Topaz Labs Blog: Feedback on HSL Color Adjustment tip by Shannon Rose

Education & Training
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In the latest newsletter I got from Topazlabs I clicked on a link to a tip about the HSL Color Adjustment by Shannon Rose. I hadn’t even been aware of the Topazlabs blog, so I was delighted to see all the information available there. I couldn’t find a way to leave a comment there, though. If it is possible, I hope someone will point out how to do it.

But back to the HSL Color tip…

Shannon did a great job displaying the color changes that Topaz Studio is capable of using the HSL Color Adjustment. She showed how the HSL adjustment could be added multiple times, each time with its own mask in order to affect specific parts of the image. However, the part of changing the color itself consisted of reading out the values that had to be entered in the Saturation, Lightness, etc fields in order to achieve the exact color change in her image. She did not say how she decided upon those values, leaving a beginner to wonder what to do with a different image and different colors to change.

I hope she does another video with more emphasis placed on experimenting creatively with sliders and talking about how a color in the image may be made up of several basic colors that all can be adjusted to achieve a new look.

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I too am not a fan of this “painting by numbers” approach being taken recently. The numbers are only relevant to the image being worked on and don’t tell me anything about what the sliders are doing, or why I would want to use them. I don’t find these videos particularly helpful.

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I’ve watched some of these videos, too, and I get the impression that the numbers are given after the demonstrator has pre-evaluated what it is they want to show by trial and error, and having arrived at an acceptable result, noted the numbers so they can be quoted when recreating the effect for the video. To whit they serve no other meaningful purpose.

For you and I, trial and error will suffice.

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