taking shadows out of pictures in photoshop

[dave milbut]

out of the shadows tutorial <http://aikodude.tripod.com/PSRemoveShadows/main.html>

[testpilot]

In Step 3,also consider Channel> Gray

[George Austin]

Dave,

What does the author means by "Set background channel to black" ? What if the background IS the image and there is no background "channel" per se? Must the background be converted to a layer and the background color be set to black?

I ask this, because my hopes for maybe miraculously salvaging some badly underexposed photos of people against a bright background were just dashed when I tried the technique.

Maybe I'm not applying the technique properly. Or maybe the photos just don't have shadow detail---which seems to be the case because no manipulation of the Curves curve in the shadows brings out usable contrast. However, for future candidate images of this type, I would at least like to know I am not mis-applying the method.

George

[Ron Hirsch]

I have no choice other than grey in PS 7 when I get to step 3.

Is it possible that an earlier version had the choice of setting the
background channel to black?

It does seem to work just fine with "grey".

Ron Hirsch