A Photographers Guide To RAW in Photoshop [PDF]

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Welcome It may not have an exciting name, but Raw can have a revolutionary effect on your digital photography. When you shoot a photo in Raw on your digital SLR, your camera preserves the scene exactly as it was shot. With the help of Photoshop (or Photoshop Elements) and its Camera Raw plug-in, you can turn your photos into crisply realised images, full of vivid colour and rich tones. Only Raw lets you do this – and we’re here to help you master this amazing technology. In this guide, you’ll discover why Raw is such a powerful option to have, and how to make sure your computer and display are ready to take advantage of it. You’ll explore the features offered by Camera Raw before completing a series of workshops designed to help you understand and take control of the powerful tools and techniques the software offers. Through our step-by-step workshops and plain-English advice, we’ll help you get the best from your Raw photos, whether you’re a seasoned pro or an enthusiast looking to take the next step. Your companion DVD contains all the image files you’ll need to try our projects, plus over nine hours of video tutorials! Richard Hill, Editor

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Contents Part 1: Introducing Raw The Raw advantage: why Raw is the best photo format

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The Raw contenders: Adobe Camera Raw and its rivals

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Don’t gamble with colour: how to see accurate colour

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Calibrate in seconds: the fast way to adjust your display

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Ensure accurate on-screen colours: calibrate your monitor 32 Update your Raw editor: download and install ACR

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Part 2: Welcome to Camera Raw 10 reasons to go Raw: quick tricks to try out

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Using Camera Raw: explore the interface

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Get more from Raw: quick tips and techniques

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Read a histogram: the graph at the heart of ACR

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Part 3: First Steps

Enhance your outdoor scenes

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Fine-tine landscape colour and tone

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Improve skin tones in your portraits

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Combine Raw shots

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Merge shots with a mask

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Create an HDR landscape photo

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Speed up your workflow

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Find a faster way to process images

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Make selective tonal adjustments

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Make your images sparkling clean

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Part 4: Exposure Improve exposure for a balanced shot

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Control a high contrast

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Enhance tones and transform your shots

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Rescue under-exposed shots

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Make selective adjustments

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Explore Raw graduations

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Use Camera Raw in Photoshop & Elements

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Improve exposure in low-light shots

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Get higher-quality photos with Raw

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Hold on to details

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Give a portrait a digital makeover

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Recover blow-out highlight detail

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4 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

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134 148 Part 5: Corrections

Part 8: Effects

Reduce noise in low-level images

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Recreate a split-tone effect

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Tackle lens-related problems

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Create a two-tone landscape

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Use Raw editing tools to rescue hazy shots

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Emulate the look of slide film

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Give a landscape a golden glow

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Create the perfect sunrise

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Turn day into dusk

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Make a moonlit scene

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Boost car light trails with tinting

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Part 6: Colour Enhance colour and saturation

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Achieve perfect colours in your photos

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Become a Raw colour master

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Get vivid colour in your photos

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Boost colours for impact

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Part 7: Mono How to go mono: ACR and the alternatives in Photoshop

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Convert a landscape to monochrome

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Get better black-and-white in Photoshop CS4

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Prepare your portrait for mono

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Enhance mono portraits

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Enhance light and shadow

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Add impact with high-contrast mono

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Part 9: Raw Projects Capture classic action photographs

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Shooting flash-lit action images

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Great HDR effects without the hassle

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Creating stunning low-light seascapes

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Photographing buildings at dusk

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On the disc Look out for this icon to view folder details

On your DVD There’s over nine hours of video workshops and sample images to follow each step on your free disc

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WorldMags.netA photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop 5

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Meet our photographers Meet four of the talented photographers who shot the images inside this guide, and discover how they used Raw and Photoshop to perfect their photos Ali Jennings

Chris George

After shooting this still life in colour as normal, Ali used the advanced greyscale tools in Camera Raw to convert the photo to monochrome. By studying the way individual hues appear in greyscale, Ali was able to give his mono conversion a rich range of tones, with strong contrast. See page 164 for more details.

Chris took a succession of shots of former Formula 1 world champion Lewis Hamilton while on location. Back in the studio, he took advantage of Camera Raw’s batch-processing tools to process the entire series of images simultaneously, saving himself hours of effort. See page 89 for more details.

Paul Newman

George Cairns

Paul used the full range of adjustment tools in Camera Raw for this shot. He adjusted the white balance, and used the clipping warning system to establish the optimum exposure amd contrast for this image before bringing out the colours – all inside Camera Raw. See page 60 for more details.

The weather conditions weren’t ideal when George took this landscape shot. In the studio, he used Raw’s ability to store a wide range of photographic information to render the same shot at two different exposures, which he then merged in Photoshop to show the full range. See page 80 for more details.

How to use this guide The workshops in this guide show you how to open and process digital photos shot in the Raw format. Most current and recent digital SLR cameras are able to capture images in this format, as well as a few compact cameras. You can follow the workshops if your camera doesn’t support Raw: the images you need are provided on the DVD that accompanies the guide. The software used in the workshops is Adobe Camera Raw, a plug-in that’s

provided free of charge with copies of Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. You can also download the latest version of the plug-in via the Adobe website (www.adobe.com). Installing the latest version is recommended, but you should ensure that your software and version is compatible before you install. Compatibility details are provided at the Adobe website. See page 35 to find out how to download and install the latest version of Camera Raw.

6 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

Other software packages are able to open Raw images. The general creative and technical principles outlined in this guide apply to these other packages, although menu commands and tool names are likely to be different. Camera Raw in Photoshop Elements doesn’t offer as broad a range of tools as it does in Photoshop. Most of the workshops in this guide apply to both programs, but some require Photoshop to be installed.

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A PHOTOGR A PH ER’S GU IDE TO...

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All contents copyright © 2010 Future Publishing Limited or published under licence. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be reproduced, stored, transmitted or used in any way without the prior written permission of the publisher. ‘A Photographer’s Guide to Raw for Photoshop’ is the trademark of Future Publishing Limited. Future Publishing Limited (company number 2008885) is registered in England and Wales. Registered office: Beauford Court, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath BA1 2BW. All information contained in this publication is for information only and is, as far as we are aware, correct at the time of going to press. Future cannot accept any responsibility for errors or inaccuracies in such information. You are advised to contact manufacturers and retailers directly with regard to the price and other details of products or services referred to in this publication. Unless otherwise specified, websites mentioned in this publication are not under our control. We are not responsible for their contents or any changes or updates to them. If you submit unsolicited material to us, you automatically grant Future a licence to publish your submission in whole or in part in all editions of the magazine, including licensed editions worldwide and in any physical or digital format throughout the world. Any material you submit is sent at your risk and, although every care is taken, neither Future nor its employees, agents or subcontractors shall be liable for loss or damage.

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Introducing Raw

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Find out why you should be using Raw, and how to get your computer and your copy of Photoshop ready to work in this format The Raw advantage: why Raw is the best photo format

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The Raw contenders: Adobe Camera Raw and its rivals

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Don’t gamble with colour: how to see accurate colour

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Calibrate in seconds: the fast way to adjust your display

31

Ensure accurate on-screen colours: calibrate your monitor

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Update your Raw editor: download and install ACR

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WorldMags.netA photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop 9

Introducing Raw

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The Raw advantage Find out why you should shoot in Raw whenever possible, and how Adobe Camera Raw is able to help you create great photos

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When you edit a Raw file, the changes you make are stored separately to preserve the original document.

their own proprietary Raw formats, such as .crw or .cr2 for Canon, .nef for Nikon and .orf for Olympus.) Photoshop and Photoshop Elements are unable to open Raw files directly in the same way they would normal images: instead, Adobe provides a plug-in called Adobe Camera Raw (often shortened in this guide to ACR) with both programs. ACR’s job is to render the data inside a Raw file into an image intelligible to the eye. When you are using either Photoshop or Elements and navigate to a Raw file using the File > Open command, ACR activates automatically and presents the image, as described in the Raw file. The Adobe Camera Raw plug-in is regularly updated to add support for new cameras as well as new features, and is free to download from the Adobe website. There’s one version that works in both Photoshop and Photoshop Elements, although some tools aren’t visible in the latter. See page 35 for our guide to downloading the latest version of ACR and installing it on your computer. Although this guide focuses on using Adobe Camera Raw inside either Photoshop or Elements, other options

Ali Jennings

he term ‘Raw file’ refers to the data actually captured by your digital camera’s sensor, without any form of processing in-camera. Not all cameras offer the option of saving shots as Raw files: broadly speaking, you should expect digital SLR models to offer the facility, but only a handful of compact cameras support the format. If your camera doesn’t support Raw, or if you set it to JPEG instead (still the most commonly used format), the camera processes the Raw data itself as you take a shot. The camera’s built-in algorithms discard precious image data before you even get to open the shot, giving you less data to work with in Photoshop or Elements. That’s why you should set your camera to use Raw if possible. Strictly speaking, Raw files aren’t images at all: they’re just data about the light that struck the various photo receptors on the camera sensor. This means that the image editor you use after you transfer your photos to your computer has to be able to recognise the distinctive Raw format. (Note that ‘Raw’ is a generic term, not a single file type like .jpg or .tif. Different camera makers – and often different models – use

10 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

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are available: we look at some of these overleaf. Many of the principles we talk about throughout this guide are applicable to these other packages, although the specific tools and commands you’d use are different.

