damage control class notes
Damage Control
by John Ross The Art of Retouching Studio http://www.TheArtofRetouching.com
Introduction Do you have images that are not quite right? Exposure problems, excessive noise, soft focus, and other fac tors out of your control can really ruin a nice image. But, there is still hope. When your image has bad lighting, weird proportions, unbalanced tones, and too much exposure, you may think that your photo is ruined beyond redemption. To the untrained eye, there’s nothing left to be done. But knowing how to use the tools you’ve learned in different scenarios will help you save pictures that are in pretty bad shape. Many “throw away” images can still be saved. Various 3rd party software packages, and Photoshop tools and techniques can be employed to save noisy or blurry images. We will also discuss restoration of old pho tographs. In short, this class will show you how to try and save pictures that are in bad shape. It may seem like all I ever do is give students random information. However, we are starting to take all these loose parts of information, and combine them one at a time, to resolve many problems within an image. Damage Control is all about looking at loose parts of information and combining them one at a time to re solve many problems within an image. This chapter will not only help you spot what’s wrong in a picture, but will teach you the skills to correct those painfully glaring mistakes like a pro.
Evolution of Retouching One of the first images I picked for my Basic One Course, also turned out to be one of my hardest to retouch. During my live classes, I would teach various items with it, but I never could figure out all the steps needed for really solving the puzzle of what to do, or what order to do it in. After 2 years, and several attempts, this turns out to be the solution that takes me closer to my vision, than ever before. Most images only take like 20 minutes for me, an hour max. This one proved to be a real chal lenge. While I make this look easy here, in reality it took about 2 hours for this pass on my main machine, to finally get it right. One of the lessons here, is that I started teaching with this image almost two years ago, when I really thought I knew everything about Photoshop already. The reality was, I didn’t know everything. You can always keep learning with your art. Photoshop is like a bottomless pit of time. Ah well, anyway... let’s discuss it.
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Photoshop Perfection: Basic 2 Course - Damage Control
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This is the original image, without anything done to it yet. The sun was settings, so the colors were blue, and the tones were dark. But, it was one of those golden moments between my wife and son that were so important to me. That’s why I made a personal project out of it.
With a few simple changes (in retrospect), the colors and exposure is balanced out. After this, I could get started on the many layers inside Photoshop.
The evolution of work, was not nearly as straight forward as this, but when you organize your layers consis tently from the beginning, you can easily follow along with the progression. Not only that, but any changes that need to be made later, are easily found and corrected. Here we have the pixel based layers at the bottom. The Camera Raw layer starts it off with PhotoNinja for anti-noise, and Shake Reduction for sharpening. Next layer up is the removal of the treeline between them, as I always found it a disconnection between both the mother and son. Next layer up is some basic Cloning and Healing. The top of the chain was an effect I came up with, just for this purpose. The sky was a very flat blue, and I wanted some light clouds for visual interest. So I grabbed a sunset from another image, and gave it a Blending Mode of Luminosity. Worked great. 2
Photoshop Perfection: Basic 2 Course - Beyond Cloning
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The next group of layers above the pixel layers are all Adjustment Layers. While I do neutralize the blue cast in his grey shirt, the changes are mostly about the color of the skin. Notice earlier he had a yellow cast, and she was pink. I needed to push and pull the colors within the lights, midtones, and darks separately, for each area.
Lastly, as a very subtle effect, I added a Lens Flare from the Knoll Light Factory Plugin. Lens Flares are good for bringing the backgrounds and foregrounds together. You really don’t notice it until you turn it on/off, but that’s the general idea. Keep it subtle. Since the original flare was blue, I used Photo Filter to warm it up. It could likely use a cropping, but I don’t delete pixels until the very end, right before export. v. 1
Photoshop Perfection: Basic 2 Course - Damage Control
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Faux Depth of Field I will semi often come across images that simply look better with less backgrounds. For example, trees, buildings, people, and other items can distract from the focal point of the image. In these cases, I will cut out the main subject, blur the background, and put the person back over the top.
