I’ve recently been introduced to a new concept in post-processing my photos. It’s not a new concept, really, just new to me. It’s using the LAB colorspace, one of the options for processing images in Photoshop.
Just what is the LAB colorspace? A colorspace is a way of representing colors in printed or on-screen format. The one we commonly know and use is RBG, which stands for Red, Green, Blue. This is the colorspace used to make prints of photos or present them on the internet. Another colorspace is CMYK, which stands for cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. The CMYK colorspace is used in the printing industry for books, brochures, and the like, because it results in more realistic colors than RGB in that application.
The LAB colorspace is another way of representing colors. LAB works a little differently than the other two colorspaces. L stands for lightness, A for a magenta-green spectrum, and B for a yellow-blue spectrum. Unlike RGB and CMYK, LAB separates the lightness portion of an image from its colors.
While RGB and CMYK colors can be viewed on screen or in print, the same is not true of the LAB colorspace. While there are great advantages to editing images in LAB, the results must be reconverted to one of the other colorspaces in order to be seen.
So, what’s the point? The point is that an image edited in LAB colorspace can be manipulated in ways not possible in the other colorspaces. The result can be images that have qualities that can’t be achieved any other way.
I’ve been playing around with LAB and here present some of my early results. I’m still very much a rookie with this mode of editing, but I find it to be creative and spirit-freeing. I hope to do a lot more of it and, over time, grow in sophistication in its use.
I’m drawing on two excellent resources as my guide. Dan Margulis’s Photoshop LAB Color is the master reference work on the subject. Though dated, it’s a thorough guide to all things LAB and I’m studying it to learn all I can about this fantastic tool. In the meantime, Harold and Phyllis Davis’s The Photoshop Darkroom gives a practical introduction to applying LAB processing to image editing that is a good starting point.
What do you think about these early images? Let me know your reaction in the comments.