Raw: pros and cons As we’ve seen, a Raw file describes the light that hits the camera sensor. This light is recorded in a very ‘literal’, linear fashion: where twice as many photons hit the sensor, twice the level of data is recorded. What this means is that if your camera captures six stops of dynamic range (for modern cameras, about the minimum range from the darkest tone in an image to the lightest), half of the Raw data it records is dedicated to the brightest stop, a quarter to the next stop, an eighth to the next and so on. In other words, there’s far more information in a Raw file about the highlights than the midtones, and there’s relatively little about the shadows. Every seasoned photographer knows that blown highlights with no recoverable detail look nasty, and it can be tempting to underexpose when you’re shooting to be on the safe side. However, because less data is captured at the shadow end of a Raw file to start with, brightening underexposed areas is always less successful than darkening bright areas, which have a better ratio of image data to noise: lightening dark areas rapidly

WorldMags.net Digital cameras can distort the colour of a sunset (left). Shooting in Raw yields a far more accurate representation of the scene (right). brings out noise and causes posterisation or ‘banding’ of tones and colours, even in ACR. The best strategy when shooting in Raw is to ‘expose for the highlights’ as far as you can without overexposing, then darken down if need be, pushing detail down into the shadows. Raw files are bigger than JPEGs (up to four times bigger in some cases), which means you’ll need to take a bigger memory card with you on a shoot, and you’ll need extra space for long-term storage. Because Raw files are bigger, the camera takes longer to save each shot than JPEGs (even allowing for JPEGs being processed in-camera – which shows how crude JPEG processing must be: it’s faster than just saving a Raw file). This means that Raw isn’t ideal if you need to take a set of shots quickly, say to capture fast-moving action in Burst mode.

Working with Camera Raw Much of the time, the Camera Raw workflow is extremely straightforward – potentially even foolproof. As soon as you try to open a Raw file, ACR leaps into action to process it. Without prompting or configuration, it applies a default set of

tweaks designed to add a bit more punch to the average shot, with a reasonably even distribution of tones across the range from darkest to lightest: a modest boost to the Blacks and Brightness, a touch of contrast enhancement, plus a hint of sharpening and noise reduction. The processed image is now ready for you to open into Photoshop or Elements – but to be honest, any old Raw converter, even your camera’s built-in system, could do this much, and you’re getting little if any benefit from the extra depth of tonal and colour detail that shooting Raw has given you. The real advantage of Adobe Camera Raw lies in the powerful tools it offers you to customise the process: to alter the settings that were used to capture the image, and to ‘develop’ your digital negative in the way you want, instead of relying on generic adjustments. As a rule, you’ll work your way through ACR’s tabs and the sliders within them more or less in order, although you’ll find yourself returning to sliders as necessary to fine-tune or readjust them where other edits have had a knock-on effect. As you work, you can monitor the effects that your edits are having using the histogram at the top of ACR’s right-hand panel. You can also activate clipping previews, which show you exactly where tonal detail is being lost and thus help you get exposure spot-on. Like a ‘digital negative’, your Raw file remains untouched by any edits you make

Raw basics

in ACR. Instead, if you click Open Image to open the processed image for further work in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements (to use features not available in the Adobe Camera Raw plug-in, such as layers or filters), your edits are applied to create a copy of the image for you to work on; if you click Done instead, your edits are saved alongside the file. They’re automatically reapplied if you reopen it, but you can remove them and revert to the ‘as-shot’ image at any time, or alter them to create different interpretations of it, like making new prints from a film negative. In this Photographer’s Guide, we’ll show you how to use all of these tools and controls, plus some ways to work more quickly and efficiently in ACR, including useful keystroke shortcuts. The aim is to get your shots as close as possible to your desired result before turning to Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. Indeed, in many cases, you might find ACR’s tools are so powerful and effective that ACR isn’t just an intermediate step, but all you need to get your shots perfect!

The histogram: your new best friend As you work in Adobe Camera Raw, you’ll be guided largely by what looks right (assuming that your monitor is trustworthy – see pages 22 to 34 for our guide to setting up your monitor). The histogram at the top of the righthand slider panel is an invaluable cross-check, however: it shows you what’s happening to the image data, so you can assess the effects that your edits are having and identify what more may be needed. A histogram is a graph of the brightness or tonal intensity values of pixels in the image, from shadows at the left to highlights at the right. The height of the graph at any point indicates the relative number of pixels with that intensity value. The combined channels are represented as a white histogram, which is your foremost indication of exposure. In a tonally well-balanced image, the graph should taper off to virtually nothing before hitting either end. A cut-off spike in the graph at either end indicates that some data is being ‘clipped’ (forced to solid black or pure white), meaning that fine tonal detail is being lost, typically in burnt-out highlights or underexposed shadows. See page 52 for more details on the histogram area in Camera Raw, and look for advice on using this and the clipping system throughout this guide.

A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop 11

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Introducing Raw

Ali Jennings

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There are plenty of great options for editing Raw images: we survey the field and help you decide which software is best for your needs

12 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

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Raw software options

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his Photographer’s Guide focuses on the use of Adobe Camera Raw as your main tool for editing Raw images, but it’s not the only option available to you. Indeed, if you own a digital SLR camera, it’s likely that you already own at least one alternative to ACR. Here, we survey the field of Raw conversion tools and explain the difference your choice of software can make to the way you work and the results you get during your image-editing. It’s possible that as you explore the potential of Raw-based photography further, one of these tools may take its place alongside

Adobe Camera Raw on your computer – or even, in time, replace it.

Four paths to take Although there are plenty Raw image-editing tools available, your choice boils down to four distinct categories. First is Adobe Camera Raw itself (page 14): the plug-in that you get for free with Photoshop or Photoshop Elements is acknowledged as one of the best Raw editing tools you can find. The second option is one you may already own: camera manufacturers typically offer stand-alone programs with the ability to open

and edit the Raw photos you take with their cameras (page 16). Related to this category is your third option: third-party Raw converters (page 18). These are typically aimed at serious photographers with a strong technical leaning, and can offer some distinctive tools and working methods. The fourth and final option is the relatively new breed of combined photo browser and image editor (page 20). Although the likes of Lightroom and Aperture support any common image file format, Raw is where they can truly make a difference to your photography. Read on to find out which option suits you best...

A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop 13 WorldMags.net

Introducing Raw

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Adobe Camera Raw It’s the default Raw conversion tool for Photoshop and Elements users, and the star of this guide. Here’s how this powerful tool works...

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hotoshop does not work directly with Raw files. They have to go through a separate conversion process first, and this is the job of Adobe Camera Raw. You don’t have to use Adobe Camera Raw, and there are various reasons why you may not want to, which we’ll cover here and over the next few pages. Some are related to image quality, some are down to everyday practicality and your workflow – your own favoured method of working. The most significant difference between Adobe Camera Raw and other Raw converters is that ACR is a plug-in, which is automatically activated when you try to open a Raw file from within Photoshop. This makes things very much simpler because you don’t have to start a separate program, carry out your Raw conversions and produce regular image files before you can work on them.

Photo enhancement In most other respects, though, Adobe Camera Raw is just like any other Raw converter. It takes the Raw data and converts it into an editable image file. The difference here is that it passes it straight to Photoshop rather than saving it out as a file (though you can do that too). As part of the conversion process, Adobe Camera Raw offers a range of tools for enhancing your photos: if you’re using ACR under the full Photoshop, these are so sophisticated that you may not need to carry out any further work in Photoshop at all. If you’re running ACR under Elements, your options are a little more limited, although it remains a powerful and useful tool.