Start by cutting out a QuickMask around the subject. Make it as close as reasonably possible. You can adjust the mask later, but for now, give it a good pass. You will basically be making a copy of the base image, and apply the mask to the second layer on top. You will now have the subject floating on top being cut out. The layer below remains the same as it was.
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Reselect the mask (Alt-Click the mask), and on the background layer, apply Edit - Fill - Content Aware. I am generally not a big fan of this func tion at all. As you will see, it does a terrible job. However, all you really want to do, is fill in behind the layer on top. It does not need to be perfect at all. In fact, it can be crap. It really doesn’t mat ter. But, you need to do this, or else the next step will do a bad job, if we leave the subject where it was. We need to cover it up. With the background selected, but no selections active, use Filter - Blur - Lens Blur. You could use Gaussian Blue too, but Lens Blur does a better job. Play with the settings, but your goal here is to get the background to properly match a Depth of Field (Aperture) that matches the subject. As long as it look pretty good, then your golden. Yes, this is a ton of extra work, but if done properly, no one will ever know you did this much work to it.
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Extreme Exposures When shooting in direct sunlight, you will often bump into situations where the whites become completely blown out, and the shadows become filled in with black. This ruins many images. However, if you are lucky, a simple ad justment within Camera Raw can easily fix, many of the worst situations. Just slide the Highlights to the right, and the Shadows to the left, then push the Blacks to the left too. Problem solved. This is the best case scenario. Often it’s not nearly as easy as this was. But, it’s very important to give it a shot. You may turn out to be pleseantly surprised. When it comes to exposure issues, Camera Raw is usually your first, basic step. Now let’s review several other ways of solving more stubborn problems.
Over Exposures When shooing in direct sunlight, this hap pens all the time. Anything white, or even close to white, gets blow out. However, doing a simple Camera Raw Highlight move may not work well globally. In these cases, you can us ethe Local Adjustment Tab, and brush a selective mask around certain areas, then move the Highlights. You can create multiple masks, and adjust different areas seprately. For example, grabbing a while shirt and ajdust ing differently than the skin.
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Photoshop Perfection: Basic 2 Course - Beyond Cloning
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There are times when there simply is not more detail left to pull out. You may want to leave it as white, but I prefer to give it a small tint of grey. Use Color Range and grab the most white areas. Select - Expand - 4 Pixels, Select Feather - 4 Pixels and then use the bot tom of Levels to put something back in.
It may look fine with White for internet use, but printing on a press generally requires something be there. Absolute White can cause printing problems.
This opens up another further discussions on tint that I discuss in my other courses with Digital Fundamentals. But let’s just say that for printing in magazines, you should always have a 2-4% value of all CMYK colors. I can achieve this by using Curves, bringing down the White Point, and re-marking the 1/4 and 1/2 Points. This will basically ensure that there is Tonal Dot, even in the Abosulte White areas. If you do not do this, the general issue may come out that dot simply stops dead in it’s tracks, and leaves a hard edge. If you are lucky enough to have the front cover, this is the last thing you want to happen.
v. 1
Photoshop Perfection: Basic 2 Course - Damage Control
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Under Exposures Just like the Under Exposures, you have a few options. You could do a Camera Raw Exposure fix, maybe you will get lucky at how easy it is. Sometimes you may need to go with a Local Adjustment, and brush in the area you want fixed. You could try Photoshop Curves as well, but that will not likelye give you any bet ter results than with Camera Raw Shadows.
Another possiblity that I didn’t mention for Over Exporsure section is using an HDR program. Now, I will not be going into this for any detail here. I cover this topic in depth in my Photoshop Intermediate Course. For right now, let me just show you a little before and after, so you can see what’s possible. Ideally, you would want to use Multiple Exposures of -1, 0, and +1 to gain the greatest Tonal Range. But even with a single photograph, these HDR programs are able to pull out even more detail that Camera Raw can. As I said, this is a whole other topic that I could not do justice as a sliver of this section.
