ADVANCED IMAGE CORRECTIONS
The true power of the digital darkroom lies in its ability to let you shape and sculpt photos for better interaction with viewers. This is a topic of such breadth and depth that it requires far more space than this book will allow. So in the interest of brevity, I’ve compiled a list of Four Rules for the Digital Darkroo, which form the basis for the techniques presented in this chapter.
Kane Creek Road, Moab, Utah. Olympus E-3, 12–60mm lens, 1/5 second at f11, ISO 100
Note The material presented here is designed for readers who already feel comfortable with the global corrections in Lightroom and the selective corrections demonstrated in
Chapter 15. These techniques require a greater degree of skill and experimentation than
those required in earlier chapters. If the digital darkroom is still new terrain to you, I’d suggest skimming this chapter and continuing on to Chapter 17. For those of you who want to attain a higher degree of dexterity and mastery in your photo corrections, this chapter may become your digital darkroom bible.
Four Rules for the
Digital Darkroom
In my small group training sessions, participants are often hungry for the “why” as well as the “how” of correcting photos. Learning techniques alone, while important, is insufficient. Understanding
why a particular technique is effective, when to apply it, and how to modify it to adapt to changing circumstances are the most important skills you can develop and are the
keys to developing your artistry in the digital darkroom.
While these concepts aren’t necessarily simple, they can be described through a series of guidelines for refining digital photos for greater depth, presence, and emotion.
Rule 1: Your eye is always drawn to the lightest and highest contrast area in a
photograph. Our brains are wired to scan a scene quickly, looking for edges, contrast,
and shapes. When glancing at a photo, we’re biologically programmed to look at the lightest and highest contrast areas first. Use careful composition and judicious burning and dodging to make sure your subject is the lightest and highest contrast area in a photo. This establishes a visual hierarchy in which the lightest elements are the most important and therefore demand the most attention.
Rule 2: When looking at a photo, a viewer looks first at shapes and then
attempts to interpret those shapes based on familiar patterns. We have a visual database in our brains that allows us to identify
common objects quickly. This is how we can
identify a silhouetted tree as a tree, not as a dark blob on the horizon. Unfamiliar shapes take longer to read and require more careful attention. Well-conceived abstract photos are successful because they break this rule, creating a visual puzzle for us to solve. A key to making your photos engaging is to make sure all key elements in a photo “separate” visually from one another by selectively lightening and darkening the tones of elements within the photo.
Rule 3: Contrast = Detail. The human visual system has evolved to be highly attuned to movement and edge contrast. When looking at a photo, a viewer’s eyes naturally travel along areas of high contrast and sharp detail. By controlling contrast and sharpness, you can, in effect, control exactly where the viewer’s eyes travel in your photos. On a technical level, the appearance of detail in digital photos is due
to subtle differences in the lightness and color values between pixels. Enhancing contrast increases those differences and makes detail more apparent.
Rule 4: Warm colors (orange, reds,
and yellows) feel more comfortable and inviting than cool colors (cyan, blue, and green). Cream is the most popular paint color for rooms because the subtle addition of a little orange makes the room feel more
cheery and inviting than a strictly neutral white. Adjusting saturation and hue to make colors warmer, cooler, or more vibrant is one way to enhance the mood created by your photo.
To demonstrate these four rules in action, compare the figure on the left to the one on the right. Do you react differently to the two photos? If so, what’s different between the two? The answer is in the caption.
363
Sever al subtle , yet impor tant, changes have enhanced this picture . Fir st, the two patches
of snow on the far bank were removed so as
not to detr act from the main subject. Second,
On the Web
To learn more about the science of seeing and its relationship with the arts, visit www
contr ast is enhanced throughout the photo to increase the visibility of details. Third, red and yellow have been added to war m the photo.
Finally, key areas of the photo were bur ned and dodged to make the photo easier to
“read” with a quick glance .
.perfectdigitalphotography.com/artistry.php. Also check out Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing by Margaret Livingstone.
As you read about the concepts described in this chapter, think back to how they relate to the Four Rules and how you may begin applying the Four Rules in your images corrections.
364
One of the most important tools for applying the Four Rules to your photos is the layer mask. In Chapter 15, I covered several ways of using layer masks to apply a correction selectively. This chapter continues working with a variety of advanced image corrections.
Burning and Dodging
The concepts behind burning and dodging are simple; knowing when and where to burn and dodge is not. The terms burning and dodging are carryovers from the traditional wet darkroom, where photographers used all sorts of methods and techniques to modify the amount of light reaching the print from the enlarger. While those days are behind us, the need for burning (darkening specific areas of a photo) or dodging (lightening specific areas) is still critical to adding depth to a print, increasing the appearance of detail, or improving the separation between elements of a similar brightness level.
Unlike the corrections we’ve made up until now, burning and dodging is used
to make precise corrections on very small areas—the petals of a flower or a tuft of grass, for example.
Typically, you’ll burn and dodge near the end of your correction process after you’ve performed global tone and color corrections.
A photographer uses burning and dodging in the same way that a chef tastes a sauce just
before she adds it to the entrée, making slight adjustments to accent specific flavors.
Should You Burn and Dodge in Lightroom or Photoshop?
Lightroom 2 lets you perform simple burning and dodging within the Develop module using the Adjustment Brush. So, should you burn and dodge in Lightroom or in Photoshop? The answer is both.
As I’ve often said in this book, it is best to perform as many of your corrections as possible on the unprocessed raw file. That said, the burning and dodging controls are more sophisticated in Photoshop than they are in Lightroom. For most of your photos, you’ll perform simple burning and dodging adjustments in Lightroom, and then you’ll jump into Photoshop for specific edits requiring additional precision.
Tools for Burning and Dodging
The most commonly used tools for burning and dodging are the Brush tool and the Burn and Dodge tools. The Brush tool is, by this point, familiar from all the work you’ve done with masks. It is useful for burning and
dodging broad areas within a photo. The Burn and Dodge tools are used similarly to the Brush tool; however, their effect on an image is quite different. They are better suited for very subtle burning and dodging changes to the photo.
The Burn and Dodge tools are located near the middle of the Toolbox below the Gradient and above the Pen tool.
Like the Brush tool, the Burn and Dodge tools have a Brush Preset picker in the Options bar for setting the Brush size and hardness.
Unlike the Brush tool, the Burn and Dodge tools use an Exposure setting instead of Opacity and contain a Range pull-down menu that allows you to target your corrections
to the shadows, midtones, or highlights. The Range setting is where the new, and greatly improved, Burn and Dodge tools in Photoshop CS4 really shine. By restricting
your corrections to a specific tonal range, you have more control to lighten the contours
of your subjects or subtly darken shadows to improve contrast.
Unfortunately, the Burn and Dodge tools are “destructive” tools, meaning their effects are immediately applied to the pixels in your image. Fortunately, by creating a specific burn and dodge layer, you can enjoy the flexibility
Layer blending modes are a means of controlling the appearance and properties of Photoshop’s layers. When the default blending mode, Normal, is selected, a layer exists independent of all other layers in the document. As soon as you change the layer blending mode from Normal, you force
Photoshop to calculate the appearance of the layer based on the characteristics of the layers below it and by the specific attributes of the blending mode. For example, any painting with white on a layer with the Overlay blending mode causes the pixels on the layers below to appear lighter. Painting with black causes pixels to appear darker. In the Normal blending mode, these corrections would simply create white or black paint strokes.
Blending modes are a powerful
365
of nondestructive editing used throughout this book.
On the Web
tool for image correction and
creative control. Unfortunately,
Creating a Burn and Dodge Layer
To create a burn and dodge layer, hold down the option (Mac) or alt (Windows) key while clicking the Create New Layer icon
at the bottom of the Layers panel. In the resulting dialog, type the new layer name, Burn and Dodge; set the layer blending mode to Overlay; and check the Fill with Overlay- neutral color (50% gray) checkbox. Click OK to create your new layer.
a full discussion of layer blending modes is
beyond the scope of the printed edition of this book, but you can find a thorough discussion on the use of blending modes on our website at www.perfectdigitalphotography.com/ photoshop.php.
Burning and Dodging in Practice
Now that you have created the Burn and Dodge layer, you have two types of tools at your disposal: the Brush tool and the Burn
366
and Dodge tools. The Brush tool is used for broadly burning and dodging specific areas. The Burn and Dodge tools offer an additional level of control, allowing you to adjust a specific portion of the tonal range within
a specific area. For example, the Burn tool allows you to darken only the shadows within the image. If your brush passes over a shadow and highlight pixel, the shadow pixel will be darkened, while the highlight pixel will remain unchanged. When using the Brush tool,
all tonal areas are affected. When using the Brush tool to burn, passing your cursor over a highlight and a shadow pixel will darken both.