Operating a plug-in inside Photoshop, Adobe Camera Raw is now so powerful that it’s practically an image editor in itself, offering controllable black-and-white conversions (seen here), targeted adjustments, digital grads, curves, levels and more. Your original Raw file remains unaltered by any of this. The processed image file you create is a copy. In fact, it’s not possible to modify Raw files with Adobe Camera Raw, although some camera makers’ own Raw conversion programs may be able to do this. Instead, Adobe Camera Raw saves all the edits and enhancements you make separately, either in its own database or as

a ‘sidecar’ .xmp file. This is, in effect, a series of processing instructions. The next time you open that Raw file in Adobe Camera Raw, it will look up its database or load the associated .xmp file too, as long as they haven’t been separated. Adobe Bridge uses these .xmp files to display thumbnails of Raw files. Adobe Camera Raw is both effective and convenient, but it shares the main

ADOBE CAMERA RAW: WORKFLOW Adobe Camera Raw acts as a Photoshop plug-in that automatically intercepts any Raw files when you open them from within Photoshop. The normal workflow, then, is to adjust the Raw file in Adobe Camera Raw, which then passes the image on to Photoshop, where you carry out any final adjustments before saving the photo as a regular image file in the JPEG, TIFF or PSD format. It is also possible to save files

directly from the Adobe Camera Raw window if you don’t need to make any more changes and want to bypass Photoshop altogether. It’s also possible, by the way, to launch Adobe Camera Raw directly from the Creative Suite program Adobe Bridge, carry out any enhancements you wish and save an image file from there, again bypassing Photoshop.

Raw file

Image file Adobe Camera Raw

14 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

Photoshop

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Raw software options

WorldMags.net disadvantage of Raw conversion programs in general: if the converted file isn’t exactly how you want it, you have to go back, make your changes and then convert or export a new version. This isn’t difficult to do – the edits are saved separately, remember, so they can easily be removed or modified at any time – and this workflow has the advantage that you can produce several different ‘interpretations’ of the same Raw original. This does mean, however, that you can rapidly fill your hard disk space with files, all identically named except for the filename extensions: you start off with your original Raw files and then add converted versions, which if you save in .dng format can be even larger than the original Raw files. So for each Raw file you have the original file, at least one converted image, plus the .xmp ‘sidecar’ file – which is not large in itself, but needs to be kept with the other files and thus adds to the clutter and confusion. There is an alternative to this approach, which is explained in the section on Lightroom and Aperture (page 20). Here, the Raw adjustments are made ‘live’, the settings are stored within the application itself for future use, and a converted image is exported only when it’s needed. It saves a lot of hard disk space and a lot of time, though many photographers may still prefer the traditional way of working. ACR’s biggest benefit, however, is that it’s free if you already own Photoshop or Elements, making it the perfect place to start learning about the potential of shooting and editing photos in the powerful Raw format.

You may be used to seeing Adobe Camera Raw pop-up when you open a Raw file in Photoshop, but you can also open pictures in ACR directly from within Bridge by right-clicking on them. Pictures which have already been edited in ACR show a small symbol to the top right. (Look to the right of the open menu in this screenshot.)

ADOBE CAMERA RAW: PROS AND CONS Pros ■ The widest support for different digital camera Raw formats ■ Integrates perfectly with Photoshop ■ Good highlight recovery ■ Excellent editing tools, including selective adjustments and graduated filters under Photoshop CS4 ■ The original Raw file remains untouched by all ACR edits and adjustments

Normally you might click Open Image once you’ve made your changes in Adobe Camera Raw, which passes the file on to Photoshop. But you can also save the image as a file directly, using a new name or a suffix, or click Done to save your adjustments but not open the converted image in Photoshop.

Cons ■ Does not preserve cameras-specific settings such as picture styles ■ Not always the sharpest conversions ■ Running ACR under Elements gives you fewer features than under Photoshop ■ Once you’ve opened the converted file in Photoshop, you can’t return it to ACR; to change the settings you must re-convert the original file from ACR

There are many ways to make use of the extra image information that you get in Raw files when you convert them. For example, you can choose the wider Adobe RGB colour space, save 16-bit instead of 8-bit files and resample them to different sizes.

A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop 15 WorldMags.net

Introducing Raw

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Camera Raw tools

Your camera may come with Raw conversion software as standard, or the maker may offer it as a paid-for extra. Why not use this...?

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ost camera manufacturers offer their own software to use with Raw photos taken with their own models, as a service to their customers. Unlike Adobe Camera Raw, which opens automatically as a Photoshop plug-in, these usually act as separate programs. You open your Raw files with the software, convert them into JPEGs or TIFFs (say) and then open them in Photoshop, as our workflow diagram indicates. Like Raw converters in general, the camera makers’ Raw conversion software will turn the data captured by the sensor into an editable image file, and as part of this process, they offer ways to optimise this data. Raw files include much more image information than is ever seen in the JPEGs produced by the camera. For example, the sensor records all the colour information in the scene, and what the camera’s white balance setting does is filter out the colour information required by the chosen setting and discard the rest. Raw files, however, retain all the original colour information, which can be ‘reinterpreted’ by the Raw conversion software using whatever white balance setting you choose to apply.

Picture styles The same applies to saturation, contrast and sharpness settings. In fact, many camera makers offer a selection of ‘picture styles’ (as Canon calls them) or similar options which consist of preset saturation, contrast and sharpness settings, though some seem to involve other, subtler, adjustments (Canon’s

Olympus camera owners get a copy of Olympus Master with their purchase, but this has only basic Raw conversion tools. The alternative is Olympus Studio, which has to be bought separately.

Landscape mode, for example, enhances blue skies in a way that has no equivalent in simple saturation and contrast terms). All Raw converters can ‘re-process’ white balance, sharpness, contrast and colour adjustments and, to a degree, the tonal range of the image. (The sensor will capture a wider dynamic range than a JPEG image can display.) But what happens to the settings you applied on the camera? Third-party Raw converters ignore these (with the exception of the white balance, though they may even interpret this differently). But the settings are embedded in the Raw file regardless, and the maker’s own Raw software will load them as the default processing parameters for the Raw image.

This is the point about the maker’s own Raw conversion software. It may be cruder than big-name third-party tools, and in particular it may not offer the extremely useful highlight recovery of Adobe Camera Raw and other tools. But it will faithfully reproduce the camera’s own picture adjustments, and usually enable you to choose different ‘camera’ settings respectively.

True to the shot This is one of two very good reasons for considering the camera maker’s own Raw conversion software. It will remain true to the colour rendition, tonal and colour qualities of the camera itself and its custom settings.

CAMERA RAW TOOLS: WORKFLOW Camera makers’ own Raw conversion software is best regarded as a separate application that you use to convert your Raw files to JPEGs or TIFFs, prior to opening them in Photoshop for any other editing work (although some Raw converters may operate as Photoshop plug-ins). That’s the main difference between this and the Adobe Camera Raw workflow (previous spread). This time, you create a converted image

Raw file

file before you open it in Photoshop, whereas with ACR the conversion takes place as the file is opened. This may restrict the extent to which you can edit the image and retain its full detail. However, this workflow might suit you if you find you can make most of the everyday image enhancements you need without Photoshop, and simply want to use Photoshop to edit those images that need a little more.

Image file Camera maker’s Raw Converter

16 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

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Photoshop

Raw software options

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Nikon’s ‘official’ Raw converter is Capture NX2, which is actually a very capable and interesting image-editor in its own right. Unfortunately, it’s a paid-for extra (around £120), and the only program you get free with Nikon D-SLRs is the much more basic Nikon Capture NX.

Sony Digital SLRs get Sony’s Image Data Converter Raw conversion software, which is supplied with the camera. It looks and sounds technical, but it does a pretty good job, so it’s worth a look, even if you subsequently decide Adobe Camera Raw is better.

It might not necessarily give you the best outright image quality and it may be less convenient, but it will exactly reproduce the camera’s own settings. The other reason for considering your camera maker’s own software is related: camera makers naturally claim their own software produce the best results. Different manufacturers – often different models of camera – use different Raw formats, which is why third-party converters such as Adobe Camera Raw need to be updated regularly to handle files from new camera models. Manufacturers claim that nobody knows their cameras’ characteristics better than they do, and that they can therefore produce converters best optimised for their own cameras. For example, Canon’s DPP software includes automatic fixes for common lens distortions specific to Canon lenses.

