Today, let’s look at how to fix multiple problems in a single photo all at once including correcting for two different color casts from mixed light sources. This may get a bit complicated but I’ll try to keep it as simple as I can. You can see from the original image (below) that we have three main problems to deal with:

1. The background is very cool/blue. So are the highlights on one side of the subject’s face. (This color cast will become more obvious as we go along.)
2. Overall, the subject is a bit too warm/amber toned. (This will also become more obvious as we make our adjustments.)
3. The primary subject is underexposed.

The first thing I did was create a new, blank layer and paint black over everything except the main subject. This made it easier for me to select just the subject or just the background. Since I knew I would need to do both, it made sense for me to perform this intermediate step.

As you paint nearer the edges of your subject, you may wish to feather (decrease hardness on) your brush in order to blend the transition.

With my background painted a uniform color, it was easy for me to use the Magic Wand tool to select the background. With the background selected, I was able to save my selection (Select | Save Selection…) You’ll want to save it in case you need to use it multiple times. I gave mine a meaningful name, in this case “Window”.

I then inverted the selection (Select | Invert) so that my subject was selected and saved that in the same way but with the meaningful name “Subject”.

I then clicked on the background layer to ensure it was active and loaded the Window selection (Select | Load Selection…) so that the “marching ants” were once again around the window in the background. With that selection active, I created a layer mask (Layer | New Adjustment Layer | Photo Filter…) to fix the color balance.

I made the adjustments by eye but you can see that warming filter #85 set to a density of 60% seems to have fixed the color cast nicely. Also note that, because I had an active selection when I created the layer, the layer was automatically masked to include only my selection area. No extra work! So the effect was applied only to the area inside my selection. (As the mask is created, your selection automatically goes away so there’s no need to deselect it.)

Next I clicked on the background layer again and loaded my saved selection of the subject (Select | Load Selection…) With that selection active, I created a new layer mask (Layer | New Adjustment Layer | Exposure…) to bring up the brightness level. Since the window in the background was not underexposed, I wanted to brighten only my main subject and this type of selection mask does that perfectly.

Looking at the screen shot for this step, some may say I overdid it on the brightening. In truth, I initially applied a smaller adjustment but the next step darkened the subject again slightly and necessitated my opening up this layer again to tweak the settings. In fact, that’s one of the best things about using adjustment layers versus making the adjustments directly on your image: you can go back, even many steps down the line, and play around with the adjustment settings. Nothing you do to your photo is ever permanent as long as it remains on its own layer.

The second thing I would point out is that I also adjusted the Gamma. For those who avoid using Gamma, it’s essentially the same as contrast. I prefer Exposure/Gamma over Brightness/Contrast because the final effects seem more subtle to my eye. It’s all a matter of preference.

Having brightened my subject, you can now see more easily that he’s much too yellow. This marks a second color cast, and one that’s completely different from the first; a hallmark of the problems associated with mixed light sources. I corrected this little problem by loading my saved selection of the subject again (Select | Load Selection…) With the selection active, I created a new color correction layer mask (Layer | New Adjustment Layer | Photo Filter…) This time I used a cooling filter #82. Filter density was set by eye but 20% seemed about right.

This fixed most of the light on our subject but now you can plainly see how blue the highlights on the right side of his face (left side of the picture) are. We’ll need to do something about that.

This next section is a lot harder for me to explain than it will be for you to actually do. (Once you’ve done it a couple of times, you’ll see what I mean.) First, making sure I don’t have any active selections, I create a new color correction adjustment layer (Layer | New Adjustment Layer | Photo Filter…) This is just a plain ole adjustment layer which will affect the entire image. For now.

Knowing that I want to warm those highlights, I go ahead and select a warming filter #81. This is less intense than the #85 filter. I set the filter density to 70%. This was done by eye, looking only at the highlights I want to correct. (Yes, the entire image was warmed considerably but we’ll take care of that in the next step.)

Click on the layer mask to make sure that’s where you’ll be painting, then select the paint bucket and “pour” black onto the image. This has the effect of masking off the entire layer and completely undoing the color adjustment you just did.