Backwards Exposures This happens to me all the time. I am out taking pictures, and the background is lighter than the fore ground. This opens up an entirely new topic that I cover in my Photoshop Basic Course, and to some degree in the next section, we basiccally would need to use masks to lighten the subject, and darken the backrounds. With the use of multiple masks and Tonal Tools, we are able to spin about the Exposure.
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Photoshop Perfection: Basic 2 Course - Beyond Cloning
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Smart Sharpening I had done many tests on all the available built-in, and 3rd party plugins that had anything to do with sharpening an image. I can to a single realization. The best results came from Filter - Smart Sharpen. While Photoshop version may come into play (CS5, CS6, CC), I would just say use this, and forget (almost) every thing else. The main issue here, is that all the 3rd party tools gave the same result. Anything extra they were promoting was not neccessary. In short, the plugins will do various sharpening on different areas. Since we can get the same result from multiple passes with Smart Sharpen and masking, I can’t justify the added cost. The older Unsharp Mask has seen it’s day in the sun. Now it just makes everything pasty, and Smart Sharp en does a better job. I use the settings of Amount 100 and Radius 1, through 200 and 2, and mix the values in between. I do not touch any other settings, as I found them to just make things worse. If I can’t get the results I was hoping for, then there is a Plan B.
Shake Reduction When all else fails, this is Plan B. Don’t use this CC Filter lightly. It can make an image, as easily as it can destroy it. Introduced with the first release of CC, it is still going through it’s growing pains. But the results can be simply amazing. It has various sliders and options. Ignore them. They are there for no good reason, that I could figure out. You can play with them (my word should not always be law, think and experiment for yourself), but don’t expect to really use them. Only possible option is to create a new focus box, which may or may not help. Keep your eye on the whole image though. You may need to use it, and then mask out several areas that it is making worse. It’s very tempermental at this point.
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Double Exposures You can fix extremely overexposed and underexposed images with dynamic HDR programs. You would then get the best results from multiple exposed images, usually 3-7 variations. But, we’ll get to that in detail with the Intermediate studies. For now, making use of the tools you’ve learned with Camera Raw and Layers, will help you control most exposure problems with a photo. When it comes to a “Repertoire” or Street Style of Photography (walking around, taking random photos), there is no time to really set the scene, and proper lighting is out of the question. I will often find the image images have backward lighting (dark on sub ject, brighter in background). Another issue is severe blowouts, and super dark shadows. That is what I would like to talk about now. For instances where a photo is overexposed on one side and under exposed on another (Think bright sunlight), you may need to dupli cate the layer so that you can make separate changes to the image. This effect usually happens when you take photos in bright daylight. The need for a Double Exposure like this happens if you make the moves on a single layer, and it just doesn’t look natural. Sometimes, everything just looks like a funny grey tone. I can’t quite describe it, but when you see it, you know it. So if you can get away with a single file, great, don’t worry about this. But if you have a problem, then here is your solution.
In Camera Raw, you can take the image and dial down the Highlights. At this point, the entire image will be dark er, including the dark areas that we want to open up. Click Open Object, and you will be brought into Photoshop.
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Right click on the layer, and select “New Smart Object Via Copy”. We want to do it this way, because it will create two different Smart Objects for us. If we just make a simple copy, the change on one object, will affect the other, which is not what we want here.
Double click on the new layer and it will take you into Camera Raw. This time, swing the sliders around so that Highlights are back to zero, but open up the shadows in stead. Adjust Black as needed. Click OK.