Free or not? This aside, though, it’s impossible to predict whether the final results will be better: because Raw files contain the actual data captured by the camera, in theory you should be able to manipulate it almost without restriction until the resulting image is exactly the way you want it, whether that matches what you saw through the viewfinder or reflects a more creative interpretation. In this view, it’s the conversion software’s power and ease of use that matter, not how well it might replicate in-camera processing, the limitations of which shooting Raw is designed to circumvent in the first place. The other consideration is cost, though this does depend on the maker. Canon supplies its own Digital Photo Professional software free with any models that can shoot Raw files, but Nikon sells its Capture NX2 software separately. You should check the bundled software that comes with your camera to find out. Our advice generally would be to try any free Raw converters, but stick to Adobe Camera Raw otherwise. (It’s also free, remember, leaving aside the cost of Photoshop or Elements itself.)

Canon’s Digital Photo Professional software comes free with its EOS SLRs and is actually a rather good Raw converter. It’s not so good at highlight recovery, but it does have automatic chromatic aberration and distortion correction for pictures shot with Canon lenses. It’s well worth trying out if you own a Canon EOS.

CAMERA RAW TOOLS: PROS AND CONS Pros ■ They may be free, so are worth trying for that reason alone! ■ They should accurately reflect the colour, tone and white balance settings on the camera, because they are developed by the people who best know the cameras ■ For the same reason, they may be better optimised for the camera’s sensor than Adobe Camera Raw ■ They may include automatic distortion and chromatic aberration correction

Cons ■ You’re generally stuck with a timeconsuming workflow where conversion is a separate process ■ The software is often crude and lacking in-depth editing tools ■ Not all Raw converters can recover the extra highlight detail that makes Raw files so useful ■ Sometimes you get only a basic converter with the camera and have to pay extra for the full version

A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop 17 WorldMags.net

Introducing Raw

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Third-party Raw converters

The camera maker’s own Raw converter may match the camera’s settings more exactly, but a third-party Raw converter may produce better quality...

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ssentially, Raw files are the closest digital equivalent to film negatives – and if that’s so, then you’d have to say that Raw converters are the digital developer. Traditionally, black-andwhite film photographers could use many different developer formulations for their films and get subtly different results each time, and we’re certainly at the same point now with Raw converters.

You can use the camera maker’s own Raw converter and get perfectly predictable results, or you can use a third-party application to try to improve on them. Third-party Raw converters often have more sophisticated tools, a more streamlined interface and workflow, and compatibility with a wide range of cameras so that you don’t have to change your software when you change cameras.

The black art of Raw

DxO Optics Pro isn’t just a Raw converter. It uses custom-made camera and lens profiles, downloaded alongside the software, to automatically correct any distortion, chromatic aberration and vignetting, and boasts many manual corrections too.

Raw conversion is a complex process. It’s not simply a case of converting one format to another. Different Raw converters will often use different ‘demosaicing’ routines, for a start. Demosaicing is the process whereby the red, green and blue pixel data captured by the sensor is interpolated into full-colour data. This is something of a black art, and it has a noticeable impact on the rendition of very fine detail. It’s noticeable, for example, that Capture One’s demosaicing process seems able to extract perceptibly crisper fine detail than others, including Adobe Camera Raw, though the levels and type of sharpening also play a part. On the other hand, Adobe Camera Raw is very good at highlight recovery, and the dynamic range it can extract from Fujifilm’s SuperCCD SR sensors (FinePix S3 Pro and S5 Pro) is breathtaking.

There are many independent Raw converters on the market, including Bibble Pro (www.bibblelabs.com). The trick is to choose the converter that suits the way you work and not concentrate solely on minute differences in image quality. Each Raw converter produces a slightly different tonal quality and colour rendition. It might, with enough experimentation, be possible to make the results from one look the same as the results from another, but when used ‘out of the box’ they do tend to have different ‘looks’. They also react differently to

THIRD-PARTY RAW CONVERTERS: WORKFLOW The workflow for third-party Raw converters is the same in principle as it is for the Raw converters that are typically provided with the D-SLR camera you buy: usually you would convert your Raw files in batches and save them out as JPEGs or TIFFs, ready for use in other programs like Photoshop. But the Raw software may have other, broader functions. Capture One and DxO Optics Pro are also used for

Raw file

enhancing regular image files too, and Capture One plays quite heavily on its browsing, rating and metadata functions. This could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how you like to organise your images. These browsing/organising tools are of limited value, for example, if you already have a system based around the Elements Organiser, Lightroom, or Adobe Bridge.

Image file Third-party Raw converter

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Photoshop

Raw software options

WorldMags.net They all do the same job, but different Raw converters have distinctly different ‘looks’. It’s worth experimenting with a few to discover whether one has a particular tone and colour rendition that you like – and doesn’t require endless tweaking to get there.

different cameras, depending on how good the maker’s profile for that particular model happens to be. Makers’ own Raw converters have the advantage of remaining true to the settings and colour renditions of the cameras themselves. You don’t get this with thirdparty Raw converters, but you often get other qualities which may prove more useful. DxO Optics Pro, for example, comes with dedicated camera and lens profiles which can automatically correct lens defects including chromatic aberration, distortion and vignetting (corner shading). These profiles are created in a lab from test samples; they’re not just a set of adjustments you have to figure out and apply manually as you would in Photoshop’s Lens Correction dialog. (In fact, this is a feature of Capture One 5 Pro, too.)

Easy workflow The other advantage of third-party Raw converters is that they may prove easier to integrate into your workflow. You may find the results superior, or you may simply prefer working with them. The workflow aspect is important. You’re likely to be converting dozens of Raw files at a time, after all, so the quality of the individual conversions does have to be set against the convenience and speed of the whole process. This is where Adobe Camera Raw (and Lightroom) are particularly effective.

THIRD-PARTY RAW CONVERTERS: PROS AND CONS

Phase One’s Capture One is available in an inexpensive standard form and a more sophisticated Pro version, which includes lens correction profiles. Both are exceptionally good at extracting every last ounce of detail.

Pros ■ They may produce better quality than the camera maker’s own Raw converter ■ They work with many different cameras, so you don’t have to learn a new program if you swap cameras ■ Some include automatic chromatic aberration, lens distortion and vignetting correction options ■ They may offer more advanced image editing and enhancement tools

Cons ■ They cost extra, over and above the cost of the camera and Photoshop ■ They ignore camera-specific settings like picture styles ■ They represent an extra processing step, which could complicate your workflow ■ However good the conversions, you may still wish you could quickly test out a different adjustment without having to re-process the image

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Introducing Raw

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Integrated browsers and Raw converters

Using a separate Raw converter adds an extra step, but there are programs out there which can integrate the process seamlessly into your workflow

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ll three of the approaches we’ve looked at so far have a distinct start point and end point: your original Raw file is converted into an editable image file. It’s an additional phase in your workflow, and it’s not one you can reverse or modify, in the sense that you can’t ‘unravel’ the finished image bit-bybit to change the conversion parameters: you have to go back to the start. If the conversion produced by Adobe Camera Raw, for example, isn’t quite right, you can reopen the Raw file, tweak the settings you used, and save out a new image with these new settings, but you can’t take an image from Photoshop back into ACR again to fine-tune the conversion. There’s an unconverted and a converted image, and the two are distinct. This is where Adobe’s Photoshop Lightroom, Apple’s Aperture and even Google’s Picasa come in. These programs treat Raw files, JPEGs and TIFFs the same. They apply the same ‘non-destructive’ editing adjustments to all of them. It’s like the principle of adjustment layers in Photoshop, but extended to everything you do, and with all the adjustments working in parallel rather than as a linear stack of layers. (Actually, in Picasa any adjustments do have to be undone in the order they were applied, but it still ‘remembers’ all of them.)

Adobe’s Lightroom offers powerful image-editing tools, but you can also send files to an external application like Photoshop. Once you’ve made your changes in Photoshop and saved the file, it’s automatically added to the Lightroom library and ‘stacked’ with the original.

In Lightroom and Aperture, the original image is never altered and no new images are created unless you use an external editing program or ‘export’ an edited version. Instead, the program library stores a reference to the location of the original file, plus a thumbnail and a larger-sized preview of what it looks like. When you make adjustments, the program library records these adjustments in its

database and displays their effects in real time on the thumbnails and previews. The adjustments are stored processes, not images made up of pixels. You can create many versions of the same image, and none of these is a separate file. Each one has its own thumbnail and preview in the database, but in fact it’s just a different set of ‘instructions‘, each of which can be re-adjusted at any time.

BROWSER/CONVERTERS: WORKFLOW The workflow for combined cataloguing/Raw conversion software is much shorter because previously separate steps are merged into one. For a start, Raw files are not treated any differently from JPEGs, TIFFs and PSD files, so there’s no separate conversion process. Second, none of the other processes we’ve looked at so far take cataloguing tools into account, but here, they’re integral to the software. Third, you never have to save your work or create new files: your changes are stored automatically in the software, and you create new files only when you need them, via an ‘Export’ option. Initially, software like this may seem more complicated, but by streamlining and integrating your workflow it makes things a lot simpler in other ways which aren’t immediately obvious.

