187 Camera Raw image processing Chapter 3 3 I then tackled the Shadow detail by raising the Fill Light setting. When you are required to push the Fill Light adjustment to such extremes, it is not uncommon to have to raise the Blacks (as I did here). The picture is not yet perfect, but we can now see detail at both ends of the tonal scale. 4 Lastly, I went to the Tone Curve panel and used the slider settings shown here to carefully add contrast to the photograph where it w as needed most. Martin Evening Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers 188 HSL/Grayscale panel The HSL controls provide eight color sliders with which to control the Hue, Saturation and Luminance. These work in a similar way to the Hue/Saturation adjustment in Photoshop, but are in many ways better; from my experience I fi nd that these controls are more predictable in their response. In Figure 3.41 I used the Luminance controls to darken the blue sky and add more contrast in the clouds, plus I lightened the grass and trees slightly. Do this using Hue/Saturation in Photoshop and you will fi nd that the blue colors will tend to lose saturation as you darken the luminosity. You will also notice that instead of using the traditional additive and subtractive primary colors of red, green, blue, plus cyan, magenta and yellow, the color slider controls in the HSL panel are based on colors that are of more actual relevance when editing photographic images. For example, the Oranges slider is useful for adjusting skin tones and Aquas can target the color of a swimming pool, but without affecting the color of a sky. Figure 3.41 In this example, the HSL/Grayscale panel was used to add more cloud contrast to the sky by going to the Luminance section and darkening the Aquas and Blues sliders. HSL color controls The choice of color ranges for the HSL sliders is really quite logical when you think about it. We may often want to adjust skin tone colors, but skin tones aren’t red or yellow – they are more of an orange color. And the sea is often not blue but more of an aqua color. Basically, the hue ranges in the HSL controls are designed to provide a more applicable range of colors for photographers to work with. Detail panel information In case you are wondering, there is a whole section on working with the Detail panel coming up in the following chapter. 189 Camera Raw image processing Chapter 3 Figure 3.43 These two screen shots show a dramatic improvement between the before version where the reds in the fl owers appeared fl at (top) and after applying a negative luminance adjustment to darken the red, orange and yellow colors (bottom). Figure 3.42 This diagram shows a plot of the color gamut of an LCD monitor (the solid shape in the center) compared to the actual color gamut of a digital camera. Assuming you are using a wide gamut RGB space such as Adobe RGB or better still ProPhoto RGB, the colors you are able to edit will almost certainly extend beyond what can be seen on the screen. Tech note The previews shown here are not simple screen grabs, but mocked up using fully processed ProPhoto RGB images. You can judge the effectiveness of this adjustment by how they are printed in the book. Recovering out-of-gamut colors Figure 3.42 highlights the problem of how the camera you are shooting with is almost certainly capable of capturing a greater range of colors than can be displayed on the monitor or seen in print. Just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they’re not there! Although a typical monitor can’t give a true indication of how colors will print, it is all you have to rely on when assessing the colors in a photo. The HSL Luminance and Saturation sliders can sometimes be used to reveal hidden color detail (Figure 3.43). Martin Evening Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers 190 Adjusting the hue and saturation The Hue sliders in the HSL/Grayscale panel can be used to fi ne-tune the hue color bias for each of the eight color sliders. In Figure 3.44 I adjusted the Reds hue slider to make the reds look less magenta and more orange. In other words, this is a useful HSL/Grayscale panel tip for improving the look of snapshot pictures taken with a compact digital camera, where the skin tones can sometimes look too pink. The Saturation sliders allow you to decrease or increase the saturation of specifi c colors. In Figure 3.45 you can see how I was able to use these to knock back specifi c colors so that everything in the photograph ended up in monochrome, except for the red guitar in the foreground. I could have used the new adjustment brush to do this, but adjusting the Saturation sliders offers a very quick method for selectively editing the colors in this way. Figure 3.44 This snap shot was taken of my friend Jeff Schewe at a party in New York. Here, I used a positive Reds Hue adjustment to take some of the redness out of the picture to make the skin tones look more natural, but I may have needed to increase the amount used here as extra glasses of wine were consumed. Grayscale conversions To fi nd out about how to apply grayscale conversions in Camera Raw, please refer to pages 358–359 in the Black and White chapter. Emulating Hue/Saturation behavior In Photoshop’s Hue/Saturation dialog there is a Hue slider that can be used to apply global hue shifts, which can be useful if you are interested in shifting all of the hue values in one go. With Camera Raw you can create preset HSL settings where all the Hue sliders are shifted equally in each direction. Using such presets you can quickly shift all the hues in positive or negative steps, without having to drag each slider in turn. 191 Camera Raw image processing Chapter 3 Figure 3.45 In this example I have shown the before