Where is it getting difficult, what are you masking and what do you want to change?
No one answer ... it varies by image. For example, in the shot of the tree I mentioned, there was a gradient from the center to the edges in darkness due to a spot on the tree. I would like to have balanced that gradient, partially, and then lightened overall to compensate for the underexposure. I had no clue about how do to anything except put in a gradient that would make it darker.
Or, with the same image, the color balance was screwy, overly orange ... possibly from my having the color balance on the camera set to something I shouldn't. I tried created a color adjustment layer, but I sure couldn't figure out any way to move the levers that did anything but make it worse.
Or, a more general issue where it seems to me that what I should be moving toward is an untouched background layer, above which there are a series of other layers, each of which applies a single type of change -- noise reduction, spot cleanup, levels, color, mask, etc. I have managed a few of these, usually by doing something like making a copy of a background layer, applying a mask, croping to extact the area of focus, then modifying this extract. This works for things like creating a UF floating head over a black background, but it doesn't let me do things like, say, try doing a contrast adjustment followed by some other adjustments, each on their own layer, and then shutting off the contrast layer to see what it looks like without that piece. |
