Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers phần 4 pot

This method may not be as accurate as having a proper profi le built for your camera, but to be honest profi ling a camera is something that can only really be done where the light source

3 I then tackled the Shadow detail by raising the Fill Light setting When you are

required to push the Fill Light adjustment to such extremes, it is not uncommon to

have to raise the Blacks (as I did here) The picture is not yet perfect, but we can now

see detail at both ends of the tonal scale.

4 Lastly, I went to the Tone Curve panel and used the slider settings shown here to

carefully add contrast to the photograph where it was needed most.

HSL/Grayscale panelThe HSL controls provide eight color sliders with which

to control the Hue, Saturation and Luminance These work in a similar way to the Hue/Saturation adjustment

in Photoshop, but are in many ways better; from my experience I fi nd that these controls are more predictable

in their response In Figure 3.41 I used the Luminance controls to darken the blue sky and add more contrast in the clouds, plus I lightened the grass and trees slightly Do this using Hue/Saturation in Photoshop and you will fi nd that the blue colors will tend to lose saturation as you darken the luminosity You will also notice that instead of using the traditional additive and subtractive primary colors of red, green, blue, plus cyan, magenta and yellow, the color slider controls in the HSL panel are based on colors that are of more actual relevance when editing photographic images For example, the Oranges slider is useful for adjusting skin tones and Aquas can target the color of a swimming pool, but without affecting the color of a sky

Figure 3.41 In this example, the HSL/Grayscale panel was used to add more cloud contrast to the sky by going to the Luminance section and darkening the Aquas and Blues sliders.

HSL color controls

The choice of color ranges for the HSL

sliders is really quite logical when you

think about it We may often want to adjust

skin tone colors, but skin tones aren’t red

or yellow – they are more of an orange

color And the sea is often not blue but

more of an aqua color Basically, the hue

ranges in the HSL controls are designed to

provide a more applicable range of colors

for photographers to work with

Detail panel information

In case you are wondering, there is a whole

section on working with the Detail panel

coming up in the following chapter

Figure 3.43 These two screen shots show a dramatic improvement between the

before version where the reds in the fl owers appeared fl at (top) and after applying a

negative luminance adjustment to darken the red, orange and yellow colors (bottom).

Figure 3.42 This diagram shows a plot of the color gamut of an LCD monitor (the solid shape

in the center) compared to the actual color gamut

of a digital camera Assuming you are using a wide gamut RGB space such as Adobe RGB or better still ProPhoto RGB, the colors you are able

to edit will almost certainly extend beyond what can be seen on the screen.

Tech note

The previews shown here are not simple screen grabs, but mocked up using fully processed ProPhoto RGB images You can judge the effectiveness of this adjustment

by how they are printed in the book

Recovering out-of-gamut colors

Figure 3.42 highlights the problem of how the camera you

are shooting with is almost certainly capable of capturing

a greater range of colors than can be displayed on the

monitor or seen in print Just because you can’t see them

doesn’t mean they’re not there! Although a typical monitor

can’t give a true indication of how colors will print, it is all

you have to rely on when assessing the colors in a photo

The HSL Luminance and Saturation sliders can sometimes

be used to reveal hidden color detail (Figure 3.43)

Adjusting the hue and saturation

The Hue sliders in the HSL/Grayscale panel can be used

to fi ne-tune the hue color bias for each of the eight color sliders In Figure 3.44 I adjusted the Reds hue slider to make the reds look less magenta and more orange In other words, this is a useful HSL/Grayscale panel tip for improving the look of snapshot pictures taken with

a compact digital camera, where the skin tones can sometimes look too pink

The Saturation sliders allow you to decrease or increase the saturation of specifi c colors In Figure 3.45 you can see how I was able to use these to knock back specifi c colors so that everything in the photograph ended up in monochrome, except for the red guitar in the foreground

I could have used the new adjustment brush to do this, but adjusting the Saturation sliders offers a very quick method for selectively editing the colors in this way

Figure 3.44 This snap shot was taken of my friend Jeff Schewe at a party in New York Here, I used a positive Reds Hue adjustment to take some of the redness out

of the picture to make the skin tones look more natural, but I may have needed to increase the amount used here as extra glasses of wine were consumed.

Grayscale conversions

To fi nd out about how to apply grayscale

conversions in Camera Raw, please refer

to pages 358–359 in the Black and White

chapter

Emulating Hue/Saturation behavior

In Photoshop’s Hue/Saturation dialog

there is a Hue slider that can be used to

apply global hue shifts, which can be

useful if you are interested in shifting all

of the hue values in one go With Camera

Raw you can create preset HSL settings

where all the Hue sliders are shifted

equally in each direction Using such

presets you can quickly shift all the hues in

positive or negative steps, without having

to drag each slider in turn

Figure 3.45 In this example I have shown the before version (top) and a modifi ed

version (below), where I used the HSL/Grayscale panel Saturation sliders to

selectively desaturate some of the colors in this scene.