In Photoshop CS3 and earlier, I used the Brush tool primarily for burning and dodging broad areas, and then used the Burn and Dodge tools for working smaller, specific areas. In Photoshop CS4, Adobe improved the way the Burn and Dodge tools work, and I now find myself using Burn and Dodge almost exclusively. My suggestion is to learn how to use both and experiment to see which one best suits your workflow.
Burning and Dodging with the Brush Tool
To use the Brush tool for burning and dodging, select an appropriately sized brush with a low hardness setting and set your brush opacity to 10 percent. The Overlay blending mode is sensitive to changes in lightness, and a low opacity setting is best for making the subtle changes needed for effective burning and dodging.
To burn (darken), set your foreground color to black by pressing d to return to the default foreground and background colors.
To dodge (lighten), set your foreground color to white by pressing d to return to the default colors, and then exchange the foreground and background colors by pressing x.
Begin painting over the areas you want to burn and dodge. Sometimes, the changes are quite subtle, and you’ll need to toggle the layer visibility icon (the eye) on and off to view the changes.
If your changes are too strong or you make an errant brush stroke, you can paint over the change by adding a layer mask and hiding your correction by painting with black on the layer mask. You can also reduce the intensity of your brush correction by using the Fade Brush command (Edit > Fade Brush) immediately after applying your brush stroke.
Burning and Dodging
with the Burn and Dodge Tools
The Burn and Dodge tools add another level of control over your burning and dodging by allowing you to specify which portion of the tonal range you want to affect. For example, I typically dodge the highlights in an image and burn the shadows to give an image additional punch.
To dodge the highlights, select the
Dodge tool from the Toolbox, set Range to Highlights, Exposure to 10%, and be sure the Protect Tones checkbox is checked.
Paint over the highlights you want to lighten. On a portrait, lightening the reflective highlights, also called specular highlights, in the
darkroom. Fortunately, the Four Rules for the digital darkroom can help guide your corrections.
367
eyes, on the lips, and on jewelry increases an image’s vibrancy. In a landscape, dodge the highlights in clouds, grasses, tips of trees, and bodies of water to add depth to the photo.
To burn the shadows, select the Burn tool from the Toolbox, set Range to Shadows, Exposure to 10%, and be sure the Protect Tones checkbox is again checked. Generally, you’ll want the Protect Tones option enabled whenever you use the Burn or Dodge tools.
Paint over the shadows in the image to add depth and richness to the photo. Darker areas tend to recede from view, while lighter areas come forward.
Burning and dodging help make your photos more three-dimensional and lifelike. However, learning how to burn and dodge is the easy part. Far more difficult is learning precisely where to burn and dodge for maximum benefit. This is a skill gained from lots of time working in a traditional or digital
Learning to burn and dodge effectively is one of the most
important steps toward taking full creative control of your photos. Typically, you’ll perform your burning and dodging near the end of your image corrections. The last step in most photographers’ workflows is image sharpening.
Image Sharpening
Image sharpening is one of the most widely used, but least understood, tools in a photographer’s workflow. Becoming highly proficient at image sharpening takes practice, but that shouldn’t deter you from using the tips and techniques presented here to dive
in and begin experimenting. Along the way,
I’ll highlight a few of the key “gotchas” that
can crop up when sharpening and teach you how to avoid them.
How Image Sharpening Works
Image sharpening is a clever trick used to fool our eyes into believing more detail exists in the image than there actually is. Here’s an example (shown on the next page). In this figure, two red rectangles isolate to shades of gray. Which is lighter, A or B?
368
Which of the two rectangles is lighter : A or B? Cornsweet illusion adapted from Livingstone’s Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing
The answer: They are exactly the same shade of gray. Place your hand over the transition in the center and you’ll quickly see that your brain fooled your eyes into seeing a difference where there isn’t one. This illustrates the art of sharpening.
Sharpening works by increasing contrast along an edge, lightening one side and darkening the other, so our brain perceives a greater difference between the lightened and darkened edges. Lightroom and Photoshop perform this lightening and darkening along the smallest of edges in our photographs, improving the visible detail in hair, grasses, and other tiny, but critical, textures. A well- sharpened image with lots of detail is a tactile experience. We can almost reach out and touch the roughness of the wood or feel the individual hairs in a dog’s fur.
For this illusion to be convincing, you have to be diligent in refraining from
excessively sharpening images. Photos that are too sharp appear gritty and saccharine, two qualities best avoided unless that is your explicit goal.
The key to making your sharpening both effective and realistic is learning to set the Radius setting effectively. The Radius
setting, as you’ll see, is found in all sharpening tools discussed in this section. It controls the width of the lightening and darkening that occurs along each of the edges in your photo. Set your Radius too high and you’ll actually diminish the amount of detail in your photos. Set it too low, and the sharpening won’t be effective. Keep this in mind as you evaluate Lightroom and Photoshop’s sharpening tools and place them within the context of your workflow.
When to Sharpen— Early, Late, or Both?
For many years, photographers and Photoshop experts argued whether sharpening should be a single-step process that occurs at the end of the workflow, immediately prior to printing, or a two-step process with one round of sharpening occurring early in the workflow and a second one happening right before printing.
When using camera raw files, it makes the most sense to adopt a two-step sharpening approach. The first round of light sharpening improves the overall definition and clarity of the image, and the second prepares it for the output method: print, web, or video.
To help clarify the two steps, the first round of sharpening is often called capture sharpening, and the second, output sharpening.
Capture sharpening is best done in the raw processing software to take advantage of the full range of unprocessed information the raw file contains. Capture sharpening
requires a delicate touch so as not to introduce problems that will need fixing later in the workflow.
Creative sharpening, a component of capture sharpening, is a term given to the process of selectively sharpening key areas within the photo, such as the subject of
a portrait or a key foreground detail in a landscape. This can be done within Lightroom using the Adjustment Brush, or in Photoshop using a layer mask to restrict sharpening to selected areas.
Output sharpening is usually performed as a final step in the workflow and is geared toward achieving maximum image sharpness for a given output size, output device, and media type. For example, the settings for output sharpening will be far higher on a large image printed on an absorbent watercolor paper than on a smaller web image.
Understanding the role of each type of sharpening will help guide your corrections. Let’s look at the sharpening options to get a feel for the controls found in both Lightroom and Photoshop.
Capture Sharpening in Lightroom
Lightroom’s sharpening tools are found in the Detail panel of the Develop module. Here, you’ll find four controls designed to improve the sharpness of your images:
■ Amount The Amount slider controls the intensity of the sharpening. Boosting the Amount amplifies the effect of the other settings, particularly the Radius.
■ Radius The most critical control, Radius, determines the width of the halo created by lightening and darkening each edge in the photo. Images with lots of fine detail require a low radius, while images with coarse detail are best served with
a medium radius setting. A high radius setting can be used for creative effect.
■ Detail This slider controls how deeply Lightroom “digs” into the image to tease out hidden or subtle detail. A high Detail setting will pull detail out of subtle, smooth tones, while a lower Detail setting concentrates sharpening on well-defined edges.
■ Masking Increasing the Masking slider causes Lightroom to build a layer mask on the fly to restrict sharpening to the higher contrast, well-defined edges. This prevents image sharpening from ruining
369
370
the smoothness of skin tones or skies and protects images from becoming overly noisy when sharpened.
When working in Lightroom, your goal is to improve the sharpness of your photo gently, in preparation for future corrections. You have to be careful not to add too much sharpening as it will cause problems when preparing images for output.
Let’s go through Lightroom’s controls to see how they work together in a real-world context. For each control, I’ll highlight what you should be looking for to ensure your sharpening is correct, every single time.
Begin with an image open in the Develop module. Scroll down past the Basic, Tone Curve, and HSL controls to target the
Detail sliders. At the top of the Detail panel is a small preview window.
Because it is so small, relative to the size of the monitor, go ahead and hide it by clicking the dark gray triangle to its right. Once the preview is hidden, an exclamation point appears to caution you against sharpening while not working at 100-percent zoom.
I strongly recommend heeding this warning. Zoom into your image by clicking the exclamation icon or by clicking in the preview window. Whenever you are applying capture sharpening, it is essential that you
are zoomed in to the actual pixels view. Otherwise, you run the substantial risk of oversharpening your images. Many sharpening
errors, or artifacts as they are often called, aren’t visible when you’re looking at the full image. Only by looking at actual pixels, or at a finished print, can you see these problems. So always zoom in to perform your sharpening.
Center your preview over the area in the photo containing the sharpest and most important detail in the photo. Most of the
time, these are the same since we set focus on the most important subject. Click and drag the preview to reposition it. For this example, I’ve zoomed into a detailed section of rock within a broader landscape photo. I’ve selected this area because it is the prime point of focus and it contains both high-contrast edges and fine details in the grasses.
