Photodigitary

Workaround for Layer Masks in Photoshop Elements

Most photographers really don’t need the expense or the big learning curve of Photoshop. Photoshop Elements does a wonderful job, especially when used as a supplement to Lightroom. Lightroom does the “heavy lifting” and Photoshop Elements can then be used for layers and to access Photoshop-type plug-ins. I use Nik Software programs such as Vivesa and Dfine all the time. While they are available as Lightroom export plug-ins, I prefer to use them as Photoshop or Photoshop Elements plug-ins because of the added control you get by using them with layers.

Elements has layer masks with adjustment layers, but not for layers with pixels. So if you wanted to change exposure by using an adjustment layer, you could control that layer with a layer mask. However, if you wanted to merge two photos, each on separate layers, you could not do that with layer masks as those layers have pixels. Here one photo has the right exposure for the ground, the other for the sky. We need to bring those two exposures together.

There is a workaround:

1. Click on the layer that you want to change and control with a layer mask.

2. Add a blank layer by clicking the add layer icon or from the Layer menu. This will add a layer over the layer you clicked on.

3. Click and drag the new blank layer under the layer you wish to control.

4. Click on the layer you want to change and press Ctrl + G or Cmd + G. This groups the layer with the blank layer, and since the blank layer is blank, the layer you want to control becomes blank, too.

5. Choose the paintbrush tool from the toolbox at the left.

6. Use black or white as the color (you could use other colors, but let’s keep it simple).

7. Paint into the blank layer wherever you want the hidden layer to now appear (if nothing happens, you are probably still on the grouped, hidden layer. Undo, then click on the blank layer before painting).

8. Erase from the blank layer to remove something from the grouped layer. You can go back and forth, painting and erasing, as much as you want, refining it so it looks natural like the real scene.

That’s it. You can also fill the blank layer with black or white (Edit menu, choose Fill, and Black or White for color) to show the hidden, grouped layer, then erase what you don’t want.

Posted in Photoshop Elements, Photoshop techniques | 3 Comments »

Getting Neutral Tones Where You Need Them

A friend of mine is a pilot and was frustrated by photographing clouds. He could never get the color right.

I gave him some ideas, something he might try for color in clouds, and thought my readers would be interested in this, too. While he was talking about clouds, the techniques here work for any situation where color is off. I will give this for Photoshop and Lightroom/Camera Raw. The key to doing this is to understand that you are using a control that works to make neutral tones neutral, i.e., whites, grays and blacks without color casts. You do need to have an idea of where the neutral tones are in a photo (parts of clouds are typically neutral, to use my friend’s example), but this does not have to be precise. You simply click on whatever you think should be neutral and keep clicking new spots until the photo looks good. If some of your clicks look bad, so what? Just click somewhere else. Here are the steps:

Photoshop and Photoshop Elements:
1. Open a Levels adjustment layer over your photo.
2. Click on the middle eyedropper of the three eyedroppers in Levels in order to select it.
3. Move your cursor onto the photo (the cursor will look like an eyedropper).
4. Click with the bottom of the eyedropper on parts of the photo that should be neutral (the middle eyedropper is for taking color casts out of neutral tones — you can click on white, gray or black sorts of tones).
5. Keep clicking until you are close, but a little over-adjusted.
6. Use Layer Opacity to control how strong the layer is applied.

Lightroom and Camera Raw:
1. Click on the White Balance eyedropper (in the toolbar at top with Camera Raw, in Basic in Develop in Lightroom).
2. Uncheck auto dismiss (in toolbar in Lightroom below photo)
3. Move your cursor onto the photo — it will be an eyedropper.
4. Click with the bottom of the eyedropper on parts of the photo that should be neutral (the WB eyedropper is for taking color casts out of neutral tones such as white, gray and black).
5. Keep clicking until you get what you want.
6. Tweak adjustment if needed with Temperature and Tint adjustment sliders.

