Nikon 9235 Reference Manual - Page 64

Getting the Colors You Want: The Curves, Color Balance, and LCH Editor Palettes When scanning, you may come across images that are over- or under-exposed, obliterating details in highlights or shadows, or that show a general lack of contrast. You may also find that the colors are "flat" or unnaturally vivid, or that fluorescent lighting has given your photograph a greenish tinge. These flaws can be corrected using Nikon Scan's three color enhancement tools: Curves, Color Balance, and the LCH Editor. Of the three, the Color Balance palette is most useful when you want to make changes to brightness, contrast, and color balance that affect the entire image. This kind of adjustment may, however, result in loss of detail in highlights or shadows. The Curves tool, in contrast, allows adjustments to be made to specific portions of the tone range in highlights, mid-tones, and shadows. The LCH Editor is useful when adjusting the vividness, or saturation, of colors. It can also be used to map a specific range of colors in the original image to a different range of colors in the output. Curves The main editing tool in the Curves palette is the curve edit display, which contains a curve showing the relationship between input (the tone information in the image prior to editing) and output (how these tones will be represented after changes to curves are applied). Separate curves control the relationship between input and output for the image as a whole (the "master curve") and for each of the components, or "channels," in the current color model (red, green, and blue in the RGB model, or cyan, magenta, yellow, and black in the CMYK model; only one channel is available in the case of grayscale images). The default curve in each case is linear, meaning that tones will be output exactly as they are input. Current channel Curve edit display Reference:The Tool Chest 63