Lens Corrections panelThe Lens Corrections controls can help correct some of the optical problems that are associated with digital capture If you inspect an image closely towards the edge of the frame area you may notice some color fringing, which will be most apparent around areas of high contrast (Figure 3.46) This is mainly a problem you get with cheaper lens optics, but it can even occur with a good lens when photographing

Figure 3.46 The top screen shot shows a 200% close-up view of an image where you can see strong color fringing around the strong contrast edges In the lower version I used a Chromatic Aberration correction to remove the color fringes

% close p ie of an image here

Lens Correction fi lter

The Chromatic Aberration controls

discussed here are also available in the

Photoshop Lens Correction fi lter

Figure 3.47 If you hold down the O A

key as you make adjustments to the Blue/Yellow Chromatic aberration controls you can hide the Red/Cyan color fringing (but you must be viewing

at 100% magnifi cation or higher) Do the same with the Red/Cyan Chromatic aberration controls

to hide the Blue/Yellow color fringing.

brightly colored subjects The Chromatic Aberration

controls in the Lens Corrections panel can be used to help

remove any visible color fringing

To correct for chromatic aberrations you do need to be

viewing the photo at a magnifi cation of 100% or higher

The Red/Cyan Fringe adjustment works by adjusting the

scale size of the Red channel relative to the Green channel,

and the Blue/Yellow Fringe slider will adjust the scale

size of the Blue channel relative to the Green channel The

net result is that with careful manipulation of both these

sliders you should be able to remove all signs of chromatic

aberration across the whole image, even though you are

only analyzing one small section of the photo

Defringe

The Defringe options provide an extra level of defringing

in addition to the manual slider adjustments To be honest,

the Highlight Edges and All Edges settings usually have a

very subtle effect, but if you are going to use this I would

suggest choosing the All Edges option (Figure 3.48) It can

also sometimes help clean up any remaining color fringes

Figure 3.48 The left half of this Camera Raw preview shows the before version and

the right half view shows the same image with the All Edges Defringe option selected.

Lens Vignetting control

With certain camera/lens combinations you may see some brightness fall-off occur towards the edges of the picture frame This is a problem you are more likely to encounter with wide-angle lenses, and you may only notice this particular lens defi ciency if the subject contains a plain, evenly-lit background The Lens Vignetting Amount slider can be used to correct for this by lightening the corners relative to the center of the photograph, while the Midpoint slider can be used to offset the rate of fall-off As you increase the Midpoint value, the exposure compensation will

be accentuated more towards the outer edges

Vignetting is not always a result of the lens used In the studio I am fond of shooting with extreme wide-angle lenses and the problem here is that it’s often diffi cult to get the backdrop evenly lit for the area of coverage that is required In these kinds of situations I fi nd it helps to use the Lens Vignetting slider to compensate for the fall-off in light towards the corners of the frame by lightening the edges (as shown in Figure 3.49 below)

Figure 3.49 An example of the Lens Vignetting sliders being used to compensate for the light fall-off on a studio backdrop, to produce a more even-balanced white.

UV fi lters and edge detail

Fixing a UV fi lter over the lens is generally

considered a good way to fi lter out the UV

light when photographing outdoors, plus it

can also offer a fi rst line of defence against

the lens getting damaged However, this

not such a good idea for wide-angle

or wide-angle zoom lenses as the light

entering the lens from the extreme edges

is forced to go through the UV fi lter at

an angle and this can cause the image to

degrade more at the edges of the frame

since the light passes through the fi lter

glass at an oblique angle

Client: Clipso.

Model: Lucy Edwards @ Bookings.

1 Here is an example of a photograph shot with a wide-angle lens, where lens

vignetting can be seen in the corners of the frame.

2 In this example I used the Lens Corrections panel to compensate for the Vignetting

I set the Amount slider to +28, and adjusted the Midpoint to fi ne-tune the correction

The aim here was to obtain an even exposure at the corners.

Post Crop vignetting control

A lot of photographers have got into using the Lens Vignetting controls as a creative tool for darkening or lightening the corners of their pictures The only problem with this is that the lens vignetting can only be applied

to the whole of the image frame area But with Camera Raw 5 you can now use the Post Crop Vignette sliders to apply a vignette relative to any cropped image area This means that you can use the Lens Vignetting controls for the purpose they were intended (to counter any fall-off that occurs towards the edges of the frame) and use the Post Crop Vignette sliders as a creative tool for those times when you deliberately wish to lighten or darken the edges

of a photo via Camera Raw

The Post Crop Vignetting Amount and Midpoint sliders work identically to the Lens Vignetting controls, except

in addition to this you can adjust the Roundness and the Feathering of the vignette adjustment

1 In this fi rst example I applied a −70, darkening vignette offset with a +45 Midpoint setting This adjustment was not too different from a normal Lens Vignetting adjustment, except it was applied to the cropped area of an image.

