Archives For Photoshop Mask

Exposure: +1.3 eV

Photography Workflow: The Portal

Jay Patel —  April 8, 2013

Paige, Glen Canyon Recreational Area, Arizona (AZ), USA

I love to shoot Glen Canyon Recreational area around Paige Arizona, but this is a challenging place to get a good composition. To create an interesting composition for this shot, I used a small puddle of water to catch the reflection in the sky. As you can imagine, this was not an easy shot to process.

Field Work: As soon as I looked at the histogram on the back of the camera for the test image, I knew that I needed to bracket the shot. The question was, how much bracketing was necessary? For this photograph, I took a series of three bracketed test shots – then adjusted the bracketing amount based on the histogram for each of the three exposures. My objective was to capture enough details in the highlights and shadows to be able to successful blend the exposures in Photoshop.

  • Paige, Glen Canyon Recreational Area, Arizona (AZ), USA

    Exposure: +1.3 eV

  • Paige, Glen Canyon Recreational Area, Arizona (AZ), USA

    Exposure: 0 eV

  • Paige, Glen Canyon Recreational Area, Arizona (AZ), USA

    Exposure: -1.3 eV

Processing: I started by processing the the RAW files, and blending them using our iHDR manual blending workflow. Then, I processed the +1.3 EV RAW file a second time to bring out the details in the reflections on the puddle of water.  I created an additional blending layer for the “portal” using the mask shown below.

Paige, Glen Canyon Recreational Area, Arizona (AZ), USA

+1.3 eV Processed for Reflection

Paige, Glen Canyon Recreational Area, Arizona (AZ), USA

Mask for Reflection

The mask allowed me to make adjustments only to the reflected surface, leaving the rest of the image unaffected. I adjusted the edges of the mask to create a smooth blend between the textures of the rock and the puddle.

My final task was to make minor targeted adjustment for the image. I used my Wacom Intuos 5 tablet and stylus to adjust the overall contrast, and to make small corrections to the sky and the portal as seen in the image below.

Final Photoshop Layers & Mask

Final Photoshop Layers & Mask

How do you blend images? Do you use a special tone mapping program like Photomatix or HDR EFex Pro? Do you do it manually like we do? Or do you rely on a combination of both these techniques?

To learn more about photography check out our webinars and eBooks below:

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Grand Tetons National Park, Wyoming (WY), USA

Before and After: Grand Tetons

Jay Patel —  February 13, 2013

This was the view outside our tent when we went camping deep in the Grand Tetons.

Composition: I wanted to capture the late evening light and the foreground flowers. So, I set up the camera very low to the ground to fill the frame with the flowers in the foreground. This also required me to focus using the hyper focal distance principles to get everything sharply in focus.

Field Work: Because the terrain was uneven, I could not use a GND filter. A GND filter would have darkened the top of the mountains. Instead I carefully selected the exposure using the histogram on the back of the camera so that the entire dynamic range of the shot was captured in one single image.

Processing: I processed a single image 3 times and blended them manually to bring out the details in every part of the image. The layers used in the processing are shown in the image above. I used a Wacom Tablet to draw precise selections I needed for creating masks on the adjustment and blending layers. Here is what the photo looked like before editing.

Mountains and sky are overexposed. Flowers show loss of detail. Shadows are Flat.

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Crystal Creek, Colorado (CO), USA

Can a “Photoshopped” image match reality?

Jay Patel —  November 26, 2012

What is a SOOC photo? SOOC stands for “Straight Out Of the Camera”. And those who use the term are generally looking for a pat on the back. Their photography is clearly superior because they “got it right” in the camera. No “manipulation”. No post-processing. Just a true representation of the scene in all its glory. When a photographer talks about their SOOC photos, they are often not-very-subtly implying that those who use processing software are cheating and that their photos are fakes. And that’s all well and good for them. I think I’ll stick to my post-processing, thank you very much. ;)

While I enjoy the challenge of “getting it right in the camera”, the fact is that even the most advanced cameras can’t always handle the broad dynamic range of light in nature. With the help of Photoshop, I am often able to create a photo that is much closer to reality than SOOC photos.

Consider the above image. I took this photograph of Lizard Lake in Colorado on a partly cloudy day. There’s no bright glaring sunlight here. The range of light isn’t very extreme. At first glance, the lighting, the colors, and the exposure look pretty well balanced. You might think that under such conditions, the photograph could be easily captured with a point-n-shoot or even a mobile phone camera in automatic mode. And a nice DSLR should be able to handle that range of light easily, right?

