Self Motivation - Interview with Dennis Lee Hughes

Jozsef:  Since I always had a natural attraction to figuring out what makes us "tick" I decided to run my own little study about self motivation. Main reason being, is that people truly like the idea of self motivation and the idea of being an amazing person. That is what I see on Facebook all day long, people posting stuff as "I can. I will" and such. I guess everybody knows what I'm talking about. I never wanted to be a party breaker so I usually shut up with my opinion because it would go like this: "Ok! So you find those words inspiring and you believe that its true that you can do something if you really want. But does that picture you shared truly motivates you to take action as well?" Well 90% of cases I guess it does not! Words will never change your life. Motivation is an attitude towards all aspects of your life, I guess. So here is my own so called study! First of all I found someone who obviously is a great self motivator. He would not be one of the best artist out there if not!
DENNIS LEE HUGHES, born in Neunkirchen, Saarland, Germany, and currently living in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He is one of the best artistic logo designers out there. There are lots of very good guys (and girls) out there but he is ONE OF THE BEST!
Before we jump into what kept you motivated along these years to keep drawing and perfect your skills, I want to ask Were you a good student?:)) Obviously we are motivated to do something because we love doing it. But how did you deal with stuff you felt you have to do, not truly wanted to do. Like learning for exams. Did you have a special strategy? My strategy was to try and learn as less as possible, trying to simplify all the information into something I can understand then at the exam just building information up from that. While most people most likely where trying to recall as much as they can from what they learned I tried to build up from that simplified version. It worked for me!

Dennis:   Well, my academic performance throughout my earlier years was hit or miss. There were always certain classes I excelled at and others… I simply wasn’t interested in (the kind of classes I usually spent drawing on my binders!) As I grew older, I became more aware of the responsibility I had as a student to perform at my best and gain as much as possible from that experience; and that philosophy has helped craft the very motivation I possess today! It was however, always more difficult for me to memorize the facts and statistics the school system deemed us necessary to know. Like you, I attempted rather to absorb the underlying meaning of anything I read or learned, and internalize that lesson. Usually, those tedious, mundane details would manifest themselves in the process.

Jozsef:   Talent. I see it as one of the biggest excuses ever invented by mankind. We always call people that are amazing at something talented so we don't have to face the fact that we would be able to do the same exact thing if we try hard enough! Time+practice=skills and experience. The only thing that makes a big difference, in my opinion is creativity. You are one of the best because of your creative ways. Kobe Bryant is the best because of his creative way of playing basketball, so the word talent is missing from my vocabulary. I'm just guessing now, but you probably draw since you were a young kid. Looking back at all of your progress probably you never believed back then you are going to come so far, right? What triggered your interest? We feel motivated to do something because we love doing it. So how did it feel back then? And is it still the same feeling even today? The word I was trying to integrate here is excitement. I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but that is why I feel motivated to do something.

Dennis:   Yes! I couldn’t have said it better myself. Too often do I hear the words, “Oh, that’s nice! I could never do something like that.” I think a lot of people limit themselves to what they are used to; to what feels comfortable. I believe each of us is capable of much more than most people realize. One does not, however, achieve success at a certain skill set simply because the ambition is there. As you said, it takes time and practice, but primarily, in my opinion, patience! I’ve been drawing ever since I can remember, and my personal experience with art is testament that no one achieves perfection overnight. I suppose that fact is troubling to some, and, for them, perhaps even reason enough to abandon pursuit. No artist I’ve ever heard of paints the Sistine Chapel on their parents ceiling the very first time they take up the brush. The keyword here is progress! Frustrating as it may be, honing your skill will take time. I remember when I was younger, I spent hours upon hours drawing the Metallica logo, the Slayer logo, the Morbid Angel logo, the Emperor logo. As I became bored with that, I began to design my own logos and artwork, pushing myself to create something special. I soon began to create logos and artwork for friends bands, and their friends bands and, as a teenager, this was very exciting for me, because my art was to be displayed on cd’s, shirts, flyers, et cetera. And now years later, I’ve designed logos and art for people/bands from all over the world. So you see, it’s the progression that really keeps me going. The constant strive to reach higher. Although I’m struck with the occasional artists block, consistently trying to reach out to more people and knowing there are no limits, is what stays the motivation and the excitement!