Posted in Digital Photo Techniques, Lightroom, Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Photoshop techniques | Comments Off

New Software

I want to tell you about some new software I am using, but before I do that, I feel a need to qualify this blog. I love software that helps me get better results from my photography and makes it easier and faster to work with photos — so I get excited about anything that does this. However, I realize that not everyone will share my excitement, and that’s okay. I don’t think everyone needs to do the same things with their images. I also cannot tell you if you will like this program, if it fits your workflow or your budget. I can only tell you what I like and how it affects my work. I say these things because I know that it is easy to get excited about software and not appreciate that the cost may be a significant factor for people who don’t work with these things for a living like I do.

Okay, the software. Nik Software just introduced Viveza 2, the latest version of this software. I like a number of things about it, including its original technology for carefully controlling adjustments in a specific area of the photo. I saw this technology, U-Point, in development years ago and was quite impressed with it at the time. U-Point technology is in a number of programs now for Nik Software, including Nikon Capture (also made by Nik), Dfine and Color Efex Pro (all very good, highly photographer-centric programs). Viveza uses the technology to create what is essentially an alternative to Photoshop’s adjustment layers and layer masks. You click on something in the photo you want to adjust.

You then adjust the brightness, contrast, saturation (which, by the way, is a far better saturation control than the one in Photoshop) and an area to be influenced. The U-Point technology finds similar color, tone and texture to what you clicked on and limits adjustments to that. You don’t have to do any selections or work with layer masks. In addition, you can add minus control points to places that are being adjusted to prevent them from being adjusted. This is just a click on the photo and you have control. The U-Point technology is very good at finding just the colors, textures, etc. that you want without a lot of work on your part.

Viveza 1 did all of that. What 2 does is add some very nice global controls that allow you to quickly and easily adjust the overall image, plus you gain a new adjustment parameter called Structure. I am so impressed with Structure (which can be used overall or with selected points using U-Point technology) that for nature photography, I find it alone is worth the price of the program.

Now do you see why I qualified this blog in my opening paragraph? I know that some people will think I am crazy saying that one small feature is worth the price of software that is not inexpensive. It all depends on your work and what you like to do. For me, Structure solves a problem I have long struggled with, and that is getting good detail and tonal rendition in the mid-tones, especially the dark tones. Clarity in Lightroom and Camera Raw is a good addition to those programs and does that to a degree. However, I find that clarity can quickly make a subject look harsh and you can lose subtle tonalities. Structure doesn’t do that. It gives great “structure” to tonalities without making them look harsh or destroying subtle tonalities. And to have that in both overall and local adjustments is great.

In the photos I have uploaded, you will see a first photo as it might come from Lightroom or Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. Then you see an overall adjustment to structure — notice how the granite rocks really become defined much better. Then I added some local adjustments to just the sky and the flowers. Bright yellow flowers can be difficult to really define because of the way that digital cameras handle bright colors, but Structure has allowed me to bring out their detail and even add some quality saturation (you can see this well in the preview at the bottom right — the left side is before, the right side is after).

Viveza 2 works with Lightroom as an export plug-in, Photoshop and Photoshop Elements as normal plug-ins. Frankly, the average photographer could use Photoshop Elements and Viveza and do work better and faster than most photographers working with Photoshop alone.  Nik Software is at www.niksoftware.com.

Posted in Digital Photo Techniques, Lightroom, Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Photoshop techniques | Comments Off

Workflow Perfection or Excellence?

It is interesting when talking about workflow, that few people discuss the difference between working for excellence and working for perfection. I am guilty of that as well. It is very easy to talk about all of the things a photographer can and “should” do in Lightroom or Photoshop, but not get into the decision making process of why do something in that workflow at all.

Over the years, I have often thought about the difference between striving for excellence and or for perfection. I have struggled with this at times, too, but today, I recognize that striving for excellence is a good goal, while striving for perfection will lead more often to frustration and disappointment. It is impossible to ever be perfect, yet we can reach excellence. There was a well known book called, On Excellence, by John Kenneth Galbraith, years ago that really helped me face this issue. Excellence means you set a high standard and work to achieve that. That is generally possible. Perfection is always an elusive goal because as humans, we can never be perfect.

