Adobe Photoshop CS2 CLASSROOM IN A BOOK [Electronic resources]

Strategy for retouching

Adobe Photoshop provides a comprehensive set of color-correction tools for adjusting the color and tone of individual images. You can, for example, correct problems in color quality and tonal range created during the original photography or during image scanning, and you can correct problems in composition and sharpen the overall focus of the image.

Organizing an efficient sequence of tasks

Most retouching follows these eight general steps:

NoteLater in this book you'll use adjustment layers, which give you great flexibility to try out different correction settings without risking damage to the original image.

Adjusting your process for intended uses

The retouching techniques you apply to an image depend in part on how you will use the image. Whether an image is intended for black-and-white publication on newsprint or for full-color Internet distribution affects everything from the resolution of the initial scan to the type of tonal range and color correction that the image requires. Photoshop supports the CMYK color mode for preparing an image to be printed using process colors, as well as RGB and other color modes for Web and mobile authoring.

To illustrate one application of retouching techniques, this lesson takes you through the steps of correcting a photograph intended for four-color print publication.

For more information about CMYK and RGB color modes, see Lesson 16, "Producing and Printing Consistent Color."