Next, making sure that the layer mask is still active, I select the paintbrush tool. I switch the colors so that I will be painting with white instead of black. I want the effect to be subtle so I reduce opacity on the brush to 40%. (I can always use multiple strokes to build-up the effect.) I also set an extremely soft brush, in this case 20% hardness. That way, I won’t have any hard edges where I paint. Finally, I set the brush size fairly large so just a few strokes will cover most of the areas I’m targeting.

Then it’s just a matter of painting directly onto any areas that look too blue. As I paint onto the image, what I will see is some of the warmth coming back into the places my brush touches. Until I’ve finally transformed this…

…into this.

Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.

Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.

Correcting Multiple Problems in Photoshop

For maximum effectiveness you really need a tripod. Start by setting the camera up on the tripod and shoot your subject sitting or laying on some kind of support.

After you get the shot, remove your subject and the support without moving the camera. Then, shoot the exact same scene again. (This second shot will capture the uninterrupted background.)

Open both photos in Photoshop at once. Select the entire photo with the subject (Ctrl+A) and copy it to the clipboard (Ctrl+C).

Switch to the photo with the plain background and paste in the photo with the subject (Ctrl+V). The pasted photo should end up on its own layer.

Convert this new layer with the subject to an adjustment layer by opening the layers palette and clicking the small icon at the bottom that looks like a square with a circle inside it. (The layer should be active when you do this.)

Select a brush and set the foreground color to black. Paint over the support and watch it disappear. You may need to zoom in and/or change brush sizes to get finer details. If the camera didn’t move between shots then the rest of the image should be fully registered (everything is aligned) so you really don’t have to worry about painting over anything but the support.

Putting this same technique to more practical use, I had this photo of my family which was taken at my daughter’s seventh birthday party. (Yes, it’s a low quality photo taken with a crappy camera but it has sentimental value and can’t be replaced.)

Its biggest compositional problem is that the person who took the photo got part of the door jamb and a light switch in the background. Sure, I could just clone them out but the background still leaves something to be desired.

Instead I had this shot, which I took of another family at the party and which had a much more satisfying background.

Since both had a similar composition, by following the above technique, I was able to clone the better background onto the shot of my own family.

One key difference with this pair of photos is that they were not perfectly registered. To overcome this problem, I simply reduced the opacity of the layer to 50%. That allowed me to see right through the layer to what would be exposed underneath if I painted over it. Once I was done painting, I bumped the opacity back up to 100% before flattening the image.

Jeffrey Kontur is the author of two how-to books on photography, which he promotes via his web site www.MoreSatisfyingPhotos.com

Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.

Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.

You Can Fly!

In a previous article, we looked at one way of salvaging an underexposed photo. (We may look at more ways in future articles.) Today let’s look at a method for salvaging an overexposed shot. As already noted, these techniques will never turn a truly bad photo into something great but they can make the difference between something that gets deleted and something that has at least a bit of artistic merit.

It pays to bear in mind that everyone takes at least some bad photos. It is impossible that every click of the shutter is going to yield a masterpiece. There are too many variables: the wind, your subject blinking, someone walking across your scene. You name it and it can probably ruin your shot.

Overexposure is usually the result of photographer error. You forgot to change your settings back after the last place you used your camera. You accidentally cranked exposure compensation way up. You have the camera on manual and simply set the settings wrong. It doesn’t really matter. The point is, now you have an overexposed photo and what do you do with it?

To be clear, we’re not talking about slight overexposure; something that might be corrected with a few tweaks in Photoshop. We’re talking about overexposure with blown highlights that would make a barroom brawler cry. High key so high that it’s actually off-key.

Deleting the offending photo may be the simplest thing. But what are some alternatives? Let’s look at one. Here we have a pasty-white photo of a woman holding a glass of wine. To make matters worse, she has horrific red-eye.

In this case, I didn’t even try adjusting the exposure in Photoshop. Experience has taught me that this shot is too far gone. I could spend hours and still have no chance of producing a pleasing image. Time to go the artistic route. I started by creating a Posterization adjustment layer (Layer | New Adjustment Layer | Posterize…) in Photoshop. There’s no special reason behind my selection of a Posterization layer, that’s just what my creative muse whispered in my ear as I worked on this image.