Perfection as a goal gives another problem — how to deal with choices. If you must be perfect, that means there is always the possibility of a better option than what you are doing. That can drive you crazy. If you strive for excellence, you know what that means and when you make a choice that gets you there, you need do nothing else.

This strongly affects how we deal with workflow. If you strive for excellence, then the choice between 8-bit or 16-bit files is easy — if your image has reached a standard of excellence at 8-bit, why bother with the effort that 16-bit requires? Or color space — if AdobeRGB does the right job for your photo, why worry about other color spaces, no matter what anyone else says?

This affects things like using specific tools in Lightroom or Photoshop. I know that some photographers start thinking that they have to use certain tools because someone said they had to, so they need to do that for some ideal of processing perfection. Yet, if your image has reached a level of excellence for what you want and you never touched the Graduated Filter or Adjustment Brush in Lightroom, then why bother taking the time or effort? If you constantly think you need to do “something else” to your photo (which will always happen if it has to be perfect as you can never reach perfection), then you will constantly fiddle with controls you don’t need. That will mess up your time and effort with your photos in the computer.

For nature photographers, too, I think we might learn a bit from nature on this one. You could argue how perfect nature is. Some people will say it is, but then others will point out “problems”, but both are really perspectives outside of nature itself. Nature doesn’t strive for perfection — look at all of the variation in a given species of plant or animal — perfection implies no variation. Nature does strive for excellence, in a sense, because anything less means you don’t survive. A wolf doesn’t care about hunting with perfection, simply the excellence that brings down the prey or not. A flower doesn’t care about perfection, only about excellence that ensures pollination occurs.

Striving for excellence does not mean that if you achieve it, that you do not look to improve your skills. I am finding, for example, that I am tending to pay more attention to opening up dark tones and the details there in my images than I did either in the traditional darkroom or when I first started working on images in the computer. I think that is improving my shots. I have always striven for excellence, but as I learn new things, I adapt my work to that.

Posted in Digital Photo Techniques, Digital camera techniques, Equipment thoughts, Lightroom, Nature, Photoshop, Photoshop Elements | Comments Off

Better Prints the Old-Fashioned Way

I often hear from photographers who are doing everything right for printing, but they have trouble getting a good print. No matter what they do, the print seems to be different than what they expect from what is on the monitor. Then they read about computer gurus who seem to get perfect prints every time and so feel really depressed about doing such a terrible job with printing.

Okay, first thing, stop blaming yourself. Unfortunately, this problem is not uncommon. For some reason, on some computer systems (Mac or PC), Adobe products don’t always communicate as well as they should with certain printers. You can try re-installing the printer driver, but that might not help. I have had this happen to me and I have seen it happen to many photographers, so I know this is real. Digital printing is not pure technology and science. Sometimes we have to apply a little art of printing to get the prints we need.

That doesn’t have to be a problem, though. Your goal is a good print, not a technologically perfect system. Now in the days of the traditional darkroom, a photographer often got less than perfect prints when starting to print an image. That was no big deal. He or she considered that a workprint and simply a step on the way to get a good print. Even a master like Ansel Adams, who you know could have banged out a great print in an instant, considered his first prints to be workprints, prints to study to figure out what would make a really good print.

I think we have been suckered into believing that the computer, printers, color profiles, calibration, etc., etc., will always give us the technology we need to get a great print. In some ways, these may be misleading us toward getting good prints, but not necessarily great prints, but that’s another story. It is related, though. The story on this blog is dealing with those situations where you can’t even get a good print.

This is one place where Lightroom really shines because it is no big deal if the print is not perfect. Simply make a virtual copy of your finished development of the image (the easiest way to do that is to right click the image to get a contextual menu, then pick virtual copy about half-way up). Now go to Develop and make an adjustment to the image using brightness, contrast or color controls that you guess will correct the printing problem. Then print this virtual copy. Still not right? Try another adjustment until it is. You are not trying to match the monitor (which can take you down the wrong path anyway, because the monitor is never a print and a print is never the monitor). Just look at the print and decide if it is a good print or not. Then write down the difference of adjustment between the first image and this virtual copy and keep those at hand for future prints on the same paper (it is possible to create a Develop preset, but this can be a little tricky, so writing this down works).

