Family photos can be incredibly precious keepsakes. Most of us have in our possession old pictures of our parents, our grandparents, or ourselves, but unfortunately, as a result of time and poor protection, these photos often become scratched or torn, or lose their original spark. Thanks to Photoshop, we can easily restore our old photos in a fun and creative Continue Reading
The post How To Retouch Old Photos In Photoshop appeared first on Photodoto.
Adobe is working on a new tool for Photoshop CC called the “Curvature Pen Tool,” and earlier today the software maker released this sneak peek video to show you how it will work.
The tool—which will be added to “an upcoming release of Photoshop CC” according to Photoshop Product Manager Meredith Payne Stotzner—is very simple to use. It works by creating curved lines between points in your selection as you create a path. Each click adds a new point, clicking a point twice turns it into a sharp corner, and once your path is complete you can add, move and toggle points between rounded and sharp edges without ever changing to another tool.
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Watch the sneak peek above to see how Stotzner uses the tool, first to create a custom shape, and then to create a perfect selection of a window frame.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
One of the most powerful Photoshop tools at your disposal is Curves. Though it’s often only used to tweak contrast, the curves tool is also hugely effective in correcting color. What’s more, learning how to use it gives you a greater knowledge of image editing in general. It’ll enhance your understanding of the histogram and teach you how to edit photos by numbers.
Correcting color in images is about removing unwanted color casts. The “unwanted” part is important because some color casts are desirable. For instance, you wouldn’t want to neutralize the warm hue of a sunset. However, you might want to remove the blue color cast that sometimes pervades photos taken on overcast days or in hazy conditions. By removing an unwanted color cast, you’ll reveal the true color of the objects and subjects in your photo and make the image “pop”.
The content of a photo will dictate how you edit it, so you shouldn’t obsess over correcting color in every photo. Many times, you’ll want to do little or nothing to the color. An appreciation of the curves tool and the numbers around it will help you decide what each photo needs.
When working with curves, histograms, and RGB numbers, it’s useful to know what the histogram is telling you. There’s no such thing as a right or wrong histogram, per se, since it only mirrors the pixel data of the image, but it will highlight potential problems.
By looking at all three RGB (red, green and blue) histograms at once, you can immediately get an idea of whether or not the image has a color cast. If there’s no color cast, the three histograms will look very similar. A black and white RGB image illustrates this perfectly because it’s completely neutral. In that case, the three RGB values will be equal in every part of the image and the histograms are identical.
In this black and white RGB image, you can see that the red, green and blue histograms are identical. You won’t get this in a color photo, but if the histograms look similar, especially from the middle to the right-hand side, there is unlikely to be a noticeable color cast.
Before you start in curves, there are a couple of things you’ll need to prepare in Photoshop:
Whenever a photo contains an area that should be neutral gray in your estimation, you can use the mid-tone eyedropper tool in either levels or curves to quickly correct any color cast. Simply clicking on the supposedly gray portion of the image will correct the color. It’s usually worth clicking a few times in different areas until you achieve a result that pleases you. There are ways of calculating precise mid-tones in an image to make this method more precise, but guessing often works well and is far quicker.
By dragging the eyedropper tool over this gravestone, we can see that the green value is less than that of red or blue. We might reasonably expect this stone to have a neutral gray color, which would give roughly equal RGB values, but the green deficit (RGB 160, 149, 160) indicates a magenta (opposite of green) cast.
By opening curves or levels and clicking on the stone using the middle eyedropper, the magenta cast is corrected. As a result, the green in the photo is stronger.
By introducing the info palette into the equation, you can make far more precise color corrections. The technique you’re about to learn also teaches you to evaluate and edit photos by the numbers. Think about this – when you have nothing to compare an image to—no alternative version—it often looks “okay” at first glance. By studying the RGB values, you’ll get a clear idea of any potential problems in the photo.
Before you proceed, it’s important to note that an image always needs “neutral” areas for color correction to succeed. That’s because a neutral tone provides a known reference point that you can work from. Neutral pixels always have identical RGB values (e.g. 128, 128, 128). Any photo that doesn’t contain a neutral tone is difficult to accurately correct. This is true whether you’re adjusting color yourself or hitting an auto-color-correct button. Photographers often use gray cards to introduce a known neutral into the image for color correction later.
Here are the steps you might take to correct color using curves, the info panel, and histograms:
With your image open, select the eyedropper tool from the Photoshop tools palette.
This is a picture of a hotel in Switzerland before any color correction. There is no strong color cast, but you might detect its cool bias.
Hover the eyedropper tool over a diffuse white highlight in the photo with RGB values in the 230s or 240s (try to avoid high 250 values). Use the info palette to see these values.