Jozsef:   Well,where I was going with this, getting back to exams and such, you will only truly feel motivated to learn and enjoy doing so if you love it.If you don't, then trick yourself into believing that you truly love learning.Sounds sort of crazy and it is not that easy to do but it works.We are lying to our self even on a daily basis I guess. It is sort of in our nature.So I believe we can trick our self as well to believe we love doing something that we actually don't.Just step into a role.
Yet talking about roles.One of the common mistakes lots of people do is wanting to be as good as someone else at least in my opinion.If I where to say I want to be just as good as you are the next question would obviously be how on earth am I going to accomplish that?! The true answer for me would be to just try and push my own current limits and celebrate each small success as a great victory without wanting to be just as good as you and Christophe Szpajdel are.But that is me.What about you? Did you dream of being a great logo designer way back years ago? Did you want to be just as great as Christophe Szpajdel? Or you just simply did your thing and sort of naturally progressed to your current level?

Dennis:   In life you are always going to come across something you’re not particularly thrilled to do. Or you might think it’s a waste of time. In some cases that’s true. I’ve always held the notion that no matter how unpleasant an experience may be, or however upset you are with an undertaking, the simple act of doing it will ultimately lead to a better understanding of yourself and the world around you. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger right? I, myself, have come across unfortunate situations that carved the path to enlightenment in one way or another. You will always make connections you otherwise would not have, and those moments will eventually become a major stepping stone in that progression I mentioned earlier.
Conversely, you will always have your inspirations; be it art, music, sports, et cetera. The positive influences you chose to help shape who you are; some of the aspects of life that you can control. I always chose to surround myself with a myriad of diverse and conventionally conflicting sources of inspiration in an attempt to absorb the many perspectives the world has to offer. And I must mention art in particular! In regards to typography, Christophe Szpjadel’s art became my greatest source of inspiration; a style he pioneered, fusing Art Noveau, Art Deco, Old English, and of course his own, unrivaled touch of darkness. There were, however, numerous other sources of inspiration throughout the years, including several other logo artists, calligraphers, musicians, painters, engravers, photographers, too numerous to mention here. And of course, friends and family. My personal studies as well have played a huge part in determining what you would call “my style”. Influences ranging from primitive studies to advanced technology; the natural world to architecture; the occult to quantum physics; conclusively, the study of the relationship between microcosm and macrocosm. I don’t think I ever made the conscious decision to one day become an artist, but rather, the decisions I made just seemed to fall into place in the perfect order allowing me to express all of my experiences and knowledge through a precise and determined, yet creative and unlimited medium: Art!

Jozsef:   I'm starting to run out of ideas, probably this will be one of the last questions.Did you ever deal with negative feedback? People telling you that you are never going to be what you truly want to be? Give up drawing because that shit is for children?:)) Stuff like that.How did you deal with that? I had my share of that as well."you only think you are good at Photoshop"(while I never ever said I am good at Photoshop) "you will never be a true Photoshop expert" "you will never learn that trick on the skateboard"bla bla bla...It is hard not to take it personal but I prefer to listen to my inner voice.Oh there is one more "That girl is not for you" Well why? Because others say so? I try to have the "Its time to show these bastards that they are wrong"attitude.Sometimes hard to do with all of these people trying to place those limiting thoughts into your mind.These negative opinions just show how self limiting people can be.It is they're own opinion that reflects they're own limiting character.

Dennis:   Unfortunately, negative feedback is something we as humans will always experience. Someone is always going to have an issue with what you do or how you do it, and try to drag you down in the process. It’s a shame really, but I, for one, have always found criticism to be somewhat motivating. I often ask my friends what they think of a certain piece of art… and usually ask them to scrutinize it! In a way it’s natural selection. How can we progress if we do not find our flaws and resolve them? The only way to improve on whatever craft or trade you practice is to keep pushing your limits and eliminate your weak points. That’s not to say that those who constantly belittle or doubt the efforts of others have their own issues, but at the risk of impending psychoanalysis… let’s leave it alone.

