269 ■ THE SHADOWS/HIGHLIGHTS ADJUSTMENT There are two basic ways to correct your mistakes. If you were painting with white as your foreground color, make black the foreground color, or vice versa, and set the opacity to 100%. Paint over the problematic area, and begin again. Alternatively, if you are dissatisfied with all the dodging or burning you did, return to Edit > Fill > Use Black, and reset the layer mask to black. Then you can start over. Try It! To practice dodging and burning, open the image DodgeBurn from www.sybex.com/ go/photoshopnature , and use the method presented here to add drama to the rock formation, enhancing texture and contrast. The Shadows/Highlights Adjustment The Shadows/Highlights adjustment is an excellent way to reveal subtle detail in the shadow and/or highlight areas of your images. Although you could theoretically produce similar results with sophisticated use of Curves, the Shadows/Highlights adjustment is far easier to use when you need to recover detail that has been lost in shadow or highlight areas because of excessive contrast. It’s similar to the Fill Light and Recovery sliders in ACR, which we covered in Chapter 3, but it has additional controls so you can fine-tune the results. Note: Some photographers are tempted to try to use Shadows/Highlights to fix all their exposure problems. We don’t recommend that because the Shadows/Highlights adjustment works by reducing contrast. That’s fine for small tonal ranges, but it’s not usually a good idea to do throughout the entire image. We find it’s far more effective to limit the Shadows/Highlights tool to recovering detail in the deep shadows and recovering highlights in very light areas. Although you can’t apply the Shadows/Highlights adjustment as an adjustment layer, you can use it as a Smart Filter. As we discussed in Chapter 5, “Workows and First Steps,” a filter that’s applied as a Smart Filter behaves similarly to an adjustment layer. The advantage of using it as a Smart Filter is that you can tweak the settings as needed, and you can add a layer mask to it to target the effects to certain areas of your image. For example, perhaps you have a portrait of a dark animal against a dark background. You may want to reveal details in the shadows of the animal but not in the background. We recommend using the Shadows/Highlights adjustment early in your work- ow, as the first step after you open the raw file as a Smart Object. To do so, take these steps: 1. If your Background layer is not already a Smart Object, you’ll need to convert it to one by choosing Filter > Convert for Smart Filters. That way, you can use Shadows/Highlights as a Smart Filter. 607343c06.indd 269 4/12/10 11:42:59 PM 270 c h a p t e r 6: EXPOSURE ADJUSTMENTS ■ 2. Choose Image > Adjustments > Shadows/Highlights. Shadows/Highlights will automatically be opened as a Smart Filter, as shown in Figure 6.35. Figure 6.35 Photoshop CS5 enables you to use the Shadows/Highlights adjustment as a Smart Filter. The default dialog box for Shadows/Highlights in Photoshop includes only the Amount sliders for Shadows and Highlights. You should never use it in this abbrevi- ated form; instead check the option for More Options. This enlarges the dialog box to include many additional controls for fine-tuning the adjustment (see Figure 6.36) and unlocks the real power of the Shadows/Highlights tool. Figure 6.36 When you select the Show More Options check box, the Shadows/Highlights dialog box expands to include more controls. The controls are divided into three sections. The Shadows and Highlights sec- tions provide similar controls for adjusting areas of your image based on tonal value; the Adjustments section provides additional controls for improving specific aspects of the image. Using the basic Shadows/Highlights control is a simple matter of adjust- ing the sliders to extract the desired level of detail in the image. As you make these adjustments, use care not to overcorrect, which can create an image that is excessively at or that has an artificial appearance. The controls in both the Shadows and Highlights sections are the same, although they obviously target different areas of the image based on tonal value: Amount The Amount slider affects the strength of the adjustment you’re making to the area. Think of the Amount slider for Shadows as allowing you to decide how much to lighten the darkest areas of your image. The Amount slider for Highlights provides 607343c06.indd 270 4/12/10 11:42:59 PM 271 ■ THE SHADOWS/HIGHLIGHTS ADJUSTMENT a similar ability to darken the brightest areas. Your first reaction may be that doing so simply reduces contrast and produces a muddy image. However, keep in mind that this adjustment is designed for situations where contrast is too high or when you want to extract more detail from the darkest and brightest areas of your image. When used with modest settings, the result is an effective increase in detail without a problematic loss of contrast. Tonal Width To adjust the range of tonal values that will be affected by this adjustment, use the Tonal Width slider. A low value causes only a limited range of tonal values within the image to be affected, whereas a high value allows the adjustment to apply to a wider range. In other words, you expand or contract the area to be adjusted by defining a tonal range. Try to limit the tonal width to as narrow a range as possible to give you the desired results. Radius The Radius slider determines how far outward from pixels that fit within the defined tonal range the adjustment will spread. This provides the ability to blend the adjustment to produce a more realistic effect. Note: You’ll find the best settings with experimentation. Usually you’ll want the Tonal Width set- ting to be as limited as possible and still affect the desired tonal range. Often we find effective radius settings around the 25–40 range and again at the very high range of the scale. Don’t hesitate to drag the sliders and experiment. After you’ve adjusted the