Some Photoshop tips and tricks...

[Jeff Wilson]

Here's a little give away on how I do some of my Photoshop work, I hope to take this fairly boring photo and do something interesting with it:

http://www.jw-photo.com/events/pictures/Lesson1.1.jpg

Now what I'm going to write up here isn't everything I would normally do to a shot that I want to really tweak in Photoshop. I simply want to share a few things I've learned along the way and give you some ideas for things to experiment with. Some of these techniques work better on some photos rather than others, and some techniques I use, aren't covered here.

Tools and techniques used in this example:

Sharpening in LAB mode
Controlling color noise
Layer masking to improve highlight
Vignetting using blending mode
Digital soft focus and selective focus
Levels
Curves
Shadow/Highlight
Hue/Saturation
Brightness/Contrast
Texture overlay using blending mode

So....let's get started! :)

[Jeff Wilson]

First open the photo you want to work on. For my example, I intentionally chose something a bit dull, aside for the slightly interesting DOF induced point of view.

The first thing I want to do with this image is adjust the levels to lighten the overall mid-tones and increase contrast, but I'm concerned about the hotspot at the end of the drain. So, I'll duplicate the background layer first (to use later) and preserve the original tones. I end up with Background and Background Copy layers. Then I hide (or turn off) the Background Copy layer.

http://www.jw-photo.com/events/pictures/Picture%202.jpg

Now I'll go ahead and select the Background layer and adjust the midtones in Image>Adjustments>Levels, I also boost the contrast a bit using Image>Adjustments>Brightness/Contrast

http://www.jw-photo.com/events/pictures/Picture%201.jpg

.....BAM! There go the highlights:

http://www.jw-photo.com/events/pictures/Picture%204.jpg

No problem, I can fix that. I turn the Background Copy layerback on and select Layer>Add Layer Mask>Hide All. This hides the Background Copy layer with a paintable mask that can be used to selectively unhide portions of the layer.

http://www.jw-photo.com/events/pictures/Picture%205.jpg

I use the Brush tool, loaded with white at 27% opacity to paint the detail back in:

http://www.jw-photo.com/events/pictures/Picture%207.jpg

Then merge the visible layers to get back to one working layer in the image.

Next is a quick color saturation adjustment using Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation

http://www.jw-photo.com/events/pictures/Picture%208.jpg

And now the image is logging a bit dark and too contrasty. The right way to fix this is to go back and redo the earlier Brightness/Contrast adjustment (or better: not do it at all) but I'm going to take the easy cheat way and use Shadow/Highlight to fix it.

If this were an image for publication I would go back and fix it the right way, but then I'd never get to show you this tool ;) I find the key here is to not go too far when bringing the shadows up, otherwise the images flattens out and the midtones look wierd.

http://www.jw-photo.com/events/pictures/Picture%209.jpg

Ok, that's better. Now on to sharpening...

[Jeff Wilson]

Many people just hit the USM and go nuts with it, but with a little trick you can get MUCH more control out of your sharpening and noise control. This is one series of actions that I've automated into a little script that works wonders on my images for an initial sharpness adjustment. I'm intentionally going too far with the sharpening in this image, so please use caution.

First, change the Color Mode to LAB: Image>Mode>Lab Color. This puts all the Luminance information on one chroma channel and the color information is split in two differential color channels (A and B).

http://www.jw-photo.com/events/pictures/Picture%2010.jpg

Why do this you ask? Well, you can adjust sharpness independantly of color and not drive your color noise through the roof. Now, on the Channels palette, slect the L Channel. Then go to Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask:

http://www.jw-photo.com/events/pictures/Picture%2011.jpg

Then go to Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask:

http://www.jw-photo.com/events/pictures/Picture%2012.jpg

Now for the best part of LAB mode. I said you can use it to prevent color noise when sharpening, you can also use it to reduce color noise in a high ISO image so that the only noise left in an image is monochrome luminance noise which mimicks actual film better and gives a more natural result.

So, on the Channels palette, slect the A Channel. Then go to Filter>Noise>Median This will average the values of pixels in a radius you select and smooth out the color channels. Do this for the B Channel also.

http://www.jw-photo.com/events/pictures/Picture%2013.jpg

http://www.jw-photo.com/events/pictures/Picture%2014.jpg

Now, convert back to RGB color in Image>Mode>RGB Color and select the RGB channel in the Channels palette.

Whew! Take a deep breath and have a quick drink.