Jozsef:   And finally. How does your self motivator character reflect in everyday life? Do you try to have a positive attitude? Are you feeling happy each morning when you wake up, thinking that it is going to be a great day so much to do, new stuff to learn? Not all of our days can be like that but sometimes that is exactly how I feel.You can also add anything else you feel should be said yet I did not ask.

Dennis:   Good question. Well, my days are so jam-packed that I’d barely have the time to be unhappy were a reason to present itself! Ha! Alas, I’m only human, and there are those days I feel overwhelmed and unmotivated with an underlying attitude of “Who the fuck cares?” But I suppose everyone is allowed a day like that every once in a while. And then… push on! The trick is not to let it become a habit! I believe it’s important, nay, absolutely necessary, to take a break from time to time, take a few steps back, and take the time to clear your head and prioritize what should be focused on, what can wait, and, perhaps most importantly, ask yourself “Am I enjoying this?” “What is my goal?”

Masking hair with Photoshop

I guess the title says it all.While extracting people the hardest part of it always is the extraction of hair because most of the time you can't draw by hand a selection that will yield convincing enough results.Here is the image I will be using.You have to admit(because you don't want to disagree with me if you know what is good for you!) that she is a very, very sexy girl!

Probably the first question that pops up in your mind is "What is her phone number?!". Well that is what I am trying to figure out as well.Since in this country all mobile numbers start with 07 it only leaves me with roughly 100 million possibilities and a huge phone bill if I try all the possibilities out.
Alright! I will finally get to the point.The answer is CONTRAST! You need some contrast to start with in order to make an extraction possible.That is why they use green or blue screens in film making as well.The image above was not shot with a green screen in the background but because she has dark hair,there still is enough contrast to perform a good extraction.Blond hair would mean we are in deep crap since the color of the hair would be very close to the color of the wall in the background.Probably I will get back to this in the future with an example like that.So lets get down to business.I will be working in RGB color mode.Since images that come from digital cameras or from the web are all in RGB mode no adjustments are needed after opening the image but in case you don't know from where you can change color spaces,it is in the upper most menu bar, Image/Mode.Here are the three color channels that contain the color information of the image in RGB mode.
This is the red channel:

green:

blue:

You can find these under the channels tab next to the Layers panel, or you can go to Window/Channels in case you can't find it.The lightest parts in these channels represent the pixels that contain most of that specific color.So the skin is very bright in the red channel because skin tones contain a lot of red.What I'm trying to find out by looking at these is what channel has the most contrast between the hair and the background.I guess I will work with the red channel but green could be an option as well.First of all I will unlock the Background layer because I will apply a mask to it after my selection will be ready.You can't apply a mask to a locked layer.To do that I will double click the background layer and hit ok in the dialog box that pops up.Now it will be called Layer 0 and the lock will disappear.

I will go to Image/Calculations.A dialog box will pop up.I will choose Red from the drop down menus and a blend mode of multiply.With other images some experimentation will always be required in order to further enhance the contrast between the hair and the background.

Yet it may not look like there would be much contrast between the hair and the background,but watch what happens if I check both invert check boxes.Sometimes it works better with only one of them checked or you might not need them at all.By making the hair white it gets me closer to what I want to achieve because in order to create a selection I will need to have the hair white.But you can always invert the new channel itself that will get created,that is why you need to set the result to New channel.Anyway by inverting it also helped me create more contrast.Once you hit ok a new alpha channel will be created,you can see it in the channels panel.

Next I could use Curves or Levels in order to try and make the background pure black.I guess I will use Levels.It really does not matter since I will use the eyedroppers that are present in both the Levels and Curves dialog.I will click with the black eyedropper on a lighter part of the background to make that tone the black point of the image.This will push most pixels from the background into the black area.

Now the alpha channel looks like this

Next I will simply take the brush tool and paint the rest of the background black and the hair white.While working on a channel you can only use black,white or shades of gray.Hit "D" to set back your foreground and background colors to black and white.Hit "B"for the brush tool,or select it from the tools panel.You will always be painting with the foreground color which should be black after hitting "D".In order to swap the foreground with the background color you can hit "x" and you will be painting with white.