Adjusting Radius
As mentioned, Radius is the most important control to set correctly, and I recommend you set it first. Press and hold the option (Mac) or alt (Windows) key while adjusting the Radius slider to see the halos being applied to the edges in your photos.
What to look for: Look for definition along the key areas of your photo. For example, you should see a faint edge along high contrast lines and key areas of detail. Keep an eye
out for a strong shadow along high contrast edges, particularly where a light subject meets a darker background. These sharpening halos are visible in the finished print. Reducing the Radius setting will help minimize visible halos.
Too high of a Radius setting (2.2) creates a strong halo along the high contr ast edge of the rock on the left and the gr asses on the r ight.
A lower Radius setting (0.7) creates lighter halos along key lines in the image while still improving the definition of details within
the scene .
If you are uncertain about your Radius setting, always hedge toward a smaller setting, because it is less objectionable to slightly undersharpen an image than to oversharpen.
Adjusting Detail
Setting the Radius establishes the width of the sharpening halos in your images. The Detail slider builds on your initial Radius setting by allowing you to reach deeper into your image to pull out textures and subtle details. Use the Detail slider with caution, because too high a
371
372 setting can add noise or create texture in smooth areas such as skin tones or skies. A very low setting of less than 5 concentrates sharpening only on the highest contrast edges. This can be beneficial for images that are noisy or slightly out of focus.
For well-exposed images, however, you’ll want a moderate Detail setting between 10 and 25.
What to look for: As you increase the Detail slider while holding the option (Mac) or alt (Windows) key, keep an eye on the high contrast
When the Detail setting is too high (78), the halos along key edges become exagger ated, leading to
potential problems in pr inting. In addition, the subtle textures on the rock are now as well defined as the edge of the rock. Given the soft light source , this is
visually confusing—the texture on the rock should be secondar y to the edges.
A lower Detail setting (17) highlights the key edges on the rock and gr asses while adding
some texture to the rock. This lighter setting is more visually balanced between shar ply
defined and subtle textures.
edges in the photo. Increasing the Detail slider setting will exaggerate existing halos and begin adding halos to other details within your photo.
Adjusting Masking
Masking, as the name implies, creates a quick mask to remove sharpening from areas of smooth tone and color, allowing sharpening to be concentrated along higher contrast lines and edges. Masking protects the smoothness of skies and skin tones and is particularly
valuable when you’re working on noisy images.
When adjusting the Masking slider, be sure to hold down the option (Mac) or alt
(Windows) key to see the mask preview. As with layer masks, the mask preview uses black to show areas where your sharpening
correction is hidden and white to display areas where your sharpening is applied.
What to look for: As you increase the Masking slider value, watch the image to make sure the mask doesn’t extend into areas of important detail, eliminating sharpening from those areas. Another potential problem exists when your mask partially covers a shape or contour. In this case, sharpening will be applied only to one portion of the shape, leaving an unnatural transition between sharpened and unsharpened sections. If this occurs, try reducing the Amount or Detail slider to eliminate the problem.
Adjusting Amount
The Amount slider is the easiest of the four controls to use, because once you’ve established your Radius, Detail, and Masking settings, all you need to do is fine-tune the Amount slider to increase or decrease the intensity of the sharpening.
Unlike the other three sliders, pressing and holding down the option (Mac) or alt (Windows) key while manipulating the Amount slider doesn’t result in an esoteric
view of the edges within your photo. Instead, the mask preview displays a black and white version of your photo to help you assess how the sharpening is affecting the tonality of your image.
What to look for: While increasing the Amount slider, keep an eye on the highlight details in your photos to ensure that they don’t blow out to pure white. Be sure you haven’t chosen a setting that makes your photo look gritty, artificial, or saccharine. Capture sharpening
should be subtle. Oversharpening at this stage will almost certainly result in an unpleasant looking print.
373
The perfect Masking setting shar pens the
smooth tones without reducing shar pening along key edges or highly detailed areas.
374
Too high an Amount setting can create a watercolor-like texture in the smooth areas in the pr int and make detail appear unnatur ally shar p.
The r ight Amount setting br ings out the natur al detail within the photo without appear ing unnatur ally shar p. There’s a “r ightness” about cor rectly shar pened photos that looks r ichly detailed and natur al simultaneously.
For the sample image, I found the following settings to be the most pleasing: Amount: 75, Radius: 0.6, Detail: 18, and Masking: 27. Check out these before and after images for comparison.
Before
After
Creative Sharpening in Lightroom
Creative sharpening is used to call attention to specific areas in the photo or to make up for a subject being slightly out of focus. While you can perform creative sharpening in Lightroom with the Adjustment Brush, this isn’t an ideal solution because the Sharpness settings in the Adjustment Brush and Graduated Filter panel lack the controls found in other sharpening tools within Lightroom and Photoshop.
For that reason, unless I just need a quick- and-dirty correction, I perform any creative sharpening in Photoshop.
Output Sharpening in Lightroom
Sharpening for output is the most difficult aspect of sharpening, due to the large number of variables involved. What is the finish of the paper? What size is the print? What is the resolution of the original photo?
Fortunately, output sharpening in Lightroom is greatly simplified through the use of output sharpening presets that take the guesswork out of the equation. In Lightroom’s Export and Print modules (covered in detail in Chapters 17 and 18, respectively), you’ll find options for selecting both the intensity
of the sharpening and the output medium. In the Export module, you’re given options to sharpen for Screen, Matte Paper, or Glossy Paper along with Amount levels of Low, Standard, and High. Lightroom then calculates the correct amount of sharpening
based on the specified output, image size, and image resolution.
As someone who was initially skeptical of the system, I’ve gotten results from the system that have transformed my skepticism into
a full endorsement. I can’t think of a single occasion where the output sharpening presets have oversharpened an image and only a few times where I’d wished more sharpening were added.
I find output sharpening to be a tremendous time-saver, particularly in the creation of web graphics, since it doesn’t require that I perform a second manual pass of sharpening. I can choose a sharpening preset as part of my output preset and move on to processing the next image.
Lightroom’s sharpening tools are undoubtedly powerful, versatile, and fast. There are occasions in which you need to use the sharpening tools in Photoshop, either because your image is already in Photoshop because you were masking or burning and dodging or you need more control over the creative or output sharpening processes than Lightroom offers.
Sharpening in Photoshop
While you’re best served performing your capture sharpening on the raw file in Lightroom, Photoshop offers two excellent tools for sharpening your images: Smart Sharpen and Unsharp Mask. After working with the sharpening commands in Lightroom,
375
376
both will feel familiar as their controls are centered around the Amount and Radius sliders.
Both Smart Sharpen and Unsharp Mask can be used for output sharpening or creative sharpening, when coupled with a layer mask.
Before you begin the sharpening process, it is important that you take two preparatory steps:
Step 1 Create a separate sharpening layer.
Step 2 Zoom in to 50- or 100-percent view.
Working in Photoshop gives you fewer options for undoing or refining your corrections. Unless you’ve stored your corrections on a separate layer, your
corrections are permanently applied once you save and close a document. For that reason, be sure to create a separate sharpening layer to serve as an escape route in case you change your mind later in the process.
If you are working on a document without any layers, you can duplicate your Background layer by pressing cmd-j (Mac) or ctrl-j (Windows) and using this new layer for sharpening. More likely, you will have several layers in your document. To create
a new layer that is a composite of all your corrections, use keyboard shortcuts cmd- option-shift-e (Mac) or ctrl-alt-shift-e (Windows) to create a new merged layer. Be sure this layer is sitting at the top of your stack of layers; otherwise, your image may change appearance due to some corrections being applied twice.
Once your sharpening layer is created, you’ll need to zoom to 100 percent if you are performing creative sharpening or if you will be sharpening images for the Web or screen. If you’re sharpening for print, you’re best served by zooming to 50 percent. This gives you a better approximation of how the sharpening in your photo will look on the printed page,
where paper-absorbing ink causes edges to blur slightly and reduce the overall image sharpness.
I’ll talk specifically about output sharpening after introducing the two sharpening tools, Unsharp Mask and Smart Sharpen.
Unsharp Mask
Let’s begin with Unsharp Mask (Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask), a time-tested sharpening favorite. Two of the three controls found in Unsharp Mask should be familiar to you from sharpening in Lightroom: Amount and Radius. Both perform the same tasks here as they do in Lightroom.
The navigation within the Unsharp Mask dialog is slightly different from that of the Detail panel in Lightroom. First, both a
preview window and an image preview appear. The preview window, contained within the Unsharp Mask dialog, is always set to 100 percent, actual pixels, by default. Use this preview for checking key details in your photo to ensure you aren’t creating any sharpening artifacts.
Move your cursor over key areas in the photo and single-click to update the preview window with the region under your cursor. Click and hold inside the preview window and then release for a before and after look at your sharpening.