Photoshop Raw file

20 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

All-in-one cataloguing/ conversion tool Image file

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Raw software options

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Mac users can use Aperture, which looks very different from Lightroom but actually works along the same principles, offering high-end cataloguing tools, sophisticated image enhancement and Raw conversion. Lightroom is also available in a Mac version, so you get a choice between two top-quality cataloguing/conversion tools. In other words, when you make changes to the Exposure, Levels, White Balance or any other setting, the sliders stay in the same position when you close the application and they’re still there when you re-open it and go back to that image. The only time Lightroom or Aperture actually creates a new file is when you export the image for use in another application. And here, you are genuinely creating a separate new file rather than saving over the original (much like saving a converted image from the Adobe Camera Raw plug-in).

The editing tools might look different on your screen, but Lightroom actually uses the same Raw processing engine as Adobe Camera Raw. Whatever you can do in ACR you can do in Lightroom, and vice versa, and the results should be identical. So your choice between Lightroom and Camera Raw is more a question of workflow than of relative image quality.

The key point about these applications as far as Raw files are concerned is that Raw conversion is no longer a ‘sealed’ process with a start point and an end point. Instead, your Raw conversions (if that’s still the right word) remain ‘live’ throughout. You can adjust any one of the conversion parameters at any time, and they never become permanent.

A good idea This is an excellent solution because it means you get all the advantages of Raw files without the separate conversion process. These programs share the pros and cons of third-party Raw converters in that they don’t precisely match the camera’s own settings, but they may well improve on the overall quality of the results. Lightroom shares the underlying Raw conversion technology used in Adobe Camera Raw, so it can be very impressive at maximising the tonal range

and particularly recovering highlights, though you need to keep an eye on midtone contrast and saturation in the process. That said, choosing a program like Lightroom or Aperture over a conventional Raw converter or the Adobe Camera Raw plug-in is a workflow decision as much as a quality decision. Lightroom and Aperture are designed from the ground up as integrated workflow solutions for photographers, combining photo-editing with photo management: all the Raw images are stored in the program’s database and accessed via the program’s own browser. It’s a new way of working that won’t suit everyone; many will still prefer to create converted JPEG, TIFF or PSD files from their Raw files, store them alongside their Raw files and use conventional photo browsing tools to keep them organised. Download the trial versions of these innovative packages, and see what you think...

BROWSER/CONVERTERS: PROS AND CONS

Google’s free Picasa can read most digital SLR Raw formats. Its Raw conversions aren’t always the best, but it can at least display Raw files and carry out basic enhancements. Its strength is that it’s really a file/folder browser, so that it shows you what files are actually on your computer rather than using a separate database.

Pros ■ Raw conversions can be tweaked in the smallest detail at any time ■ Raw files, JPEGs, TIFFs and PSD files are all treated the same, so you can use the same tools and process JPEGs without losing detail until you export ■ Less hard disk space is used than with other options because the software creates ‘virtual’ versions, not new files ■ Your workflow is simpler because there are fewer steps ■ Handling Raw files is part of your whole workflow, not an additional step ■ Integrated photo browsers mean you can manage your photos as well as edit them

Cons ■ Not everyone will like using image database tools – ordinary file/folder browsers like Adobe Bridge are simpler to grasp ■ If you’re not systematic about the way you handle files, it’s possible for the database and the original files to become separated ■ Adjusted images must be exported as new files before they become available to other image-editing programs ■ Regular backups are vital because all your photo enhancements are stored in a single database file ■ You‘re committed to the entire workflow, and can’t easily just convert the occasional Raw file if you want to

A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop 21 WorldMags.net

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Don’t gamble with colour Get accurate colours by following a few simple rules. We explain how colour management can help you get perfect prints

22 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

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Colour management

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efore you start editing Raw images on your computer in earnest, consider this: there’s no point working in an image format designed to present colours accurately if your computer and printer aren’t equipped to show those colours properly. Most people assume that computers show colours as they’re supposed to be: in fact, most computers are incorrectly set up in some respect. If you don’t take colour management seriously, you really are taking a gamble with your digital photography and image-editing. Read on to discover how easy it can be to turn out predictable results with accurate colours.

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Introducing Raw

WorldMags.net Before you do anything, read this!

In our experience, the idea of a ‘colour space’ is what drives most people crazy as they begin in colour management. Any colour can be represented as a point in space inside a sphere (see the diagram below). Somewhere within that colour sphere sits the position that describes your chosen colour. It can be represented mathematically as a point on three axes within the sphere. A colour space describes the size and shape of a 3D box that sits within the sphere. If any of your colours are too strong for your chosen colour space, then they’ll simply spill outside the box: that’s called ‘being out of gamut’. In digital photography, there are two widely used colour spaces: sRGB and Adobe RGB. The first is the default colour space used by most digital cameras and the default colour space of most computer monitors. Both sRGB and Adobe RGB use red, green and blue to reference colours. However, colour inkjet printers use a combination of cyan, magenta, yellow and black inks. This is because if red, green and blue inks are mixed on paper the result is a horrible muddy brown mess. In order to translate the colour that appears on your camera’s LCD or your computer screen, we need colour management. In practice, this is really just complex arithmetic that calculates instructions for a printer to place dots of yellow, magenta, cyan and black ink on paper in order to mimic the colours you see on screen. With the best will in the world, there’s no way that a series of ink droplets can exactly match the colour that appears on your computer screen, but we can get very close – and we do this by using colour management.

Workflow for perfect colour There are four main elements to your workflow if you want consistently accurate colour prints

My space Adobe RGB and sRGB colour spaces are pretty close in practical terms. Commercial printers prefer Adobe RGB, but sRGB is best for home or lab prints. The colour space info will be embedded in every shot you take until you choose to use another colour space.

1

Set your D-SLR colour space

Choose the colour space that you want to shoot in. Both sRGB and Adobe RGB are good. The Adobe RGB colour space can cope with a wider range of colour than sRGB, but most monitors and colour printers can’t display all the colours able to be recorded in Adobe RGB. Most modern D-SLR cameras let you choose your colour space, but the way you do this varies from camera to camera. Read your camera’s manual to find out how.

White

Yellow

Green

Red

Blue

Black

24 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

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Colour management

WorldMags.net Calibrate your 2 colour monitor

All computer screens vary in terms of colour and brightness. To be sure that your screen is producing a faithful version of the images you’ve shot, it’s essential that you calibrate your computer’s screen. This will ensure that there are no overt colour casts and that the gamma of the screen is set at a suitable level of brightness. We do this so that the screen will more faithfully mirror the final output from your chosen printer or other output device.

3

Get accurate colours in Photoshop

When you open an image in Photoshop, the way the image is handled depends on how you’ve configured Photoshop’s Color Settings (see below). Normally, you should choose to preserve the embedded colour profile. This tells Photoshop not to change any colours, but to be aware of the possible range of colours the image may contain. If you try to push the colours beyond the limits of the colour space during editing, some colours will be ‘out of gamut’.

Check this…

The Color Settings in Photoshop (Edit >Colour Settings) are supplied with a series of presets to get you started. For us in the UK, the European General Purpose Defaults preset is probably the best option. You can choose this preset from the drop-down menu at the top of the Color Settings dialog.

4

Get your printer settings right

Once your computer screen is accurate, you’ll have a much better chance of adjusting the colour of your images with more accuracy. This should mean that your prints will reflect the edits you’ve made. You can choose to let your printer manage the colours or you can get your image-editing software to handle it. There are pros and cons to each method: you need to try both to see which yields the best results for you.

A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop 25 WorldMags.net

Introducing Raw

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Measuring your monitor If you walk into an electrical store and stare at a wall of television screens on display, all showing the same picture, you’ll be struck by how different the colours look on each set. The same goes for your computer screen. Each

monitor has its own inherent level of brightness and colour. Some screens produce warm images, while others might have a blue cast. You probably don’t notice this because the human eye is a very clever tool. Your eye (or your brain, to be strictly accurate) can make even candlelight look normal rather than the sickly yellow that it really is. But when you take a photograph in candlelight, if you don’t set the correct white-balance preset on your camera, you may see an image that simply looks wrong. The truth is, your computer screen may also look wrong, but your eyes use the human equivalent of auto white balance to make everything look okay. You can get reasonable results with calibration software (see page 31);

26 A photographer’s to… Raw in Photoshop 26 Digitalguide Camera September 2008

but to make certain that your monitor is displaying colours accurately, you need a monitor calibrator. This is a light-sensitive device that measures the brightness and colour of a screen. The calibration device plugs into your PC or Mac via a USB cable. Using special software, it measures your screen and makes adjustments to display colours accurately. Using a calibrator is very easy. You place the colorimeter on the surface of your computer’s screen and follow the on-screen prompts. The software gets your screen to display a range of colours at different levels of brightness, then produces a colour profile to correct any deficiencies. Your monitor’s profile is a reference file stored on your computer to ensure the screen displays colours accurately. The screen profile plays no further part in the colour management process apart from that. See page 32 for more on calibration.

