elements 2.0 users I’m going to extract the luminosity the long way (the only way in elements).

The first thing the “hidden powers” book recommends is general color correction. So I’m going to start there and show you the way Richard Lycnh recommends in his book.


Open image.

Duplicate image (for back-up and comparison). (Image > Duplicate Image).

 

[Jason B]

Step one will be a levels adjustment the way the book teaches it.
(Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Levels).

Okay, by default the levels box comes up set to RGB channel...

 

[Jason B]

Click the drop down menu and select the red channel histogram.

 

[Jason B]

We want to get rid of all gaps and tails in the histogram

 

[Jason B]

so adjust the sliders accordingly...

 

[Jason B]

Now back to the drop down menu and select the green channels histogram.

 

[Jason B]

Again, get ride of any gaps or tails in the green channel.

 

[Jason B]

Finally, go select the blue channels histogram from the drop down menu.

 

[Jason B]

Get rid of any tails or gaps.

 

[Jason B]

Click "OK" on the levels box.

Flatten image (Layer > Flatten Image)

Now that the general color correction is done, lets go extract that luminosity channel and go on to the sharpening.

Here's what we have...