Your second preview is the image itself. Set this preview to 50 percent view for a more accurate preview of your print, and use this large preview to gauge the effect sharpening has on the overall image. Toggle the sharpening on and off by clicking the Preview checkbox in the Unsharp Mask dialog.
In addition to the Amount and Radius sliders, Unsharp Mask also provides a
Threshold slider. This slider determines how dissimilar two pixels need to be in order
to be sharpened. Like the Masks slider in Lightroom, Threshold is used to remove sharpening from smooth areas such as skin tones and skies, or to prevent sharpening from exacerbating image noise on high ISO images. Even though the programming behind the two controls differs slightly, their net effect on an image is the same.
When using Unsharp Mask, like other sharpening tools, set the Radius based on the width of the finest detail in the image.
This will ensure that your photo contains maximum detail. The exact Radius setting will vary based on the content of the image, the size of the picture, and the desired effect. For creative sharpening, low Radius and Amount settings are often ideal for gently calling attention to a subject. Output sharpening generally requires higher settings for Amount and Radius to sufficiently prepare an image for print.
Smart Sharpen
You can think of Smart Sharpen as Unsharp Mask’s brash younger brother. While Smart Sharpen is frequently faster and more effective, at times Smart Sharpen’s inexperience causes problems. Like Unsharp Mask, Smart Sharpen is found in the Filter menu (Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen).
377
378
Smart Sharpen is best suited to low- ISO images with lots of fine detail or images destined for the Web. Smart Sharpen is a
strong tonic and can cause problems if it’s not used carefully.
Like Unsharp Mask, Smart Sharpen provides Amount and Radius sliders to control the intensity and effect of the sharpening. As
a rule of thumb, you’ll want to use a lower Radius and higher Amount for Smart Sharpen than with Unsharp Mask. Additionally, you’ll want to set the Remove option to Lens Blur instead of Gaussian Blur for best results with photos from digital cameras. If you’re working on film scans, you will be better served using Unsharp Mask.
The trouble with Smart Sharpen lies in its handling of smooth areas of a photo. It can be tempting to push the intensity of your sharpening in Smart Sharpen as it makes your photos amazingly clear and detailed.
Unfortunately, Smart Sharpen is so powerful, it tries to pull details out of areas that don’t have any detail, resulting in grainy and oddly textured images. On noisy images, Smart Sharpen makes the noise jump out from the photo, an obviously undesirable outcome.
That said, use Smart Sharpen carefully for creative sharpening or for performing output sharpening on heavily detailed or textured images for print. On web-resolution images, Smart Sharpen really shines, bringing to life smaller images for a web page or gallery.
Using Photoshop’s Sharpening Tools for Creative Sharpening
The goal of capture sharpening is to highlight specific regions within a photo to focus the viewer’s eye on these areas. Using either Smart Sharpen or Unsharp Mask on a dedicated sharpening layer adds just enough sharpening to give important lines heightened definition or clarity. I suggest using a Radius setting of less than 0.5 to keep your corrections discreet and vary the amount as needed.
379
Once you’re satisfied with your sharpening settings, click OK. Add a layer mask to your sharpening layer and fill the layer with black by pressing cmd-i (Mac) or ctrl-i (Windows), inverting the layer mask from white to black. Your sharpening is now completely hidden by the mask.
The image above has received basic capture shar pening, but no creative shar pening. The image on the left has received a light pass of creative shar pening to call attention to the
r ider’s face , helmet, and jer sey. Smar t Shar peni settings: Amount 142, Radius 0.3
Select an appropriately sized brush, and set the brush opacity to 50 percent and the foreground color to white. Begin painting over the areas you’d like sharpened and you’ll begin seeing your sharpening applied to those areas. Vary your brush opacity to increase
or decrease the effect of the sharpening and smooth transitions between sharpened and unsharpened areas. Often, a light pass of sharpening goes a long way at this stage. Your
goal is to make the image look acceptably sharp on screen, but don’t get carried away, because your image will receive a third pass of sharpening as it is readied for output.
Using Photoshop’s Sharpening Tools for Output Sharpening
When sharpening an image for output, several factors will influence the sharpening settings selected:
■ Image size and image resolution
■ Size and viewing distance of the finished print
380
■ The type of printer, paper, ink, and processes used (inkjet, laser, sheet-fed press)
■ Content of the image, including the frequency of fine details, the quantity of smooth tones, and the message contained in the photo (soft and inviting like a baby or sharp like a knife)
Becoming proficient in sharpening takes practice—lots of it—to gauge the correct intensity of sharpening over the predicted softening that will occur as part of the printing process. Sharpening for the Web is far easier since you can see the finished result immediately on the screen.
For more in-depth information on image sharpening, I strongly recommend that you read Real World Image Sharpening with Adobe Photoshop CS2 by the late, great Bruce Fraser. Bruce was a leading voice in the development and implementation of Photoshop. He helped to design and test the sharpening presets found in Lightroom’s output module, and he distilled his deep knowledge of image sharpening in this informative and easy-to-read book.
Adobe Photoshop :
Essential Skills
As you continue to refine and craft your photos to match your final vision, you can take many paths and apply many techniques to get where you want to be. From the beginning of the Chapter 15 until now, I’ve tried to focus on the skills you’ll use most frequently—the “bread and butter” techniques you’ll use on a regular, if not daily, basis.
Of course, those aren’t the only skills you’ll want to have. From time to time, it is essential that you dust off an infrequently used technique to reduce image noise, or make
a beautiful black and white version of your favorite color image. The rest of this chapter is devoted to those techniques that broaden your repertoire and improve your photos.
Noise Reduction
Digital noise, the errant flecks of tone or color on your photos, isn’t the problem it once was. The current crop of digital cameras produce superior results at high ISO settings compared to the cameras available just a few years ago. With that in mind, there are still occasions when you need to clean up a noisy image. A couple of good noise reduction tricks are a helpful addition for any photographer’s bag
of digital darkroom tricks. In this section, I’ll highlight the inherent tradeoffs present with any noise reduction technique and give you tips for making noise reduction effective.
An Ounce of Prevention
The single best noise reduction technique is judicious exposure. The number one cause of digital noise is not high ISO settings; it’s underexposure. If you’re still in the habit
of setting your camera to –2/3 of an f-stop, like many photographers did with slide film, stop. You need to retrain yourself to expose accurately, if not slightly overexpose. Keep in mind that breaking old habits often means you’ll run into some roadblocks here and there. However, once you become accustomed
to exposing properly for digital, you will reap big rewards.
In Chapter 14, I discussed the need to overexpose your photos slightly to put more of the image detail in the right half of the histogram. This will give you better shadow detail and less noise, and it’s significantly faster and more effective than any noise reduction technique.
That said, mistakes happen. Sometimes you have to rescue an underexposed picture.
When this occurs, you’ll want to perform as many adjustments as possible in camera raw. This is one area where performing your corrections on the raw file gives markedly better results than performing the same corrections on a processed image.
After you’ve lightened the image sufficiently, it’s time to tackle the noise. Whenever you perform noise reduction on an image, you’re faced with a tradeoff. Noise reduction inevitably removes image detail. So you can opt for more detail and more noise,
or less detail and less noise. Even though some degree of compromise is unavoidable, the following techniques will help shift the odds in your favor.
Removing Noise in Lightroom
The noise removal tools within Lightroom work best for mild to moderate noise reduction. They tend to work best on chroma noise, the color impurities seen most frequently in the dark shadows.
Lightroom’s noise reduction tools are located in the Detail panel of the Develop module, immediately below the sharpening tools. By default, the Color slider is set to 25 to gently scrub out any color noise appearing in the shadows. This low setting rarely impacts noise-free images while cleaning up slightly noisy images. To remove more severe color noise, zoom in to your image, adjust your preview to display a noisy image area, and begin increasing the Color noise reduction slider until the color noise disappears.
I like to insert my cursor in the numeric readout to the right of the Color slider and hold down the shift key while pressing the up arrow key on my keyboard. This increases the noise reduction 10 units at a time and is more precise than using the slider alone. Let go of the shift key to adjust the slider 1 unit at a time. This trick works for all the sliders
in Lightroom and is great for making micro- corrections that are difficult to achieve with the sliders.
Use the Luminance slider for removing luminance noise, the pernicious “salt-and- pepper” noise hidden in the deep shadows. Luminance noise is far more difficult to remove than color noise. While it can be mitigated using the Luminance slider in Lightroom, for truly noisy images, you’ll need
381
382
to use one of the advanced techniques in Photoshop, preferably with a dedicated noise reduction plug-in such as Noise Ninja from PictureCode or Dfine from Nik Software.
These specialized tools do the best job of removing digital noise from your photos while minimizing the loss of detail in your images. If you routinely shoot at high ISO settings and find yourself removing noise regularly, these tools will be a worthwhile investment. You
can download a free trial or purchase either noise reduction software directly from the manufacturers at www.picturecode.com/ and www.niksoftware.com/dfine/usa/entry.php.
