Lightness adjustment in HSL Dialog

[LeviFiction]

With this new image the effect is less pronounced. 202x522 is a good example of a white pixel being turned grey. And the entire blue circle is another good example of grey and white pixels turning black as it completely loses all of its anti-aliasing and becomes jagged.

As for sampling, I just zoomed way in so I could move the eye dropper over the area easily with little fuss. And then I just had to turn the adjustment layer on and off to see the differences in value with the eye-dropper. In PSP2020 (don't know which version it started in) one of the options directly on the tool options bar for the eye dropper is displaying the colors in various formats. In previous versions that don't have this option, you could set all display properties to be in HSL in the general preferences.

[LeviFiction]

I just asked some people on other forums what Affinity Photo is doing and they informed me that although we're selecting the blue hues that gets translated to the RGB color space. So we're affecting the blue colors directly, the green colors slightly, and not the red colors at all. This would explain the greyscale. There is far less red in the blue clouds and as the blue and green are decreased in luminosity they approach the lower red value. Doesn't explain why the blue doesn't go completely black but it at least makes sense and matches our observations.

[migf1]

Thank you Levi,

seems like the whole thing is too messy. It started when I recently tried to transfer to PSP some Ps color manipulation techniques, and it simply seems like it's not possible. I am yet to find alternative native PSP ways allowing me to do the same things with full non-destructive control.

One such example is converting color images to dramatic b/w, which involves removing luminance from cooler tones and boosting it for warmer tones.

PS. Sorry about the color-wheel image and thank you... I did saw the point you made with it. The original image is 1920x1080 but the forum doesn't allow pics higher than 1000px, so the 1st time I had it resized to 1000px height. The 2nd time (besides correcting the yellow-swatch codes) I shrunk the canvas height instead, hence the crisper anti-aliasing.

[LeviFiction]

You can still remove the lightness from the blues but what you will be doing is only slightly reducing lightness, just a tiny bit, and removing saturation completely.

[migf1]

I've tried, along with many other experiments but sadly it doesn't seem possible in PSP.

For instance, for the dramatic b&w example I gave above, this video is pretty close to what I'm doing in Ps too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6atbz0mEl8

I know PSP comes with many ready-made B&W effects, however the above workflow (besides being really fast & effective) gives me full, non-destructive control on each color channel separately.

if you know of ways doing similar things in PSP, please (please) share. I'm not fond at all of switching to PS when I need that kind of control. I would really (really) love doing it in PSP instead.

[Jean-Luc]

is there an easy way to replace Ps workflow involving brightness removal from certain colors, with something that gives the same or similar results in PSP?

The closest I get using Layer Blend Mode (sort of PS BlendIf):

[migf1]

Thank you Jean-Luc,

I am well aware of Blend Ranges, and of Ps Blend-If (btw, for anyone interested there is a nice video about it on youtube especially for PSP: https://youtu.be/TA7JF6u9HN8).

Unfortunately, blend ranges don't really help in this case. The HSL adjustment layer with the lightness slider working like in Ps, AF (or those android/iphone apps mentioned in that video) is way more easy, clean and most importantly time saving.

What I'll try next is to use 3 Curves (or Levels) adjustment layers above the main image, set them to Luminance blending mode so they only affect the lightness, and then try to manually decrease/increase the intensity of the desired color channel on each one of them (it will require working separately on the 2 halfs of the graph for each color: 1 half for the targeted color and 1 half for its complementary color). I think that's a more "natural" approach, but still much more time consuming compared to a single HSL adjustment layer.

I'll let you guys know, however I'll probably won't try it until tomorrow or sometime next week.

Thank you for the reply!

[migf1]

I just tried it, I had to (LOL)

Works nice, and only 1 Curves adjustment layer is needed. This is a quick go with modified reds and blues only (and their complementary colors) in Luminance blending, after simply de-saturating with an HSL adjustment layer...

Doing it all in the HSL adjustment is still better and more intuitive, but this is the best alternative for me...I am happy with it.
Before, After: https://gyazo.com/3e5a6b69c3bbae1ea73a7d42ee4f8f82