Once you have the two layers in Photoshop, use Color Range to select the Blacks in the layer where you adjusted the Highlights. This will give you all the darkest parts of the image. Come out of Color Range and apply Image - Select - Expand - 4 and also Image - Select - Feather - 4. Use this selection to apply a mask to the layer with the brighter shadows. When you put the images together and adjust the opacity of the top layer down to about 20%, you will have effectively lightened the dark areas and lightened the white areas all in a single image. The goal here is fill in the blow outs, and pull out the details in the shadows. At this point you can adjust the mask, and tweak the image as usual. At least now, you have a better balanced image to start with. v. 1
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Salvaging Crappy Old Pictures In general, this can become a bottomless topic. I mean, I could teach an entire course on how to restore old and damaged photographs. However, for right now, let’s just target some from the early 2000’s where the digital qual ity wasn’t all that good. When I look back at all the images I took, there seems to be some common themes. The primary one was that they were mind numbingly noisy. Tons of color spots all over the place during low light situations. Another problem is that the lenses were junky, so every thing was either soft, or pasty looking. My own wedding from 2003 was largely a lost cause. Until now. Behold the power of Photoshop CC. Today, we now have built in functions, or 3rd party plugin’s, that hold the keys to saving images from the last two decades. Let’s pick an image that has long since been written off as a lost cause, and see what we can do now. You may be very surprised. Even if you have a JPG (as many images from back then were), you can still open it up in Camera Raw. Review your Prefer ences - File Handing - Camera Raw Settings, and ensure that “Automatically Open all JPGs” is selected.
Start with Camera Raw. Make the best choices the image gives you. While many times will provide satisfactory results, you can definitely take it fur ther, and clean up the core problem areas. I use a plugin called PhotoNinja (previously NoiseNinja) to clean up a major ity of the mess the camera leave behind. Yes, it’s like $130, and yes it’s worth every penny. I use it quite regularly. The tool itself is a Raw Processor, but I only use the anti-noise function. Only other product is Imagenomic Noise ware, but I have no working knowledge of it at this time. Photoshop has nothing built in that does even close the same good job these will. 12
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Depending on the image, you may need to convert it to another Smart Object. Here’s why: Photoshop, as of the time of this writing, does not have multiple masks, for multiple Smart Objects. It is a huge product flaw, and I believe they are holding it back as a big release one day. For now, you may need to right click the layer, and convert to another Smart Object. Then possibly apply Shake Reduction and Add Noise. Here’s why... Smart Sharpen will only help images that are already fairly sharp to some degree. Shake Reduc tion is great on anything that looks too soft to be saved. As for Adding Noise, even though we just removed random noise, adding back in controlled noise of like 2-3 will make it look more consistent, and less pasty after the Shake Reduction filter.
Like always, you can do more to im prove the image, but at least this way will get you started. While this advise is being fairly general, it is how I bring back many of the older images I am faced with. Camera Raw, PhotoNinja, Shake Reduction and Smart Filter are often all you need.
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Selective Photo Filter
It is very easy to adjust overall Temperature Warm or Cool by using Camera Raw or Cam era Raw Filter. When it comes to quick Tem perature changes in Photoshop itself, I like to use the Photo Filter Adjustment Layer for making quick changes to skin tone. I will make a QuickMask of the skin tones, and apply that mask to the Photo Filter. While there are several different ways to achieve the same effect, I happen to like the way it gives skin a golden brown tint without much hassle. I use the standard “Warming Filter (85)” and adjust the Density as needed. I may sometimes pick my own color to better match the scene, but I don’t much care for the other pull down options.
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Liquify While Liquify is often used to nip and tuck on models, don’t forget that this filter is great for cases where a subject looks too bloated due to the camera angle or whatnot. You can use Filter – Liquify to reduce smaller or larger areas. While Free Transform, may also be used to some degree, Liquify allows you to tar get areas and push and pull the pixels. Photoshop CS5 and older were painfully slow. CS6 introduced a new rendering engine, which significantly speed everything up. CC came along, and allows you to also use it with a Smart Object, which is totally awesome.
