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Posts Tagged ‘layer’

Architectural Photography Using Layer Masking to Correct Contrast and White Balance

17 Dec
Dps 2

A challenging nighttime scene was overcome with multiple exposures and layer masking.

Blending indoors and outdoors in architectural photography can often create a compelling image. Unfortunately, however, it is often fraught with exposure and white balance issues. These issues are compounded at night, when artificial lights inside buildings coupled with the darkness of the night sky create an especially contrasty image with an unattractive colorcast created by the different light sources. Luckily, with multiple exposures and layer masking in Photoshop, you can create a photo that looks a lot like what you saw with your own eyes.

This method is a little different than HDR, which involves taking three or more photos at different exposures, then using automated software to combine them into one image that captures the range of light in the scene. Here, you’ll be taking three or more photos and blending them manually, since HDR software often creates unpleasant artifacts and odd color blending when used in the type of situations presented in this tutorial. You can always try HDR software first, and if the colors don’t seem to bleed, you can skip down to the later part of the tutorial for dealing with the colorcasts.

Dps 1

An image that required three exposures and had a color cast from the lamps.

Shoot three or more exposures on a tripod

You need to shoot as many photos as it takes to capture the dynamic range (the range from light to dark) in the scene. It is really important to shoot in RAW, to get as much mileage out of each photo as possible. A tripod is also necessary, since you’ll probably be taking these at night, and also because you won’t be using HDR software which aligns the images. You can use auto exposure bracketing to capture three images, but at night, exposures on the high end can often exceed 30 seconds, the longest shutter speed most cameras will let you shoot manually. It’s probably easiest to use manual mode, set your ISO to 100 or 200, stop down your aperture to f/7.1 or f/8 (if it’s really dark out, you can open it up wider), and then take a series of shots at increasingly slower shutter speeds until you’ve captured the range of light in the scene. If you need to go past 30 seconds, go into bulb mode (consult your camera’s manual for how to find it), and use a remote trigger release, holding the shutter open as long as you want. Don’t worry about white balance yet.

Dps 3

Processing one of the RAW files in Lightroom. Here you can see where just processing one RAW file wouldn’t be sufficient.

Process each exposure in Lightroom or Camera Raw, then open as layers in Photoshop

First, you are going to process the photos for exposure only, ignoring white balance. If you don’t have Lightroom, you can do this in Adobe Camera Raw. Since you have multiple exposures, you don’t need to go crazy trying to recover lost highlights (overblown bright spots) and shadows (dark parts that look black), but you want to recover them a little bit to give you more leverage later on in the process. There’s no magical formula for processing here. I usually apply lens profile correction, remove chromatic aberration, and do a little noise reduction before bringing down the highlights a little bit and bringing up the shadows and whites a little bit. Once you’re done processing each exposure, select them all, right click, and select “open as layers in Photoshop. Now you’ve got an image with three or more layers all ready to go, but we’re no quite ready to do the layer masking yet.

Dps 4

Go back and reprocess for white balance

White balance is a setting that keeps the whites in the image white, removing any colorcasts. Different light sources have different white balance settings though, so if you have a photo with two or more different light sources (such as the night sky and an artificial light), no matter how you adjust your settings, you’ll always have a color cast somewhere on your photo. What you’re going to do here is reprocess each photo so that you’ve corrected any colorcasts. If you’re lucky, you’ll have no more than two light sources in the photo. Unfortunately, though, there can often be more.

It’s important to note that you only have to correct for colorcasts that are in properly exposed parts of each photo. For instance, in one of your overexposed photos, don’t worry about the white balance for the overblown highlights. You’ll be discarding that part of the photo later. For one of your underexposed photos, don’t worry about correcting for the shadows, since you’ll also be discarding that. Start with your most properly exposed photo, and correct for any colorcast you see (for instance, the lights inside a building have a yellow cast).

All you have to do to correct the white balance is slide those two sliders (one goes from blue to yellow, and the other goes from green to magenta) until the part of the photo with the colorcast looks normal. When you’re done, open that photo in Photoshop, and make it a layer in the other image you have open. Do this by hitting Ctrl-A on Windows, or Command-A on a Mac to select the photo you just opened, then Ctrl-C or Command-C to copy it. Then click on the image with the three layers, and hit Ctrl-V or Command-V to paste it in as a layer. Repeat the processing until you have corrected all colorcasts in the photo. Then, move on to the other exposures, and correct any color casts there (remember, only the properly exposed parts need to be corrected).

Dps 5

Mask in one layer at a time

Once you’ve finally got every exposure and every colorcast accounted for as separate layers, you’re going to mask them in one by one. I start by making all but the bottom two layers invisible and masking in one layer at a time (by the way, the order of the layers does not matter, but having the most properly exposed image on the bottom will probably make things easier). Do this by clicking the little eye to the left of each layer except the bottom two. Then, with the layer one up from the bottom selected, click the layer mask icon (it’s a rectangle with a dot in the middle, found at the bottom of the layer panel). Make sure the paintbrush icon is selected as well (this can usually be found on the left hand side). You may need to adjust your brush size as you go through.

When painting with black on the layer mask, you will cover up the parts of the layer you don’t want appearing (the improperly exposed or color cast parts of the image are what you want to cover up). When you want to go back and reveal parts because you’ve made a mistake, paint with white on the layer mask. Click X on your keyboard to toggle back and forth between black and white.

When you’ve masked out all the parts of the layer you don’t want shown, select the layer on top of that and make it visible (click the space where the eye used to be). Then create another mask and start masking that layer. Keep revealing layers and masking them in until you’re done. In some cases, one part of the photo may be properly exposed in more than one image. In this case, keep the one that looks better to you. Once you’ve finished this process, save the photo as you would normally. If you think you might come back to this photo later and edit it, make sure to save a copy as a PSD.