version (top) and a modifi ed version (below), where I used the HSL/Grayscale panel Saturation sliders to selectively desaturate some of the colors in this scene. Martin Evening Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers 192 Lens Corrections panel The Lens Corrections controls can help correct some of the optical problems that are associated with digital capture. If you inspect an image closely towards the edge of the frame area you may notice some color fringing, which will be most apparent around areas of high contrast (Figure 3.46). This is mainly a problem you get with cheaper lens optics, but it can even occur with a good lens when photographing Figure 3.46 The top screen shot shows a 200% close-up view of an image where you can see strong color fringing around the strong contrast edges. In the lower version I used a Chromatic Aberration correction to remove the color fringes. % c lo se p i e o f an i ma ge he re Lens Correction fi lter The Chromatic Aberration controls discussed here are also available in the Photoshop Lens Correction fi lter. 193 Camera Raw image processing Chapter 3 Figure 3.47 If you hold down the O A key as you make adjustments to the Blue/Yellow Chromatic aberration controls you can hide the Red/Cyan color fringing (but you must be viewing at 100% magnifi cation or higher). Do the same with the Red/Cyan Chromatic aberration controls to hide the Blue/Yellow color fringing. brightly colored subjects. The Chromatic Aberration controls in the Lens Corrections panel can be used to help remove any visible color fringing. To correct for chromatic aberrations you do need to be viewing the photo at a magnifi cation of 100% or higher. The Red/Cyan Fringe adjustment works by adjusting the scale size of the Red channel relative to the Green channel, and the Blue/Yellow Fringe slider will adjust the scale size of the Blue channel relative to the Green channel. The net result is that with careful manipulation of both these sliders you should be able to remove all signs of chromatic aberration across the whole image, even though you are only analyzing one small section of the photo. Defringe The Defringe options provide an extra level of defringing in addition to the manual slider adjustments. To be honest, the Highlight Edges and All Edges settings usually have a very subtle effect, but if you are going to use this I would suggest choosing the All Edges option (Figure 3.48). It can also sometimes help clean up any remaining color fringes. Figure 3.48 The left half of this Camera Raw preview shows the before version and the right half view shows the same image with the All Edges Defringe option selected. Martin Evening Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers 194 Lens Vignetting control With certain camera/lens combinations you may see some brightness fall-off occur towards the edges of the picture frame. This is a problem you are more likely to encounter with wide-angle lenses, and you may only notice this particular lens defi ciency if the subject contains a plain, evenly-lit background. The Lens Vignetting Amount slider can be used to correct for this by lightening the corners relative to the center of the photograph, while the Midpoint slider can be used to offset the rate of fall-off. As you increase the Midpoint value, the exposure compensation will be accentuated more towards the outer edges. Vignetting is not always a result of the lens used. In the studio I am fond of shooting with extreme wide-angle lenses and the problem here is that it’s often diffi cult to get the backdrop evenly lit for the area of coverage that is required. In these kinds of situations I fi nd it helps to use the Lens Vignetting slider to compensate for the fall-off in light towards the corners of the frame by lightening the edges (as shown in Figure 3.49 below). Figure 3.49 An example of the Lens Vignetting sliders being used to compensate for the light fall-off on a studio backdrop, to produce a more even-balanced white. UV fi lters and edge detail Fixing a UV fi lter over the lens is generally considered a good way to fi lter out the UV light when photographing outdoors, plus it can also offer a fi rst line of defence against the lens getting damaged. However, this not such a good idea for wide-angle or wide-angle zoom lenses as the light entering the lens from the extreme edges is forced to go through the UV fi lter at an angle and this can cause the image to degrade more at the edges of the frame since the light passes through the fi lter glass at an oblique angle. Client: Clipso. Model: Lucy Edwards @ Bookings. 195 Camera Raw image processing Chapter 3 1 Here is an example of a photograph shot with a wide-angle lens, where lens vignetting can be seen in the corners of the frame. 2 In this example I used the Lens Corrections panel to compensate for the Vignetting. I set the Amount slider to +28, and adjusted the Midpoint to fi ne-tune the cor rection. The aim here was to obtain an even exposure at the corners. Martin Evening Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers 196 Post Crop vignetting control A lot of photographers have got into using the Lens Vignetting controls as a creative tool for darkening or lightening the corners of their pictures. The only problem with this is that the lens vignetting can only be applied to the whole of the image frame area. But with Camera Raw 5 you can now use the Post Crop Vignette sliders to apply a vignette relative to any cropped image area. This means that you can use the Lens Vignetting controls for the purpose they were intended (to counter any fall-off that occurs towards the edges of the frame) and use the Post Crop Vignette sliders as a creative tool for those times when you deliberately wish to lighten or darken the edges of a photo via Camera Raw. The Post Crop Vignetting Amount and Midpoint sliders work identically to the Lens Vignetting controls, except in addition to this you can adjust the Roundness and the Feathering of the vignette adjustment. 