Combined effects

Now that we have post crop vignette

controls as well as the standard Lens

correction vignette sliders, you can achieve

even more varied results by combining

different combinations of slider settings,

whether a photo is cropped or not

Client: Andrew Collinge Hair & Beauty Hair by

Andrew Collinge artistic team Make-up: Liz

Collinge.

2 In this next version I adjusted the Roundness slider to make the vignette shape less

elliptical and adjusted the Feather slider to make the vignette edge harder.

3 For this fi nal version I applied a +100 vignette Amount to lighten the corners of the

cropped image, combined with a narrow Midpoint and a softer Feather setting.

Camera Calibration panelEveryone wants or expects their camera to be capable of capturing perfect colors, whether they really need to or not For a start, what is perfect color? Some photographers will look at the results they get when looking at a JPEG version of an image and judge everything according to that, while others, who shoot raw, may prefer the default look they get from a particular raw processing program Apart from anything else, is the display you are using capable of showing all the colors that your camera can capture? Camera Raw is the product of much camera testing and raw fi le analysis carried out by Thomas Knoll at Adobe Test cameras were used to build a two-part profi le of each camera sensor’s spectral response under standardized tungsten and daylight balanced lighting conditions From this, Camera Raw is able to calculate a pretty good color interpretation under these lighting conditions, and beyond, across a wide range of color temperatures This method may not be as accurate as having a proper profi le built for your camera, but to be honest profi ling a camera is something that can only really be done where the light source conditions are always the same, because you would otherwise need to reprofi le the camera every time the lighting was changed.

The Camera Calibration panel controls (Figure 3.50) provide a mechanism for fi ne-tuning the color adjustments

in Camera Raw so that you can address any slight differences between your camera and the ones Thomas used to test with, and customize the Camera Raw output to produce a custom calibration for each individual camera body This system of calibration does require a little extra effort to set up, but it is worth doing if you want to fi ne-tune the color calibration for each individual camera you shoot with

You also have to bear in mind that many of the default Camera Raw settings were achieved through testing a limited number of cameras It has been reported that there can be a discernible variation in color response between individual cameras So it was as a result of testing a wider

Figure 3.50 The Camera Calibration panel

controls can be used to fi ne-tune the Camera Raw

color interpretation The Camera Profi le setting

at the top can offer a choice of camera profi le

settings, depending on whether there is more

than one Camera Calibration profi le to choose

from.

ACR compatible cameras

The list of cameras compatible with the

latest version of Camera Raw can be found

at the Adobe website by following this link:

www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/

cameraraw.html

Figure 3 50The Camera Calibration panel

pool of cameras that Thomas Knoll decided to update the

default settings for certain makes of camera and in some

cases provide later version default camera profi les (in

addition to keeping the legacy profi le available for use)

This is why you will sometimes see extra profi les listed that

refer to earlier builds of Camera Raw, such as ACR 2.4 or

ACR 3.6, etc (see sidebar on choosing the right profi le) In

addition to this, Adobe have also provided a range of new

profi les for Camera Raw where the Adobe profi le should

now be the new default profi le for Camera Raw 5

Some writers have tended to gloss over the Camera

Calibration panel and suggest that you ‘tweak the sliders

until the photograph kind of looks right’ Well, there is a

more scientifi c approach to using this panel and although

it may look complicated, it is in fact quite easy to carry out

and only needs to be done once for each camera

The ACR Calibrator script

In the early days of Camera Raw I used to shoot an X-Rite

ColorChecker chart and use a visual color comparison

technique with a synthetic ColorChecker chart to adjust

the Calibrate settings It was all very complex! But

fortunately there is now an easier way to calibrate your

camera equipment First of all, you still need to buy an

X-Rite ColorChecker chart (either the standard or Mini

size will do) One of these can be ordered on-line and will

cost you around $100 (Figure 3.52) You will then need to

photograph the chart with your camera in raw mode It is

important that the chart is evenly lit and exposed correctly,

and the best way to do this is to use two studio lights in a

copy light setup or, failing that, use a diffuse light source

Apart from that it does not matter what other camera

settings are used, although I would recommend you shoot at

a low ISO rating

The next thing you will need is the ACR Calibrator script

which will work for Mac or PC with Photoshop CS, CS2,

CS3 or CS4 This is free and can be downloaded from Tom

Fors Chromaholics website: http://fors.net/chromoholics/

Once installed, the ACR Calibrator script will be available

for use via the File ➯ Scripts menu in Photoshop

Accurate white balance measurement

An X-Rite ColorChecker chart is essential for measuring the color response of your camera, but it is generally felt that the white and gray patches on these cards are a tad warm If you want to get a really accurate white balance measurement for individual shots I can recommend you use

a WhiBal™ card as sold by RawWorkfl ow.com These are available in various sizes and offer one of the most accurate ways you can measure the white balance in any lighting setup (see Figure 3.22)