To learn more about removing noise in Photoshop with Noise
The Zone System is a comprehensive method of judging and setting exposure in- camera, determining film development times, and establishing print controls in the wet darkroom. This system was developed and widely practiced by photography luminaries including Ansel Adams, Paul Strand, Edward Weston, and Minor White.
These techniques have been adopted and modified for the digital darkroom and are just as important as their traditional counterparts. I’ll apply a simplified version of the digital Zone System to color-to–black and white conversions and will then go deeper into the digital Zone System in Chapter 18. Keep in mind that literally hundreds of different techniques, plug-
On the Web
Ninja, check online at www
ins, or methods are available for converting
.perfectdigitalphotography.com/ advanced-techniques.php.
Black and White Conversions
Expressive and evocative, a high-quality black and white print is still the holy grail of photography. Since the first edition of the book, the tools for creating a good black and white image and creating a stunning black and white print have gotten better. What matters most, however, is not the technique, but the vision. Learning to photograph in black and white tones instead of color is a challenge. Whether you’re a dedicated black and white aficionado or a color photographer who dabbles in black and white, learning
to see tonal differences in your photos and understanding the digital Zone System will make you a better photographer.
your color images to black and white. However, none will help you create a great black and white image unless you understand what it is you’re trying to accomplish. For this reason, this section will be less about technique and more about philosophy.
Introduction to the Digital Zone System
The underlying focus of the Zone System is to help you, the photographer, take control over the tonality within a black and white or color photo. Although tonal separation
between elements within a color photo is just as important as it is with black and white, brilliant color can sometimes mask flaws in tonal separation. In black and white, there is nothing to hide behind—problems with poor tonal separation or contrast are visible for the world to see.
This is where the Zone System can serve as a valuable ally, to help you take control over the conversion of your color images to black and white, guide your burning and dodging, and help identify areas in need of correction. The Zone System, combined with the Four Rules introduced at the beginning of the chapter, serves to guide your corrections, helping you make your photos look better than ever before.
The Zone System is a method of controlling exposure in-camera, guiding your corrections in the traditional or digital darkroom, and performing adjustments to maximize image quality in print. In fact, many of the corrections you’ve already been
introduced to follow Zone System principles, even though I haven’t described them as such.
The Zone System derives its name from a division of the tonal range from black to white into 11 discrete segments, or zones. Zone 0 is absolute black, and Zone X is pure white. Zone V is middle gray. Ideally, a well-exposed photo will bridge a range of these zones with detail in the highlights, midtones, and shadows.
before you press the shutter. While composing and capturing your photo, you should have an idea of whether you want the photo to be high key, low key, high contrast, or low contrast.
This guides both your initial exposure settings and the corrections you make in the darkroom.
The Zone System in Action
Here’s an example of how the Zone System can be applied to your entire photographic process. When judging your exposure, you’ve been taught to “expose to the right” or slightly overexpose your raw files to ensure full detail in the shadows with the least amount of digital noise. In doing so, you probably verified
your exposure using the histogram on the back of your camera, making sure there are no “cliffs” in either the shadows (Zone 0) or the highlights (Zone X), indicating under- or overexposure.
Once you bring this raw file into Lightroom, you set the brightest highlight and the darkest shadows with the Exposure and Blacks sliders. This stretches the dynamic range of the image to encompass all usable Zones I–IX and improves the overall contrast
383
Dark Shadows
Zones Containing Detail
Bright Highlights
X
of the photo. In the next step, you adjust the brightness, shifting the midtones in the pictures lighter or darker, and then adding contrast to the photo using the Contrast slider. From the perspective of the Zone System, you are controlling the
The underlying philosophy behind the Zone System is previsualization, the act of imagining the appearance of the finished print
distribution of tones through the midtones (Zones III–VII).
384
The Zone System, with only 11 zones, is limited in its ability to describe the selective changes you perform. However, the underlying philosophy is the same. You’re adjusting tonal values within the photo to add visual interest, separate the tonal values between adjacent objects (localized contrast), and call attention to the important elements within the photo. You are able to accomplish
all this within the philosophical framework of the Zone System using tools unimaginable to the Zone System’s founders.
Let’s look at how you might apply the philosophy behind the Zone System when converting color images to black and white in Lightroom.
Creating Black and White Photos in Lightroom
Whenever possible, I prefer to perform my color-to–black and white conversions in Lightroom. It gives me access to the unpro- cessed raw file while still providing me a sophisticated set of image correction tools for carefully shaping the tones in the black and white image.
Here, I’ll describe a typical black and white conversion in Lightroom. The
underlying methods and philosophy can easily be translated for use with any black and white conversion technique such as the black and white adjustment in Photoshop or any of
the black and white conversion plug-ins for Photoshop.
Tip When working in Lightroom, create a virtual copy of your original raw file for your black and white conversions. Virtual copies take
up minimal space on your hard drive while allowing you to keep the original color image. In the Filmstrip, right-click the image and select Create Virtual Copy from the context menu. Or, from the Photo menu choose Create Virtual Copy.
Begin by performing the global tone and color corrections as outlined in Chapter 14. Start by setting the White Balance manually, and then use the Exposure slider to set the brightest tone in the image (Zone X), the Blacks to set the darkest shadow (Zone 0 or I), and the Brightness slider to balance the midtones (Zones IV–VI). As needed, use Recover to improve highlight detail or Fill Light to open blocked shadows. Your goal
at this stage is to expand the tonal range to encompass the full histogram and begin
distributing and balancing your photo’s tones throughout the tonal range.
Next, begin manipulating contrast in the photo to enhance the shapes and forms of your subject. Feel free to use either the Contrast slider or the Tone Curve, whichever best suits your image. For this photo, I used the Targeted Adjustment tool (TAT) in conjunction with the Tone Curve to lighten the highlights on the man’s face, while darkening some of the shadows around his collar and neck. My aim is to give his face shape and depth to reveal his character—the lines on his face tell the story of his life.
385
Once your broad tonal adjustments are completed, convert your color image to black and white by clicking the Grayscale option under the Treatment heading immediately above the White Balance options in the Develop module. Your photo should be a relatively flat, black and white image lacking contrast, but otherwise nicely balanced between the highlights, midtones, and shadows.
Once you are satisfied with your overall contrast, you can begin adjusting the lightness values for individual colors in your photos by adjusting the Grayscale Mix sliders located in the HSL/Color/Grayscale panel. Use the TAT
386
to nudge colors lighter or darker to improve their separation with one another and with the background. Since this photo contains similar colors throughout, the effect of adjusting the Grayscale Mix is minimal.
Tip For dramatic blue skies, drag the Blue and Aqua sliders to –100. This will create a
dark gray sky similar to the effect created by placing a red #25 filter over your lens while shooting black and white film. You can fine- tune the darkness of the sky by adjusting the Temperature slider toward blue, but be careful as this can negatively impact other areas within your photo.
At this point, you should be fairly satisfied with the overall tonality, contrast, and tonal separation. You can now shift attention to performing selective corrections using
the Adjustment Brush or Graduated Filter, or by making small adjustments to earlier corrections.
To improve localized contrast, consider using the Adjustment Brush:
■ Add more Clarity to improve definition of key lines in a person’s face, or use a negative Clarity setting to smooth out skin tones and skin detail.
■ With a moderate Contrast or Sharpness setting to add definition to key lines or shadows. Pay particular attention to the eyes in a portrait, because this is the first place a viewer’s eyes will travel.
■ Add Brightness or Exposure to lighten the shadows surrounding the eyes in a portrait.
For this image, I used the Adjustment Brush as follows:
■ Brighten and add clarity around the eyes
■ Darken the man’s neck, shirt, and hat
■
Add pop to the lettering and paint spatters on his hat, add definition to the gray hair in his sideburns, and lighten the catchlights in his eyes using the Exposure slider at a low opacity
With all of these corrections, I performed the initial brush strokes with a higher intensity to accurately view the location of the correc- tions, and then I reduced the intensity of the correction to blend it with the surrounding area.
Finally, consider adding a light vignette to the corners of the image and a moderate amount of sharpening to improve the appearance of detail.
Although Lightroom’s tools are sophisticated enough for most black and white conversions, you can always export your photo into Photoshop to take advantage of additional tools or incorporate advanced techniques.
Sepia Toning
Sepia-toned pictures impart a feeling of nostalgia, history, and age. Think of Edward
S. Curtis’s famous photographs of Native Americans or Edward Weston’s photographs of Carmel, California. Sometimes, sepia tone
is the perfect match for the photo’s content. In this section, I’ll show you my favorite method for adding a sepia tone or any color tint in both Lightroom and Photoshop.