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Colour management

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Accurate printing

Now that you’ve made sure that what you see on your screen is correct, it’s time to set up your printer to show the same colours An accurate screen isn’t a guarantee for an accurate print. Accurate prints depend on profiling or calibrating of your printer. Every printer is different,

and each model prints colour slightly differently depending on the batch of ink used and the type of paper you’re printing on. Fortunately, you have

several strong choices when it comes to printing colours accurately, so here, we’ll explain each of your printer management options in turn.

Option A: Do nothing

Option B: An ICC profile

Option C: Custom profile

Most printers have their own colour management built into the printer driver. This takes the RGB values from a digital photo and translates them into instructions that tell the printer where to squirt individual droplets of differentcoloured inks and at what size. A lot of today’s printer drivers are pretty accurate, so it’s worth trying this method first once you’ve calibrated your monitor. Assess the result: if it’s close enough for your needs, don’t torture yourself any further. However, if it’s not close to what you’re seeing on your calibrated screen, then go to option B...

Most printer manufacturers produce ICC profiles for their printers. ICC stands for International Color Consortium – the industry body that sets standards for colour management. These small files contain a description of how your printer handles colour. Each profile is created for use with the manufacturer’s own range of paper and printers. There will even be separate profiles for different types of paper. Most specialist paper makers produce ICC profiles that you can use with your specific model of printer. To use ICC Profiles, configure Photoshop’s Print dialog box properly (see below).

Set Photoshop up to print well One of the main reasons why people find their prints don’t match what appears on their computer screen is down to improper settings in Photoshop’s Print dialog. Follow these tips for pictures that will more closely match what you see on screen.

If you want total accuracy, then you can use a colorimeter to profile your own printer. Using a device such as the ColorMunki, you can print out a special test chart, which you then scan with a colorimeter. The software produces an ICC profile unique to your printer. You’ll need to create a fresh profile for each different paper type you use.

Rendering with intent If an image has some ‘out of gamut’ colours, Photoshop needs to know how to handle those colours. The way of handling colours is called a rendering intent. Photoshop can render colours that are too bright or too saturated for your printer in one of four ways:

PERCEPTUAL

1 2 3 4

This intent ensures that all colours fit within the colour gamut of your printer. It preserves the relationships between the colours but squeezes them into the available colour space. Use this as your default for printing photos.

RELATIVE COLORMETRIC Here any colours ‘in gamut’ are left unchanged. Colours ‘out of gamut’ are clipped. Colours too saturated or bright for your printer are clipped to fit. This is best used for CMYK-to-CMYK printing.

SATURATION This intent squashes colours into a desired colour space, but it alters the relationship between the colours. It’s best for printing vibrant graphics.

5

1 Color Space Check you’re using the right colour space – it should be Adobe RGB or sRGB.

2 Management If using an ICC profile, select Photoshop; otherwise choose Printer.

3 ICC Profile Choose the correct profile for the printer and paper that you’re using.

4 Rendering See our guide on the right to decide which type of rendering intent to use.

5 The proof Tick this box to get an indication of how your image will look when printed.

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ABSOLUTE COLORMETRIC Similar to Relative Colormetric, this option takes into account the white point of the paper you’re using. It’s good for proofing packaging or newsprint.

Introducing Raw

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Calibration devices

We compare four popular colour measurement gadgets to help you decide which is the best for your needs and budget

X-Rite ColorMunki

Pantone Huey Pro

PRICE £335 DETAILS www.colormunki.com

PRICE £70 DETAILS www.pantone.com

This was the first all-in-one colourprofiling device to come on the market. The ColorMunki can profile your monitor, printer and read the colour of individual swatches of material or colour test charts. The device is a bit unwieldy: to calibrate your monitor, you must first dress the ColorMunki in its own zip-up jacket, which has a weighted strap that enables the device to rest against your computer screen while taking readings. The software is so easy to use that it’s almost impossible to go wrong. Once you’ve profiled your computer screen you can then print out a colour test chart, which you then scan by running the ColorMunki over it. Getting this right takes a bit of practice, but once you’ve scanned the first chart, the ColorMunki software will produce a second chart for you to scan and fine-tune your printer profile. It’s a great device, and well worth looking at if you use specialist types of paper.

If you’re on a tight budget, the Pantone Huey is a great solution. It can only profile your monitor, but that’s all many people want to do. The Huey reads ambient light levels and will adjust the brightness of your screen to match the lighting conditions in your workroom or studio. The software supplied is really easy to use, but you may have to adjust the brightness and contrast settings of your monitor to get a proper profile. Sticking the Huey on your screen is a bit hairy, as the device uses a group of mini suction cups to stay in place – it’s a bit like the tentacle of an octopus – but in our extensive tests, it hasn’t caused any damage to any LCD screen. When the Huey isn’t in use, just leave it plugged into your computer, and it will sit happily in its little cradle, taking ambient light readings at intervals chosen by you. Having the device always at the ready makes it easy to recalibrate your screen every few months or so.

Verdict

Verdict

The ColorMunki smashes the price and performance barriers of professional colour management. Definitely a good investment for photo and graphics work.

The Pantone Huey is the obvious choice for anyone on a budget: it has good software and is easy to use. It’s also neat, which means it takes up hardly any space on the desk.

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Colour management

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Spyder3 Elite

Studio XR2

PRICE £160 DETAILS www.datacolor.com

PRICE £150 DETAILS www.colourconfidence.com

DataColor is a Swiss company that’s long been involved in colour management. The Spyder range of calibration devices has always sold well, and the Spyder 3 is no exception. Unlike a real spider, this Spyder only has three legs. It’s suitable for sticking to an LCD monitor or a conventional glass CRT device. The Spyder 3 has a large sensor that’s very sensitive to colour. To get the best from the Spyder 3 you need to make sure your monitor is ‘warmed up’: screens need to be on for 30 minutes before they settle down. Like the Huey, the Spyder 3 sits in its own cradle and stays connected to your computer. The DataColor software is good, but it requires a serial number (as does the ColorMunki). We wonder why companies bother with this, as you have to buy their hardware to use the software anyway.

Based on the old Eye-One device, the XR-2 is showing its age a little but, nonetheless, it can profi le a monitor perfectly well. The software is good because it uses a special little routine that can fi nd where on the screen the colorimeter is sitting. Included in the kit is a Kodak Color Management Check Up kit, which helps you to assess images on your screen against the ones you print out. High-res test fi les are included on a CD along with genuine certifi ed Kodak test prints that you can match against them. Colour Confi dence has also included one of their Total Balance devices. This little fl ip-out square of plastic is a bit like a Lastolite refl ector and has one side that’s white and the other that’s neutral grey. It’s a good device for taking custom white balance readings and classic grey card exposures.

Verdict

Verdict

Cutting-edge technology and a professional device for colour management. Look out for trade-in offers on your old calibration device to cut the cost.

The Studio XR2 is quite good value, but there are more modern devices appearing on the market now. If you like the extras on offer, then it could be a good deal for you.

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Introducing Raw

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What to do next... Once you’ve profiled your monitor and printer (or chosen the correct ICC profile), you can make a test print of one of your photos to compare what appears on the screen and what comes out of the printer. Before you do that, it’s important to understand how light can wreck your colour perception. It’s no good trying to assess your colour prints under the light of a tungsten table lamp or by the flicker of a fluorescent tube. Use daylight to assess your images, and you’ll see the real colours. When you hold your test print up to your computer screen for comparison, it’s important to realise that you’re never going to see a perfect match. A screen that uses red, green and blue dots of light to create an image can never exactly match the reflected light from a piece of off-white paper that’s covered in droplets of cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink. But with good colour management practice, you can get very close.

Colour success 1 Calibrate your monitor 2 Use an ICC profile 3 Select Perceptual Render 4 Assess your print in daylight If your monitor is incorrect, your prints will probably be off too. Choose the right profile for your printer and the paper you’re using.