Choosing the right profi le

When a profi le is updated for a particular camera, it is necessary for Camera Raw

to preserve the older profi les since these need to be kept in order to satisfy customers who have relied on the previous profi le setting It wouldn’t do to fi nd that all your existing Camera Raw processed images suddenly looked different because the profi le had been updated So in order

to maintain backward compatibility, Adobe leave you a choice of which profi les to use

Figure 3.51 X-Rite ColorChecker charts can

be bought as a mini chart or the full-size chart you see here.

1 To use the script, you will need to open a raw image that was taken of the X-Rite ColorChecker chart and open it in Photoshop via the Adobe Camera Raw dialog Use the white balance tool to measure the patch next to the white patch (circled) Crop the image tightly around the ColorChecker chart Go to the Workfl ow options, set the crop size to the smallest pixel size possible and set the bit depth to 8-bits per channel There are no other settings you need concern yourself with It does not matter if auto settings have been applied and it does not matter which RGB output color space is selected Now click ‘Open’ to open the image in Photoshop.

2 With the image open in Photoshop, select the pen tool with the Paths mode option selected in the Options panel (circled) Click with the pen tool on the brown patch Now hold down the S key and click on the white patch, the black patch and lastly the blue-green patch Now go to the File ➯ Scripts menu and select the ACR Calibrator script that you installed earlier.

3 The ACR Calibrator script will automatically open the raw fi le many times over and

gradually build a status report in a new Photoshop document This process can take

a long time to complete, which is why it is important to keep the bit depth at 8-bits

per channel and the image size small It will also help if you hide all the Photoshop

panels fi rst before you run the script Shown here is the ACR Calibrator status

window after the script had run its full course; I have highlighted the calibration

settings in yellow.

4 You’ll need to make a note of the fi gures highlighted in Step 3 and enter them in

the Camera Calibration panel in Camera Raw and save this as a custom calibration

setting for your camera When you save the Camera Raw settings, check only the

Camera Calibration checkbox You can now apply this setting to all photos that have

been shot using this camera and expect to see more accurate color results.

Skin tone calibration settings

Going back to what I said earlier about

‘what is proper color’… it is all very well creating a perfect calibration, but sometimes the most accurate color doesn’t always quite match expectations For example, proper camera calibrations tend

to produce Caucasian skin tones that look slightly too magenta for most people’s liking You may therefore want to tweak the settings slightly Try adding 10 units

to the red hue measurement and save this modifi ed setting as a camera calibration for use with Caucasian skin tone subjects

New Camera Raw profi les

I mentioned earlier the ACR profi les and how these were updated as Thomas chose to revise the earlier Camera Raw profi les and provide newer ones based on improved testing More recently, Eric Chan on the Camera Raw team has worked to improve many of the standard ACR profi les as well as extending the range of profi les that can

be applied via Camera Raw (Figure 3.52) Older profi les such as ACR 3.6 and ACR 4.4 will still be honored and made available where appropriate But for Camera Raw 5, the ‘Adobe’ profi le is now the new default and this and the other profi les you see listed in the Profi le menu options are the result of improved analysis as well as an effort to match some of the camera vendor ‘look settings’

If you are happy to trust the new ‘Adobe’ profi le, then I suggest you leave this as the default setting The differences you will see with this profi le are going to

be slight, but I think you will fi nd these still represent

an improvement and are worth keeping as the default The ‘Standard’ profi le is rather clever because Eric has managed to match the default camera vendor settings for most of the main cameras supported by Camera Raw So,

if you choose the Standard profi le you can get the Camera Raw interpretation to match the default color renderings applied by the camera manufacturer software This means that if you apply the Standard profi le as the default, Camera Raw will apply the exact same kind of default color rendering as the camera vendor’s software and it will also match the default camera JPEG renderings When you next bring your photos into Camera Raw, you won’t see any jumps in color as the Camera Raw processing kicks

in because Camera Raw is now able to match the JPEG rendering for many of the supported cameras

The other profi les you may see listed are designed to let you match some of the camera vendor ‘look settings’ These profi les include: Faithful, Landscape, Neutral and Portrait In Figure 3.53 you can see an example of how these can compare with the standard ACR and Adobe profi les

Figure 3.52 The Camera Calibration panel

showing the new Camera Profi le options.