[Jeff Wilson]

Okay, Next step is a quick horizontal vignette effect. On the Layers palette, select and duplicate the Background layer. Use the Rectangular Marquee Tool to select a strip horizontally through the image that will form the main focus of the finished image:

http://www.jw-photo.com/events/pictures/Picture%2015.jpg

Now go to Select>Feather and feather the selection by 150 pixels and press bacspace to clear the selection. Now on the Layer palette click the Blending Mode selection list and change the blending mode to Multiply:

http://www.jw-photo.com/events/pictures/Picture%2016.jpg

You can deselect the image now Command+D. You may want to adjust Layer Opacity to taste as well.

Next step, a texture mask. For this I open an image of some concrete and from that image I drage the Background layer from the Layers palette to the image I'm working on:

http://www.jw-photo.com/events/pictures/Picture%2017.jpg

I then reorder this texture layer in between the Background layer and the Background Copy layer that has become the vignette layer. With Layer 1 copy (the texture layer) selected I change the Blending Mode to Color Burn.

http://www.jw-photo.com/events/pictures/Picture%2019.jpg

I adjust the Hue/Saturation, Brightness/Contrast and the Opacity of this layer to taste. I lightened it up, pumped up the contrast, and reduced opacity to 70% to get a look I liked. This is the part where you experiment a little on your own. ;)

Next I duplicated the Background layer and brought it to the front (top of the list in the Layers palette). And like the earlier vignette routine I use the Elliptical Marquee Tool to select all but the corners of the image:

http://www.jw-photo.com/events/pictures/Picture%2020.jpg

Then I feather this selection by 150 pixels, clear the selection and change the blending mode to Multiply, exactly the same as I did earlier in this excercise. Resulting in this:

http://www.jw-photo.com/events/pictures/Picture%2021.jpg

The image is getting there, but it's still harshly sharp and contrasty overall, so I want to do some selective focus adjustments. This is NOT a subsitute for proper use of in-camera DOF control because this is pretty unnatural looking...but I want that here.

First, I make another copy of the Background layer. Then I blur it using Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur[b]

http://www.jw-photo.com/events/pictures/Picture%2013.jpg

To this layer, [b]Background Copy 3, I add a layer mask using Layer>Add Layer Mask>Reveal All and then use the Brush tool to paint out the areas that I want to highlight (just to the front and right of the drain and a thin hoizontal strip through the image). I also adjust the overall opacity of this layer to 80% in the Layers palette.

Again, this is the part where you experiment a little, all of this is like spaghetti sauce and done to taste.

[Jeff Wilson]

Finally, I want to tone some areas of the image a bit more sepia/monochrome. So once again I dupe the Background layer. This time I start by desaturating the color in the layer by 50% in Image>Adjust>Hue/Saturation.

Next I select Image>Adjust>Curves and adjust RGB, R G and B each independantly:

http://www.jw-photo.com/events/pictures/Picture%2024.jpg

http://www.jw-photo.com/events/pictures/Picture%2025.jpg

http://www.jw-photo.com/events/pictures/Picture%2026.jpg

http://www.jw-photo.com/events/pictures/Picture%2027.jpg

The next step with this layer is to adjust opacity to 80%, and I add Layer>Add Layer Mask>Hide All to this layer and paint in the sepia along the left and right sides using Brush at 30% opacity. I just want to knock the color down a little bit.

I went a bit further (which I'm not going to go through step by step because it's already covered) and duplicated some of the vignette layers to deepen the vignette at the top of the image. I simply deleted the parts of the vignette layers that I didn't want to use.

Results in next post......

[Jeff Wilson]

Voila:

http://www.jw-photo.com/events/pictures/lesson1.F.jpg

[Brian McCormick]

Here's one I did today while trying to avoid the heat.
http://i.pbase.com/o4/17/538217/1/63920564.f2kwYR77.chickredofcopy.jpg

A cheesy gif to show a few of the steps.
http://i.pbase.com/o4/17/538217/1/63920620.EDfjqe5e.chickredo.gif

[Austin Langley]

This is an excellent write up however the methods you use are destructive (ie you can't undo many of the steps). For example, rather than go Image>Adjustments>Levels, you'd be better suited creating a new levels adjustment layer. This way you can undo certain steps along the way without worrying about loosing work. This is also useful with Hue/Saturation, Brightness/Contrast, etc.

[Jeff Wilson]

This is an excellent write up however the methods you use are destructive (ie you can't undo many of the steps). For example, rather than go Image>Adjustments>Levels, you'd be better suited creating a new levels adjustment layer. This way you can undo certain steps along the way without worrying about loosing work. This is also useful with Hue/Saturation, Brightness/Contrast, etc.

Correct, I just didn't use them for this writeup. :)