However there is some fine detail that should be turned into white but it is to complicated to get it accurately with the brush tool.I will hit Ctrl+L again and this time use the white eyedropper to turn that detail into white.

In order to transform this into a selection you have to Ctrl+click the thumbnail of the alpha channel.This will load the lighter pixels as a selection.Now you have to click on the top most channel the one labeled RGB in order to go back to the color version of the image.This will deactivate the alpha channel but keep the selection.

Click back on the Layers tab next to the channels tab or go to window/layers.Click on the mask button at the bottom of the layers panel and this will create a mask for the image from the selection.This means everything that falls out of the selection will be invisible(but not deleted).Once the mask is applied you should introduce transparency in the image.

After creating the mask it should be active by default but you could also click on it to make sure it is selected.Now with the brush tool I painted back in the rest of the body and adjusted a few edges at the hair.Painting with white will make detail visible again,painting with black will hide.Use "X " to swap your foreground and background color when needed.

We lost some of the tiny detail at the edges but I can live with that.I have my own technique for bringing back some of that very fine detail as well.But it is late and I will stop here.There will be a part two to this explaining those steps as well.The girl is ready know to be used on other backgrounds by moving this layer 0 into a new document that contains the new background or I could Import a new image into this document as well.You should click and drag the new image under layer 0 in the Layers panel else it will sit above and cover the person you extracted.(just in case you did not know that!)You will also have to scale or rotate if needed.

And here is a more finished version that turned out not looking to great,but anyway!

Sepia toning with Photoshop

Meet Cyborg Octopus!A Deathcore band from the state of California.You can find them on youtube if you are into Deathcore and surely you wont be disappointed! It is one of the great things about being friends with "The Lord of the Logos" Christophe Szpajdel.I have the chance to get in contact with people from all across the globe.He is the one who created the bands logo.And I did this:

But getting back to the Sepia effect.It is one of those effects that most people will say "What can be that hard at it?".Well I'm telling you there is nothing hard about it.The only limit is your creativity.With an effect so over used like Sepia you have to get a little creative to get an effect that is a little bit different and more interesting that most of the sepias you see out there.It is really not about the methods,it is about the outcome.Most of the great looking images out there are not the result of one adjustment or filter applied,they are the result of a combination of adjustments or filters and maybe local adjustments.So here is how mine is put together.

Yes we can argue about how this does not look that different of most sepias you have seen,but it is a combination of adjustments that allowed me to be more creative,and helped me achieve a result that looks more cool then if I would have applied a brown tone to it only.Oh! And I did replace the sky as well.I figured a more cloudy sky would look great with this image.I will write one about replacing the sky in the near future.
The first thing that I did was to hit ctrl+J.That will duplicate my image,so now I have two copies sitting on top of each other.I set the blend mode of the duplicate on soft light.It is a nice and quick method of increasing contrast.

The color looks a little bit harsh.I will use a Vibrance adjustment to desaturate a little the over saturated colors.The vibrance adjusment exists since version CS4 of Photoshop.The vibrance slider can saturate muted colors or desaturate over saturated colors depending on which way you drag it.I already have all my layers created so I am only walking you through on how I created them.If you don;t know how to create an adjustment layer here it is.Click on the round half black half white button at the bottom of the layers panel and choose vibrance from the dialog that pops up.

In the adjustment panel that pops up I dragged the vibrance slider to the left to decrease the saturation of the over saturated colors.It ends up creating a nice effect.
Next I created a Black and White adjustment layer.You can create it the same way as the vibrance adjustment but this time you have to choose Black and White from the pop up.And this is my favorite method to add the brown sepia tint to an image.If you check the tint radio button and double click the tint color swatch the color picker will pop up.From there you can choose what ever color you would like to add to the image.I went with a dark brown.With the color sliders I can adjust what lightness level gets assigned to each main color in the image.That means I can assign a dark gray to the reds or a light gray if I want too.So a heck of a lot of control just from this panel.This is why it is my favorite method.So you can see that I played around with the color sliders as well.You could use that hand tool in the upper left corner of the panel to drag straight on the image to adjust the luminance levels.Dragging to the left on an area of the image will make those tones darker dragging to the right will make them brighter.This way you don't have to guess which slider will affect that area more.