DNG Profi le editor

The DNG Profi le editor is a separate

program that you can download free from

the Adobe website If you are feeling up

to the task, this utility program will allow

you to edit your own ‘profi le look settings’

and add these to the ones offered here in

Camera Raw 5

New Camera Profi le availability

Not all the Camera Raw supported cameras

have new profi les so you may not see the

full list of profi le options for every Camera

Raw compatible camera, just the newer

and most popular camera models

Figure 3.53 This page shows a comparison of the different camera profi les one

can now choose from and the effect these will have on the appearance of an image

shot using a Canon EOS 1Ds MkIII camera that has been processed via Camera Raw.

Photo: © Jeff Schewe 2008.

Model: Alex Kordek @ MOT.

Spot removal toolYou can use the spot removal tool (b) to retouch spots and blemishes Whenever the spot removal tool is active you will see the Spot Removal options appear in the panel section on the right, where you can choose between Heal and Clone type retouching (Figure 3.54) and, ideally, you should work on the image at a 100% magnifi cation In Clone mode, the tool behaves like a cross between the spot healing brush and clone stamp in Photoshop It will carry out a straightforward clone of the image with a soft feathered edge circle and automatically select the area to sample from In Heal mode, the tool behaves like a cross between the spot healing and normal healing brush in Photoshop, where it auto-selects an area to sample from and blends the sampled data with the surrounding data outside the spotting circle In either case, you can click to select an applied clone circle and use the Type menu to switch from one mode to the other With both the Clone and Heal modes you have the option to adjust the radius of

Mouse down on a circle edge and drag to adjust the size of a circle

Mouse down inside a source or

destination circle and drag to

move the circle’s position

Click with the retouch tool, centered on a blemish, to apply an instant clone or heal retouch

Click and drag with the mouse to set a specifi c radius size for a retouch circle

Figure 3.54 This screen shot shows the retouch tool in action, with explanations

of how to apply and modify the retouch spot circles.

Clearing the retouching work

You can remove individual retouch circles

by selecting them and hitting the D

key Or, you can click on the Clear All

button to delete all retouch circles

Turning off the preview

In Camera Raw 5, you can now use the

Preview option to toggle showing/hiding

the spot removal retouching

Figure 3.55 Here is an example of the Camera Raw dialog being used to carry out

synchronized spotting

Keeping the sensor clean

Dust marks are the bane of digital photography and ideally you want to do

as much as you can to avoid dust or dirt getting onto the camera sensor I have experimented with various products and fi nd that the Sensor Swabs used with the Eclipse cleaning solution from Photographic Solutions Inc (www.photosol.com) are reliable products I use these from time to time to keep the sensors

in my cameras free from marks

the spot removal tool as well as the opacity You can use

the [] keys to tweak the radius, but it is usually simpler

to follow the instructions in Figure 3.54 and drag with the

cursor instead The opacity slider is new and this allows

you to lower the opacity setting should you wish You can

also click on the Show Overlay box or use the h key to

toggle showing and hiding the circles so that you can view

the retouched image without seeing the retouch circles

Synchronized spotting with Camera Raw

You can also synchronize the spot removal as you apply it!

Make a selection of images in Bridge and open them up via

Camera Raw (as shown in Figure 3.55) Now click on the

Select All button This will select all the photos and if you

now use the spot removal tool you can retouch the most

selected photo (the one shown in the main preview), and

the spotting work will automatically be updated to all the

other selected images

Red eye removalThe remove red eye tool is useful for correcting photos taken of people where the direct camera fl ash has caused the pupils to appear bright red To apply a red eye correction, select the red eye removal tool and mouse drag over the eyes that need to be adjusted In Figure 3.56

I dragged with the mouse to roughly select one of the eyes As I did this, Camera Raw was able to detect the area that needed to be corrected and automatically adjusted the marquee size to fi t The Pupil Size and Darken sliders can then be used to fi ne-tune the Pupil Size area that you want to correct as well as the amount you want to darken the pupil by You can also revise the red eye removal settings by clicking on a rectangle to reactivate it, or use the D key to remove individual red eye corrections

If you don’t like the results you are getting, you can always click on the Clear All button to delete the red eye retouching and start over again

Figure 3.56 Here is an example of the red eye tool in action.