Now I am going to tell you that doing this will take less time, frustrate you less, and allow you to keep more of your hair in place than trying in vain to make the computer and printer communicate properly. If you are really computer savvy, you might succeed at that, but I find most photographers are not and this process, which is based on how we used to work in the darkroom, is much more calming.

If you are working with Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, you can do something similar by adding an adjustment layer to your image when it is ready to print. You could try Brightness/Contrast, Levels or Curves for a too dark or too light print; Hue/Saturation or Color Balance for color. For example if your photo is too dark, add brightness to your image in an amount you guess would make the print look better and reprint. Since you are using an adjustment layer, you can then readjust this for another print if your guess was wrong. Then when you get a print you like, either write down that adjustment’s numbers (probably the easiest way to do this) or save a file with that adjustment layer intact for repeat use later, then whenever you print again, add an adjustment layer with those adjustments.

This is so much easier than pulling your hair out. And yes, you will not be matching your monitor, but I am not a big believer in that anyway. A good print is a good print in your hands, not simply something that matches the monitor. The monitor can be used as a reference or guide, but no one who sees your print will ever ask to see the monitor to see if it matches. They will simply judge how well they like the print from what it looks like.

Posted in Digital Photo Techniques, Lightroom, Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Photoshop techniques | 2 Comments »

Black-and-White

Black-and-white photography has gained a resurgence of interest that is well-deserved. It is interesting that the impact of black-and-white and photography has really changed. Not all that long ago, back in the 1980s for example, it was considered the “cheap” photography. It was what appeared in the cheap magazines or in the cheap pages of those publications. It was not treated well.

Black-and-white had once been the only way to experience photography. Masters such as Ansel Adams, W. Eugene Smith and Bill Brandt elevated it to high levels of quality and style. But when color became popular, black-and-white lost out. It was the opposite of “impact.”

Today, color is the major way photography is seen. Publications emphasize it. Even newspapers use it heavily. It is what everybody uses for photography. And that is exactly why a good black-and-white image has impact. It is not the way everyone shoots. It is not the expected way of seeing a subject.

But it has to be good. The simple conversion of color to black-and-white through any program using one option such as Grayscale or Desaturate is often disappointing. The key to a good conversion is to think of it as a translation of color to specific shades of gray. The wrong shades of gray will make a photo look bad, yet the right shades of gray will make it look great.

The latest versions of Photoshop and Photoshop Elements have good black-and-white conversion features that can be helpful if you really play with the controls rather than simply accepting the first look you see. This can definitely mean some playing around with those adjustments, seeing bad black-and-white and good. I like the controls in Lightroom 2, which are similar to those in Photoshop CS4 in that you can create an “activated cursor” where you click the cursor on something in the photo, the program finds the right color for you, and you drag the cursor up and down (Lightroom) or left and right (CS4) to get the color the right shade of gray. This means you don’t have to think about what color is what as the program finds it for you.

What you are always looking for when converting color to black-and-white is making the image clear and understandable in black-and-white. A good example is an image with a red flower against green grass. A straightforward translation will make the two colors show up as the same shade of gray as red and green are often the same brightness — not a very attractive or understandable image. When you change the translation of these colors to grays, you can make the flowers light and the grass dark, the grass light and the flowers dark, or many steps in between.

What is right depends on what you want the photo to express. Once you make the basic translation, you also need to make the photo look right in terms of blacks, whites and midtones, just like in color, but the interpretation will be different because of the change from color to black-and-white. This may mean increasing the blacks to be blacker and giving more contrast to the image as black-and-white often needs that compared to color. But never consider that an absolute. You may find that a subtle, open tonality in the midtones is needed for a particular subject.

