The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers part 29 docx

ptg 261Chapter 9Fixing Common Problems Continued The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers Step 13: We need a selection around this layer again, so press-and-hold the Command (PC: Ctrl) key and click on the top layer’s thumbnail to load it as a selection. Once the selection is in place, we’re going to need to get a blend of all the background colors, so go under the Filter menu, under Blur, and choose Average. Step 14: It doesn’t bring up a dialog or anything, it just does its thing, and creates a blur that averages all the colors in the select- ed area together (as shown here). Press Command-D (PC: Ctrl-D) to Deselect. It doesn’t look right yet, but it will in just a moment. Download from www.wowebook.com ptg 262 Chapter 9 Fixing Common Problems The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers Step 15: To make this blend, there are two things you need to do: (1) change the layer’s blend mode from Normal to Color (so just the color shows through, instead of being solid); and then (2) lower the Opacity to around 15%, so a hint of the Average blur color from the background appears as a tint over your subject, and this ties the color of the two together (as seen here, where her overall color is more muted, like the background colors). Step 16: This last step is totally optional and is based on the-depth-of field project we did earlier in this chapter, but you can add a blurred effect to the background image to make it look like the photo was taken using a wide-open f-stop to get a very shallow depth-of- field. You do that by clicking on the layer that has your background image (Layer 1 here), then going under the Filter menu, under Blur, and choosing Lens Blur (this gives a more realistic depth-of-field blur than a standard Gauss- ian blur). In the Iris section in the middle, set the Radius amount to 44 (that’s the amount of blur), then click OK to get the final effect you see here. Download from www.wowebook.com ptg 263Chapter 9Fixing Common Problems The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers Continued Step One: First, let’s look at the problem: Here’s a shot I took at sunset using an off-camera flash (the flash is up high and to the right of my camera position, aiming down at the subject and firing through a shoot- through umbrella). At this point in the shoot, I didn’t remember to add a CTO gel to warm the light, so the light from the flash is bright white (which looks really out of place in a beach sunset shot like this. The light should be warm, like the light from a setting sun, not a white flash). Step Two: To warm the light from the flash, go to the Adjustments panel and click on the Photo Filter icon (it’s the second icon from the right in the middle row). The Photo Filter controls will appear, and from the Filter pop-up menu, choose Orange (as seen here), then increase the Density to around 55%. So, how did I know 55% was right? I opened a photo from a few minutes later in the shoot, when I had added a CTO gel to my flash, and matched the color and amount, but actually the amount doesn’t matter as much, because we’ll be able to lower it later if it’s too much. The whole image gets the Photo Filter, and it changes the color of the sky, and well…everything, but we just want to change the color of the light. When using an off-camera flash on location, most pros put an orange gel over the flash to warm the color of the light, so it doesn’t stand out as arti- ficial light. This plastic gel is called CTO (for Color Temperature Orange) and you can find it at most large camera stores (and a lot of small ones, too). So, the problem is that not everybody has these gels, and if they do, they don’t always remember to tape them over their flash head, but luckily, we can warm the color temperature of the light after the fact in Photoshop. Fixing On-Location Flash Photos SCOTT KELBY Download from www.wowebook.com ptg 264 Chapter 9 Fixing Common Problems The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers Step Three: What we need to do is hide the overall orange color, and then just apply it where we want it (where the light is actually falling on the subject). To do that, just press Command-I (PC: Ctrl-I) to Invert the layer mask attached to your Photo Filter adjustment layer, so your orange filter is hidden behind a black layer mask. Now, get the Brush tool (B), press D to switch your Foreground color to white, and paint over your subject’s skin, hair, clothes, and anywhere the light from the flash is falling (as shown here). That way, the orange only affects where the light from the flash lands. Step Four: Remember in Step Two where I said I wasn’t worried about the amount because I could change it later? That’s now. Because we used an adjustment layer, we can just go to the