Lens Correction, Adaptive Wide Angle and Perspective Warp Here are a few more very useful filters, mostly for architecture. Lens Correction will handle simple straightening and Barrel Roll. Adaptive Wide Angle is more flexible, but more damaging. Perspective Warp may or may not even work on your computer. Neither my classroom PC nor my MacMini will properly use this tool. The graphics become distorted, and I can’t use it. Because of that, I can’t even teach it. Best I can tell, it’s not even that impressive,
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by John Ross The Art of Retouching Studio http://www.TheArtofRetouching.com
Introduction Do you have images that are not quite right? Exposure problems, excessive noise, soft focus, and other fac tors out of your control can really ruin a nice image. But, there is still hope. When your image has bad lighting, weird proportions, unbalanced tones, and too much exposure, you may think that your photo is ruined beyond redemption. To the untrained eye, there’s nothing left to be done. But knowing how to use the tools you’ve learned in different scenarios will help you save pictures that are in pretty bad shape. Many “throw away” images can still be saved. Various 3rd party software packages, and Photoshop tools and techniques can be employed to save noisy or blurry images. We will also discuss restoration of old pho tographs. In short, this class will show you how to try and save pictures that are in bad shape. It may seem like all I ever do is give students random information. However, we are starting to take all these loose parts of information, and combine them one at a time, to resolve many problems within an image. Damage Control is all about looking at loose parts of information and combining them one at a time to re solve many problems within an image. This chapter will not only help you spot what’s wrong in a picture, but will teach you the skills to correct those painfully glaring mistakes like a pro.
Evolution of Retouching One of the first images I picked for my Basic One Course, also turned out to be one of my hardest to retouch. During my live classes, I would teach various items with it, but I never could figure out all the steps needed for really solving the puzzle of what to do, or what order to do it in. After 2 years, and several attempts, this turns out to be the solution that takes me closer to my vision, than ever before. Most images only take like 20 minutes for me, an hour max. This one proved to be a real chal lenge. While I make this look easy here, in reality it took about 2 hours for this pass on my main machine, to finally get it right. One of the lessons here, is that I started teaching with this image almost two years ago, when I really thought I knew everything about Photoshop already. The reality was, I didn’t know everything. You can always keep learning with your art. Photoshop is like a bottomless pit of time. Ah well, anyway... let’s discuss it.
v. 1
Photoshop Perfection: Basic 2 Course - Damage Control
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This is the original image, without anything done to it yet. The sun was settings, so the colors were blue, and the tones were dark. But, it was one of those golden moments between my wife and son that were so important to me. That’s why I made a personal project out of it.
With a few simple changes (in retrospect), the colors and exposure is balanced out. After this, I could get started on the many layers inside Photoshop.
The evolution of work, was not nearly as straight forward as this, but when you organize your layers consis tently from the beginning, you can easily follow along with the progression. Not only that, but any changes that need to be made later, are easily found and corrected. Here we have the pixel based layers at the bottom. The Camera Raw layer starts it off with PhotoNinja for anti-noise, and Shake Reduction for sharpening. Next layer up is the removal of the treeline between them, as I always found it a disconnection between both the mother and son. Next layer up is some basic Cloning and Healing. The top of the chain was an effect I came up with, just for this purpose. The sky was a very flat blue, and I wanted some light clouds for visual interest. So I grabbed a sunset from another image, and gave it a Blending Mode of Luminosity. Worked great. 2
Photoshop Perfection: Basic 2 Course - Beyond Cloning
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The next group of layers above the pixel layers are all Adjustment Layers. While I do neutralize the blue cast in his grey shirt, the changes are mostly about the color of the skin. Notice earlier he had a yellow cast, and she was pink. I needed to push and pull the colors within the lights, midtones, and darks separately, for each area.
Lastly, as a very subtle effect, I added a Lens Flare from the Knoll Light Factory Plugin. Lens Flares are good for bringing the backgrounds and foregrounds together. You really don’t notice it until you turn it on/off, but that’s the general idea. Keep it subtle. Since the original flare was blue, I used Photo Filter to warm it up. It could likely use a cropping, but I don’t delete pixels until the very end, right before export. v. 1
Photoshop Perfection: Basic 2 Course - Damage Control
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Faux Depth of Field I will semi often come across images that simply look better with less backgrounds. For example, trees, buildings, people, and other items can distract from the focal point of the image. In these cases, I will cut out the main subject, blur the background, and put the person back over the top.
Start by cutting out a QuickMask around the subject. Make it as close as reasonably possible. You can adjust the mask later, but for now, give it a good pass. You will basically be making a copy of the base image, and apply the mask to the second layer on top. You will now have the subject floating on top being cut out. The layer below remains the same as it was.
