Color Enhance


Blue Enhance | Green Enhance | Red Enhance | Skin Tone Enhance | Blue/Amber Grad | Warm/Cool

Blue Darken/Lighten

Note: Roll your mouse cursor over the above image to see the indicated PhotoKit Color effect.
Blue Darken
Blue Darken/Blue Lighten
The Blue Darken effect is very effective at darkening blue skies and increasing cloud contrast. It works by isolating the blue colors on two separate layers. The lower layer contains the main Blue Enhance effect. The default opacity is set to 50%. As you increase the opacity of this layer, the blue colors will darken and you should see more contrast appear between the clouds and the sky. Above this is the Blue Saturation layer. The default opacity for the Saturation layer is 25%. This provides a gentle saturation boost to the blues in the picture. By adjusting the layer opacity you can make the blue saturation stronger or weaker. The Blue Lighten effect will do the opposite and lighten the blue content, not just skies, but any blue color that you wish to make lighter.

Blue Darken + Mask/Blue Lighten + Mask
The Blue Enhance layer is automatically masked during the PhotoKit Color process and in most cases this does a very good job of deleting everything except those blue colors we wish to see enhanced. If you apply the Blue Darken + Mask or Blue Lighten + Mask effect, the mask is preserved as a layer mask, which masks the Blue Enhancement layer (the Blue Saturation layer does not require a mask). The reason we provide this additional effect is that some users may prefer to edit the mask to fine-tune this Color Enhance adjustment.

Blue Darken
Blue Darken + Mask

Top | Blue Enhance | Green Enhance | Red Enhance | Skin Tone Enhance | Blue/Amber Grad | Warm/Cool

Green Darken/Lighten

Note: Roll your mouse cursor over the above image to see the indicated PhotoKit Color effect.
Green Lighten
Green Darken/Lighten
The Green Lighten effect is very effective at lightening dark green colors, such as wooded landscape images. It works by isolating the green colors on two separate layers. The lower layer contains the main Green Enhance effect. The default opacity is set to 50%. As you increase the opacity of this layer, the green colors, especially the dark greens, will lighten. Above this is the Green Saturation layer. The default opacity for the Saturation layer is 25%. This provides a gentle saturation boost to the greens in the picture. By adjusting the layer opacity you can make the green saturation stronger or weaker. The Green Darken effect targets the green colors in an image and is also effective on landscapes and woodland scenes where you wish to make the green colors richer.

Green Darken + Mask/Green Lighten + Mask
The Green Enhance layer is automatically masked during the PhotoKit Color process and in most cases this does a very good job of deleting everything except those green colors we wish to see enhanced. If you apply the Green Darken + Mask/Green Lighten + Mask effect, the mask is preserved as a layer mask, which masks the Green Enhancement layer (the Green Saturation layer does not require a mask). The reason we provide this additional effect is that some users may prefer to edit this mask to fine-tune the Color Enhance adjustment.

Green Lighten
Green Lighten + Mask

Top | Blue Enhance | Green Enhance | Red Enhance | Skin Tone Enhance | Blue/Amber Grad | Warm/Cool

Red Darken/Lighten

Note: Roll your mouse cursor over the above image to see the indicated PhotoKit Color effect.
Red Lighten
Red Darken/Lighten
The Red Lighten effect is effective at lightening dark red colors, such as in the landscape shown here. It works by isolating the red colors on two separate layers. The lower layer contains the main Red Enhance effect. The default opacity is set to 50%. As you increase the opacity of this layer, the red colors, especially the dark reds, will lighten. Above this is the Red Saturation layer. The default opacity for the Saturation layer is 25%. This provides a gentle saturation boost to the reds in the picture. By adjusting the layer opacity you can make the red saturation stronger or weaker. The Red Darken effect produces the opposite effect, by selectively darkening the red colors in an image.

Red Darken + Mask/Red Lighten + Mask
The Red Enhance layer is automatically masked during the PhotoKit Color process and in most cases this does a very good job of deleting everything except those red colors we wish to see enhanced. If you apply the Red Darken+ Mask/Red Lighten + Mask effect, the mask is preserved as a layer mask, which masks the Red Enhancement layer (the Red Saturation layer does not require a mask). The reason we provide this additional effect is that some users may prefer to edit this mask to fine-tune the Color Enhance adjustment.

Red Lighten
Red Lighten + Mask

Top | Blue Enhance | Green Enhance | Red Enhance | Skin Tone Enhance | Blue/Amber Grad | Warm/Cool

Skin Tone Enhance

Note: Roll your mouse cursor over the above image to see the indicated PhotoKit Color effect.
Skin Tone Enhance
The Skin Tone Enhancement is designed to help correct reddish skin tone colors, a problem often associated with point and shoot digital cameras. The Skin Tone Enhance effect creates two layers. The lower layer contains the main Skin Tone Enhance effect. This layer can be used to lighten the skin tones by increasing the layer opacity beyond the default 50% opacity. Above this is the Yellow Tint layer. The default opacity for the tint layer is 0%. As you increase the opacity this will cause the skin tones to become more yellow. In most cases you should only want to increase the opacity of this layer to around 10-15%.

Skin Tone Enhance Masks
The Skin Tone Enhancement layers are automatically masked during the PhotoKit process and in most cases this does a very good job of deleting everything except the skin tone colors we wish to see enhanced. If you apply the Skin Tone Enhance + mask effect, the mask is preserved as a layer mask on both the Skin Lighten and Yellow Tint layers. The reason we provide this additional effect is that some users may prefer to edit this mask to fine-tune the Color Enhance adjustment. For example, in the above image I edited the Skin Lighten layer mask, by adding black paint to the background areas as was felt necessary so the skin tone enhancement effect was concentrated mainly on the skin tones only.

Skin Tone Enhance
Skin Tone Enhance + Mask

Top | Blue Enhance | Green Enhance | Red Enhance | Skin Tone Enhance | Blue/Amber Grad | Warm/Cool

Blue/Amber Grad

Note: Roll your mouse cursor over the above image to see the indicated PhotoKit Color effect.

Blue/Amber Grad
The Blue/Amber Grad offers a classic graduated filter effect that can be applied to any image in Photoshop. This is effect is most suited to sunny, blue sky landscapes such as the photograph shown here. There are three types of Blue/Amber Grad effect. The numbers indicate the ratio percentage of blue to amber color. So in the example above, a Blue coloring layer is applied to the top 70% and an Amber coloring layer is applied the bottom 30%. The Blue/Amber Grad ratios are: 50/50 and 30/70. The uppermost luminosity control layer preserves the tonal balance of the picture.

 


Top | Blue Enhance | Green Enhance | Red Enhance | Skin Tone Enhance | Blue/Amber Grad | Warm/Cool

Warm/Cool

Note: Roll your mouse cursor over the above image to see the indicated PhotoKit Color effect.
Warm/Cool Effects
The Warm/Cool effect comes in three strength settings. These enhance the shadows and highlights by creating an Amber layer that colorizes the highlights, and a Blue layer that colorizes the shadows. Use the layer opacity slider to adjust the balance between the shadow and highlight coloring. The uppermost luminosity control layer preserves the tonal balance of the picture. If you reduce the opacity of the Luminosity control layer you lose control of the tones, but will obtain a stronger coloring effect in the shadows and highlights.