Sepia Toning in Lightroom
Once you’ve completed your black and white corrections in Lightroom, you can add a sepia tint using the Split Toning panel. The Highlights and Shadows sliders allow you to apply a separate colored tint to the highlights
and shadows of your photos, and then you can blend the two with the Balance slider.
Begin by selecting a Hue value for the Shadows between 35 and 45. This is the color range between reddish-orange and yellow- green. After some experimentation, you’ll find the hue that suits your preference. It is often helpful to increase the Saturation to between 30 and 40 when setting the hue, as the color is more visible. Once you’ve selected your Hue value, reduce the Saturation to your desired level. For this image, I selected a Hue setting for the Shadows of 41 and a Saturation of 22. This adds an antique warmth to the shadows that trails off toward the highlights.
387
388
Once you’ve established your base tint, fine-tune your sepia tone with the Balance slider. Positive values limit the sepia tint to the darkest shadows, while negative values allow the sepia to flood into the midtones. I suggest setting your Balance on a case-by-case basis, so you can allow the image to dictate the settings used.
If you’d like to try my Sepia
You can use the photo filters, Curves, or Hue/Saturation for this technique, but I
tend to use Hue/Saturation because I like the controls it offers.
Tip If you want to add a sepia tone to a black and white image but find your color options grayed out, you may have converted your photo to the Grayscale color mode. You’ll need to convert your photo to RGB (Image
> Mode > RGB) before adding a sepia tone. Color modes will be covered in greater detail in Chapter 17.
Step 1 With a black and white image open, create a new Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. Check the Colorize checkbox near the bottom of the dialog box. This will apply a colored overlay to your photo. Set the Hue between 25 and 40 and adjust the Saturation based on your preferences. Don’t change the Lightness as this will affect the tonality of your photo. For this image, I set the Hue to 37 and the
On the Web
Toning preset, you can
download it at www
Saturation to 21.
.perfectdigitalphotography.com/ advanced-techniques.php.
Sepia Toning in Photoshop
Creating the same sepia-toned look in Photoshop is a bit more difficult. You can use shortcuts, but they apply the color throughout the photo instead
of concentrating the color in the shadows. To do it right, you need to incorporate a special
trick.
Step 2 In the Layers panel, target your Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and then click the Add a layer style button at the bottom of the Layers panel and select
Blending Options from the top of the pop- up menu.
Step 3 Near the bottom of the Layer Style dialog are the Blend If sliders, which can be used to apply an effect to a specific region of the tonal range. The Layer slider controls the appearance of an effect on the current layer.
The Blend If sliders work by making visible any portion of the tonal range that falls between the two sliders. To remove the sepia tone from the highlights, you need to move the right slider toward the midtones. This causes the highlights to fall outside the range of the sliders, making those pixels transparent.
Step 4 The hard transition between opaque and transparent looks unnatural, so you’ll want to feather the transition along the right slider. option-click (Mac) or alt- click (Windows) on the slider to split it into two separate elements. The gap between
the two halves of the slider is a transition zone where pixels in this section of the tonal range are partially transparent. This makes the effect more natural looking.
389
390
Step 5 As a final step, you’ll often want to adjust the saturation level slightly by moving the Saturation slider within the Hue/Saturation dialog, or decreasing the layer opacity. For this image, I’ve opted to decrease the layer opacity from 100 to 77 percent to achieve the final result.
Saving Your Master File
After investing so much work into processing your photos, you’ll want to archive a layered version of your photo. I call this a master file because it contains all your corrections, stored on separate layers, and is only mildly sharpened and saved at your camera’s native resolution.
This is the file you will always return to for reference when you need to make prints or create an image for posting to the Web.
To save a master version of your layered photo from Photoshop, click the File menu and click Save As; then choose Photoshop as the Format and be sure the Layers checkbox is checked. This will preserve all layers used for image corrections, allowing you to go back and tailor or adjust your corrections later. If you’ve opened the image from Lightroom
and save the master file back in your original folder, Lightroom will add the image to the library, placing it next to the original raw file in your library. This makes it easy to keep track of your raw and master files.
I’ll show you how to save your photos in additional file formats in Chapter 17.
Multiple Image Photography
In the last several years, photographers have begun blending multiple images into a single image that breaks free from the traditional ratios or print sizes of standard photographs. This allows photographers to create images with an infinite depth of field impossible to achieve in-camera, or a single image with
an expansive dynamic range. The common denominator between these multi-image techniques is a desire to create images that mirror the way our eye sees the world, not the way the camera sees the world.
Several new digital techniques have opened doors for photographers to
latest improvements in Photoshop’s blending of multiple images into a seamless panorama makes the process so easy, you owe it to yourself to begin playing with this powerful tool.
Back in Chapter 3, Jay Dickman walked you through many of the steps needed to set up a panoramic shot. Whether you create your panorama with a medium focal length lens on a tripod set to the nodal point, or you
quickly snap a series of hand-held pictures, the techniques for processing panoramic images are the same. Obviously, you can expect less distortion and higher accuracy if you carefully lay out your shot, but you can still get good results from hand-held panoramas.
Building the Panorama
391
On the Web
experiment and rethink the process,
You cannot yet create a panorama entirely in
tools, and techniques of photography. In my opinion, the future of photography lies in these still somewhat experimental processes. To help you get a handle on these new techniques, I’ve provided condensed discussions on creating panoramas, images with an extended depth of field, and high-dynamic range images. Since these technologies are evolving so quickly, I’ll post updated and expanded information and additional tutorials on our website at www
.perfectdigitalphotography.com/multi-image
Panoramas
I’ve long been enthralled with panoramic photos and drawn to their all-encompassing angle of view and tremendous detail. The
Lightroom. You need Photoshop to merge multiple images. Fortunately, Lightroom makes it easy to select multiple images in your library and deliver them to Photoshop for processing. Here’s how you do it:
Step 1 Select the images for your panorama in Lightroom. Under the Photo menu select Edit In > Merge to Panorama in Photoshop.
Step 2 In the resulting Photomerge dialog box, you’re presented with a list of the Source files Photoshop will use to create
the panorama, along with a column on the left that lists the six layout options. Each layout option is designed for a specific type of panorama. Selecting the correct one will greatly improve your panorama’s quality.
392
■ Auto Blends images automatically using the layout method Photoshop determines is best for the image. This is typically, but not always, Perspective or Cylindrical. I use Auto as a first choice for panoramas with hand-held images.
■ Perspective Distorts the image to keep the horizon line true. The
Perspective layout has a tendency to create panoramas that wrap around the viewer. Unfortunately, this can cause problems as the elements within the photo are greatly exaggerated.
■ Cylindrical Ideal for blending images taken with a wide-angle lens. The Cylindrical layout will compensate for the slight vignetting that occurs at the corner of wide-angle lenses and the slight distortion along the horizon.
■ Spherical Designed for 360-degree panoramas. Spherical panoramas hold promise for photographers to create interactive worlds for the viewer and certainly should be an avenue of exploration for photographers with the technical inclination and temperament to pursue this craft.
■ Collage Positions the photos as though in preparation for a panorama, but does not blend the images into one. Instead, the intact edges of each photo give the appearance of a scrapbook collage made from multiple prints.
■ Reposition Repositions the photos without performing any blending. This is ideal for photographers shooting
from a technically accurate setup who want to blend the images in the panorama manually.
Additional options are available at the bottom of the Photomerge dialog:
■ Blend Images Together Automatically blends images by creating layer masks for each image.
■ Vignette Removal Useful if you are using a wide-angle lens that has a tendency to vignette at the corners.
Without Vignette Removal, your blue skies will have a tendency to appear mottled near the seams between images.
■ Geometric Distortion Correction Designed to correct for the distortion imparted by wide-angle or fish-eye lenses. Although these lenses aren’t ideal for panoramic photography to begin with, this feature can mitigate arcing horizons and bending buildings.
Step 3 After selecting your layout method, click OK and Photoshop will begin processing your panorama.
Tip Always check your panorama. Stuttered roads, bent fences, power lines that split in midair—these are a few of the problems that can plague panoramas. After your panorama is completed, zoom in to 100 percent and check any line traversing more than two images. The newer versions of Photoshop are far more reliable than those of the past, but Photomerge can still make mistakes. It’s far better to catch it at this stage than halfway through a giant banner print.
If you do find a mistake, try rerunning the Photomerge process, this time with a different Layout option selected. For important panoramas, I’ll try at least the first three options and pick the one I like best.
For more panoramic tips, techniques, links
to create a Panorama or Stack Images. The Panorama option uses layer masks to blend images into a seamless composite. The Stack Images option can be used to blend two or more images taken of the same composition with different exposure settings (extend dynamic range) or at different focal points
393
On the Web
and examples visit www
(extend depth of field).
.perfectdigitalphotography.com/ multi-image.php.