Hovering the eyedropper tool over diffuse white highlights, I can see the blue channel has consistently higher numbers than red or green. The difference isn’t drastic, but it does indicate a blue color cast.
Hold down the Shift key and click to create a sample point from this white area, which will show in the info palette as #1. It’s possible to move a sample point after you’ve created it by holding down the Shift key and dragging.
Repeat this procedure with a neutral gray mid-tone, if you can find one, with RGB values of around 120-140.
Here, we’re creating a mid-tone sample point. Again, you can see from the numbers (RGB 111, 120, 137) that there’s a strong blue presence. The highlight sample point that I’ve only just recorded is stored on the depicted info palette at the left, third down (marked as #1).
Do the same thing with any black, shadow areas with values of about 10-30. After that, you’ll have created three sample points. Since color casts in shadows are inherently harder to see, this third sample point can often be skipped without ill effect.
A shadow sample point from the trash bag records at RGB 20, 21, 29. We can see now that a cold color cast runs through the entire image from highlights to shadows. Once I’ve clicked on this, my three sample points are all stored and displayed in the info palette.
Looking at the three RGB samples you’ve created, you should get an idea of any color casts that are present. You’ll typically see the same problem across all tones from highlights to shadows, though not always. Remember that a low RGB value in any of the three channels indicates an opposite color cast. Thus, a low red value indicates a cyan cast, low green is magenta, and low blue is yellow. This only applies in areas that should be neutral in color (i.e. white, gray, black).
Open a curves adjustment layer. Hold down the Ctrl and Shift (Cmd + Shift) keys and click once again exactly on the center of the second, mid-tone sample point you created (#2). This has the effect of placing a mid-tone point along each of the individual RGB curves.
Holding down Ctrl + Shift (Cmd + Shift in Mac) and clicking with the eyedropper tool places a sample point on each of the three RGB curves. This is useful for adjusting specific mid-tones. Here, I’ve opened the red channel to illustrate this. To correct color, you have to adjust the individual red, green and blue channels until the corresponding output numbers on the info palette match.
Now it’s time to correct the color cast. On a curves graph, the top right point represents highlights and the lower left shadows. In between are any mid-tone points that you placed on the curve.
Starting with highlights (your #1 sample), open the individual red, green and blue curves channels one at a time and move the top right point either left or down along the outer edge of the graph so that, eventually, the three values match. As you move each point on the graph, the info palette gives you the updated output value.
Usually, it’s best to choose the lowest or middle of the three existing highlight values and match the other two to that (see “tip” below).
This is an exaggerated example of a curves highlight adjustment in the blue channel. I’ve pulled the highlight point to the left, which has added blue to the image (far too much blue). Moving the point down the right-hand side of the graph would increase yellow. In reality, these edits will usually be very slight, moving only a small amount either way. The info palette will reflect these changes in the RGB output numbers.
Repeat this process with the mid-tone and shadow points, so that all of the chosen neutral points in the image are in fact neutral. The bottom-left shadow point is also moved along the outer edge of the graph, either upwards or right. The mid-tone point you’ll drag either up or down. If the color looks wayward at the end of this process, it typically means that you’ve picked a sample point that wasn’t neutral. Ensure that your sample points contain no color noise or reflected color. Zoom in on the area you sample to make certain of this.
Here you’ll see that all three sets of RGB values have been equalized – for each point, you see the before (left) and after the (right) value (Red on point #1 went from 238 to 239, Blue from 244 to 239).
Now all points are roughly similar, in other words, all the sample points I took that were estimated to be neutral have been made neutral. Note that the numbers don’t have to match perfectly like this as long as they’re close. In the curves graph, the red channel has been lifted and the blue channel pulled down slightly as a result of my edits. The green channel was untouched in this instance, so the corresponding line cuts straight through the middle.
Once the correction is complete, the sample points are removable by holding down Ctrl + Alt (Cmd + Option) keys and clicking on them. You should see the scissor icon when you hold these keys down. To finish, either save the image with its adjustment layer intact or flatten the layers, as required.
Before – uncorrected image.
This is the color-corrected image. With the blue cast gone, other colors in the photo can breathe. In particular, the yellow color of the hotel and the green in the grass and trees are more prominent.
Tip: Since moving the endpoints of the curve line affects all highlights and shadows, you should edit conservatively. In particular, avoid choosing the highest of the three RGB values as the target when matching red, green and blue highlight channels. Otherwise, you may find that you blow out wanted detail in the brightest part of the image. Flaws in the shadows are generally less noticeable, but you still risk blocking detail if you adjust all the shadow RGB points to the lowest of the three values. In general, turn the numbers away from their extremes.
