by Rolando Gomez
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If you’re like most “Adobe Photoshop” enthusiasts or even a serious expert, you’ll probably find yourself editing your images with your computer desktop wallpaper in the background. Most people don’t have gray or black desktop wallpaper, they usually have some favorite scene or photo of their loved ones filled with brilliant and saturated colors.
While this is fine, after all it’s your computer, chances are this will hurt you when editing your images in your favorite imaging program. Not to worry, there is a work around when using Adobe Photoshop, all it takes is one key, the “F” key.
By simply pushing the “F” key, you’ll instantly change your background wall paper to gray first, then if you hit the “F” key again, it goes to black. Once you close out Photoshop or hit the “F” key again while still in Photoshop, you’ll find your background will reset to the original wall paper.
There is a reason behind this “F” key function. One, the human eye and brain “perceive” color often by surrounding colors. If you have a darker color around your main image, your main image will lighten up, and if you have a lighter color around your main image, your main image will darken up. Colors are also interpreted differently when surrounded by other colors, sometimes by a color cast when light is reflected from a surface, sometimes by the brain when it can’t distinguish color sandwiched between other colors.
As an example, look at the image below. If you were to cover up the very last rows so none of the green rows are connected, you’ll see (perceive) that the green rows on the left are darker than the green rows on the right—the right appearing lighter than the left. Not so, when you uncover the bottom rows, you’ll see the connection, both greens are identical.
 Click on the image for larger view, new window opens. |
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Personally, I work with the “F” key in the gray mode when doing final edits on an image, as the gray is more representative to the common 18% gray reference used in camera and flash meters, and gray is in fact neutral. The ideal gray is known in the industry as Munsell gray, usually ranked as N5 through N7**, however I don’t recommend you paint your walls this color unless you’re working in a professional prepress environment. You can eliminate some of these perception issues by purchasing a nice, portable viewing table like those from Graphic Lite Technologies, or GTI.
When you view your prints, such as on a GTI PDV style viewer, not only are you viewing your images in properly balanced 5000 K (Kelvin) temperature light, but you should have no other prints next to the one you are judging. This inexpensive viewer along with good viewing habits and post production habits when working in Photoshop will make your prints look consistently better and normally the end result is you’ll save on paper and ink as you’ll have less test prints.
While the “F” key can make your image editing process more accurate, you can multiply the “F” key’s efficiency by hitting the “tab” key after hitting the “F” key. By hitting the “tab” key, you’ll at first be shocked when all of sudden your tool bar, palettes and menu bars disappear, don’t worry, they’ll come back, just hit the “tab” key again. For the ultimate viewing of your images, use the keys sequentially, learn those shortcuts and you’ll find yourself working faster so when you’re done editing your images you can close Photoshop and enjoy loved ones or your favorite scene once more.
**Munsell Gray information and application can be found on page 291 of the Photoshop 7 Savvy book from Sybex--read Rolando's Review of this book.
©2004 Rolando Gomez
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