Well. No. This is not an SOOC image. In fact, I created this photo by blending three separate exposures using our iHDR workflow to maintain a natural look.

Here are the three bracketed exposures – SOOC using default settings. Notice that none of the individual exposures looks better than the processed image. And none of these SOOC shots represent reality as closely as the manually blended image. It is true that photographers can get pretty artistic with Photoshop and HDR technology – but in many cases, processing software also lets us bring our photographs much closer to reality than those SOOC photos.

There are – of course – LOTS of other good reasons to take the time to process your photos. This is just one of them!

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Transient Light, Glacier National Park, MT

How much time do you spend in Photoshop?

Jay Patel —  November 12, 2012

For us, the answer is different for every photograph. Some photos require just a moment or two in Photoshop, while others requires more than 30 minutes. On average, I spend between 5 and 15 minutes per image in Photoshop. Here is a typical Photoshop workflow for me.

This is an image from Glacier National Park in Montana. It’s one of my early photographs produced using a GND filter and my old Canon D30 (Canon’s first 3mp DSLR). I always do what I can to get it right in-camera, but the dynamic range of the scene was too great for my camera to handle.

This image showcases two types of light. On the right side of the image, you can see predawn magenta light. This is the subtle reflected light that touches the mountains before the sun comes over the horizon. The light falling on the clouds in the upper left is direct light from the sun, which is very low on the horizon. This light is far more intense than the soft, predawn light on the right side. So even with my GND filter, the top left of the image was over exposed.

To process this image, I started with the Basic tab in Adobe Camera RAW (as shown above – click for a larger view). I chose white balance and exposure settings that produced the most accurate colors for the predawn light. (2 minutes)  As expected, the area that was lit by direct sunlight (the area marked in red) was too bright. I felt that most of the image was correctly processed with just a few simple adjustments to white balance, exposure, and contrast. In almost all my images, I use a colors saturation of 10% or less.

The next step was to open the image in Photoshop and to restore the highlights, bring out the shadow details, and make few minor targeted adjustments. To restores the highlight, I processed this RAW image again, and manually blended the two versions using our iHDR workflow. (6 minutes)  Then, I used layers and masks in Photoshop to make targeted adjustments. I used a Wacom Intuos tablet for drawing selections for masks – the stylus lets me be incredibly precise so I can create perfect masks really quickly. (5 minutes) My total time spend in Photoshop (including Adobe Camera RAW) for this particular image was about 13 minutes.

How much time do you spend in Photoshop? Feel free to share your workflow.

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Tinkers Creek State Park, Ohio (OH), USA

How to Process a Moody Photograph

Jay Patel —  October 1, 2012

Conveying mood in a photograph sometimes requires a little extra care in your processing technique. I took this shot in Tinkers Creek State Park in Ohio on a foggy morning. To preserve the moody atmosphere, I processed a single RAW image twice – then combined these two versions of the same image using our iHDR Manual Blending Workflow.

Low Contrast Processing

Fog and humidity in the air reduce the contrast of objects that are farther away, so my first step was to process the RAW file with low contrast. The image you see above shows the result. The foggy atmosphere in the trees and highlights is preserved, but the grass in the foreground and the wooden boardwalk look dull and unappealing.

High Contrast Processing

Next, I used the same RAW file and processed the image with higher contrast settings. The image above shows that these adjustments produced good details in the foreground – but the appearance of the fog in the tree was all but lost. As a final step, I selectively combined the low-contrast and high-contrast images using layers and masks in Photoshop. I retain good details in the foreground, while also preserving the foggy, low-contrast mood in the trees and the highlights.

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Eagle Creek, Columbia River Gorge, Oregon (OR), USA

Manual Blending Workflow

Jay Patel —  July 16, 2012

Take a look at the workflow I used to process this photograph from Eagle Creek in Oregon.

Raw Image

Raw Image + iHDR Highlight Blend

Take a look at the RAW image above on the left – the trees look just right, but there are some blown highlights in the water. This is a typical problem when shooting water. The solution is simple. I process the same image again – this time for the highlights in the water. I blend the two images using layers and masks in Photoshop. The result looks like the image on the right. Both the trees and the water are properly exposed, and we can see details in highlights as well as shadows.

The next step is to make some minor adjustments to restore contrast in the image. I use a stylus to draw selections with my Wacom graphics tablet and create masks to make adjustments that are targeted to specific areas. A little bit more contrast at the river’s edge, some softer contrast in the water… and so on. The image below shows the layers and masks I used to make those adjustments.