For most home printing, choose the Perceptual Rendering Intent.

Let your print dry, then assess it in daylight before you decide if it’s okay.

If you follow these four simple steps, you should find that your colour prints have predictable colours. Now you can edit your photos confidently, knowing that they will print out as a close match to what you’re seeing on your computer screen when editing.

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Colour calibration

WorldMags.net How to…

Calibrate in seconds Don’t want to invest in calibration hardware? Here’s a free option... calibration device to help you set the monitor’s colours and tones, but there are software alternatives available. Here, we’ll show you how to use the free Monitor Calibration Wizard to calibrate Original your display. You can download this handy tool via http://tinyurl.com/mcwiz. Read on to learn more...

Look in the Calibrate 1 folder on your DVD

shot

Lee Beel

Getting your pictures to look the same in print as they do on your PC’s monitor can be quite a challenge if your screen isn’t set up correctly. On an overly bright screen, for example, black shadows may look grey. By darkening the shadows in Photoshop, you could cause them to become clipped and print with no detail. If your display is too dark, then you may produce blown-out highlights when you try to brighten things up. You can buy a

On the disc

1 Adjust contrast

2 Adjust maximum colour value

In Photoshop, open settings_start.jpg from the Calibrate 1 folder on your DVD. This is a reference image to help you calibrate colours and tones. In Monitor Calibration Wizard’s welcome screen, click Run Wizard and then Start. Adjust your Monitor’s brightness and contrast so that the white box looks white while the black box looks black. Click Continue.

To set your display’s maximum colour value, go to the Step 1 panel. Drag the top box’s slider left. Stop just before the colour in the bottom half of the red box begins to change. Move the bottom box’s slider as far right as you can before you can spot any difference between the top and bottom sections of the black box.

3 Adjust mid-range colours

4 Test the profile

Go to the Step 2 panel. These boxes adjust the mid-range colours for your display’s Red, Green and Blue channels. To calibrate these individually, drag each box’s slider until the colour in the inner box blends perfectly with the colour of the outer box’s pattern. When the display’s Red colours are calibrated, click do the same for Green and Blue.

Test your display’s new profile by clicking on the 15 Second Test button. The wizard will minimise and show you what your display will look like using its newly calibrated colours. Fine-tune the brightness using the slider and click Apply to confirm the changes. You can then tick a box to make Windows load the profile when your PC starts up.

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Introducing Raw

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How to…

Ensure accurate on-screen colours

On the disc Look in the Calibrate 2 folder on your DVD

Learn how to use a calibration device to set your monitor to display colours as accurately as possible – the way they were meant to be seen The monitor you use to view and edit your images is a fundamental part of your photography kit. If your screen has never been calibrated, the chances are that it doesn’t display the colours in your shots as accurately as it should. This accuracy is essential: without it, you might be tempted to make colour adjustments to your Raw photos when they’re not actually needed, or neglect to make them when they are required. Given a picture of a bright red object, for example, an uncalibrated monitor might display a slightly muted or different shade of red. If you then correct the image so that it’s as bright as you think it should be, it may seem fine on your monitor, but it will look too bright on a screen that’s been correctly calibrated – or, more importantly, when you try to print it out. Likewise, your monitor might make reds look a bit over-saturated, but if you tone them down they’ll end up looking flat on a monitor

that displays accurate colours. The solution is simple; calibrate your monitor so that it displays colours correctly - pure red pixels as red, pure white pixels as white, and so on. One way to do this is by eye: older full versions of Photoshop used to include an application called Adobe Gamma, which enabled you to adjust the brightness and colour of your screen to match defined presets. If you haven’t got an old version of Photoshop, we showed you on page 31 how to use Monitor Calibration Wizard to do a similar job. Software certainly helps – but a better, more precise way to ensure accurate onscreen colours is to use a calibration kit, or colorimeter. There are numerous makes and models available, but they essentially do the same thing. A colour meter placed on your screen objectively measures the colour and brightness of a series of on-screen colour swatches, and then works out the difference

32 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

between what your screen is displaying and what the colours actually are. It uses this information to create a colour profile, which it applies to your monitor. After calibration, a test chart enables you to see the difference the procedure has made so that you can make sure you’re happy with the results. Until recently, colour calibration devices tended to be quite expensive, but there are now some excellent budget options available for as little as £60 (and if you club together with a few friends, the investment obviously works out even cheaper). Here, we’ll show you how to install, activate and use the popular Spyder 3 Express colorimeter, which retails for around £80. The whole process only takes 15 minutes. Once your screen is calibrated, you’ll wonder how you managed without it. For anyone who’s serious about digital photography, the hardware and the time you spend to use it is definitely a worthwhile investment.

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Correct colours with confidence

1 Install the software

To get started, close all open applications and insert the Spyder3 Express software CD into your computer. Select Install when prompted: a series of screens will then guide you through the installation process. A screen prompt will remind you not to plug in the Spyder until installation is complete.

2 Activate the Spyder

Once the software is installed, make sure you’re connected to the internet and plug the Spyder into a USB port. Double-click the Spyder 3 icon on your desktop and follow the on-screen instructions. Enter the serial code on your packaging when prompted and note the activation code. Click Finish.

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Introducing Raw

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3 Get set up

4 Attach the Spyder

5 Start the calibration

6 Go compare

Double-click on the Spyder 3 icon to launch the Calibration Wizard. You’ll be asked to confirm that your monitor has been on for 30 minutes (to ensure accuracy), that there are no bright lights pointing at the screen, and that the monitor is set to its default brightness and contrast settings. Click Next.

Click Next to begin the calibration process. A series of colour swatches will appear on-screen, and the Spyder will flash as each colour is calibrated. The software takes a few minutes to scroll through a series of colours, plus their assorted shades. When the calibration process is complete, click Finish.

Next, choose LCD & Laptop (or CRT if your monitor looks like an old-fashioned TV). Place your Spyder onto the screen as indicated, using either the sucker provided or the counterweight attached to the USB cable, which can be hung over the back of the screen to hold the Spyder firmly in place.

The software will now display a series of images that enable you to see the difference the calibration process has made to your screen. To compare your calibrated screen with the uncalibrated version, click on the Switch button in the bottom-left corner. You’ll be amazed at the difference!

The best of the rest When it comes to monitor calibration, there are plenty of good quality, great value options to choose from. We used the Spyder 3, but here are three more worth considering...

Pantone Huey, £70

Capable of calibration in three minutes, the plug-and-play Pantone Huey works like the Spyder 3, but it can also compensate for changes in ambient lighting. The process is almost entirely automated, and its small size and stand make it portable and easy to use.

Eye-One Display LT, £110

Like the Spyder and the Huey, the Eye-One Display LT is a plug-and-play, entry-level device. It too features compensation for ambient lighting, and an easy-to-use interface. Plus, it can be easily upgraded to the professional Eye-One Display 2 software.

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ColorMunki Photo, £335

If you’re serious about image editing, the ColorMunki is the ultimate in functionality. Unlike the other models, it provides fast and accurate monitor-to-print matching, so you can be confident that what you see on screen will print exactly as you expect.

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Update

Update your Raw editor How to download and install the latest version of Adobe Camera Raw To view and edit Raw files, you need to use Adobe’s Camera Raw (ACR) editor, or similar software such as Digital Photo Professional. However, if you’re not running the latest version of ACR it may not be compatible with your camera, especially if you own one of the newer models. Different cameras use different

processing techniques to capture a Raw image, so Adobe has to keep updating its Camera Raw editor to make it compatible with the latest models as they go on sale. Camera Raw is a software plug-in, so you can download and install the latest version. We’ll show you how in the steps below.

Different versions of Photoshop also use different versions of the Camera Raw plug-in. This means that if your new camera requires a recent version of the Camera Raw plug-in, you may be obliged to update your copy of Photoshop or Photoshop Elements to make it compatible with the latest plug-in release.

1Download the update

2Install the camera profiles

3Install the Camera Raw plug-in

4You’re now up to date!

In a web browser, go to www.adobe.com. Select Updates from the Downloads menu. Use the Find Product Updates drop-down menu to locate Camera Raw. This gives you a list of available versions: click on a release to view information on which versions of Photoshop or Elements it requires. Click Proceed to Download, then click Download Now. Choose Save.

From the Start menu, select My Computer and then the C drive. Navigate to the correct Plug-ins folder for your Photoshop version: the options are provided on the Adobe web page where you downloaded the plug-in. Drag the original Camera Raw plug-in from this folder to your Desktop (in case you ever need access to the older ACR version), then drag your newly downloaded Camera Raw plug-in into the folder.

