Datasheet

There you have it. Your first steps in color correction involve controlling
lighting, calibrating your monitor, and having all the color profiles you need
for editing images and outputting them either for Web hosting or printing.
After you have these essentials in place, you can begin the task of color
correction.
Getting to Know the Language of Color
Color terms and definitions can be very confusing, but for this book, we use
the same terms and concepts that Adobe Photoshop Elements uses and
avoid all the fancy scientific stuff you really don’t need to know to edit your
images.
Color is defined by just three terms: hue, saturation, and brightness. In order
to make the concept of correcting color much easier to understand later in
the book, we also give you the definition of a complementary color, which
means the exact opposite (on the color wheel) of the color you’re looking at.
Stay awake because the following sections are really important.
Hue
Hue is the term used to name the actual color you’re looking at. Your eyes
perceive only three pure colors, but those three colors mix in your brain to
give you all the colors you actually see.
The human eye has special receptors called
cones. Cones come in three dif-
ferent kinds, each sensitive to a narrow portion of the light spectrum humans
can see. One cone type responds to short wavelength light and sees blue.
One cone type responds to middle wavelength light and sees green. The last
cone type responds to the longest wavelengths and sees red. Our eyes’ three-
color cone design is why your monitor can show you millions of colors, even
though it projects light in just three pure hues: red, green, and blue. These
colors are known as the
additive model.
Photoshop Elements works with color by mixing (adding) red, green, and
blue. You need to identify these hues in the same way that Photoshop
Elements does. Take a look at the color wheel in Figure 1-1.
Figure 1-1 shows a standard, simplified color wheel. The colors are as close
to the real monitor hues as we can show you in this book because of ink
limitations.
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Chapter 1: Understanding Color
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