There is no science to using posterization. I simply adjusted the slider by eye. What I was looking for was to keep a degree of detail so my subject remained recognizable but for the posterization effect to be quite evident.

Next I added four separate Photo Filter layers (Layer | New Adjustment Layer | Photo Filter…) I renamed each layer to reflect the filter color used. Once again, there was no real science to this. I went with more or less the standard of blue, green, yellow and red. (Because my subject already had so much red, I had to make some accommodations with the red filter. More on that in a second.) For the blue, green and yellow filter layers I set the opacity to 100% and unchecked the Preserve Luminosity checkbox. This gave me a richly colored palette with only the darkest portions of the original image showing through.

Also note that I did not keep these layers all visible at once. Clicking the little eyeball icon next to each layer on the layers palette will toggle that layer between visible and invisible. (You can see this on the right edge of the blue layer image shown above. Click on any image in this post to view a larger version.) I wanted to work with just one color at a time and not muddy them all up by mixing them together.

With the red layer, which I labeled as white, I kept the Preserve Luminosity checkbox checked. This is because the dark tones in my image were primarily red and they would not show through in a way that was visually satisfying. By preserving the luminosity, which was already pretty extreme given that I was working from an overexposed original, the effect was a white background with some punched-up reds in the few midtones and shadows I had. It also removed any non-red colors from the image.

Next I made each of the color layers visible one at a time, merged the visible layers (Layer | Merge Visible) and saved the resulting file with a new name. Then I used Photoshop’s history feature to back up to the image’s pre-merge state so I could repeat the process with the other color layers. In the end, I had four separate files.

Next I made a new image (File | New…) with a canvas size twice as high and twice as wide as my original image. I was then able to copy-paste each of the four colored images into my new image (Photoshop automatically places them on their own layers) and use transform (Select | Transform Selection) to grab the pasted image and drag it around within the frame.

So, with a little creative tinkering, I managed to salvage this original image

and turn it into this.

Great art? No. Pop art? Maybe. Imitation? Only if you’ve heard of Andy Warhol. At least it’s better than losing the image entirely. In future installments, we’ll look at more methods for salvaging bad shots.

Jeffrey Kontur is the author of two how-to books on photography, which he promotes via his web site www.MoreSatisfyingPhotos.com

Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.

Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.

From Overexposed “Trash” to Pop-Art

It has been said that the difference between an amateur photographer and a professional is that the professional never lets anyone see his bad shots.

There are several messages implied in that statement but, for our purposes, the most important is that everyone takes bad photos. No matter who you are, no matter what subjects you shoot, no matter what equipment you use, no matter how much experience you have, it’s unrealistic to expect that every click of the shutter is going to yield yet another masterpiece. A portrait photographer may take a dozen or more poses to get just one or two he can sell you. A wedding photographer may deliver a beautiful package of 200 or so shots from your big day, but those are simply the best of the 1,000 or more that she took. Even after he and a whole staff of assistants spend hours setting up and getting it all just right, a commercial photographer will probably only use one or two out of what may be dozens of shots taken.

There are myriad ways in which a shot may not make the cut. Today, let’s look at just one: underexposure. We’re not talking about slight underexposure that can be corrected with a few quick Photoshop tweaks. We’re talking about severe underexposure that utterly ruins what might otherwise have been a decent picture; a nearly black frame with only a few barely visible details.

You might very well want to simply delete the offending photo. But what if it was somehow special? What if it were a once-in-a-lifetime shot? What if you simply want to exercise some creative muscle to see if you can salvage the shot? Perhaps even make it into something artistic?

Let’s look at a couple of techniques for doing that. The shot below is a perfect example.

I started, obviously enough, by lightening the image to see how much detail could be salvaged. My preferred method for doing this is to create an Exposure adjustment layer in Photoshop. From the Layer menu, select New Adjustment Layer, then Exposure…

Notice that, although I was able to pull out a reasonable amount of detail, I had to increase exposure by more than 5 stops. (Click on any of the images to view them full size.) The recovery also came at the expense of noise and color fidelity. Both may be correctable, to a degree, but this will never be a “good” photo in the traditional sense no matter how much time I spend on it.