The types of correction discussed in this article work best when there are naturally occurring color casts in the image. In mixed lighting, where the light sources are radically different (e.g. incandescent lighting and daylight), you’ll need to painstakingly address each affected area of the image using layers in Photoshop or the adjustment brush in Lightroom. Avoid this type of lighting wherever possible, since it’s difficult and time-consuming to correct in processing.
I don’t expect that you’ll use these techniques on every image, but I hope they’ll improve some of your pictures and that you’ll enjoy experimenting using curves in Photoshop. This type of mathematical editing gives you a good understanding of histograms and the meaning of RGB values.
Merely hovering the eyedropper tool over a picture while watching the numbers will tell you something about it. If there are no naturally occurring “neutrals” in the photo and you want consistent or accurate color, a high-quality gray card provides a solution.
Please don’t hesitate to fire questions my way if anything is unclear.
The post How to do Color Correction Using the Photoshop Curves Tool by Glenn Harper appeared first on Digital Photography School.
This is an article for beginners in Photoshop. You will learn how to simply add an element to your photo and transform a daylight image into a nighttime one.
First thing you want to do is select a photo of a mountain (in raw format). For that, open Photoshop then go to File > Open, it will open a window where you can select the photo that you want. Here we select raw file of the mountain:
Because we opened a raw file it is going to pop up in Adobe Camera Raw and we are going to retouch it to make it look like night first. Let’s set the White Balance towards the blue, so move the Temp slider to 4150. Then you want your Exposure to be very low so it looks dark, try -1,90, lower your Highlights to -84, add some Contrast to +39, boost the Blacks to +28, and lower the Whites to -46. Basically bring down the bright parts and boost the darker parts to give the image a night mood.
Now click on the sentence under your photo: ProPhoto.. and select Open in Photoshop as a Smart Object.
Once you have done that you can come back and open an image or element to add to the first image. We are going to select a moon that we want to add to this mountain. Go to File > Open and select one photo of a moon in jpg.
You should have the photo of the moon and the mountain in tabs on the top of your Photoshop interface. If you don’t see that, you can go to Window > Arrange > Consolidate all tabs:
For this tutorial we need a workspace with two windows on the right, one is to show Layers and one is for Properties. For that you need to select “3D” from the pull-down menu for Workspace in the upper right corner.
Go to your moon photo and grab the Move tool, it is the first icon on your left side (tools palette), the keyboard shortcut is V.
Using the Move tool you need to click on the moon, hold your mouse button, drag it over to the tab of the mountain and let go of the mouse to drop it.
You can see that we have black around the moon still, so we are going to blend that out. In the layer window there are different options for Blending Modes, For this one we are going to use Screen. Pull it down and select Screen from the options.
That took most of the black out.
To make the moon even bigger, go to Edit > Free Transform.
Using the shift key to maintain its proportions, you can extend the moon by grabbing the corner and pulling it down.
You can also move the moon or your element around, and see where you want to put it. It looks pretty cool already but now we are going to get into masking. For this you will need to click on the Eye icon next to the moon layer number (to turn it off) and click on the layer of the mountain to select it.
You should see this now.
Select the Quick Select Tool (W on your keyboard) and drag your mouse over the sky to select it.
Turn the moon layer back on and click on the little square icon at the bottom to create a layer mask (shown in red below).
This is going to create a mask and because we have an active selection, a part of the moon is now hidden.
If you want to reposition the moon you just have to select the moon layer and click on the little chain on the side to unlink the image of the moon from the mask.
Side note: if you make a mistake you can select Cmd/Ctrl+Z to go back or undo the last step.
You can see that there is a difference of color around the moon because of the layer, so to fix grab the Brush tool. (hit B for brush on the keyboard) or the select the Brush on the tool palette).
Make sure that the opacity is at 100% and that black is your foreground color. Right-click and set the hardness to zero. This makes your brush very soft and you can brush over the white to remove it.
Side note: Click on the Control and Alt keys to make your brush or any tool in Photoshop smaller or bigger.
Here you can see where I painted on the mask.
There you go! You have added a moon to your landscape!
I hope you liked this article and you feel more comfortable using Photoshop so you can add the moon or another element into your landscapes and create this cool effect.
If you enjoyed this tutorial and want to learn more about how to use Photoshop, check out Serge’s course Photoshop for Photographers 2017. Use the special promotional code – DPS65 – to get 65% off as a dPS reader!
The post How to Easily Add a New Element to Your Image Using Photoshop by Serge Ramelli appeared first on Digital Photography School.