Hiding the red eye rectangles

As with the spot removal tool, you can

click on the Show Overlay box to toggle

showing and hiding the rectangle overlays

(or use the h key)

Localized adjustments

We now come to the adjustment brush and graduated

fi lter tools, which can be used to apply localized edits to

photos in Camera Raw Although localized editing made an

appearance in Aperture 2.1, the Camera Raw tools are quite

different as they truly do allow non-destructive editing

Just like the spot removal and red eye removal tools you

can revise the edits as many times as you like, without

having to render an interim pixel version of the raw master

Not only that, these are more than just dodge and burn

tools There are a total of seven adjustment effects to

choose from, not to mention an Auto Mask option

Adjustment brush

When you select the adjustment brush tool (k) the tool

options shown in Figure 3.57 will appear in the panel

section on the right with the New button selected, and

below that a set of sliders you can use to confi gure the

brush adjustment before you apply it

Camera Raw versus Aperture

It is worth making the point here that Camera Raw 5 and Aperture 2.1 have adopted completely different approaches

to localized editing Aperture creates

a rendered pixel image that can be manipulated via what is essentially a basic pixel image editing program, and

to be honest, if you are going to render

a pixel image, you might as well edit in Photoshop Camera Raw on the other hand offers true non-destructive raw image editing

Figure 3.57 The Adjustment brush options

Toggle the main panel controls

Hit the k key to revert to toggle between the main edit panel mode and the Adjustment Brush panel

Increase Exposure button Increase Brightness button Decrease Brightness button

Increase Contrast button Decrease Contrast button

Increase Saturation button Decrease Saturation button

Increase Clarity button Decrease Clarity button

Increase Sharpness button Decrease Sharpness button

Make color warmer button Make color cooler button

Decrease Exposure button

Create new adjustment/Add to adjustment/Erase

Brush size radius Click to select a swatch color Feather brush radius Brush fl ow Brush opacity

Click to clear all brush edits Mask options

Toggle show/hide pins

Initial Adjustment brush options

To apply a brush adjustment, click on the New Brush button

at the top of the panel and then select the effect options you wish to apply by using either the plus or minus buttons

or the sliders For example, clicking on the Exposure plus button will increase the exposure setting to +0.50 and clicking on the negative button will set it to −0.50 (these are your basic dodge and burn settings) The effect buttons therefore make it fairly easy for you to quickly create the kind of effect you are after You can only select one effect setting at a time using the buttons, but if you use the slider controls you can fi ne-tune the adjustment brush effect settings and combine multiple types of effects

Brush settings

Below this are the brush settings The Size slider adjusts the brush radius, plus you can also use the [] keys to make the brush smaller or larger The Feather slider adjusts the softness of the brush and you can also use the S] keys to make the brush edge softer and S[ to make the brush harder Note that these settings will be refl ected

in the cursor shape shown in Figure 3.58

The Flow slider is a bit like an airbrush control If you select a low Flow setting, you can apply a series of brush strokes that successively build to create a stronger effect

As you brush back and forth with the brush, you will notice how the paint effect gains opacity and, if you are using a pressure-sensitive tablet such as a Wacom™, the Flow of the brush strokes is automatically linked to the pen pressure that you apply

The Density slider determines the maximum opacity for the brush This means that if you have the brush set to 100% Density, the fl ow of the brush strokes can build to a maximum density of 100% If on the other hand you reduce the Density, this will limit the maximum brush opacity to a lower opacity value For example, if you lower the Density and paint over an area that was previously painted at a density of 100% you can paint with the adjustment brush

to reduce the opacity in these areas and, if you reduce the Density to 0%, the adjustment brush will act like an eraser

Hiding and showing brush edits

Use the Preview button in the Camera Raw

dialog to toggle showing and hiding all

Adjustment brush edits

Return to the main panels

Click k to toggle between the Adjustment

Brush tool mode and other panel modes

On-screen brush resizing

If you hold down the L key (Mac) or use

a right-mouse click (Mac and PC), you can

drag to resize the cursor before you start

using it to retouch the image

Figure 3.58 The outer edge of the adjustment brush cursor represents the overall size of the brush, while the inner circle represents the softness (feathering) of the brush relative to the overall brush size.

Figure 3.59 In this example I added several pin markers representing groups of

brush strokes The one at the top was used to darken and the one that is currently

active was used to lighten the bucket with a positive Exposure value.

Adding a new brush effect

You are now ready to start painting When you click on the

image, a pin marker is added and the Adjustment Brush

panel will show that it is now in Add mode (Figure 3.59)

As you start adding successive brush strokes these will be

collectively associated with this marker and will continue

to do so until you click on the New button and click to add

a new set of brush strokes

The pin markers therefore provide a tag for identifying

groups of brush strokes and you can click on a pin marker

whenever you need to add or remove brush strokes or

re-edit the brush settings that were used previously If you

want to hide the markers you can do so by clicking on the

Show Pins box to toggle showing/hiding, or use the h key

shortcut

Figure 3.60 In this screen view, the ‘Show Mask’ option is checked and you can

see an overlay mask for the selected brush group Click on the swatch next to it if you wish to choose a different color for the overlay display.

