The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers part 29 docx

Step 15: To make this blend, there are two things you need to do: 1 change the layer’s blend mode from Normal to Color so just the color shows through, instead of being solid; and then

Step 13:

We need a selection around this layer

again, so press-and-hold the Command

(PC: Ctrl) key and click on the top layer’s

thumbnail to load it as a selection Once

the selection is in place, we’re going to

need to get a blend of all the background

colors, so go under the Filter menu, under

Blur, and choose Average.

Step 14:

It doesn’t bring up a dialog or anything,

it just does its thing, and creates a blur

that averages all the colors in the

select-ed area together (as shown here) Press

Command-D (PC: Ctrl-D) to Deselect

It doesn’t look right yet, but it will in

just a moment

Step 15:

To make this blend, there are two things

you need to do: (1) change the layer’s

blend mode from Normal to Color (so

just the color shows through, instead

of being solid); and then (2) lower the

Opacity to around 15%, so a hint of the

Average blur color from the background

appears as a tint over your subject, and

this ties the color of the two together (as

seen here, where her overall color is more

muted, like the background colors)

Step 16:

This last step is totally optional and is

based on the-depth-of field project

we did earlier in this chapter, but

you can add a blurred effect to the

background image to make it look like

the photo was taken using a wide-open

f-stop to get a very shallow

depth-of-field You do that by clicking on the

layer that has your background image

(Layer 1 here), then going under the

Filter menu, under Blur, and choosing

Lens Blur (this gives a more realistic

depth-of-field blur than a standard

Gauss-ian blur) In the Iris section in the middle,

set the Radius amount to 44 (that’s the

amount of blur), then click OK to get the

final effect you see here

Step One:

First, let’s look at the problem: Here’s a shot I took at sunset using an off-camera flash (the flash is up high and to the right

of my camera position, aiming down at the subject and firing through a shoot-through umbrella) At this point in the shoot, I didn’t remember to add a CTO gel to warm the light, so the light from the flash is bright white (which looks really out of place in a beach sunset shot like this The light should be warm, like the light from a setting sun, not a white flash)

Step Two:

To warm the light from the flash, go to the Adjustments panel and click on the Photo Filter icon (it’s the second icon from the right in the middle row) The Photo Filter controls will appear, and from the Filter

pop-up menu, choose Orange (as seen

here), then increase the Density to around 55% So, how did I know 55% was right?

I opened a photo from a few minutes later

in the shoot, when I had added a CTO gel

to my flash, and matched the color and amount, but actually the amount doesn’t matter as much, because we’ll be able to lower it later if it’s too much The whole image gets the Photo Filter, and it changes

When using an off-camera flash on location, most pros put an orange gel

over the flash to warm the color of the light, so it doesn’t stand out as

arti-ficial light This plastic gel is called CTO (for Color Temperature Orange) and

you can find it at most large camera stores (and a lot of small ones, too) So,

the problem is that not everybody has these gels, and if they do, they don’t

always remember to tape them over their flash head, but luckily, we can

warm the color temperature of the light after the fact in Photoshop

Fixing On-Location Flash Photos

Step Three:

What we need to do is hide the overall

orange color, and then just apply it where

we want it (where the light is actually

falling on the subject) To do that, just

press Command-I (PC: Ctrl-I) to Invert

the layer mask attached to your Photo

Filter adjustment layer, so your orange

filter is hidden behind a black layer mask

Now, get the Brush tool (B), press D to

switch your Foreground color to white,

and paint over your subject’s skin, hair,

clothes, and anywhere the light from the

flash is falling (as shown here) That way,

the orange only affects where the light

from the flash lands

Step Four:

Remember in Step Two where I said

I wasn’t worried about the amount

because I could change it later? That’s

now Because we used an adjustment

layer, we can just go to the Layers panel

and lower the Opacity to lower the

amount of orange (I lowered it to 64%

here) If, instead of needing to lower the

amount, you need more orange, then

just double-click directly on the

adjust-ment layer itself (in the Layers panel)

and it reopens the Photo Filter controls

in the Adjustments panel, so you can

increase the Density amount Here’s the

final image, with the orange gel effect

added in Photoshop

Step One:

Here’s a shot near the Temple of Heaven

in Beijing (I know, the lens perspective is off terribly, but that’s handled in the next project) I tried to get a shot without the tourists, but even though I was pretty darn patient, I just couldn’t come up with

a shot where there were no tourists at least somewhere in the shot The trick is to take

a few more shots, and hope that when all

is said and done, you can combine them, with a layer mask or two, to hide those tourists (it’s easier than it sounds)

Step Two:

Here, I took another shot of the same building, and as long the tourists in this photo are in a different spot than the tourists in the photo in Step One, we’ll

be able to mask them out in seconds But first, we’ll need to get the two photos into the same document, so switch to the

Move tool (V), press-and-hold the Shift

key, then drag the second image over onto the first image This second image appears

as its own layer above the first image (as seen here), and the two photos will be

The nemesis of the travel photographer is the tourist, because nothing

looks worse than a beautiful, iconic tower, palace, cathedral, or statue with

a bunch of tourists roaming around Although there’s nothing we can do to

stop tourists from walking into our photos while we’re taking them, there is

something we can do after the fact in Photoshop (as long and we do just a

little preparation in advance, which makes our retouching job super-simple)