Have you ever found your photos flat? The colors are muted and it just looks dull? That’s because it lacks contrast. Sometimes regardless of your best exposure skills, the conditions are not suited to get a wide range of tones. Not to worry though, it can be fixed in post-processing. I’ll show you my workflow for how you can take control of contrast in your images using Curves and Levels in Photoshop.
Of course, there are many ways to adjust the contrast on Photoshop, there’s even a tool called Brightness and Contrast, however, it doesn’t give you much control. What I like to do is to manipulate Curves and Levels. In this article, I’ll explain to you why and how I use these tools to boost contrast.
Low contrast can happen for many different reasons; bad weather for example or photographing through glass. In any case, the resulting image doesn’t show a wide range of tones, in other words, there’s not enough difference between the lights and the darks.
I find this problem occurs especially while traveling, because you can’t go back to the location when the weather is better, or because you are seeing things through a pane of glass. For example, the image I will use for this tutorial was taken through the window while traveling on a tour bus.
I chose an image where the contrast is clearly low so that you can easily see the effects of every step. However, in some cases, it won’t be as obvious, but you can always review the histogram to know the tonal range of your image.
A typically correct exposure should have a histogram that reaches from black (left) to white (right) evenly spread, with the highest values in the middle. Please note that this can change if you are going for a different effect like low key or high key where you purposely choose a specific range to work with, so I am just talking about the average image here.
As you can see, in this case, all the information is concentrated in the middle tones, but it doesn’t reach the black or the white side (see histogram below). This is why the image has no contrast.
First, we are going to manipulate the Curves tool. Remember to do it on an adjustment layer and not directly on your original (this is non-destructive editing), that way you won’t loose any information and you can always go back and start again if you don’t like the results. To do this go to the menu then: Layers > New Adjustment Layer > Curves and a new window will pop up.
You can also get to Curves on the Adjustment panel.
Inside that, you’ll find a graph with the histogram on it. The line that crosses the graph controls the contrast; the steeper it is, the greater the contrast.
You can fix anchor points along the line that you can move up or down to adjust the contrast of the image. Add as many anchor points as you need. The higher right quadrant controls the highlights and on the lower left one, you have the dark tones.
If you want to increase contrast, as we do in this case, add one anchor point in the lower left quadrant and slowly pull it down. Watch how it affects the dark areas of the image. Move it until you’re happy with the result. Then add another anchor point in the upper right quadrant and pull it up slowly until the highlights are bright enough for your preference. By making the straight line into more of an s-curve you will add contrast to the image.
Note: if you have an image with too much contrast the opposite can work. Pull down the highlights, and push up the dark areas on the curve to get an inverted s-curve.
After fixing the curves for the overall image, this tool allows you to fine-tune by channel. The step we did before was working on RGB, however, if you click on the drop down menu you can choose each channel to work with separately.
In this case, let’s start with the Blue channel. If you pull up an anchor point from the highlights (the upper right quadrant) you are making the sky, which is the lighter part of the picture bluer. In the left lower quadrant (the shadows) pulling the anchor a little bit down allows you to remove some of the color cast.
Next is green channel so that you can get a wider tonal range out of the forest and nature of the scene. The adjustments are very subtitle because when you are working in such detail the tools become very sensitive. Move around the graph until you are happy with the result.
Remember different light sources have different colors; a sunset has warmer colors than at noon, artificial light can be more yellow than natural light, etc. Apart from correcting any color bias, it works to add some special effects and get creative. In the next example, you can see what happens when the graph gets completely inverted in the red channel. You can also achieve this by playing with the different presets, in this case, color negative.
Next, you want to manipulate the Levels, also using an adjustment layer. You can do this by going to the menu > Layers > New Adjustment Layer > Levels (or you can find it on the Adjustments panel just to the left of Curves). Again a new window will appear with a different graph, this represents the darkest parts of the picture (0) to the lightest parts (255).
You can manipulate contrast by dragging the sliders underneath the graph, however, you will have much more control if you use the eyedroppers. This is how to work with them:
First, choose the white eyedropper (bottom one next to the graph) and click on the lightest part of the image that still has information or detail. You’ll notice how your entire image becomes lighter and brighter. Don’t worry about getting it right on the first try, you can click around on the image until you are satisfied with how it looks.
Then pick the black eyedropper and click on the darkest part of the image with detail. Same as the white one, try it until you get it right. You can always do some final adjustments with the sliders as well.
Finally use the gray (mid-tones) eyedropper to set the ambiance or mood of the scene, as it will change depending on where you click. Here some examples:
In Levels, you can also do the selective adjustments by channel if you need.