Undoing and erasing brush strokes

As you work with the Adjustment brush,

you can undo a brush stroke or series of

strokes using the Undo command (Cz

Lz)

Previewing the mask more clearly

Sometimes it is useful to initially adjust

the settings to apply a stronger effect

than is desired This will let you judge the

effectiveness of your masking more clearly

You can then reduce the effect settings to

reach the desired strength for the brush

strokes

Resetting the sliders

Double-clicking a slider name will reset to

zero, or to its default value

k’ ti i h k d d

Editing brush adjustments

To edit a series of brush strokes, just click on an existing pin marker to select it (a black dot will appear in the center

of the pin) This takes you into the Add mode, where you can add more brush strokes or edit the current brush settings For example, in Step 2 (opposite) I might have wanted to drag the Exposure slider to lighten the selected brush group more You might also want to erase portions of

a brush group, which you can do by clicking on the Erase button at the top of the Adjustment Brush panel where you can independently edit the brush settings for the eraser mode (except for the Density slider which is locked at zero) Alternatively, you can hold down the O A key to temporarily access the adjustment brush in eraser mode When you are done editing, click on the New button to return to the New adjustment mode where you can now click on the image and add a new set of brush strokes

Previewing the brush stroke areas

If you click on the Show Mask option, you’ll see a temporary overlay view of the painted regions (Figure 3.60) The color overlay represents the areas that have been painted and can also be seen as you roll the cursor over a pin marker

1 Here is a portrait of Rod Wynne-Powell who tech-edited the book for me To add a

new adjustment brush group, I adjusted the effect sliders, clicked on the image and

started painting In this fi rst step I applied a darkening effect to the background.

2 I then added further brush groups In this step I added a new brush group to lighten

the eyes and a third brush group (highlighted here) to lighten Rod’s forehead.

Photograph: © Jeff Schewe 2008

Auto masking

The Auto Mask option is at the bottom of the Adjustment Brush panel and when switched on will cleverly mask the image at the same time as you paint It does this by analyzing the colors in the image where you fi rst click and then proceeds to apply the effect to only those areas with the same matching tone and color (Figure 3.61) It does this on a contiguous selection basis For example, in the steps shown here I dragged with the adjustment brush in auto mask mode around the outside of the basket handle

to darken the outer area and then dragged separately on the inside of the basket handle to include this in the auto mask brush group While the Auto Mask can do a great job

at auto-selecting the areas you want to paint, at extremes

it can lead to ugly ‘dissolved pixel’ edges This doesn’t happen with every photo, but it’s something to be aware of The other thing to watch out for is a slow-down in brush performance As you add more brush strokes, the Camera Raw processing takes a knock anyway, but it gets even worse when you apply lots of auto mask brushing

1 This shows the original photograph of a basket of oranges against a stone wall, so far with just the Basic panel corrections applied.

Figure 3.61 Quite often all you need to do

is to click on an area of a picture with the color

you wish to target and drag the adjustment brush

in auto mask mode to quickly adjust areas of the

picture that share the same tone and color.

2 I selected the adjustment brush and clicked on the minus Exposure button to set

this to −0.50, dragged the Saturation slider to +50, and started painting the wall

Because Auto Mask was checked, the brush effect only adjusted the stone wall area.

3 To demonstrate how effective the auto masking was in this image I lowered the

Exposure slider to −2.00, which darkened the wall even further You can see how the

basket handle and fruit stood out more as I did this

Hand-coloring in Color modeThe adjustment brush tool can also be used to tint black and white images and is a technique that works well with any raw photograph, or JPEG/TIFF image that is in color

to start with This is because the auto mask feature can

be used to help guide the adjustment brush to colorize regional areas that share the same tone and color and, if the underlying image is in color, then the auto mask has more information to work with To convert the image to black and white you can take the Saturation slider in the Basic panel all the way to the left, or you can go to the HSL panel and drag all the Saturation sliders to the left The advantage

of this approach is that you then have the option to adjust the luminance sliders to vary the black and white mix (see Chapter 6) Once you have done this you can select the adjustment brush and click on the color swatch to open the Color Picker dialog and choose a color to paint with In the following steps you can see how I went about coloring a photo that had been converted to black and white

1 The fi rst step was to go to the Basic panel and desaturate the colors in the image by dragging the Saturation slider all the way to the left

Adjustment brush speed

The fact that you can apply non-destructive

localized adjustments to a raw image is a

clever innovation, but this type of editing

can never be as fast as editing a pixel

image in Photoshop The example shown

here demonstrates how far you could take

localized edits with the adjustment brush

tool, but in reality it can be extremely slow

to carry out complex retouching with the

adjustment brush Even on a fast computer

2 Once I had done this I selected the adjustment brush and edited the brush settings

In this instance I clicked on the swatch to choose a green color and, with Auto Mask

selected, started coloring the leaves.