I also think very highly of Nik Software Silver Efex if you are really serious about black-and-white. This is a plug-in for Photoshop, Photoshop Elements and Lightroom. It has a lot of presets that can quickly get you a look you like, plus it has a lot of control over how colors are changed to gray as well as quickly giving you overall control of the tonality and contrast of the image.

I also spend a bit of time talking about black-and-white in a number of my books, including The Magic of Digital Nature Photography and the Epson Complete Guide to Digital Printing.

Posted in Digital camera techniques, Lightroom, Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, nature photography | 2 Comments »

Muddy dark tones

One thing I see a lot of is what I like to call “muddy dark tones.” This is when the dark parts of an image have their tonalities sort of mush together like the tones of mud. The photo here is from Machu Picchu and has dark tones in it, but they have life and vitality in them, giving life to the photo. Where things are black, they are black and not trying to be dark tones.

Muddy tones can be avoided first when shooting. The first thing to understand as there is no such thing as an arbitrarily “correct shape” to a histogram. You cannot control that — that is a function of the scene. What you want to do is be sure is that there is no large gap at the right side of the histogram — that is a problem for a lot of reasons, including:

• you are not using the sensor efficiently or in its most optimum range
• you are compressing dark tones
• you may be getting less than the full range of tones the camera can handle
• you can increase noise.

In processing your image, you can look to see what is happening to the left or dark side of the histogram. Opening it up can help, depending on the scene. That means having a calibrated monitor in order to see this. With Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, this usually means working the low end of Curves (shadow and dark for Elements’ Color Curves) or using a Screen technique for layers and changing the opacity of the layer (note on that at the end of this blog).

I really like some of the controls in Lightroom 2 that allow you to open dark tones and give them definition so they do not look muddy — this includes the Fill slider (but be careful not to overuse it or the scene will look unlike anything that exists on this planet) and the shadow and dark sliders of the Tone curve. A challenge with all of this is that the world doesn’t follow rules very well! Growing as a photographer means, to a degree, gaining experience with all sorts of conditions and recognizing how different conditions change the way we interpret exposure.

Note on using Screen: Add an adjustment layer to your photo (Levels works fine). Click okay (if needed) without actually doing to the adjustment. This gives you an adjustment layer without any adjustments. Now go to the Blending Modes. They will say Normal by default and are at the top left of the Layers palette. Click on Normal to get a blending modes list. Then select Screen. Your photo will get lighter, but most of the effect is in the dark areas. Use the Opacity of the layer to tone this adjustment down, reducing Opacity until things look right. You can also use the layer mask with your adjustment layer to selectively allow or block the Screen adjustment.

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Color problems in printing

I got a question from a student who was having problems with her printer giving her prints with a slight green cast. If one is following everything in the printing process as you “should”, then this can be hard to diagnose. Sometimes a specific computer system just doesn’t work together as we expect.

This is usually not a calibration issue — few photographers would actually be adding greens to the image. A misconception that many have is that calibration gives you good prints. It doesn’t. Calibration gives you a consistent and predictable workspace which is important for getting better prints, but it does not guarantee good prints.

There are some things that can be tried if you run into similar problems. If you are using profiles in your printing, I would suggest you try having the printer manage colors instead. Or the reverse. You will often hear that you “must” use profiles, but some printers do as well or better when they manage colors, and sometimes, I have found that on a specific computer system, one method is perfect when the other does not perform as expected. Be sure you turn off printer management in the printer driver if you are using profiles and be sure it is on if you are having the printer manage colors.

If that doesn’t help, then it is best to download a new printer driver from the Epson website (to ensure you have the latest one) and install it.

If that doesn’t help, there are some other things you can do. If you have the printer manage colors, then you can set up the printer driver to correct for the color problem. Not all printer drivers handle this the same way, so I can’t give the exact way this is set — however, you want to either decrease a problem color (such as my student’s green) with less of that color’s slider (green in the example) and/or add more of the opposite color slider (magenta in the example). Once you get that worked out, you can usually save that setting for future use.