And there you go, when you are satisfied with your results, flatten the image by going to the menu Layers – Flatten Image. See how the histogram has a much wider range now, and the final image has more impact.
Before image.
Before adjustments for reference.
Histogram after Curves and Levels adjustments.
After image.
Remember that when you are photographing through glass there might be reflections, and when you boost the contrast these reflections will be much more noticeable. So think about that before shooting, when you are composing your image.
In order to demonstrate this for you, I made a photo while enjoying a panoramic view from a skyscraper in Milan. It was a 360 degrees glass wall, so I was bound to have a reflection. In order to use it to my advantage, I decided to place my foot strategically so that its reflection would be in between two buildings and entitled the photo “Stepping into Milan”.
Before processing.
After processing, notice my foot in the lower left corner?
As I mentioned before, it’s not only shooting through glass that can give you low contrast scenes. Here I have another example that had to do with the weather. It was a very cloudy day so there were no shadows, everything looked kind of gray and the light was very flat. This too can be fixed with Curves and Levels following the previous steps.
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Now you know that a low contrast photo doesn’t mean you’ll end up with a flat or dull image, so shoot away! I hope you found this helpful and if you have any doubts or tips about contrast, please share them with us in the comments section below.
The post How to Take Control of Contrast Using Curves and Levels in Photoshop by Ana Mireles appeared first on Digital Photography School.
Adobe launched a new YouTube tutorial series for Photoshop beginners this week. It’s called ‘3, 2, 1 … Photoshop!’ and it covers some basic tips on how to use different features of the image editor—from the crop tool, to layer groups, to brushes and beyond.
Advanced users probably won’t get much out of the new series (although, to be fair, you never know what basic tip you’ve been overlooking), but beginners will find it extremely useful. Over the years Photoshop has gotten more and more advanced and complicated. The tutorial series helps cut through the clutter and offer a few top tips from the makers themselves.
You can watch the first video in the series, Three Tips for Photoshop’s Crop Tool, up top. To see the rest, keep on scrolling down.
If you like these videos and you want to see more like them, check out the Adobe Photoshop YouTube channel and keep your eyes peeled for more ‘3, 2, 1 … Photoshop!’ tutorials in this playlist.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Let’s say you use Lightroom and you’ve tried and tried to get rid of those distracting spots using Lightroom’s Spot Removal Tool but no matter how you set it – using Clone or Heal or changing the Opacity or increasing the Feather – you have a giant, obvious repair on your image. Not good!
This is my final, processed image but I had to dive into Photoshop to get there.
For kicks, let’s agree that in addition to knowing your way around Lightroom, you’re a skilled photographer. You also subscribe to Adobe CC, but honestly, you don’t use Photoshop much. Perhaps you’re even a little bit afraid of it. You loaded the software and update it whenever Adobe tells you to but other than the PS icon looking cool and professional in your dock, you don’t actually use it.
I mean, Layers, Masks, Blending? Ugh. I know. I do 90% of my work in Lightroom. No one has ever called me out on that so I keep on keepin’ on with Lightroom. I love Lightroom but – and it’s a great big but – LR’s Spot Removal Tool is no match for Photoshop’s Spot Healing Brush Tool.
Because I know this issue affects so many of us, I’m going to teach you the quick and dirty method for how to Spot Heal in Photoshop. No layers. No tricky stuff. Just easy, quick simple repairs for the problem areas in your images.
Grab an image that has a problem area that you can’t seem to fix in Lightroom and follow along with me. Practice is the best way to learn so repeat these steps a few times today. After you Spot Heal a few images in PS, it will naturally become part of your image processing tool kit.
In Lightroom, process your image as normal. Here’s my RAW image before I’ve made any adjustments.
Canon 7D Mark II, 70-200 plus 1.4x @ 280mm, f/6/3, 1/1600, ISO 400.
Below is a screenshot of all the adjustments I’ve made on my image. I started with a pretty aggressive crop. You can see the White Balance and Basic adjustments but I also dropped in several Radial Filters to add clarity and brightness to key elements like the horses’ eyes. However, I struggled to get rid of the flecks of mud around the black horse’s eye.
Right-click on your image. Select Edit in Adobe Photoshop CC.
It is very important that you don’t skip this step. Do not open your image directly in Photoshop. For the down and dirty method to be most effective, you must start this process in Lightroom.
NOTE: If you haven’t updated to PS CC 2017 or if you use an older version of PS, you might need to modify these steps. Instead of Edit in Adobe Photoshop CC 2017, you might see Edit a Copy in PS.
It takes a minute, but eventually, your image will appear in the Photoshop window. Here’s the image I’m working on. Check and make sure your screen looks pretty similar to mine.