Next I added a curves adjustment layer to add even more contrast to the image.You ca do that by placing nodes on the diagonal line.That means clicking on the line will add a node.The down left end of the line represent black,the upper right end white.The rest all all the other luminosity levels in between black and white.Clicking and dragging those nodes to the right will darken the tones from that area,dragging them to the left will brighten.You can also use the pencil tool from the panel to draw the curve or use the hand tool to drag on the image itself.

And finally I added a photo filter adjustment.Here is the only place in Photoshop where you will see the name sepia.It is a preset that adds a brown tint to an image.But I never use it.I used the Cooling filter (LBB) from the preset drop down.I wanted to add a subtle  bluish tint.And in my opinion it makes the image look better.And tho it has a bluish tint as well now I guess there won't be anybody saying "Hey,this is a split toned image not a sepia!"

Toxic Look with Photoshop

There was a few years back when I read about the so called "toxic look"on the net.It is called that way because in the dark room they used to use some toxic chemicals to create the effect.I have seen back then a tutorial on how to create a similar effect in Photoshop.They used curves in order to manipulate the RGB channels.So I do not completely understand what is exactly what they tried to achieve in the dark room,to add some sort of a tint to a colored image,or to replace some of the colors to create a more surreal effect.Curves is a great tool but in case I want to change some of the colors in an image to something else I like having more control then that.How well does my final result fit the "toxic look" profile or not I don't know,but here it goes!For this example I will show the already finished product with its layers and all and walk you through on how I created it just to try out that format as well,so here is how my layers panel looks like with the finished product.

I will Alt+click the eye icon of the Background layer,witch contains the image itself, to make all layers but my background invisible.This reveals the image in its original form.

The next step is creating a Selective Color adjustment layer.Selective color is mainly there to help us optimize our images for print.That is why we only have CMYK sliders in the Selective color panel.So as an example.RGB black would look more like a dark gray in CMYK.That in the case of 3 color printers.Those printers use,(or used to use because nowadays we have 4 color printers or some high end  printers use even more),Cyan Yellow and Magenta to mix colors.So using 100% cyan+100%Yellow+100%Magenta would try to simulate black but would end up looking as dark gray.This is called a process black.But adding black to a printer first of all makes it use less of the CMY and helps create more rich blacks.K from CMYK stands for keying.Black is known as the keying color,because the CMY plates are keyed with the key of the black plate.But using just black ink for printing black sometimes is not enough,well probably because the paper absorbs the black ink and then it becomes gray,or I don't know.But when using rich blacks first a layer of CMY is applied then on top a layer of black witch then absorbs all light reflected of the paper resulting in deep black. .So to make blacks more black on print we need to create a custom rich black.We can do that by adding more yellow or cyan and Magenta to our black.And Selective Color makes that possible.But!Do not take things that i say about printing as words from the holy bible.Sometimes I just feel like even I don't know what the hell I am talking about.Anyway we are not going to be using selective Color to optimize colors for print.First ,to create a Selective Color adjustment layer click on the round half black half white button at the bottom of the layers panel and choose Selective color.

I obviously only have to turn it back on because it is just invisible.I can do that by clicking the area where the visibility eye ball show be at.And here is the panel that will pop up,in the image below.And even tho no sliders where moved my image changed.If you look at the upper part of the panel there is a drop down menu.By default it will pop up set to red.But it is not the reds I wanted to work on.It is the black and the white that I altered.

So if I switch from reds to black and then white these are the settings that I have used.Of course you can try and experiment with all the colors available,as I did as well.I wanted to change the skin tone as well but Selective Color did not get me the result I was after.Maybe I did not try hard enough but I switched tactics for that one.You will see that as well shortly.