controls in the Shadows and Highlights sections, use the Adjustments section to fine-tune the final result. The Color Correction slider is really a saturation adjustment that affects the darkest areas of your image. This con- trol allows you to compensate for shadow areas that often have reduced saturation compared to other areas of the image because there isn’t adequate light to enhance the colors. After you’ve brightened up shadow areas, you’ll likely want to increase the saturation slightly so those areas match the rest of the image. Similarly, brightening shadows and darkening highlights helps extract more detail but results in an overall reduction in contrast. The Midtone Contrast slider allows you to apply some compensation by adjusting contrast for just the midtone val- ues within the image, leaving the shadow and highlight areas you’ve already adjusted relatively unchanged. The Black Clip and White Clip settings allow you to specify how much detail can be sacrificed in the image when making adjustments by using Shadows/Highlights. We recommend leaving these values to their default of 0.01% to minimize the loss of detail. Note: Don’t let the Save As Defaults button lull you into thinking you can establish one set of adjustments for Shadows/Highlights that will be appropriate for all images. Each image deserves its own custom settings. 607343c06.indd 271 4/12/10 11:42:59 PM 272 c ha p te r 6: E XPO SUR E ADJ US TME NT S ■ Once you’ve established the optimal settings in the Shadows/Highlights dialog box, click OK to apply the adjustment to your image, as in Figure 6.37. Figure 6.37 The Shadows/Highlights adjustment allows you to extract detail in your image with relative ease. Photo by EllEn Anon For Photoshop Elements Users: Shadows/Highlights Adjustment Elements’ Shadows/Highlights tool has a subset of the options Photoshop CS provides, giving you access to Shadows, Highlights, and Midtone Contrast. Although Elements does not provide Smart Objects, you can use the same technique explained in the “Curves” section to add a layer mask to your Shadows/Highlights adjustment. 1. Make a copy of your image layer if that’s your only layer, by dragging it to the New Layer icon at the top of the Layers panel. If you already have other layers, click on the top layer, hold down the Alt/Option key, and click the double-arrow icon at the top right of the Layers panel to access the fly-out menu. Choose Merge Visible and continue to hold down the Alt/Option key until a new layer appears on top of the other layers. (If only a sin- gle layer appears, you released the Alt/Option key too quickly.) Continues 607343c06.indd 272 4/12/10 11:43:01 PM 273 ■ EMPHASIZING YOUR SUBJECT For Photoshop Elements Users: Shadows/Highlights Adjustment (Continued) 2. Select Enhance > Adjust Lighting > Shadows/Highlights, and a dialog window will appear. 3. Use the sliders to adjust the different parts of your image. If your image isn’t changing, make sure the Preview check box is selected. When you’ve finished with Shadows/Highlights, click OK and follow Steps 6–9 from the Ele- ments “Curves” sidebar to add a layer mask to your adjustment. Try It! Open the image ShadowHighlight at www.sybex.com/go/photoshopnature, and work with the Shadows/Highlights adjustment to extract as much detail as possible while maintaining appropriate overall contrast. Emphasizing Your Subject Exposure is everything in photography, and for nature photographers it can be espe- cially critical. Being able to reveal detail hidden within your images, and to emphasize key areas of those images, can be a tremendous advantage for the final result. By prac- ticing the adjustments covered in this chapter, you’ll be able to exercise tremendous control over your images, taking them far beyond what you’d be able to achieve if you used only the camera to control your exposure. Learn to emphasize your subject by making it subtly lighter/darker, brighter, and/or more contrasty than the background by using layer masks. By taking advan- tage of the different exposure tools in conjunction with layer masks, you can tweak the tonalities in different areas of your image, creating a final print (or other output) that would have taken incredible skill and long hours in a traditional darkroom. Once you’ve established the optimal settings in the Shadows/Highlights dialog box, click OK to apply the adjustment to your image, as in Figure 6.37. For Photoshop Elements Users: Shadows/Highlights Adjustment Elements’ Shadows/Highlights tool has a subset of the options Photoshop CS provides, giving you access to Shadows, Highlights, and Midtone Contrast. Although Elements does not provide Smart Objects, you can use the same technique explained in the “Curves” section to add a layer mask to your Shadows/Highlights adjustment. 1. Make a copy of your image layer if that’s your only layer, by dragging it to the New Layer icon at the top of the Layers panel. If you already have other layers, click on the top layer, hold down the Alt/Option key, and click the double-arrow icon at the top right of the Layers panel to access the fly-out menu. Choose Merge Visible and continue to hold down the Alt/Option key until a new layer appears on top of the other layers. (If only a sin- gle layer appears, you released the Alt/Option key too quickly.) Continues 607343c06.indd 273 4/12/10 11:43:01 PM 7 Ph oto by Josh An on 607343c07.indd 274 4/13/10 2:41:43 PM . ADJUSTMENTS ■ 2. Choose Image > Adjustments > Shadows/Highlights. Shadows/Highlights will automatically be opened as a Smart Filter, as shown in Figure 6.35. Figure 6.35 Photoshop CS5 enables. relative ease. Photo by EllEn Anon For Photoshop Elements Users: Shadows/Highlights Adjustment Elements’ Shadows/Highlights tool has a subset of the options Photoshop CS provides, giving you access. to your image, as in Figure 6.37. For Photoshop Elements Users: Shadows/Highlights Adjustment Elements’ Shadows/Highlights tool has a subset of the options Photoshop CS provides, giving you access