Raw Image + iHDR Highlight Blend + Targeted Adjustment

Most of our post-processing revolves around these simple steps. To learn more check out our iHDR webinars and eBooks below:

 

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Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

Selective Sharpening Workflow

Jay Patel —  July 9, 2012


One of the things that people ask us about a lot is sharpening. So, here’s a quick tutorial on how we do it. There are lots of different ways to sharpen an image – and lots of tool available. Right now, we’re using a great tool called Nik Output Sharpener for sharpening images for print and preparing images for web display. Jay used Nik Sharpener to sharpen the image above.

Nik’s sharpening software lets us control the edge sharpness and local contrast independently, and it’s “structure” control lets us get picky about fine details. We fine-tune our sharpening with their “U-Point” technology – which makes the whole process easy, and gives us even more control. Most importantly – in our opinion anyway – the final results are displayed in Photoshop as a separate layer. That means we can create and adjust masks to further restrict the sharpening to specific areas of the image. (Did I mention that we’re control freaks?)

Here’s what our workflow looks like.

We start by selecting a preset option that is close to what we want for our finished image. We want the image to look sharp – but it’s important to avoid haloing along high-contrast edges. The preset option we choose differs depending upon the image we’re working with… but once we’ve chosen one that’s close to what we want, we start refining. We use control points to define local contrast and structure selectively. Maybe we want more contrast in one area and less in another – control points let us make very specific adjustments as we work.

When we’re happy with the results in every part of the image, we click “done” and the image opens automatically in Photoshop. There’s the layer we’ve just created… ready and waiting.  In an image like this one, we might want to remove sharpening in some areas – like the water and the sky – to eliminate noise. We prefer a softer look for skies and water, so we don’t want to sharpen those areas. A quick adjustment to the mask does the trick, and we’re done.

To learn more about Layers and Masks please check our our eBooks and Webinars below:

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San Gregorio State Park, California (CA), USA

Photoshop How To: Lower Contrast Images

Jay Patel —  May 21, 2012

Sometimes we find ourselves photographing a scene where the light conditions are just perfect. We can capture the entire dynamic range with a single exposure, so no special filters or bracketing is necessary. But when you open up your raw file, it often appears to lack the contrast and details that you remember seeing while you were out in the field. This happens because the contrast and sensitivity of our eyes adjusts based upon the light conditions. The dynamic range of the sensor remains fixed. So, low contrast scenes end up using only a fraction of the dynamic range of the sensor, and this creates a flat and unappealing image. Here is a video that show how we deal with lower-contrast scenes like this one:

Layers and Mask are valuable tools that have the potential to dramatically improve your photography. To learn more about Layers and Masks, check out our webinars.

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San Gregorio State Park, California (CA), USA

Quick Tips: Targeted Adjustments in Photoshop

Jay Patel —  April 30, 2012

In many cases, a photograph will require small adjustments to specific areas to bring out the details and colors throughout the image. We refer to these area-specific changes as “targeted adjustments.”


Here’s a shot from San Gregorio Beach in California. In this finished image, each area of the image looks correctly exposed…but the camera didn’t capture it this way. Because the light over the entire scene was somewhat uneven, the camera underexposed some areas and overexposed others. This is a typical problem for nature photographers who can’t control the light over a large area. The image below shows what I mean.

To restore details, colors, and contrast in each part of the image, I used layers and masks in Photoshop. You can see all the layers and masks I used to make targeted adjustments below. I also used the clone tool to remove the distracting elements in the scene. Varina and I both use Wacom Intuos tablets to draw masks, for cloning, and to make adjustments. (Actually – neither of us uses a mouse anymore. A graphics tablet can do anything a mouse can do – and much more.) A stylus gives us far more control over minute details… which means we can work faster and more precisely.

Once I’m finished making changes, I flatten the layers and save the file. Targeted adjustments allow me to bring out rich details and colors in my photographs, and to produce a more appealing finished product.

To learn more about Layer’s and Mask check out our webinars below:

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Nature Photography and iHDR Workflow Recordings

Photoshop How To: Layers and Mask

Jay Patel —  April 23, 2012

St. Mary Falls, Glacier National Park, Montana (MT), USA

Here is a photo of St. Mary falls in Glacier National Park. You can see exquisite details and vibrant colors in every part of the image. But did the image come out looking like this, or did we have to make adjustments to the original? Most landscape photographs require some amount of post-processing for a natural look, and this photo was no exception. I made selected adjustment to the image using layers and masks in the photograph. The video below explains the adjustments I made and why I felt they were necessary.

Layers and Mask are valuable tools that have the potential to dramatically improve your photography. To learn more about Layers and Mask check out our webinar below:

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