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Reselect the mask (Alt-Click the mask), and on the background layer, apply Edit - Fill - Content Aware. I am generally not a big fan of this func tion at all. As you will see, it does a terrible job. However, all you really want to do, is fill in behind the layer on top. It does not need to be perfect at all. In fact, it can be crap. It really doesn’t mat ter. But, you need to do this, or else the next step will do a bad job, if we leave the subject where it was. We need to cover it up. With the background selected, but no selections active, use Filter - Blur - Lens Blur. You could use Gaussian Blue too, but Lens Blur does a better job. Play with the settings, but your goal here is to get the background to properly match a Depth of Field (Aperture) that matches the subject. As long as it look pretty good, then your golden. Yes, this is a ton of extra work, but if done properly, no one will ever know you did this much work to it.
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Photoshop Perfection: Basic 2 Course - Damage Control
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Extreme Exposures When shooting in direct sunlight, you will often bump into situations where the whites become completely blown out, and the shadows become filled in with black. This ruins many images. However, if you are lucky, a simple ad justment within Camera Raw can easily fix, many of the worst situations. Just slide the Highlights to the right, and the Shadows to the left, then push the Blacks to the left too. Problem solved. This is the best case scenario. Often it’s not nearly as easy as this was. But, it’s very important to give it a shot. You may turn out to be pleseantly surprised. When it comes to exposure issues, Camera Raw is usually your first, basic step. Now let’s review several other ways of solving more stubborn problems.
Over Exposures When shooing in direct sunlight, this hap pens all the time. Anything white, or even close to white, gets blow out. However, doing a simple Camera Raw Highlight move may not work well globally. In these cases, you can us ethe Local Adjustment Tab, and brush a selective mask around certain areas, then move the Highlights. You can create multiple masks, and adjust different areas seprately. For example, grabbing a while shirt and ajdust ing differently than the skin.
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Photoshop Perfection: Basic 2 Course - Beyond Cloning
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There are times when there simply is not more detail left to pull out. You may want to leave it as white, but I prefer to give it a small tint of grey. Use Color Range and grab the most white areas. Select - Expand - 4 Pixels, Select Feather - 4 Pixels and then use the bot tom of Levels to put something back in.
It may look fine with White for internet use, but printing on a press generally requires something be there. Absolute White can cause printing problems.
This opens up another further discussions on tint that I discuss in my other courses with Digital Fundamentals. But let’s just say that for printing in magazines, you should always have a 2-4% value of all CMYK colors. I can achieve this by using Curves, bringing down the White Point, and re-marking the 1/4 and 1/2 Points. This will basically ensure that there is Tonal Dot, even in the Abosulte White areas. If you do not do this, the general issue may come out that dot simply stops dead in it’s tracks, and leaves a hard edge. If you are lucky enough to have the front cover, this is the last thing you want to happen.
v. 1
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Under Exposures Just like the Under Exposures, you have a few options. You could do a Camera Raw Exposure fix, maybe you will get lucky at how easy it is. Sometimes you may need to go with a Local Adjustment, and brush in the area you want fixed. You could try Photoshop Curves as well, but that will not likelye give you any bet ter results than with Camera Raw Shadows.
Another possiblity that I didn’t mention for Over Exporsure section is using an HDR program. Now, I will not be going into this for any detail here. I cover this topic in depth in my Photoshop Intermediate Course. For right now, let me just show you a little before and after, so you can see what’s possible. Ideally, you would want to use Multiple Exposures of -1, 0, and +1 to gain the greatest Tonal Range. But even with a single photograph, these HDR programs are able to pull out even more detail that Camera Raw can. As I said, this is a whole other topic that I could not do justice as a sliver of this section.
Backwards Exposures This happens to me all the time. I am out taking pictures, and the background is lighter than the fore ground. This opens up an entirely new topic that I cover in my Photoshop Basic Course, and to some degree in the next section, we basiccally would need to use masks to lighten the subject, and darken the backrounds. With the use of multiple masks and Tonal Tools, we are able to spin about the Exposure.