Auto-Align and Auto-Blend
You can also build your panoramas entirely within Photoshop using the Auto-Align and Auto-Blend features.
Select the images you want to align in the Layers panel by clicking the first layer and then shift-clicking the last layer in the stack. Then under the Edit menu, select Auto-Align Images. In the resulting dialog, you’ll be presented with the six Layout options listed earlier. Click OK to align the images.
The Auto-Blend Layers feature (Edit > Auto-Blend Layers) can be used to blend images in a panorama, to blend several images taken with different focal points extending the depth of field, or to automatically blend two or more photos taken at different exposure settings.
First use the Auto-Align feature to ensure that your photos are correctly aligned. Next, select the Auto-Blend Layers feature. The Auto-Blend Layers dialog gives you the option
In my experience, Stack Images works reasonably well for extending the dynamic range, but it isn’t quite as good as blending them manually. I believe this has to do with the difference between a technically correct rendering of the scene versus an artistic ren- dition of the scene. More often than not, I’m looking for an artistic interpretation of the scene. Experiment and see which one you like best.
Extending the depth of field holds great promise for landscape and macro photographers, letting them create photos that were once impossible due to the laws of
physics. By carefully capturing several photos, each with a slightly different focal point, you are able to ensure that every part of the photo is in focus.
To extend the depth of field, follow the preceding steps to align images automatically; then in the Auto-Blend Layers dialog, select Stack Images. Photoshop will preserve the in- focus portion of each image, masking out the out-of-focus areas. This creates a photo with sharp focus from foreground to background.
394
Tip When working with macro photos, be sure to shoot several overlapping photos, each with a maximum depth of field. With close focus, or macro photos, it is more difficult to gauge the amount of the scene that will be in focus when compared to landscape photos and will be more prone to error. Hedge your bets and shoot a few extra photos to ensure that you cover the full distance between foreground and background.
High Dynamic Range Images (HDR)
One technology promising to significantly impact the art and process of photography is High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography. Photographers have long been frustrated by the camera’s inability to capture the range
of brightness they see with their eyes. In a digital camera, this limitation is caused by the sensor’s inability to capture detail across a
wide brightness range. Instead, a typical photo captures a slice of the possible tonal range.
Dark shadows lose detail, becoming solid black. Excessively bright highlights overwhelm the sensor and are reproduced as pure white.
An HDR image overcomes this problem by merging together several images, taken
at different exposures, to reproduce detail throughout the tonal range. By blending the best information from several different exposures, a well-constructed HDR image delivers richer, noise-free shadows; smooth transitions at every portion of the tonal range; and clear, crisp highlight detail. In Chapter 4,
you were introduced to the techniques necessary to capture the raw images for creating your
HDR image. In this section, I’ll concentrate on summarizing the steps needed to combine your unprocessed images into a single HDR photo and prepare it for printing or publishing to the Web.
Currently, the biggest difficulty in working with HDR images lies not in image capture, but in image processing. The tools for working with HDR images are still rather crude and produce artificial or overworked- looking images. While these limitations can be used creatively, most photographers will continue to desire more effective HDR- processing software.
The most common HDR-processing software applications are Photomatix and Photoshop’s Merge To HDR command. Photomatix (www.hdrsoft.com) is easier to use and is more widely used by amateur and professional photographers who want to create HDR images.
Regardless of the HDR processing application used, the basic steps for creating and processing HDR images are similar.
Since the technology is still evolving rapidly, I’ll focus the discussion on these key steps, highlighting specific areas you’ll want to evaluate when testing HDR software or creating HDR images.
Assembly and Registration The first step in the workflow is merging your bracketed exposures to create a single HDR image.
Several potential pitfalls will need to be navigated along the way. The biggest obstacle at this stage is the registration of the images
used for HDR creation. Even if you are careful to keep the camera firmly mounted on a tripod, changing your shutter speed for each exposure often introduces slight movement into the composition. Good HDR processing programs should be able to align the images without too many problems. Hand-held HDR images are often more difficult, if not impossible, to align correctly. Misalignment can be corrected later in the process, but the more effective this step is initially, the more time you will save later in the process.
Another important consideration is the way a software application handles motion. A moving car, tree branches blown by the wind, or a person walking through your composition can cause problems in HDR images. Often, movement creates odd ghostlike blurs through the photo. Occasionally, the object will be truncated by the software, leaving half of the object in your photo unaffected while blending the other half with existing exposures. Moving objects often require some manual compositing or cloning later in the workflow.
During the assembly process, the HDR processing software will need to convert your photo to a linear gamma space, similar to the one used for storing your camera raw data. For this reason, you will get better results creating HDR images from raw files than from JPEGs, because using raw files prevents the image from undergoing a second gamma conversion.
Image Adjustments Your composited HDR image isn’t like other photos you’ve worked with. An HDR image uses floating-point 32
bits per channel (bpc) math, as opposed to the 8 and 16 bpc you’ve worked with in the past. These 32-bpc images have tremendous editing potential. The downside is that very few tools work with images in the 32-bpc mode. For example, Photoshop restricts you to the following adjustments for editing
32 bpc: Levels, Exposure, Hue/Saturation, Vibrance, Channel Mixer, and Photo Filter. Compounding problems is the fact that many of the tools work differently with 32- bpc images than with their 8- and 16-bpc
counterparts. This makes it difficult to perform color or tone corrections on 32-bpc images.
The 32-bpc images are also difficult to work with because you cannot see the entire range of tones present in the image on your monitor, because the range between light and dark is far greater than your monitor can display. Photoshop provides a display slider for you to select which portion of the tonal range you’d like to preview. This makes it
exceptionally difficult to correct HDR images. Not only are your tools limited, but you often can’t see the effects of your corrections.
For that reason, many photographers bypass the image adjustments stage, moving directly into tone mapping. This is a shame, since small changes applied to the image in this stage can make the tone mapping process much easier.
Tone Mapping The corrections and processes used to create and adjust an HDR image
are so abstract they seem to border on the theoretical. It isn’t until you convert your
395
396
32-bpc image into a usable 8- or 16-bpc image that can you really find out whether your HDR image will be successful or not. This process is called tone mapping because the tonal range of the HDR image needs to be compressed into the standard tonal range and contrast range used for non-HDR images. The problem with this step is that you’re taking
Creating HDR images is a challenge, to be sure. Still, I’m convinced HDR images will play a central role in the future of photography as more photographers gravitate toward capturing what the eye can see, bypassing the artificial limitations imposed by the camera.
For more information on HDR images and a review of
a large tonal range and squishing it together
On the Web
current HDR tools, visit www
to fit within the dynamic range of a normal image. It’s a bit like trying to stuff a large pillow into a small box; it can be done, but a lot of struggling is involved in the process.
The tone mapping stage is frequently the greatest source of disappointment for
photographers learning to shoot HDR. During the compression process, the separation of tones is often lost, creating an image that shows detail from the brightest highlights
to the deepest shadows, but often lacking contrast and losing the tonal relationships between objects. At this stage, many HDR images take on an ashen, artificial appearance. There are two ways of avoiding this problem:
■ Perform basic corrections to your image in the 32-bpc stage. If your image appears a little too dark, lighten it using Exposure
.perfectdigitalphotography.com/workflow.php. To view a vast collection of HDR images, visit the Flickr HDR photo pool at www.flickr.com/ groups/hdr/pool/.
Workflow Automation
Mastering the digital darkroom is more than just learning a broad range of techniques.
True mastery comes when you’re working both effectively and efficiently with the tools available to you. Chapters 14 and 15 focused mostly on working effectively. To take your workflow to the next level, I want to introduce
you to some of the productivity boosters found in Lightroom and Photoshop.
Keyboard Shortcuts
Excellent retouchers almost never
or Levels. If your shadows are weak, boost them using Levels before tone
On the Web
move their right hands from
the mouse or their left from
mapping to 8 or 16 bpc. These seemingly small moves make a big difference in the final image quality.
■ Convert your HDR image from 32 bpc to 16 bpc for further editing. Working in
16 bpc gives you more leeway in adding back lost contrast or massaging the tonal relationships between objects in the photo.
the keyboard. They work quickly, with an
economy of movement that is impressive to watch. One key to their success is the use of keyboard shortcuts for all their commonly used commands. I’ve posted a list of Photoshop and Lightroom keyboard shortcuts at www
.perfectdigitalphotography.com/workflow.php.
If you cannot find a Photoshop keyboard shortcut for a command you use frequently, or the keyboard shortcut isn’t to your liking, you can create a custom set of keyboard shortcuts under the Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts menu. Here you can assign new keyboard shortcuts, create additional keyboard shortcut sets, or reset to the default set of shortcuts.