Removing Tourists the Easy Way

Step Three:

If you’re handholding the images (and

chances are, at a tourist spot, you

prob-ably will be), then you’ll need to have

Photoshop perfectly align the two

pho-tos first, so the layer masking will work

(Note: If you did take your shots on a

tripod, you can skip this step altogether,

along with Step Four and Step Five,

because your photos will already be

in perfect alignment.) Go to the Layers

panel, press-and-hold the Shift key, and

click on the Background layer to select

them both Then go under the Edit

menu and choose Auto-Align Layers

(as shown here)

Step Four:

This brings up the Auto-Align Layers

dialog (shown here) Auto should be

selected by default, but if it’s not, click

on the Auto radio button, then click OK,

and Photoshop will perfectly align the

two images (it does an amazing job of it,

too) To see the results, go to the Layers

panel and click on the Eye icon beside

the top layer toggle it on/off—you’ll see

that everything is the same, except the

tourists, and that’s just what we need

Step Five:

You’ll notice that, in most cases, there will

be a gap at the top and/or sides of your

image, and that’s normal because

Auto-Align Layers has to tweak your images a

bit to make them line up (that’s because

they weren’t taken on a tripod—they

were handheld), so at this point, you’ll

need to crop away these areas Get the

Crop tool (C) and drag it out so the gaps

on the sides, top, and bottom will be

cropped away Press the Return (PC:

Enter) key to complete your crop.

Step Six:

Click on the top layer, then click on

the Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom

of the Layers panel (it’s shown circled

here in red)

Step Seven:

Next, get the Brush tool (B), make sure

your Foreground color is set to black,

choose a soft-edged brush tip (from the

Brush Picker up in the Options Bar), and

set your brush size so it’s just a little

smaller than the tourists you want to

remove (use the Left and Right Bracket

keys on your keyboard to change the size

of your brush They’re to the right of the

letter P on your keyboard) Now, paint

over the tourists (and their shadow) on

the left side of the photo (the ones in

front of the sign), and as you paint, it

covers them up, revealing the sign on

the layer below it This works so well,

because the two photos have been

perfectly aligned

Step Eight:

Anywhere you see a tourist, just paint

right over them, and they’re gone

(as shown here) If you make a mistake,

switch your Foreground color to white,

and paint over your mistake Once you

try this, and realize how easy it is, you’ll

see fewer and fewer tourists in your

travel photos in the future Just keep

in mind, the more photos you take, the

better chance you’ll be able to find two

(or more) photos you can stack in layers

(like we did here), and then layer mask

the tourists away

Step One:

Here’s a problem image Look at the columns on either side, which are bowing outward, and leaning outward, as well

Adobe figured you’d be using this filter

a lot now (since it’s so much better than

in previous versions), so they put Lens Cor-rection right up at the top of the Filter menu (rather than its previous home, hidden under Distort on the Filter menu)

So, go ahead and go under the Filter menu,

and choose Lens Correction now.

Step Two:

When the dialog opens, there are two tabs

on the right: Auto Correction and Custom (Custom means “do-it-yourself”) I always try Auto Correction first, because that way, it does all the work for you To turn it on, turn

on the checkbox for Geometric Distortion (if I see edge vignetting [darkening of the edges], I turn on that checkbox too, and it’ll fix that at the same time) It looks at the embedded camera data to find out which camera make and model, and lens you took the photo with, then it matches that against its built-in set of correction profiles to fix the problem (it did a pretty decent job here,

as you can see) If it doesn’t instantly come

up with a profile (or the camera data is

Photoshop CS5 definitely has some overlap with the included Camera Raw 6

that comes with CS5 (and is part of Photoshop), in that you can do a lot of the

same things in Photoshop that you can do in Camera Raw If you shoot in RAW

mode on your camera, you’re better off doing things like lens corrections right

within Camera Raw (see Chapter 3), because it’s faster and does less harm to

your pixels However, if for whatever reason, you don’t want to use Camera Raw’s

Lens Corrections panel (it works for JPEGs and TIFFs, too Hint, hint), then

you can use the vastly improved Lens Correction filter in CS5

Fixing Problems Caused by Your Camera’s Lens

Step Three:

If, after choosing your camera make and

model, no profiles show up in the Lens

Profiles listing box, try clicking the Search

Online button It will go to Adobe’s own

servers, and check to see if any additional

profiles for your camera make and model

have been added by end users (as long

as you’re connected to the Internet, of

course) If it does find some, they’ll be

list-ed there, and all you have to do is click on

one to apply it In this case, it found two

additional profiles for my lens, but with

a different camera I tried them both, but

neither was better than the original

pro-file that was already there, so I stuck

with it Hey, it was worth a try, right?

Step Four:

Although it did a pretty good job of fixing

the barrel distortion caused by the lens

(the bowing out of the columns), they’re

still bowing out just a tiny bit, so that’s

when you switch to the Custom (manual)

settings These settings are added to any

corrections applied in the Auto

Correc-tions tab, so you don’t lose what Auto

Corrections already did for you At the

top, you’ll see a slider for correcting

geometric distortion, and on either end

of the Remove Distortion slider is an

icon that shows how the image will

be affected if you drag in that direction

Since the photo was bowing outward,

you drag toward the icon bowing inward,

so I dragged to the right just a little, until

the columns stopped bowing (in this

case, I only need to increase it by +2)