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Photoshop Perfection: Basic 2 Course - Beyond Cloning
v. 1
Smart Sharpening I had done many tests on all the available built-in, and 3rd party plugins that had anything to do with sharpening an image. I can to a single realization. The best results came from Filter - Smart Sharpen. While Photoshop version may come into play (CS5, CS6, CC), I would just say use this, and forget (almost) every thing else. The main issue here, is that all the 3rd party tools gave the same result. Anything extra they were promoting was not neccessary. In short, the plugins will do various sharpening on different areas. Since we can get the same result from multiple passes with Smart Sharpen and masking, I can’t justify the added cost. The older Unsharp Mask has seen it’s day in the sun. Now it just makes everything pasty, and Smart Sharp en does a better job. I use the settings of Amount 100 and Radius 1, through 200 and 2, and mix the values in between. I do not touch any other settings, as I found them to just make things worse. If I can’t get the results I was hoping for, then there is a Plan B.
Shake Reduction When all else fails, this is Plan B. Don’t use this CC Filter lightly. It can make an image, as easily as it can destroy it. Introduced with the first release of CC, it is still going through it’s growing pains. But the results can be simply amazing. It has various sliders and options. Ignore them. They are there for no good reason, that I could figure out. You can play with them (my word should not always be law, think and experiment for yourself), but don’t expect to really use them. Only possible option is to create a new focus box, which may or may not help. Keep your eye on the whole image though. You may need to use it, and then mask out several areas that it is making worse. It’s very tempermental at this point.
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Double Exposures You can fix extremely overexposed and underexposed images with dynamic HDR programs. You would then get the best results from multiple exposed images, usually 3-7 variations. But, we’ll get to that in detail with the Intermediate studies. For now, making use of the tools you’ve learned with Camera Raw and Layers, will help you control most exposure problems with a photo. When it comes to a “Repertoire” or Street Style of Photography (walking around, taking random photos), there is no time to really set the scene, and proper lighting is out of the question. I will often find the image images have backward lighting (dark on sub ject, brighter in background). Another issue is severe blowouts, and super dark shadows. That is what I would like to talk about now. For instances where a photo is overexposed on one side and under exposed on another (Think bright sunlight), you may need to dupli cate the layer so that you can make separate changes to the image. This effect usually happens when you take photos in bright daylight. The need for a Double Exposure like this happens if you make the moves on a single layer, and it just doesn’t look natural. Sometimes, everything just looks like a funny grey tone. I can’t quite describe it, but when you see it, you know it. So if you can get away with a single file, great, don’t worry about this. But if you have a problem, then here is your solution.
In Camera Raw, you can take the image and dial down the Highlights. At this point, the entire image will be dark er, including the dark areas that we want to open up. Click Open Object, and you will be brought into Photoshop.
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Photoshop Perfection: Basic 2 Course - Beyond Cloning
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Right click on the layer, and select “New Smart Object Via Copy”. We want to do it this way, because it will create two different Smart Objects for us. If we just make a simple copy, the change on one object, will affect the other, which is not what we want here.
Double click on the new layer and it will take you into Camera Raw. This time, swing the sliders around so that Highlights are back to zero, but open up the shadows in stead. Adjust Black as needed. Click OK.
Once you have the two layers in Photoshop, use Color Range to select the Blacks in the layer where you adjusted the Highlights. This will give you all the darkest parts of the image. Come out of Color Range and apply Image - Select - Expand - 4 and also Image - Select - Feather - 4. Use this selection to apply a mask to the layer with the brighter shadows. When you put the images together and adjust the opacity of the top layer down to about 20%, you will have effectively lightened the dark areas and lightened the white areas all in a single image. The goal here is fill in the blow outs, and pull out the details in the shadows. At this point you can adjust the mask, and tweak the image as usual. At least now, you have a better balanced image to start with. v. 1
Photoshop Perfection: Basic 2 Course - Damage Control
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Salvaging Crappy Old Pictures In general, this can become a bottomless topic. I mean, I could teach an entire course on how to restore old and damaged photographs. However, for right now, let’s just target some from the early 2000’s where the digital qual ity wasn’t all that good. When I look back at all the images I took, there seems to be some common themes. The primary one was that they were mind numbingly noisy. Tons of color spots all over the place during low light situations. Another problem is that the lenses were junky, so every thing was either soft, or pasty looking. My own wedding from 2003 was largely a lost cause. Until now. Behold the power of Photoshop CC. Today, we now have built in functions, or 3rd party plugin’s, that hold the keys to saving images from the last two decades. Let’s pick an image that has long since been written off as a lost cause, and see what we can do now. You may be very surprised. Even if you have a JPG (as many images from back then were), you can still open it up in Camera Raw. Review your Prefer ences - File Handing - Camera Raw Settings, and ensure that “Automatically Open all JPGs” is selected.