Click on the Spot Healing Brush Tool. It looks like a band-aid except that it has a little semi-circle handle over it.
If you can’t find this tool, count seven icons down on the tools pallet and right-click on that. Once you right-click, you should see the rest of the tools. Hover your cursor over the band-aid icon that says Spot Healing Brush Tool. Click to select it. It will now show as the active tool.
Review the settings for the tool bar that runs across the top of your Photoshop window.
If your Spot Healing Brush Tool doesn’t default to these settings, change them to:
Zoom in and increase the size of your image so you can see the problem area more clearly. Click the Command/Alt key and the + (plus) key simultaneously. Click again to zoom in more. If you’ve zoomed in too far, click the Command/Alt Key and the – (minus) key simultaneously to zoom back out. Grab the drag bars on the bottom and right side of the image to reposition the problem area so that it’s in the middle of the screen and easy to see and repair.
Zoomed into 200%, I can see the problem area clearly.
Hover the Spot Healing Brush Tool over the problem area. You may need to change the size of the brush. The easiest way to do that is to use the square bracket keys on your keyboard.
Notice that as you click on the bracket keys, the Size number in the bar that runs across the top of your image increases or decreases. (If you click on that number, you’ll get more tool options. Don’t worry about those for now.)
Using the Left Bracket Key, I adjusted my Spot Healing Brush Tool to 20 pixels and started making small repairs around the eye.
After you’ve adjusted the size of your brush, start clicking on the area of your image that you want to repair. You can also drag the brush to make short strokes.
Photoshop is smart and should fill in the area with an appropriate selection but if it doesn’t, click Edit > Undo Spot Healing Brush in the top menu (or Cmd/Ctrl+Z will also undo). That will undo the last thing that you did.
If you want to undo multiple things, go to Edit and click Step Backward repeatedly till you’re at the last point that you liked. Step Backward does have limitations so work slowly and check your repair work often. Note: you can aslo open the History panel and go back to any previous step.
Evaluate your work. Do you like the repairs? If Yes, go to File > Save in the top menu. Photoshop defaults to saving images as a TIFF file. If it doesn’t, select the TIFF option if/when the menu pops up. This will also import the newly edited image into Lightroom.
If you don’t like the repairs you made, quit Photoshop without doing anything. Photoshop will ask if you want to save your work. Just say No. Go sip some coffee and try again another day when you’re fresh.
Almost done!
Go back to Lightroom. You’ll still be in the Develop Module with the original RAW image that you were working on still open. Press G for Grid which will take you to the Library Module. Check to make sure that next to your original RAW file is a new TIFF file. Select the two images and view them in Survey Mode so that you can look at them side by side (N on your keyboard).
If the two files don’t show up right next to each other in Lightroom resort your images by Capture Time (or file name), or drag and drop so that they do.
Side by side of RAW file adjusted in LR (on the left) and TIFF with the addition of spot healing (on the right).
That’s the down and dirty part. When you’re doing simple fixes like this, you don’t need to worry about layers. Why? Well, layers are excellent if you’re doing quite a few things to your image and you want to be able to turn different effects on and off. They’re also important so that you preserve your original image in a background layer (non-destructive editing).
But with this method, you still have your original RAW file. That’s why you want to start in Lightroom and then open your image from there into Photoshop. Lightroom sends a copy of your image to Photoshop. When you save your work in Photoshop in step #8, Photoshop generates a totally separate image file. That new TIFF file shows up in your Lightroom catalog next to your original RAW file.
NOTE: If you haven’t updated to PS CC 2017 or if you use an older version of PS, you might need to modify these steps. You might need to select “Edit a copy” and not “Edit Original.”
This is a wild horse so I didn’t go too crazy fixing every little thing, but the distracting mud around the eye and on the neck is cleaned away nicely, don’t you think?
This might not work for your image. Some repairs are finicky and this is definitely a hack method that won’t work for everything. My advice is to experiment. Remember the other tools that were grouped with the Spot Healing Brush Tool? Try one of those. Or, keep using the Spot Healing Brush Tool but change the Mode from Normal to Replace or even Multiply.
Remember when we clicked the Size number? Click that again and adjust the Hardness of the brush or the Roundness. Make only one change at a time and make notes on what each change does. If something works, click File, then Save and remember what you did. If nothing works, exit out of Photoshop without saving (and go have more coffee).
You can always experiment again another day because you still have your RAW image. It’s cataloged in Lightroom right next to the TIFF file. As long as you always start in Lightroom, you’ll be able to try again later.