1 In this fi rst example I applied a −70, darkening vignette offset with a +45 Midpoint setting. This adjustment was not too different from a normal Lens Vignetting adjustment, except it was applied to the cropped area of an image. Combined effects Now that we have post crop vignette controls as well as the standard Lens correction vignette sliders, you can achieve even more varied results by combining different combinations of slider settings, whether a photo is cropped or not. Client: Andrew Collinge Hair & Beauty. Hair by Andrew Collinge artistic team. Make-up: Liz Collinge. [...]... Calibrator script which will work for Mac or PC with Photoshop CS, CS2, CS3 or CS4 This is free and can be downloaded from Tom Fors Chromaholics website: http://fors.net/chromoholics/ Once installed, the ACR Calibrator script will be available for use via the File ➯ Scripts menu in Photoshop Choosing the right profile When a profile is updated for a particular camera, it is necessary for Camera Raw to preserve... Evening Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers Clearing the retouching work You can remove individual retouch circles by selecting them and hitting the D key Or, you can click on the Clear All button to delete all retouch circles Turning off the preview In Camera Raw 5, you can now use the Preview option to toggle showing/hiding the spot removal retouching Spot removal tool You can use the spot removal... the Camera Raw dialog being used to carry out synchronized spotting 205 Martin Evening Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers Hiding the red eye rectangles As with the spot removal tool, you can click on the Show Overlay box to toggle showing and hiding the rectangle overlays (or use the h key) Red eye removal The remove red eye tool is useful for correcting photos taken of people where the direct camera... 3.51 X-Rite ColorChecker charts can be bought as a mini chart or the full-size chart you see here 199 Martin Evening Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers 1 To use the script, you will need to open a raw image that was taken of the X-Rite ColorChecker chart and open it in Photoshop via the Adobe Camera Raw dialog Use the white balance tool to measure the patch next to the white patch (circled) Crop the... to –0.90 4 After that, I clicked on the color swatch to open the Color Picker shown here, selected a blue color and added a new Graduated filter adjustment by dragging from the top of the photograph downward to the horizon 219 Martin Evening Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers Angled gradients As you drag with the Graduated filter you can do so at any angle and also edit the angle afterwards For example,... panel in Camera Raw and save this as a custom calibration setting for your camera When you save the Camera Raw settings, check only the Camera Calibration checkbox You can now apply this setting to all photos that have been shot using this camera and expect to see more accurate color results 201 Martin Evening Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers Figure 3.52 The Camera Calibration panel showing the... background 2 I then added further brush groups In this step I added a new brush group to lighten the eyes and a third brush group (highlighted here) to lighten Rod’s forehead Photograph: © Jeff Schewe 2008 211 Martin Evening Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers Figure 3.61 Quite often all you need to do is to click on an area of a picture with the color you wish to target and drag the adjustment brush in... how the basket handle and fruit stood out more as I did this 213 Martin Evening Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers Adjustment brush speed The fact that you can apply non-destructive localized adjustments to a raw image is a clever innovation, but this type of editing can never be as fast as editing a pixel image in Photoshop The example shown here demonstrates how far you could take localized edits... vignette shape less elliptical and adjusted the Feather slider to make the vignette edge harder 3 For this final version I applied a +100 vignette Amount to lighten the corners of the cropped image, combined with a narrow Midpoint and a softer Feather setting 197 Martin Evening Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers Figure 3.50 The Camera Calibration panel 3 50 controls can be used to fine-tune the Camera... Brush size radius Feather brush radius Brush flow Brush opacity Mask options Toggle show/hide pins Click to clear all brush edits Figure 3.57 The Adjustment brush options 207 Martin Evening Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers Return to the main panels Click k to toggle between the Adjustment Brush tool mode and other panel modes Hiding and showing brush edits Use the Preview button in the Camera Raw . Kordek @ MOT. ACR 4. 4 Faithful Portrait ACR 4. 3 Landscape Standard Adobe Neutral Martin Evening Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers 2 04 Spot removal tool You can use the spot removal tool ( b ). (Figure 3 .43 ). Martin Evening Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers 190 Adjusting the hue and saturation The Hue sliders in the HSL/Grayscale panel can be used to fi ne-tune the hue color bias for. corners. Martin Evening Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers 196 Post Crop vignetting control A lot of photographers have got into using the Lens Vignetting controls as a creative tool for darkening or