Layers panel and lower the Opacity to lower the amount of orange (I lowered it to 64% here). If, instead of needing to lower the amount, you need more orange, then just double-click directly on the adjust- ment layer itself (in the Layers panel) and it reopens the Photo Filter controls in the Adjustments panel, so you can increase the Density amount. Here’s the final image, with the orange gel effect added in Photoshop. Download from www.wowebook.com ptg 265Chapter 9Fixing Common Problems The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers Continued Step One: Here’s a shot near the Temple of Heaven in Beijing (I know, the lens perspective is off terribly, but that’s handled in the next project). I tried to get a shot without the tourists, but even though I was pretty darn patient, I just couldn’t come up with a shot where there were no tourists at least somewhere in the shot. The trick is to take a few more shots, and hope that when all is said and done, you can combine them, with a layer mask or two, to hide those tourists (it’s easier than it sounds). Step Two: Here, I took another shot of the same building, and as long the tourists in this photo are in a different spot than the tourists in the photo in Step One, we’ll be able to mask them out in seconds. But first, we’ll need to get the two photos into the same document, so switch to the Move tool (V), press-and-hold the Shift key, then drag the second image over onto the first image. This second image appears as its own layer above the first image (as seen here), and the two photos will be kind of close to being lined up with each other (using the Shift key centers the second image over the first). The nemesis of the travel photographer is the tourist, because nothing looks worse than a beautiful, iconic tower, palace, cathedral, or statue with a bunch of tourists roaming around. Although there’s nothing we can do to stop tourists from walking into our photos while we’re taking them, there is something we can do after the fact in Photoshop (as long and we do just a little preparation in advance, which makes our retouching job super-simple). Removing Tourists the Easy Way SCOTT KELBYSCOTT KELBY Download from www.wowebook.com ptg 266 Chapter 9 Fixing Common Problems The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers Step Three: If you’re handholding the images (and chances are, at a tourist spot, you prob- ably will be), then you’ll need to have Photoshop perfectly align the two pho- tos first, so the layer masking will work. (Note: If you did take your shots on a tripod, you can skip this step altogether, along with Step Four and Step Five, because your photos will already be in perfect alignment.) Go to the Layers panel, press-and-hold the Shift key, and click on the Background layer to select them both. Then go under the Edit menu and choose Auto-Align Layers (as shown here). Step Four: This brings up the Auto-Align Layers dialog (shown here). Auto should be selected by default, but if it’s not, click on the Auto radio button, then click OK, and Photoshop will perfectly align the two images (it does an amazing job of it, too). To see the results, go to the Layers panel and click on the Eye icon beside the top layer toggle it on/off—you’ll see that everything is the same, except the tourists, and that’s just what we need. Download from www.wowebook.com ptg 267Chapter 9Fixing Common Problems Continued The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers Step Five: You’ll notice that, in most cases, there will be a gap at the top and/or sides of your image, and that’s normal because Auto- Align Layers has to tweak your images a bit to make them line up (that’s because they weren’t taken on a tripod—they were handheld), so at this point, you’ll need to crop away these areas. Get the Crop tool (C) and drag it out so the gaps on the sides, top, and bottom will be cropped away. Press the Return (PC: Enter) key to complete your crop. Step Six: Click on the top layer, then click on the Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers panel (it’s shown circled here in red). Download from www.wowebook.com ptg 268 Chapter 9 Fixing Common Problems The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers Step Seven: Next, get the Brush tool (B), make sure your Foreground color is set to black, choose a soft-edged brush tip (from the Brush Picker up in the Options Bar), and set your brush size so it’s just a little smaller than the tourists you want to remove (use the Left and Right Bracket keys on your keyboard to change the size of your brush. They’re to the right of the letter P on your keyboard). Now, paint over the tourists (and their shadow) on the left side of the photo (the ones in front of the sign), and as you paint, it covers them up, revealing the sign on the layer below it. This works so well, because the two