In this image of an outdoor seafood market in Essaouira, I experimented with a variety of tools to zip out the distracting bit of tree on the left, the construction equipment and the light posts. The RAW image, with Lightroom only adjustments, is on the left. The spot-healed TIFF is on the right.
Share with the dPS community: What hack or down and dirty methods do you use when you process your images?
The post Quick and Dirty Method of Using the Photoshop Spot Healing Brush Tool by Lara Joy Brynildssen appeared first on Digital Photography School.
The worst part about taking photos of monuments and city streets is that you always get cars and people blocking the architecture behind them. It can be very distractive, and they take away from the real subject. In this Photoshop tutorial, you will learn a technique that will allow you to quickly remove people and cars from your photos. You do need to plan ahead and take multiple photos, but the results will be amazing!
Photoshop has this little-known feature that has been around for over a decade called Image Stack Modes.
The Image Stack Modes are sort of like a Blending Mode that blends layers inside of a Smart Object in a certain way depending on the algorithm that you select.
One of those Stack Modes is Median, which takes a statistical average of the content found in all the photos in the stack. It will keep identical areas and remove everything that changes between the different shots. It is very likely that cars and people will move and change locations from one shot to the next. Thus, you can remove people and unwanted traffic when the algorithm is applied, leaving only the background.
The tricky part is to get the right photos for this Stack Mode to work. Ideally, you should take your photos on a tripod so that the images line up better during the blend. However, if you do not have a tripod, hold your camera as steady as possible when shooting your images and you will still get great results.
The pictures that we will be using in this tutorial were shot by hand with a mobile phone. I wanted to use photos that were less than perfect so that you could see the power of this technique.
When you take your photos, wait about 20 seconds or so in between each shot. You want to give people and cars enough time to move. In most cases, you will need between 8 to 25 photos.
The first step is to bring the image files into Photoshop as layers in a single document. To do so, go to File > Scrips > Load Files into Stack…
In the “Load Layers” window select “Folder” from the “Use” drop down. Then click on the “Browse” button, and look for the folder containing your images. Press OK after you have selected the folder.
The file names will appear within the window (as shown below). If all the files are there, press the OK button. Photoshop will then take all the files and place them in a single document as layers.
For the Image Stack to work, the layers need to be aligned as best as possible. If you used a tripod when shooting the images, then your layers should already be aligned. The photos used in this tutorial were shot without a tripod, so we will need Photoshop to align them for us.
To align the layers, select them all by pressing Cmd + Option + A (Ctrl + Alt + A on PC). Then go to the Edit menu and select “Auto-Align Layers.” Make sure that “Auto” is selected, and press “OK.” Photoshop will then look through all your layers to find similar pixels and align them accordingly.
Now that all the layers are aligned, you need to put them into a Smart Object so that you can apply the Stack Mode. Select all your layers again by pressing Cmd + Option + A (Ctrl + Alt + A on PC). Then right-click the space on the left side of any selected layers and choose “Convert to Smart Object.”
You should now only have a single Smart Object in your Layers Panel.
Now that all the layers are inside a Smart Object you can control how the set blends by using a “Stack Mode.” Go to Layer > Smart Objects > Stack Mode > Median.
This Stack Mode takes a statistical average of the content found in all the photos. It keeps identical areas and removes everything that changes between the different shots, such as people walking through the scene.
You can get to this point in the tutorial by only using one single command!
The reason that I took the long approach was so that you could see what Photoshop was doing behind the scenes. If you get into trouble, then you’ll know what the steps were to create the effect, and you can backtrack to fix the problem.
To do this whole process in a single command, go to File > Scripts > Statistics…
In the Image Statistics window, select Folder you want to use. Click on the Browse button to find the images that you want to use in the Image Stack.
Once the images load, select Median as the Stack Mode, and check “Attempt to Automatically Align Source Images.”
This will Auto-Align the images, put them in a Smart Object using the Median Stack Mode. Getting you to this part of the demo all within one window!
Problems may arise when dealing with background elements that are always moving, such as water, clouds, or flags. In this example, the two flags on top of the Tribune Tower disappear. We can bring them back by copying and pasting a flag from one of the original images.
To see the original images, go to Layer > Smart Object > Edit Contents. A new tab will open that contains the contents of the Smart Object. Then look through your layers to see which of the original layers contains the best version of the item you would like to replace.
Select the Lasso Tool and make a selection around the objects. With the selection active press Cmd/Ctrl + C to copy.
Go back to the working document and press Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + V to “Paste in Place.” Repeat these steps with any other object that you need to fix.