3 I then added several more brush groups to color the photo In this example you can

see I have the pin marker on the door selected, where I adjusted the brush settings to

apply a blue color with a −0.60 Exposure setting.

be used in moderation to retouch a raw photo and enhance areas that could do with a touch more sharpening than the rest of the photo You will also note in Figure 3.37 (on page 180) how I used a +25 Sharpness effect in conjunction with a −50 Clarity adjustment to produce a skin retouching brush effect.

Negative sharpness undoes the sharpening and at its maximum strength gives you only a slightly blurred version

of the original and is therefore nothing quite as dramatic as

a Gaussian Blur tool for Camera Raw

Figure 3.62 This shows a positive sharpness effect being applied to the eye area

in this photo at +100% You would normally want to reduce the overall amount to something less aggressive than this, since heavy sharpening can enhance artifacts.

Two Smart Object sharpening layers

As I have mentioned in the accompanying

text, the Sharpness slider is rather limited

compared to the full range of sharpening

controls now offered in the Detail panel

An alternative approach would be to use

the ‘Opening raw fi les as Smart Objects’

technique described on page 150 to open

an image twice You could apply one set

of Detail panel settings for one layer and

a stronger sharpening effect on the other

You could then use a layer mask (as

described in Chapters 5 and 8) to blend

these two layers so that you manage to

combine two methods of sharpening in the

one image

Graduated fi lter tool

Everything that has been described so far about working

with the adjustment brush more or less applies to working

with the Graduated fi lter, which allows you to add linear

graduated adjustments (Figure 3.63) To use the tool, just

click in the picture to set the start point (the point with the

maximum effect strength), drag the mouse to defi ne the

spread of the Graduated fi lter, and release to set the point of

minimum effect strength There is no midtone control with

which you can offset a Graduated Filter effect, and there

are no Graduated Filter options other than ‘linear’

Graduated fi lter effects are indicated by two pin

markers with a dashed line between these two points

This indicates the spread of the fi lter; you can change the

width by dragging the outer pins further apart, and move

the position of the gradient by clicking and dragging the

central line When a gradient is selected, the green dashed

line represents the maximum effect strength and the red

dashed line represents the minimum effect strength

Figure 3.63 The Graduated fi lter tool options.

Toggle the main panel controls

Hit the g key to revert to toggle between the main edit panel mode and the Graduated Filter panel

Resetting the sliders

As with the adjustment brush options, double-clicking a slider name will reset to zero, or to its default value

Increase Exposure button Increase Brightness button Decrease Brightness button

Increase Contrast button Decrease Contrast button

Increase Saturation button Decrease Saturation button

Increase Clarity button Decrease Clarity button

Increase Sharpness button Decrease Sharpness button

Make color warmer button Make color cooler button

Decrease Exposure button

Create new gradient/Edit gradient

Click to select a swatch color

Click to clear all gradient edits Toggle show/hide overlay

2 I selected the Graduated fi lter tool, which revealed the Graduated Filter panel I selected a negative Exposure as the effect to use, and dragged the Graduated fi lter tool from the middle of the sky downward.

1 This shows how the original photograph looked after I had applied just the main Basic panel adjustments to optimize the highlights, shadows, and contrast

4 After that, I clicked on the color swatch to open the Color Picker shown here,

selected a blue color and added a new Graduated fi lter adjustment by dragging from

the top of the photograph downward to the horizon.

3 I then decided to strengthen the darkening Graduated fi lter effect by decreasing the

Exposure setting to –0.90.

Angled gradients

As you drag with the Graduated fi lter you can do so at any angle and also edit the angle afterwards For example, if you click on a pin marker to select it (as shown in Figure 3.64) you can drag the marker, rotating it around the other marker point and, if you hold down the S key, you can constrain the angle of rotation to 45° increments

Adding clarity and contrast

In this last example, I wanted to show another series of steps using the graduated fi lter, but this time to demonstrate how to add contrast and clarity to an image I took this particular shot early one morning in Chicago at sunrise, but

I never really managed to get the dramatic colors that I was after This was mainly because of the early morning misty sky I realized this picture would benefi t from some added contrast in the softer parts of the image, so I experimented with the localized adjustment tools to see if these could be used to modify the original raw image

Figure 3.64 This shows a Graduated fi lter

being rotated, where the red pin marker is being

dragged and rotates around the green marker.

1 Here is the original version which I had optimized for the highlights, shadows and contrast, plus I added a little Clarity and Vibrance to bring out more defi nition and color in the buildings.

2 I then selected the Graduated fi lter tool and added two color effect gradients: a light

blue gradient over the water and a warm colored gradient to add warmth to the sky.

3 But still the buildings in this photograph lacked presence, so I added a further

gradient in which I combined a +100 Contrast effect with +50 clarity and dragged

from the middle of the picture down to the water line.