photos have been perfectly aligned. Step Eight: Anywhere you see a tourist, just paint right over them, and they’re gone (as shown here). If you make a mistake, switch your Foreground color to white, and paint over your mistake. Once you try this, and realize how easy it is, you’ll see fewer and fewer tourists in your travel photos in the future. Just keep in mind, the more photos you take, the better chance you’ll be able to find two (or more) photos you can stack in layers (like we did here), and then layer mask the tourists away. Download from www.wowebook.com ptg SCOTT KELBY 269Chapter 9Fixing Common Problems The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers Continued Step One: Here’s a problem image. Look at the columns on either side, which are bowing outward, and leaning outward, as well. Adobe figured you’d be using this filter a lot now (since it’s so much better than in previous versions), so they put Lens Cor- rection right up at the top of the Filter menu (rather than its previous home, hidden under Distort on the Filter menu). So, go ahead and go under the Filter menu, and choose Lens Correction now. Step Two: When the dialog opens, there are two tabs on the right: Auto Correction and Custom (Custom means “do-it-yourself”). I always try Auto Correction first, because that way, it does all the work for you. To turn it on, turn on the checkbox for Geometric Distortion (if I see edge vignetting [darkening of the edges], I turn on that checkbox too, and it’ll fix that at the same time). It looks at the embedded camera data to find out which camera make and model, and lens you took the photo with, then it matches that against its built-in set of correction profiles to fix the problem (it did a pretty decent job here, as you can see). If it doesn’t instantly come up with a profile (or the camera data is missing from the file), you can help it along by choosing your camera’s make, model, and even lens from the pop-up menus on the right. Photoshop CS5 definitely has some overlap with the included Camera Raw 6 that comes with CS5 (and is part of Photoshop), in that you can do a lot of the same things in Photoshop that you can do in Camera Raw. If you shoot in RAW mode on your camera, you’re better off doing things like lens corrections right within Camera Raw (see Chapter 3), because it’s faster and does less harm to your pixels. However, if for whatever reason, you don’t want to use Camera Raw’s Lens Corrections panel (it works for JPEGs and TIFFs, too. Hint, hint), then you can use the vastly improved Lens Correction filter in CS5. Fixing Problems Caused by Your Camera’s Lens Download from www.wowebook.com ptg 270 Chapter 9 Fixing Common Problems The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers Step Three: If, after choosing your camera make and model, no profiles show up in the Lens Profiles listing box, try clicking the Search Online button. It will go to Adobe’s own servers, and check to see if any additional profiles for your camera make and model have been added by end users (as long as you’re connected to the Internet, of course). If it does find some, they’ll be list- ed there, and all you have to do is click on one to apply it. In this case, it found two additional profiles for my lens, but with a different camera. I tried them both, but neither was better than the original pro- file that was already there, so I stuck with it. Hey, it was worth a try, right? Step Four: Although it did a pretty good job of fixing the barrel distortion caused by the lens (the bowing out of the columns), they’re still bowing out just a tiny bit, so that’s when you switch to the Custom (manual) settings. These settings are added to any corrections applied in the Auto Correc- tions tab, so you don’t lose what Auto Corrections already did for you. At the top, you’ll see a slider for correcting geometric distortion, and on either end of the Remove Distortion slider is an icon that shows how the image will be affected if you drag in that direction. Since the photo was bowing outward, you drag toward the icon bowing inward, so I dragged to the right just a little, until the columns stopped bowing (in this case, I only need to increase it by +2). Download from www.wowebook.com . Problems The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers Step 15: To make this blend, there are two things you need to do: (1) change the layer’s blend mode from Normal to Color (so just the. after the fact in Photoshop. Fixing On-Location Flash Photos SCOTT KELBY Download from www.wowebook.com ptg 264 Chapter 9 Fixing Common Problems The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers Step. final image, with the orange gel effect added in Photoshop. Download from www.wowebook.com ptg 265Chapter 9Fixing Common Problems The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers Continued Step