Just as I was getting used to playing with curves on Photoshop CS2 and finding the right blend to make the midtones stand out, Scott Kelby goes and shows me a simpler way to do it. No math involved, no shaping the right S-curve, and there’s even no necessary constant monitoring of the image to make sure every adjustment is right.

Great. Now I can’t even feel smart about it.

But seriously. It is so ridiculously simple that even though I still haven’t found my CS3 Power Tour workbook, I didn’t need it for this post. I mean, if even my short-term-memory-challenged mind that keeps failing to keep track of chores and grocery lists and maintenance schedules can remember this without a cheat sheet, then it must really be that simple.

What I learned at the CS3 Power Tour:

5. If you want an almost no-brainer method to punch up your midtones, do it in Lab color.

Here’s a photo I took in Grand Cayman a few months ago. It was a bit overcast that day, which made for the flat colors in this photo. At least, that’s what I tell myself. Hey, it’s my memory, okay?

After adjusting the exposure ever so slightly, I converted it to Lab color. Then I launched curves and switched to the “a” channel. I shifted both endpoints of the curve (or line, if you insist I say that because it’s straight and you don’t want me to confuse anyone) in toward the center by equal amounts.

The adjusted curve looks like this:

(By the way, yours will look a bit different because that’s a CS2 screen shot. I didn’t feel like powering up the other machine just to get that capture. Bear with me, I haven’t had breakfast yet.)

Don’t be alarmed by the intermediate effects on your image. You’ll see it in green or blue or some other strange otherworldly hue, but that’s okay. Be patient and wait for the final result. Which won’t be a long wait, because the only thing left to do is to make the same adjustment for the “b” channel, and presto! Instant midtone punch.

If you plan to do more processing or save it as a jpeg file, don’t forget to convert it back to RGB color.

And if anyone asks, tell them, “Oh, I converted the image to lab color mode and then manually adjusted the curves for individual channels to get that result.” They’ll think you’re a genius and that you can calculate the slope of a curve in your head without a calculator and recite the value of pi to twenty-nine decimal places.

Then you can come back here and thank me. I will gladly accept words of praise and bars of chocolate. And chewy home baked cookies.