The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers part 10 docx

But before you begin dragging sliders, you may want to click on the Detail icon the third icon from the left at the top of the Panel area and lower the Sharpening Amount to 0% if you add

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Step One:

Open a photo that has signs of chromatic

aberrations If they’re going to appear,

they’re usually right along an edge in

the image that has lots of contrast (like

along the edges of these rock formations)

Press Z to get the Zoom tool and zoom

in on an area where you think (or see)

the fringe might be fairly obvious Here,

there’s red fringe running along the edges

of the rocks To remove this, start by

click-ing on the Lens Corrections icon (the

sixth icon from the left) at the top of

the Panel area

Step Two:

In the Profile tab, turn on the Enable

Profile Corrections checkbox and

Photo-shop tries to remove the color fringe

based on your lens’ make and model (it

learns this from your image’s EXIF data

See page 66 for more on this) If the

image still needs correction, try the C

Aberration slider under Amount If the

automatic way doesn’t work for you, try

getting rid of the fringe manually

Chromatic aberration is a fancy name for that thin line of colored fringe that sometimes appears around the edges of objects in photos Sometimes the fringe is red, sometimes green, sometimes purple, blue, etc., but all the time it’s bad, so we might as well get rid of it Luckily, Camera Raw has a built-in fix that does a pretty good job

Fixing Chromatic

Aberrations (That

Colored-Edge Fringe)

Step Three:

At the top of the Lens Corrections panel,

click on the Manual tab Down in the

Chromatic Aberration section, there

are only two sliders and you just drag

toward the color you want to fix (they’re

labeled—the top one fixes red or cyan

fringe; the bottom fixes blue or yellow

fringe) But before you begin dragging

sliders, you may want to click on the

Detail icon (the third icon from the left

at the top of the Panel area) and lower

the Sharpening Amount to 0% (if you

added any or are fixing a RAW image),

because sharpening can also cause color

fringes to appear (and you want to make

sure you’re curing the right problem)

Step Four:

Start by moving the top Chromatic

Aber ration slider all the way to the

right (toward cyan), which reduces the

red fringe Here, there’s still just a little

color fringe, so try choosing All Edges

from the Defringe pop-up menu, which

seems to do the trick

TIP: Editing TIFFs and JPEGs

Although you can edit TIFFs and JPEGs

in Camera Raw, there is one “gotcha!”

Once you edit one of those in Camera

Raw, if you click the Done button (rather

than opening the image in Photoshop),

you’ll need to always open that photo

from within Camera Raw to see the edits

you made That’s because those edits live

only inside of Camera Raw; if you bypass

Camera Raw and open an edited TIFF

or JPEG directly into Photoshop, the

Camera Raw edits you made earlier

won’t be visible

Step One:

Here, you can see the dark areas in

the corners (that’s the bad vignetting)

This is normally caused by the camera’s

lens, so don’t blame yourself (unless you

bought a really cheap lens—then feel free

to give yourself as much grief as you can

bear) To remove this vignetting from

the corners, start by clicking on the Lens

Corrections icon (the sixth icon from the

left) at the top of the Panel area In the

Profile tab, turn on the Enable Profile

Corrections checkbox and Photoshop

tries to remove the edge vignetting based

on your lens’ make and model (it learns

this from your image’s EXIF data See

page 66 for more on this) If the image

still needs correcting, try the Vignetting

slider under Correction Amount

Step Two:

If the automatic way just isn’t working, do

it manually by clicking on the Manual tab

In the Lens Vignetting section, click on

the Amount slider and drag it to the right

until the vignetting in the corners

disap-pears Once you move the Amount slider,

the Midpoint slider beneath it becomes

available and it determines how wide the

vignetting repair extends into your photo,

so drag it to the right to expand the

lightening farther toward the center

of your photo

If you’re looking at a photo and the corners of the photo appear darker, that’s lens vignetting Generally, I look at it this way: If it’s just the corners, and they’re just a little bit dark, that’s a problem and I fix it However, sometimes I want

to focus the viewer’s attention on a particular area, so I create a vignette, but

I expand it significantly beyond the corners, so it looks like an intentional soft spotlight effect Here’s how to fix (or create) vignettes:

Edge Vignetting:

How to Fix It

and How to

Add It for Effect

Continued

Step Three:

Now for the opposite: adding vignetting

to focus attention (by the way, in the

“Special Effects for Photographers” chapter,

I also show you how to get the same

effect outside of Camera Raw) This time,

in the Lens Vignetting section you’re going

to drag the Amount slider to the left, and

as you drag left, you’ll start to see

vignett-ing appear in the corners of your photo

But since it’s just in the corners, it looks

like the bad kind of vignetting, not the

good kind, so you’ll need to go on to the

next step

Step Four:

To make the vignetting look more like

a soft spotlight falling on your subject,

drag the Midpoint slider quite a bit to

the left, which increases the size of the

vignetting and creates a soft, pleasing

effect that is very popular in portraiture,

or anywhere you want to draw attention

to your subject That’s it—how to get rid

of ’em and how to add ’em Two for the

price of one!

Step Five:

So far, adding the vignette has been

pretty easy—you just drag a couple of

sliders, right? But where you’ll run into

a problem is when you crop a photo,

because you’re also cropping the

vignett-ing effect away, as well (after all, it’s an

edge effect, and now the edges are in a

different place, and Camera Raw doesn’t

automatically redraw your vignette at the

newly cropped size) So, start by applying

a regular edge vignette (as shown here)

Step Six:

Now, let’s get the Crop tool (C) from

the toolbar, crop that photo in pretty

tight, and you can see what the problem

is—the vignette effect we just added is

pretty much gone (the dark edges were

cropped away)

Note: Adobe originally added the ability

to add a vignette after you’ve cropped an

image (called Post Crop Vignetting) back

in Photoshop CS4, but the problem was

when you added it, it didn’t look nearly

as good as the regular non-cropped

vignetting (even though it offered more

control, as seen at the bottom of the

Effects panel shown in Step Seven) It

kind of looked just like adding muddy

dark gray to the edges Yeech!