I obviously switched blacks with a tint of green.I also added some more black,you can see that the black slider is also moved to the right to keep the darkest tones black,if not they would also be green.For the highlights I created a yellow color.If you are wondering why the white in the eyes did not change,that is because I masked the effect out from the eyes.The result was not that great on the eyes as you will see in the image below,so I decided to work on them separately.Just in case you don't know that white rectangle on the adjustment layer is a mask.Each adjustment layer gets automatically created with a mask attached.We can selectively hide the effects of an adjustment layer by painting black on the image while the mask is selected.Hit D on the keyboard,this will reset your colors to foreground black and background white colors.Hit B to select the brush tool,or choose it from the tool box,adjust the brush size and hardness by right clicking on the image and then paint over the area you want to mask out.Here is how the effect looked like on the eyes without a mask.

Next in the layer stack is a hue and saturation adjustment.I chose that to alter the skin tones.A hue and saturation adjustment you create the same way as the selective color,but instead of that you choose hue and saturation.

And once again,even tho the sliders in my example are not moved still the skin tones have changed.On top of the Hue/Sat panel there is a drop down menu as well.Right now is set to master.But obviously skin tones in general contain a lot of reds.So I changed it from master to red.In the image bellow you can see that after I switched it to red I also moved those small triangles from the lower color spectrum further from each other to increase the range of what Photoshop includes as red from the image.This step was necessary for a smoother result.Else it would have not changed all of the skin tones.

Now all what is left to do is the eyes.For that I will create a new layer by clicking the new layer button at the button of the layers panel or by holding down shift+ctrl+alt+N.After that I randomly chose a yellowish color by clicking on the foreground color swatch located at the down right corner of the soft interface.Then with the brush tool,hit B on the keyboard,I just painted over the eyes.Here is how the eyes look like now.

Now set the layer blend mode to multiply.

Now this does not look good at all.Well you cold see that there is an other adjustment layer above the eye color layers.I like to call this type of adjustment layers controllers.In this case we will create a hue and sat adjustment layer that will be clipping to the layer bellow it.That means it will affect only that particular layer,in my case the eye color layer.In order to create an adjustment layer that will clip to the layer bellow first hold down the alt button,then click and HOLD down the mouse button,if you let go the fly out will disappear.From the list choose Hue and Saturation.That means push the mouse forward while keeping the button down and let go when the cursor is over the hue and saturation option.In the dialog box that pops up make sure you check the use previous layer to create clipping mask radio button.Now I will turn on my controller so you can see the adjustments.I only worked on master,so no "dirty"tricks this time.

And that is it.I also added some text as it always seems to make an image more interesting for people.I believe that with tis text lots of die hard hip-hop fans would start sharing this on facebook if I make it public.But creating that text effect is a subject for an other story!

Color Correction with Photoshop CR and Lightroom

Let's take a look at this picture with a retard thinking he will impress some chicks on facebook if he acts all hard and cool with a cigarette in his mouth while wearing 3d glasses.Yes,that's me! We where at the cinema to see The Avengers.It was sick! But the problem with taking pictures in the parking lot at evening is the bluish color cast you might end up with.I don't want to state that I am a true master of color corrections,I find this often times the hardest part of touching up an image.But the basic rule is this.Each color has its opposite,so at the right amount they just knock each other out.Red with cyan,green with magenta,blue with yellow.So basically we would have to add some yellow to knock the blue out.We will create a curves adjustment layer.The reason why I prefer curves is the control we have,while the color balance adjustment allows us only linear control,that means we can drag sliders to the left or right,adjusting curves offers us a lot more control over the end result.
However just a color correction without any local adjustment will almost never be perfect,or at least for me they almost never are.So often times a little bit more work is required.


Method no.1


I will create a curves adjustment layer by hitting the new adjustment layer button at the bottom of the layers panel.It is that half black half white round button.

From the drop down(highlighted with red in the image bellow) I will choose blue.Tho we can place up to 32 points on a curve,as far as I know,I will place only one in the middle,and drag that to the right.This will start adding yellow and it will knock out the blue.I stopped at the point from where the image will start having a yellowish tint.We could obviously add more point to have more control over the amount of blue we are subtracting from the shadows and highlights,but this looks just fine to me.There is only one more thing I want to make,to brighten the image a little bit.