My best bet at this point is to keep going and try to turn this shot into something artistic. So next I add a Brightness and Contrast layer (Layer | New Adjustment Layer | Brightness/Contrest…) I don’t touch the brightness at all, but I increase the contrast to +100. This has the effect of darkening parts of the image all over again.

Next I add a Threshold layer (Layer | New Adjustment Layer | Threshold…) The threshold layer will strip all the color from your image and turn it into one of pure black and pure white.

The lone adjustment slider, at the base of the histogram, determines the brightness cutoff point at which a pixel is rendered as either black or white. This has the effect of controlling the degree of detail in the final image. I have found it easiest to make this adjustment by sight rather than by following any sort of guidance or formula.

So, with a little creative tinkering, I managed to salvage this original image

and turn it into this. Great art? Not really, but certainly better than losing the image entirely.

In future installments, we’ll look at more methods for salvaging bad shots, including different methods for dealing with underexposure.

Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.

Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.

Salvaging Severely Underexposed Photos

It’s not hard to find advice online for understanding the various white balance settings found on most digital cameras. For the most part, these settings are pretty self-explanatory and most moderately experienced photographers (that would include practically all DPS readers) can figure them out simply by playing with them.

Most people approach white balance with the mindset of getting true color representation. That makes sense. You want your whites to be white and all your other colors to be true representations of the original scene as you shot it.

There is a case to be made for deliberately setting the “wrong” white balance to achieve artistic effects. For example, when at the beach on a perfectly sunny day, you might set your white balance for cloudy or even shade. This tells the camera that the ambient light has a slightly blue cast to it. The camera will compensate by adding a bit of a bronze (red/orange) tone to offset this supposed cast. The result is that your subjects get an instant suntan!

Be warned that this may not work for scenes in which the sky is visible as the color manipulation may be quite obvious in your final images.

Conversely, when photographing an icy scene, perhaps you should try setting your white balance to Tungsten. This tells the camera that the light is slightly orange so it will introduce more blue to offset that. The result is an image that simply looks “cold”.

For even finer control, it pays to develop a bit of understanding of the Kelvin scale. Many cameras will allow you to directly set a Kelvin temperature for the ambient light. Tricking the camera by claiming that the light is warmer or cooler than it actually is can allow you to very finely tune the adjustment, thus giving you the ability to make the effect more subtle. (Or more garish, if that’s what you’re after.)

Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.

Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.

Manipulating White Balance for Artistic Effect

1. Press shutter button.
2. Curtain A opens.
3. Flash fires.
4. Frame is open for some period of time (as determined by your shutter speed).
5. Curtain B closes the frame, ending the exposure.

This is the normal sequence and doesn’t really have a name, except to help differentiate it from our next scenario. With Second Curtain Synch (also sometimes called Slow Synch) the sequence goes like this:

1. Press shutter button.
2. Pre-flash fires so the camera can measure and adjust the intensity.
3. Curtain A opens.
4. Frame is open for some period of time (as determined by your shutter speed).
5. Flash fires.
6. Curtain B closes the frame and ends the exposure.

To understand the significance, imagine you are taking a picture at night in which moving lights will be visible during the exposure. During the exposure, the lights move across your frame and you are not panning.

During the first (normal) exposure, the flash illuminates the subject on one side of your frame. The lights then form streaks across the frame right over top of the subject, resulting in a weird looking image.

In the second scenario, the shutter opens and the lights record their streaks. Then the flash illuminates the subject. The streaks from the lights lead up to the subject, giving the illusion of speed and creating a generally cool effect.

Depending on the speed and direction of movement and the intensity of the lights, it doesn’t always work this way but one of the great things about digital is that you can review your results and try something different if you didn’t get what you were expecting.

It bears noting that you can’t precisely control exactly when the flash fires when using second curtain synch. So it’s possible in our example scenario that the subject could be out of the frame before the flash goes off. Second curtain synch requires some practice, a bit of finesse and sometimes luck to use well.

This post is an excerpt from Jeffrey’s book Photography Basics.

PS: Check out these Amazing Examples of Slow Sync Flash

Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.

Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.

An Explanation of 2nd Curtain Sync Flash (or Slow Sync Flash)