Problems with Hue/Saturation

D
Posted By
Dharmashanti
Jul 12, 2007
Views
575
Replies
6
Status
Closed
I am working through a tutorial to create a fire image, but I’m having trouble when it comes to adjusting the Hue/Saturation. I’m using Photoshop CS2.

Here’s what I’m doing.

I’ve started with a new file in RGB. I start with a white background, invert it to black, then type some white text. I rasterize it. Rotate it 90 CCW. Apply the wind effect a few times. Rotate it back 90 CW. I then apply a Gaussian blur with a 7.5 radius. Everything is cool up to this point.

But when I open the Hue/Saturation dialog box, select Colorize and then set Hue to 40 and Saturation to 100, there is no visible effect. Everything is still black and white. I have double checked and quadruple checked everything I can think of with no luck. And I can’t find anything on the web addressing this issue. All I can think is there is some setting in some obscure menu.

Help!

Dharmashanti
Related Tags
hue problems saturation

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JR
John_R_Nielsen
Jul 12, 2007
I assume it’s this tutorial <http://www.photoshoptechniques.com/texp/fireptk.php>?

Sound like you may be omitting the part in step one where you merge the layers.
GA
George_Austin
Jul 12, 2007
You CANNOT change the saturation of a neutral color. The PS saturation algorithm cannot get a handle on neutral. If the neutral color is black or white, the algorithm shuts down. If it’s gray, you can bring the process back to life by slightly altering one of the channels so you do not start with 3 equal channel values—making it no longer strictly gray. With black or white, all three channels would have to be altered—none can be zero or 255. And the range over which you can increase saturation narrows to insignificance the closer any one of the channels is to zero or 255.
C
chrisjbirchall
Jul 12, 2007
What you say is true George – except when the Hue/Sat dialogue is in colorize mode. In this case you can apply a hue to all shades of grey.
GA
George_Austin
Jul 12, 2007
Chris,

Yeah, I slept on it and woke up realizing that I must not have checked the colorize box. Will take another look.

Thanks,

George
GA
George_Austin
Jul 12, 2007
When black is the starting color, the lightness is 0. In order to see any change from hue and saturation sliders, the lightness slider must be moved to a positive number. Else the zero lightness prevails and you’re completely blacked out.

When white is the starting color, the lightness is 100%. In order to see any change from hue and saturation sliders, the lightness slider must be moved to a negative number. Else the 100% lightness prevails and you’re completely snowed out.

One more thing: The saturation slider setting is not the saturation you’ll get. It is the percent of the color channel value gap between that value and 255 on the high side or between that value and 0 on the low side by which the gap is to be altered in attempting to increase/decrease saturation.
GA
George_Austin
Jul 13, 2007
Dharmashanti

The gussian blur is key here.

You started with only black and white, but the gaussian blur created gray edge gradients extending inward and outward 2.7 x the blur radius, with mid-gray (128) at the initial edge tapering exponentially to 255 on one side and 0 on the other. Within that 5.4-radii range (40 pixels at 7.5 blur radius), the hue and saturation sliders take effect (although hardly noticeable at the tapered ends). Tweak the blur radius to control this range. Works as expected for me.

If you see no effect—and I apologize for asking this—did you really check the Colorize box? Come on, now, I admitted failing to do so. It’s easy to forget to check that box because every time you exit and re-enter the Hue/Saturation dialog box, the default (unchecked) status of the Colorize box is re-instated. Although I know better, I got lulled into checking it once and carelessly thinking that status would persist for the session.

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