Matching Shots - The Art and Technique of Digital Color Correction - page 365

Fig. 9.5 First Leffel got the “base” image to a place where he was comfortable with it.
Fig. 9.6 Data from the Primary room.
target image overall—throwing warmth in. Once I had that even remotely
close, I started dialing contrast in. So then it was time to hit blacks and
gamma and dial in some contrast. Then working black and gamma against
each other to try to get full tonal separation again in the shadows and the
midtones so that I wasn't crushing or hitting anything too hard.”
I press him further, asking, “By saying 'full tonal separation and work-
ing blacks against mids,' you mean how far you pull down the blacks
and how high you pull up the mids or how high you bring up the blacks
and how low you pull down the mids? And you're doing that with both
hands. Then you do that on the other side with the highlights?”
“Exactly,” he responds. “You open the midtones and darken the whites.
It's a lot easier to match an image if you have some full tones to work
with so I added black. I added gamma. I added color saturation. I mostly
manipulated midtones. I brought the black down, but I also brought the
whole midtone down. You can see that the white values don't change a
whole lot, but the midtones and the blacks do.”