You can also add a print correction layer in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, or a virtual copy and/or preset for Lightroom. Then you make a correction that reduces green in the photo (adds magenta). There are a number of ways to do this. In Lightroom, it is easy as you can use the white balance area of Develop (Basic) to change the warmth of a photo (Temperature) or green/magenta (Tint) — this works great if you do this to a virtual copy so you keep the original processing intact.

In the Photoshops, a simple thing to try is adding a fill layer with a color the opposite of the problem color, change the blending mode from Normal (click on the word normal at the top of the layers palette to get a dropdown menu) to Color, then reduce the Opacity to a low amount (maybe even 10% or less). The fill layer is handy because you can reopen the adjustment box and change the color to tweak the correction without hurting the underlying photo. Once you get this right, you can take notes on the adjustment or save a small version of the file with that fill layer. Then you just open that photo and drag the fill layer over to your new image anytime you want to make this change again (you could even call this your printing layer).

Posted in Digital Photo Techniques, Lightroom, Photoshop, Photoshop Elements | 1 Comment »

The Importance of Setting Blacks in Digital Photos

A problem that I have seen consistently with digital images is lack of blacks. This is even a very big problem with publications. Some people still claim digital doesn’t look as good as film because of this (a side note — blacks are set properly in film, not from the film, but from how they are scanned in — so in essence, publications are setting blacks there and must do the same with digital image files if photos are to look their best).

Setting blacks affects the contrast, color, brilliance and general attractiveness of digital image files. Often, a photo with poor blacks looks like it was shot with a gray filter.

You can set blacks in a number of ways, but I find the quickest and easiest is by using Levels in Photoshop or Blacks in Lightroom or Camera Raw because there you have an easy access to a threshold screen. I consider that screen vital to the adjustment. By holding down the Alt or Option key while moving the left (black) slider in Levels or the Blacks slider in Lightroom or Camera Raw, a white screen appears, showing black thresholds. As you move the slider, blacks begin to appear. In most photos, you need to at least have the blacks start to appear (these are pure black in the photo). A photo with blacks in the composition is no guarantee that any true blacks are actually in the image file. Some photos with intense color will not show pure black, but will have colors appear showing where channels are at their max “black.” You would not go for any pure black in a foggy photo.

Where to set blacks is an art and not a precise science so you must practice. I have more information about this on my website, www.robsheppardphoto.com. After setting blacks, you must also check whites and adjust midtones for proper brightness appropriate to the subject and its interpretation in the photograph. 

Posted in Digital Photo Techniques, Lightroom, Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Photoshop techniques, Uncategorized, landscape photography | 4 Comments »

Photoshop Elements and Camera Raw

I often get questions about RAW files and Photoshop Elements. While I am a big believer in Photoshop Lightroom for photographers, I also think some version of Photoshop is needed. For many photographers, that will be Photoshop Elements 6 or 7. 

Adobe includes a restricted version of Camera Raw in Photoshop Elements. It has the same basic, key functions of Camera Raw that comes with Photoshop, but it does not include the more advanced functions, such as the Tone Curve or HSL (hue-saturation-luminance). It also has the same underlying programming, so you get equal quality processing, just  not as many choices.  

You can work around some of this by telling Camera Raw to export to Photoshop Elements with a 16-bit file. Then you use the Color Curves (dumb name as it is not used for color by most photographers) in place of the Tone Curve (the parametric part of Tone Curve was actually inspired by the Color Curves in Photoshop Elements). Use the Hue/Saturation adjustment in place of the HSL tab by looking for Edit:Master, then clicking on Master to get a list of colors (you can click on the photo to match colors to what you are adjusting; luminosity in Hue/Saturation doesn’t work all that well).

The approach to adjustments is pretty much the same as in the Camera Raw in Photoshop, you just don’t get them all in Camera Raw in Photoshop Elements. Also, you can only resize in Photoshop Elements (not in its Camera Raw), but having the file in 16-bit helps. 

Posted in Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Photoshop techniques | Comments Off