Lightroom Presets
Lightroom is one of the few programs that becomes smarter the more you use it. The way you add to Lightroom’s intelligence is by creating presets for frequent tasks, corrections, and templates. For example, you’re probably already using a Lightroom preset for your
file naming and metadata entry during the download process. Work efficiently by building custom Lightroom presets for performing black and white conversions, adding vignettes, correcting blue skies, or adding a gradient to lighten the foreground. Once you’ve created a series of presets, you can quickly move through the bulk of your corrections by selecting
presets and then making small adjustments to fine-tune the correction for the specific needs of your photo.
To create an editing preset, click the plus (+) icon in the upper-right corner of the Presets panel in the Develop module. In the
New Develop Preset dialog, click Check None
to clear the Settings fields used in the preset, and then manually add the Settings you want to have applied with the preset.
For example, if you want to create a sharpening preset, check the Sharpening checkbox and leave the others blank. This protects any corrections you may have already made to your photo and adjusts the Sharpness setting based only on the values currently in use at the time the preset is created.
397
398
I frequently use presets for my black and white conversions, gradient filters, printing, and web galleries. I’ll show you how to create and apply print and web creation presets
in Chapters 18 and 19, the printing and multimedia chapters later in this book.
Photoshop Actions
Unfortunately, Photoshop doesn’t have presets to expedite your workflow. What Photoshop does have are actions, which are similar to macros used in other applications to perform a routine set of steps automatically.
I’ve compiled an actions tutorial on the Perfect Digital
Scripts
The truly geeky among us may want to look at using scripts to control image processing in Photoshop. Scripts are far more difficult to
use than either presets or actions, but they are far more powerful, allowing you to automate a long series of steps involving both the
operating system and Photoshop. For example, a script may take a folder of images, resize and sharpen them to a specific size, add metadata, and then save a copy of each photo in a specific folder on your hard drive. Once the processing is complete, the script can post the images to a web server using an FTP connection.
If you have experience with JavaScript, AppleScript, or Visual Basic, you may want to take a look at the Adobe Photoshop CS4 Scripting Guide for information on how to control Photoshop and other Creative Suite applications using Scripts: visit www.adobe
.com/devnet/photoshop/scripting/.
On the Web
Photography website at www
.perfectdigitalphotography.com/workflow.php.
Wrap - up
I’ve covered a lot of ground in this chapter. Of course, when you begin working with the advanced features in Photoshop, you’ll find an infinite range of techniques at your disposal. While the physical limitations of the book prevent us from covering everything we’d like to include, the flexibility of the Web allows
us to share several bonus sections with you. Here’s a sampling of the information available to you online:
■ A bonus chapter on scanning, including recommendations on purchasing a scanner, selecting the appropriate scanning software, and getting the best scan from your film
■ Additional Photoshop and Lightroom techniques to help your photos look their very best
In the next chapter, we’ll turn our attention from enhancing images to preparing them for print or publication online.
399
400
H OW T O : U SING C OMPLEX M ASKS TO E NHANCE F OCUS AND A TTENTION
Once you master using simple layer masks, you’ll find your creative well running deeper and deeper as you think of new and intriguing ways to use layer masks for compositing multiple images or applying creative effects. This How To will demonstrate several real-world image refinements, each using a different method for using layer masks to limit the correction to a specific region, color, or section of the tonal range. There is no single “perfect” method for creating layer masks. Instead, strive toward mastering a handful of techniques for building selections and layer masks. This will make your corrections more versatile as you can adapt your approach to the specific needs of the photo and select the technique that allows you to perform your corrections quickly.
A primary reason for performing selective contrast correction is to emphasize the subject and de-emphasize the background to make the photo appear more three-dimensional, calling attention to your main subject. Layer masks, in conjunction
with Curves and other adjustment tools, are perfectly suited to this task.
In this photo, the climber isn’t as prominent in the picture as he should be. By performing a few selective corrections, his focused expression will take center stage in the photo. For that to happen, four corrections need to take place:
■ Darken the rock in the foreground Since the rock is one of the lightest elements in the photo, your attention naturally gravitates toward it. Darkening the rock will cause the viewer’s gaze to focus more on the climber’s expression.
■ Darken the background Light objects appear to be closer to the viewer than dark objects. Darkening the background will make the ground appear farther from the climber, increasing the appearance of height and depth in the photo.
■ Lighten and increase contrast on the climber’s face One of the difficulties in photographing climbing is that the climber’s face is always shaded. By lightening his face and increasing the contrast, it will be easier to see his expression and make for a more compelling photo.
■ Darken and add contrast to the climber’s hand and arm The second most important element in the photo is the climber’s hand and the crack in the rock he’s using for a hand-hold. Since it is
the second most important element, it needs to be darkened slightly so it is less prominent than the climber’s face.
I’ll use a separate adjustment layer and layer mask for each correction. This way I can fine-tune the balance of each element in the photo. Let’s get started.
The first step is to use a Curves adjustment layer to darken the image considerably. This addresses the need to darken the rock and the background.
To remove this correction from the climber, I’ll select a soft brush at 50 percent opacity and zoom in on the image to paint with black over the climber to remove the darkening correction. If at any point my brush strokes extend outside the edges of the climber, I press the x key to exchange the foreground and background colors (in this case, black for white) and paint out the errant brush strokes. This makes it easy to correct the edges of a layer mask.
Next, I’ll create a second Curves layer using the Adjustments panel. I want this curve to lighten and increase contrast on the climber’s face, so I’ll select the On-image adjustment tool near the upper-left corner of the Curves dialog. This allows me to hover my cursor over the climber’s face to see exactly where those tonal values lie on the curve. Setting two curve control points just outside the range for the climber’s face, I drag
the top point up and left to lighten and add contrast through the midtones. This improves the climber’s face, but it makes the rest of the image look overly saturated and “contrasty.”
401
The mask used for removing this Cur ves cor rection from the climber. Notice how, in this case , the mask doesn’t need to be perfect—it just needs to look
natur al. By using a layer mask, I can restrict this correction to
the climber’s face, leaving the rest of the image unaffected. While I could paint the entire layer mask with black, save
402
the area of his face, it’s far more efficient to press cmd-i (Mac) or ctrl-i (Windows) to invert the layer mask from white to black, hiding the correction from the entire image. At this point, selecting the Brush tool and using white allows me to brush in the correction on the climber’s face. To help disguise the correction, I decrease the brush opacity to 20 percent and paint in the correction on the climber’s hat as well.
After painting in the correction and zooming back to see the full image on my screen, his face seems artificially bright and contrasty when compared to the rest of the photo. Reducing the layer opacity to 88 percent makes the correction appear more natural.
The layer mask with
tr ansparent areas showing the white (revealed) areas of the mask
point a quarter of the way down from the top of the curve and drag down and to the right to darken and improve contrast in the highlights. As an extra step, I’ll nudge the highlight point on the curve to the left, along the top margin of the Curves dialog. This has the potential to cause a loss of detail in the extreme highlights. Since I don’t have any extreme highlights in his hand, I’m okay using this technique to improve the contrast in the selected area.
The final major correction I need to make is to darken the climber’s hand and arm slightly. In doing so, I can increase the definition in the climber’s forearm as well, emphasizing the climber’s strength. I’ll create
a third Curves adjustment layer and use the On- image adjustment tool to locate the tonal values of the climber’s hand on the curve. Since these values lie so high on the curve, it isn’t practical to make an S-curve as I did in the preceding step. Instead, I’ll place one
As in the last step, the adjustment doesn’t improve the overall look of the image, so I’ll invert the layer mask to temporarily hide the correction entirely, and then
I’ll brush in my correction only where I need it using a soft brush, set to 50 percent opacity with white as my foreground color.
The layer mask with tr ansparent areas showing the white (revealed) areas of the mask
Using these three Curves adjustments, I am able to address the four problem areas. After completing a
correction like this, it is always beneficial to toggle on and off all the adjustment layers for a before-and-after view
of your corrections. This allows you to make sure your corrections are positively impacting the image and that no odd edges to the mask will be visible in the finished print.
To toggle on and off all of your layers quickly, hold down the option (Mac) or alt (Windows) key while clicking the layer visibility icon (the eye) next to the Background layer.
Holding the OPTION
(Mac) or ALT (Windows) key while clicking the
Background layer’s
visibility icon allows you to quickly see a before- and-after preview of
your cor rections.
403
This ability to fine-tune your corrections without affecting any other layers is one of the greatest time-savers of working with adjustment layers and layer masks.
The image before cor rections
After performing my before-and-after preview, I feel my first correction was a little strong, so I decrease the layer opacity of the Curves 1 layer to 82 percent and change the Layer Blending mode to Luminosity to balance the corrections. The Luminosity blending mode isolates the Curves correction to tonal information only, without affecting color. In this image, it removes a color and saturation shift imparted by the steep curve.
The image after selective cor rections
I
lti
!l,
' .f,t,
CHAPTER 17