Select the all the layers by pressing Cmd + Option + A (Ctrl + Alt + A on a PC), right-click on the side of any selected layer and choose “Convert to Smart Object.” This Smart Object can now be adjusted or manipulated as if it were a single layer. You can apply the Camera RAW filter non-destructively to enhance the image color and tone.
Select the Smart Object containing all the layers and open Adobe Camera Raw by going to: Filter > Camera RAW. This filter works a lot like Adobe Lightroom. The controls are in a similar layout and do the same things. Lightroom is built from the Camera RAW engine, so it will be familiar to you if you are a Lightroom user.
You can create an HDR effect by darkening the Highlights and brightening the Shadows. Slide the Highlights slider to the left, and the Shadows slider to the right. Slide the Clarity slider to the right. Clarity adds contrast to the mid-tones.
Finalize the effect by adding Vibrance which is a controlled saturation. Vibrance adds less saturation to already saturated areas, and it protects skin tones in portraits.
If you did not use a tripod, you will see that the edges of the photo are likely misaligned. To remove these imperfections, you can simply crop them out by using the Crop Tool. Press C on the keyboard, then use the handles to adjust the size of the crop. Press Return when you’re done.
This is how the final image looks:
Give this technique for and go try and remove people and cars from your images. Let me know how you make out and if you have any questions, please post them in the comments area below.
The post How to Remove People from Your Photos Using Photoshop by Jesus Ramirez appeared first on Digital Photography School.
[ By SA Rogers in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]
A crew of artists found a new way to ‘clean up’ graffiti in a public place by simply erasing a car and dumpster from a street in Russia using the old familiar Photoshop transparency pattern. Called CTRL+X, the piece was created as part of the Stenograffia street art festival, and carrying it out was simple – if a little bit time consuming. Before they got started, the surfaces were covered in tags in all shades of the rainbow, and they had to paint everything a matte light gray as a base.
After dark, they set up a projector so they could trace the Photoshop checkerboard pattern from the perspective point from which the scene would be viewed by the public, so it’s angled just right. They used pencil to mark the lines, and then taped off the squares that needed to be painted a darker gray.
The end result is a pretty fun optical illusion that’s probably only effective for people who are used to working in Photoshop. Check out lots of behind-the-scenes photos on the Stenograffia Facebook page.
[ By SA Rogers in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]
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In this article I am going to show you how you can do amazing night photography with no tripod and not too much grain.
In this photo I was on the Academia Bridge in Venice, the place to be to catch the sunset. There were tons of photographers taking long exposure photos, so many that I couldn’t squeeze in to put my tripod down. So I put my camera at f/4, went to 1/10th of a second and shot at ISO 1250.
These settings froze the boat and the water is still nice and smooth. But the thing that I was really happy about was the light reflection in the water; it was not too strong. If I had done a long exposure the light reflection in the water would have made big blots of light which is very catchy to the eyes and creates a lot of contrast, which I don’t like.
Like on this photo below:
Let me show you in this extreme case:
For the image above, I had a zoom lens on so the widest I could open up my aperture was f/5.6. My shutter speed was 1/25th of a second at 2500 ISO, and I set my camera on high speed burst mode, which allows the camera take several shots quickly. But unfortunately at 2500 ISO there is going to be a lot of noise. So to show how noisy this photo is, let me do my basic retouching.
As you can see it is very grainy/noisy.
Even if I try to use the noise reduction it doesn’t look that great:
So what you can do in this situation is to select all the photos you took in Continuous Shouting mode, I am selecting five here. Then click on sync, Check All, and select synchronize.
Once you have done that, right-click select Edit In > Open as Layers in Photoshop.
Now that we are in Photoshop, you can see that each photo has its own layer. Select them all, then go to Edit > Auto-Align Layers.
You can click on auto here. If you are shooting handheld it is important to have all the layers aligned. Here you can select all the layers again, right-click and select Convert to Smart Object.
Then you are going to select your layer and go to Layer > Smart Object > Stack Mode > Median.
What’s that is going to do is Photoshop will detect the common pixels from a photo to another and then remove the noise and any people that moved from frame to frame, which is pretty cool. You can see the before and after below.
After this technique has been applied, you can see that the water is nicer on the eyes and there is almost no noise in the image.
Before
After
So this is a good way to avoid noise in a low light situation where you don’t have a tripod. Let me review the important points for you:
And voila. See below for the video walk through of this technique as well.
If you enjoyed this tutorial and want to learn more about how to use Photoshop, check out Serge’s course Photoshop for Photographers 2017. Use the special promotional code – DPS65 – to get 65% off as a dPS reader!
The post How to do Night Photography With No Tripod – and a Little Photoshop Help by Serge Ramelli appeared first on Digital Photography School.
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