Dps 6

Sometimes you get lucky, and the part of the image that’s colorcast has a very strong hue to it. If you have a colorcast that’s almost all one color, you can automate the masking process a bit for that layer. In the top pane, go to Select –> color range, then click somewhere in the colorcast. Look at the preview. You want the part of the image that’s your colorcast to be almost completely white, and the rest to look almost completely black. Adjust the fuzziness slider until this is the case, and then click ok. You actually want to select the inverse of that, so go to Select –> inverse. Now click the layer mask icon, and you’ll have a mask that hopefully masks out the colorcast. If it doesn’t look right, undo it and try it again with a different fuzziness setting. This is not a perfect fix. You will still need to do some fine-tuning, but it really helps move things along quicker.

Dps 7

A simple “select color range” layer mask got rid of most of the colorcast in this photo.

Conclusion

This is just one method of conquering the challenges brought on by nighttime architectural photography. As you start working with photos of this nature, you may find a different method that you prefer. Luckily, many photos only require some of the steps detailed in this tutorial. Sometimes you only need one exposure, but you need to process for colorcasts. Other times, the white balance is even, but you need to mask for exposure. It takes practice to master these intricate masking techniques, so don’t give up if you’re unhappy with your results at first. Start with simpler photos with fewer colorcasts and exposures needed before diving into a really complex one. In time you’ll be creating photos that look as natural as they appeared when you saw them in person.

Dps 8

A single exposure that required layer masking to correct colorcasts.

Have you got any tips for doing architectural photography or using layer masking? Please share in the comments below.

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The post Architectural Photography Using Layer Masking to Correct Contrast and White Balance by Samantha Decker appeared first on Digital Photography School.


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Enhancing photos with layer blend modes

02 Nov

If you have a group of images alike you can always use one of them to improve another one. I made this video to inspire you to work with your photos creatively.
Video Rating: 5 / 5

 
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Posted in Retouching in Photoshop

 

PHOTOSHOP HOW TO GLOSSY LIPS WITH LAYER STYLE PALETTE-N 1.mp4

26 Oct

With Photoshop Layer Style Palette you are able to color lips,eyelids,garments,bloks fasade,jewellery,cars and what else…..mmmmmm everythig! It gives you tones of color,nuance and why not humour? So follow next steps 1-make selection of some object (you can use some like Lasso Tool or Polygonal Lasso Tool or Qick Selection Tool or something that you prefer to make selection) 2-place this selection on a new layer with CTRL +j 3-click on FX (down in Layer Palette) or on the Layer sidelong to bring out Layer Style platte box 4-replace the settings I give you,but you can experiment with your own settings as well ENJOY AND MAKE A GREAT FUN WITH IT FOTO FROM WWW DIGITALDESIGN.COM
Video Rating: 4 / 5

 
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Layer Masks Part 2 – Photoshop Elements

04 Sep

As promised, here is the second part of the video tutorial on layer masks. Photoshop Elements does not include the layer mask functionality, in its native form at least. However, it does include adjustment layers, and these little beauties have their own layer masks. In this video I show you a rather clever trick whereby you can hijack this mask and use it as you would a normal layer mask. Best of all its really easy to use.
Video Rating: 5 / 5

 

Layer Masks – Part 1

30 Aug

As I mentioned in my last video, I see layers as being about the most powerful tool there is in Photoshop, Elements, and all the good photo editing packages. Within the topic of layers there are two specific areas that I would define as being the most powerful aspects of layers. These are layer masks and Adjustment layers. In this video, and the next, I will address the former of these, the wonderful layer mask.

 

Layer Masks for skin tone correction in photoshop

22 Mar

This video will teach you more in depth how to selectively apply skin tone corrections using layer masks. I show you what curves were used but for more in depth information on skin tones and color correction, check out my online Photoshop Workshop called “Color Fixing.”

this is my very first tutorial. there may be a better way to do this but i like my way. it’s easy. i had to change the song–copyright crap.. lol. its broken by seether. the version of photoshop i used was 7.0. and noo i’m sorry i can’t edit any pictures for you, my laptop broke and i’m hardly ever on the computer anymore.
Video Rating: 4 / 5

 

Photoshop: Glitter Graphics : Photoshop: Blinking Glitter Graphic Layer

19 Mar

Add a blinking layer to add more life to a glitter graphic. Learn about enhancing a project with a blinking layer from a Photoshop expert in this free computer software video. Expert: Robert Segundo Bio: Robert Segundo has been an artist since he could hold a pencil. Filmmaker: Christopher Rokosz
Video Rating: 2 / 5

www.mymediatutorials.com It is recommended to first use the Unsharp Mask tutorial @ www.mymediatutorials.com This tutorials shows how to make an animated gif file that changes the color of your eyes or of anything you want in photoshop. This is part 1. Please see the video response section or our website for part 2- www.mymediatutorials.com visit our site for more tutorials!

 

Enhancing photos in CS4 using Noiseware Pro and Topaz Adjust 3 with layer masks.

20 Feb

In this tutorial I show how I further improve image quality of a photo after RAW editing in Lightroom 2. Opening the photo from LR to CS4 in 16bit tiff 300dpi mode and then using layer masks with Imagenomic’s Noiseware Pro and Topaz Adjust 3. This is “my way” of enhancing nature photos where there’s a lot of separation between the background and subject. I do not using Topaz Adjust 3 on portraits nor do I use it on landscape shots. I’m also a “self-trained” photoshop user, so if you know that I’m doing something wrong or a better way to do it, then please let me know.

TUTORIAL FOR THIS BEFORE PIC: i96.photobucket.com COMES IN SEVERAL PARTS, AFTER PIC: i96.photobucket.com
Video Rating: 4 / 5