Start with Camera Raw. Make the best choices the image gives you. While many times will provide satisfactory results, you can definitely take it fur ther, and clean up the core problem areas. I use a plugin called PhotoNinja (previously NoiseNinja) to clean up a major ity of the mess the camera leave behind. Yes, it’s like $130, and yes it’s worth every penny. I use it quite regularly. The tool itself is a Raw Processor, but I only use the anti-noise function. Only other product is Imagenomic Noise ware, but I have no working knowledge of it at this time. Photoshop has nothing built in that does even close the same good job these will. 12
Photoshop Perfection: Basic 2 Course - Beyond Cloning
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Depending on the image, you may need to convert it to another Smart Object. Here’s why: Photoshop, as of the time of this writing, does not have multiple masks, for multiple Smart Objects. It is a huge product flaw, and I believe they are holding it back as a big release one day. For now, you may need to right click the layer, and convert to another Smart Object. Then possibly apply Shake Reduction and Add Noise. Here’s why... Smart Sharpen will only help images that are already fairly sharp to some degree. Shake Reduc tion is great on anything that looks too soft to be saved. As for Adding Noise, even though we just removed random noise, adding back in controlled noise of like 2-3 will make it look more consistent, and less pasty after the Shake Reduction filter.
Like always, you can do more to im prove the image, but at least this way will get you started. While this advise is being fairly general, it is how I bring back many of the older images I am faced with. Camera Raw, PhotoNinja, Shake Reduction and Smart Filter are often all you need.
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Photoshop Perfection: Basic 2 Course - Damage Control
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Selective Photo Filter
It is very easy to adjust overall Temperature Warm or Cool by using Camera Raw or Cam era Raw Filter. When it comes to quick Tem perature changes in Photoshop itself, I like to use the Photo Filter Adjustment Layer for making quick changes to skin tone. I will make a QuickMask of the skin tones, and apply that mask to the Photo Filter. While there are several different ways to achieve the same effect, I happen to like the way it gives skin a golden brown tint without much hassle. I use the standard “Warming Filter (85)” and adjust the Density as needed. I may sometimes pick my own color to better match the scene, but I don’t much care for the other pull down options.
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Photoshop Perfection: Basic 2 Course - Beyond Cloning
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Liquify While Liquify is often used to nip and tuck on models, don’t forget that this filter is great for cases where a subject looks too bloated due to the camera angle or whatnot. You can use Filter – Liquify to reduce smaller or larger areas. While Free Transform, may also be used to some degree, Liquify allows you to tar get areas and push and pull the pixels. Photoshop CS5 and older were painfully slow. CS6 introduced a new rendering engine, which significantly speed everything up. CC came along, and allows you to also use it with a Smart Object, which is totally awesome.
Lens Correction, Adaptive Wide Angle and Perspective Warp Here are a few more very useful filters, mostly for architecture. Lens Correction will handle simple straightening and Barrel Roll. Adaptive Wide Angle is more flexible, but more damaging. Perspective Warp may or may not even work on your computer. Neither my classroom PC nor my MacMini will properly use this tool. The graphics become distorted, and I can’t use it. Because of that, I can’t even teach it. Best I can tell, it’s not even that impressive,
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Photoshop Perfection: Basic 2 Course - Damage Control
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