Tho I guess the smartest thing to do would be to do the tonal adjustment first,that means to brighten the image and only after that the color correction,because tonal adjustments can cause color shifts,that will need some color correction but in this case I found that it is ok to do it in this way.From the same drop down I will choose RGB then I will brighten the image by placing a point in the middle and dragging it to the left.Once again I will use only on point since I don't find it necessary to use more.It is just a lame photograph 

taking in a parking lot,I guess no fancy retouching is needed.

We still need some local adjustments to correct everything but first I will show an other method as well to correct the white balance of an image.

There is another method that I sometimes use.I used that one in the before and after above.It is a slightly different result,makes the image look like a daytime shoot,So we have a blown out sky,but sometimes this method may be just what you need.

Method no.2

We can use levels or curves for this,it does not matter, as we will be using the eyedroppers located at the side of these adjustment panels and they both do the same thing.I guess I will go with levels.(I created a levels adjustment the same way as shown above with the curves adjustment).

With the use of these eyedropers we can define a black point, a white point or I don't know how to describe it correctly,so I will call it midpoint.We can define what will be neutral grey in the image with this eyedropper.You don't have to use all of them,in fact in Camera Raw and Lightroom we only have one that does all three things.We will get to that just a little bit later.this takes a little bit of experimentation.Since I know what should be white,what should be black and what most likely is grey in the image I can take the eyedroppers and simply click on these areas and see what happens.With a little bit of experimentation I ended up with these combinations:With the white eyedropper I clicked on the cigarette,and with the grey one on the rear bumper of the car.I experimented with the black one as well but it just made the image way to dark in some areas,so I left the black eyedropper alone.

We can still see a little bit of blue on the shoes and on the shady parts of the T-shirt.I tried clicking on those parts with the grey eyedropper but it added a little bit of a yellowish tint to the image.Given the fact that it was sunset maybe that is the way the image should truly look like,with a yellow cast on the highlights,but I like it more without that.Here is one "dirty"method that I sometimes use to get rid of some leftover color contamination.I will create an other adjustment layer,this time a black and white adjustment.This will tum the 

image into black and white.I will hit Ctrl+I to invert the colors in the adjustment layers mask.This will turn white into black,and will make the effect invisible.Now with a soft brush and foreground color white I can paint over the areas of interest.

This magicly takes care of all areas that should have no color anyway.But there I see an other problem on the shirt and pants.The shirt has its original color only on the darker areas,the lighter ones are still a little bit bluish,and the pants as well.I will be using the color replacement tool to correct that.There might just be a few people who can color correct an image without having to make localized adjustments as well,but my opinion is that it is impossible to do an all images.First of all we have to merge everything we just did,or I just did into one layer.You could flatten your image but if you have to go back to readjust some setting then you will have to start from scratch.Using Shift+Ctrl+Alt+E will merge everything visible into one layer that will get placed on top of the stack.Next I will take the Eyedropper tool from the toolbox and click on the color that represents the true color of the shirt.

Nested with the brush tool we have a so called color replacement tool.So right click on the brush tool or click and hold and then choose color replacement tool from the fly out.With this tool I will start painting over the shirt and the colors will get replaced with the foreground color that we just selected with the eyedropper.

So yes! my T-shirt happens to be grey so the black and white method would have worked just as good I guess,but will not work on the pants.So once again I will click with the eyedropper to select the true color of the pants and then I will paint over The bluish areas.

Camera Raw/Lightroom

In Camera Raw and Lightroom we only have one Eyedropper for color correction,it is called the white balance tool.I basically clicked all over the place to get a combination that I like.If you watch the area highlighted with red.you will see the temperature and tint sliders move around as you click.That means you could manually correct the image as well by moving these two sliders.

In terms of color replacement camera Raw does a lame job!I tryed with the adjustment brush found in the upper menu.There is a color option where we can input what tint we want to use.I don't know if there is a way that we can actually sample colors instead of just eyeballing it.Anyway I created a color sampler with the color sampler tool and with the numeric RGB value I jumped to photoshop to see what is the according HSB value of that color then I came back and entered the H and S value because there is no B value aswell if you double click the color box,and then I brushed over the pants and it did manage to replace the color in the areas that where not heavily contaminated.But overall a very lame result.I was lazy to make screen shoots of this one.It does not work anyway.But here is just one and hopefully you will understand what I was saying.