Step Seven:

Let’s go add a post-crop vignette by clicking

on the Effects icon (the fourth icon from

the right) and, under Post Crop Vignetting,

dragging the Amount slider to the left to

darken the edges, then using the Midpoint

slider to choose how far into your image

this vignetting will extend (as seen here)

Now, here’s what they’ve added in CS5

(it makes all the difference in the world):

At the top of the Post Crop Vignetting

section is a pop-up menu with three

different types of vignetting: Highlight

Priority (which I think far and away looks

the best, and the most like the original

vignetting we applied back in Step Five),

which tries to maintain the highlight details

as the edges are darkened; Color Priority

tries to maintain the color while the edges

are darkened (it’s okay, but not great); and

Paint Overlay is the old method from CS4

that almost everybody hated (apparently

somebody liked it, because it’s still there)

I would stay away from this one altogether

Step Eight:

Below the Midpoint slider is the

Round-ness slider that gives you control over the

roundness of the vignetting (lower the

Feather amount to 0, so you can get a

better idea of what the Roundness slider

does) The farther to the right you drag,

the rounder the shape gets, and when

you drag to the left, it actually becomes

more like a large, rounded-corner

rect-angle The Feather slider determines

how soft that oval you created with the

Roundness slider becomes I like it really

soft, so it looks more like a spotlight, so

I usually drag this slider quite a bit over

to the right (here I dragged it over to

73, but I wouldn’t hesitate to go higher,

depending on how it looks on the photo)

Step One:

There are three advantages to converting

your RAW files to Adobe DNG: (1) DNG

files are generally about 20% smaller

(2) DNG files don’t need an XMP sidecar

file to store Camera Raw edits, metadata,

and keywords—the info’s embedded into

the DNG file, so you only have one file to

keep track of And, (3) DNG is an open

format, so you’ll be able to open them in

the future (as I mentioned in the intro

above) If you have a RAW image open in

Camera Raw, you can save it as an Adobe

DNG by clicking the Save Image button

(as shown here) to bring up the Save

Options dialog (seen in the next step)

Note: There’s really no advantage to

saving TIFF or JPEG files as DNGs, so

I only convert RAW photos

Adobe created DNG (an open archival format for RAW photos) because, at this point

in time, each camera manufacturer has its own proprietary RAW file format If, one day, one or more manufacturers abandon their proprietary format for something new (like Kodak did with their Photo CD format), will we still be able to open our RAW photos? With DNG, it’s not proprietary—Adobe made it an open archival format, ensuring that your negatives can be opened in the future, but besides that, DNG brings another couple of advantages, as well

The Advantages of

Adobe’s DNG Format

for RAW Photos

Step Two:

When the Save Options dialog appears,

at the bottom of the dialog, from the

Format pop-up menu, choose Digital

Negative (shown here), click Save, and

you’ve got a DNG

TIP: Setting Your DNG Preferences

Once you’ve converted to DNG, Camera

Raw does give you a few preferences

for working with these DNG files Press

Command-K (PC: Ctrl-K) to bring up

Photoshop’s Preferences dialog, then click

on File Handling in the column on the

left side, and click on the Camera Raw

Preferences button (or press Command-K

when you have Camera Raw open) When

the dialog appears, go to the DNG File

Handling section (shown here) You’d

choose Ignore Sidecar “.xmp” Files only

if you use a different RAW processing

application (other than Camera Raw or

Lightroom), and you want Camera Raw

to ignore any XMP files created by that

application If you turn on the Update

Embedded JPEG Previews checkbox (and

choose your preferred preview size from

the pop-up menu), then any changes you

make to the DNG will be applied to the

preview, as well

Step One:

Here’s the original image of a red sculpture

on a washed-out, cloudy blue sky, and

what I’d like to do is tweak the color of

that sky so it’s a richer blue, which would

add a nice contrast to the red sculpture

You tweak individual colors, or ranges of

color, in the HSL/Grayscale panel, so click

on its icon at the top of the Panel area (it’s

the fourth one from the left—circled here

in red) Now, click on the Luminance tab

(as shown here) to bring up the Luminance

controls (which control how bright the

colors appear)

Step Two:

The blue in the sky is washed out, so we

need to bring some richness and depth

back into the color, so drag the Blues slider

way over to the left toward the darker

blues (those color bars behind each slider

give you an idea of what will happen when

you drag a slider in a particular direction)

Now drag the Aquas sliders to the left

quite a bit, too (as shown here) Moving

the Aquas slider added a little more

satu-ration to the blue in the sky How did

I know this was going to do that? I had

no idea I just dragged each slider back

and forth real quick to see what it

would do I know—it sounds awfully

simple, but it works

In the next chapter, you’re going to learn how to paint an adjustment over any part of your image, but sometimes you need to affect an entire area (like you need the entire sky bluer, or the sand warmer, or a piece of clothing to be

an entirely different color) In those cases, where you’re adjusting large areas, it’s usually quicker to use the HSL adjustments, which not only let you change color, but also let you change the saturation and the lightness of the color

It’s more powerful, and handy, than you might think

Adjusting or

Changing Ranges

of Color