Once the download is finished, make sure that neither Photoshop nor Elements is running. Double-click the downloaded file, Camera_Raw.zip, and choose File > Extract All. Follow the instructions to open the unzipped files in a new window. Double-click Camera Profiles and follow the instructions to add the latest camera profiles to your computer.

Start Photoshop or Photoshop Elements and open a RAW file via the File > Open menu option. You should now see the new version number at the top-left of the ACR editor’s main interface. Keep an eye out on the Adobe website and magazines such as Digital Camera or Photo Plus for news of Camera Raw plug-in updates, then repeat the procedure to ensure you’re always up to date.

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2

Welcome to Camera Raw

Explore the powerful Raw editor included with Photoshop and Elements, and find out how it can help you create perfect photos 10 reasons to go Raw: quick tricks to try out

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Using Camera Raw: explore the interface

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Get more from Raw: quick tips and techniques

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Read a histogram: the graph at the heart of ACR

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Original shot

This photo, Ben Brain; other images, George Cairns

On the disc

10 great reasons to go Raw Look in the Raw Top Ten folder on the DVD

Use these easy Raw fixes to combat common photo problems relating to colour, composition and tone, without compromising on quality WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop CS1 or Photoshop Elements 5, or later WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How to use Adobe Camera Raw to reveal hidden detail, correct colour casts, and improve your pictures’ composition IT ONLY TAKES 20 minutes When you capture a scene using a compressed file format, such as JPEG, your camera processes the image as it’s stored. This can save you the hassle of boosting image colours or sharpening your shots with software when you get them home. You can often

alter the parameter settings for these automatic tweaks through the camera’s menu. If editing the shots becomes necessary later, however, compressed files are much more likely to develop ugly artifacts. When you shoot in Raw, the camera ignores the parameter menu settings, so it doesn’t boost colour or sharpen shots as it captures them. What you get is the image data actually captured by the sensor, without any in-camera processing. You can then use the Adobe Camera Raw editor, a plug-in that works with either Photoshop CS or Photoshop Elements, to take greater control over

38 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

each shot’s colour and sharpness, all while reducing the chance of adding artifacts to the edited image. To introduce you to the potential of Adobe Camera Raw, we’ll demonstrate how to overcome some of the more common photo problems, using only the tools in this powerful plug-in software. This will enable you to produce correctly colour balanced shots with a healthy tonal range, without compromising the quality of your edited shots. We’ll also help you fix compositional problems and even straighten up wonky horizons, all without leaving the comfort and familiarity of the Camera Raw editor.

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Camera Raw basics

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1 Reveal detail and remove noise

2 Fix clipped highlights

3 Tweak tints and temperature

4 Boost colour

This shot (Raw_start04.cr2 on the DVD) suffers from clipped shadows: dark areas have become jet black, so fine tonal detail that should be visible in these areas is lost. Drag the Fill Light slider to about 45 to restore shadow detail without blowing out the highlights. This can reveal colour noise, so click the Detail tab and drag the Noise Reduction Color slider to about 50, then boost Saturation to +15 to remove it.

Some shots can suffer from a green or magenta tint, so use the Tint slider to correct these colour aberrations. A value of around +20 will counteract this shot’s green tint and create healthier-looking skin tones. Warm up the shot by boosting the Temperature to about 5,800. This should remove unwanted lighting hues.

Overexposed shots (such as Raw_start01.cr2) suffer from flat highlights. To spot and fix these, click the Highlight Clipping Warning icon above the right-hand end of the histogram display at the top of the Camera Raw screen, and clipped highlights will appear as red patches in your image. Drag the Recovery slider to 80 to restore the missing highlight detail. Nudge the Exposure to –0.90 to refine the shot’s overall tone.

By boosting Saturation, you can create a more striking photo, but there’s a danger that skin tones will look too orange. The portrait-friendly Vibrance slider is designed to increase a shot’s colours but leave skin tones intact. Drag the Vibrance slider up to +50 or so to boost the colours without leaving the subject red-faced.

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Welcome to Camera Raw

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5 Sharper shooting

6 Clever cropping

To give your print extra punch (and sharpen a shot that isn’t quite in focus), click on the Details tab. Zoom in to 100%, then drag the Sharpening Amount to about 65 and Radius to 1.3 for a crisper-looking picture. Sharpening works by increasing edge contrast, meaning it can add halos and other artifacts to edges, so it’s best to leave sharpening a shot until after you’ve finished editing colour and tone.

You can get rid of the distracting people in the background of this shot using ACR’s Crop Tool. Click and drag to select the whole image. Hold down Shift to constrain the Crop Tool, then drag the corner handles inwards to crop the image. Be patient and try to get the best composition you can. When you’re finished, click Open Image to apply your changes and open a copy of the image in Photoshop or Elements.

7 Correct colour casts

8 Going straight

It’s easy to forget to adjust your White Balance setting to match local lighting conditions, leaving shots too cold (blueish) or too warm (orangey). To correct this cold shot (Raw_start02. cr2) in Photoshop, select Camera Raw’s White Balance tool. Click the eyedropper on an area that should be white, and you’ll reset the balance for the entire shot. 40 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

You can crop and level a wonky horizon in one easy move. Open Raw_start03.cr2, then click and drag with the Straighten tool to draw a line along the shot’s tilted horizon. Photoshop will then crop and level it in one go when you press Open Image. We kept a bit of creative tilt in this particular edited shot, though we could have levelled it out completely.

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Camera Raw basics

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9 Correct exposure

One of the most common problems you’ll encounter is shots that aren’t correctly exposed. Shooting and editing in Raw means you have the freedom to change the exposure setting without adding artifacts. Brighten up an underexposed Raw shot, such as Raw_start.cr2, by dragging the Exposure slider up by nearly one f-stop to +0.90. This results in a brighter shot with a much broader tonal range.

10 Perfect presets

You can use the Raw editor’s white balance presets to fix a colour-tinted shot, or even to creatively enhance a shot. To make our landscape (Raw_start.cr2) look like it’s being lit by a twilight golden glow, select Cloudy from the White Balance menu. This warms up the overall colour temperature in an instant. A quick crop also helps create a more balanced composition and a better image overall.

Camera Raw jargon buster

The common terms you’ll see throughout this guide CLIPPING An area that is either pure black or pure white: usually a sign that you are losing detail in shadows or highlights in your image. DYNAMIC RANGE The range of shadows, midtones and highlights visible in a scene. You can restore missing detail to increase the dynamic range. HALO If you over-sharpen a shot, you can get light or dark outlines appearing around the edge of contrasting pixels. These are known as halos. HDR High Dynamic Range images feature a greater range of colours and tones than ordinary image formats. HIGH KEY High-key images tend to be dominated by white or very light tones, with darker tones providing the details. The term is typically used to describe low-contrast images that are softly lit.

HISTOGRAM A graph that shows the tonal range of a photo. It plots the number of pixels in the image according to their brightness, from the darkest on the left to the lightest on the right. Camera Raw uses a histogram: your camera may also be able to show one. POSTERISATION If you push the Saturation slider too far, some areas will be replaced with clumps of garish colour, making it look as though you’ve applied a filter to your photo. SATURATION The strength of a hue in an object’s colour. If you reduce a shot’s saturation to -100 you’ll get a greyscale image. If you oversaturate a shot, you can produce unprintable colours. SHARPENING Photoshop attempts to make a shot look sharper by increasing the contrast around the edge of objects. This gives the shot more impact.

TEMPERATURE Different light sources have a different colour temperature. To a camera, daylight looks blue (cool) and indoor light looks orange (warm). Colour is measured in degrees K (Kelvin). The temperature of daylight is around 5,500K. ACR’s Temperature slider displays units in the Kelvin scale. TINT Your camera can end up tinting shots magenta or green. The Tint slider enables you to remove these hints of tint easily. If you want, you can also use your camera’s menu to bias the tints it captures as you shoot. WHITE BALANCE Digital cameras use white as a reference point to interpret all other colours. To avoid blue or orange colour tints, your camera performs a white balance operation. This is designed to warm up or cool down pixels so they look white instead of blue or orange.

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Welcome to Camera Raw

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Using Adobe Camera Raw

Explore the interface and tools for the powerful plug-in that’s going to help you improve your photos We always recommend shooting Raw files when you’re capturing an unrepeatable event. The beauty of the Raw format is that it offers you maximum image quality and gives you more editing control. Unlike JPEGs, Raw photos are not compressed, so no valuable image information is lost. A JPEG is like a shorthand description of what the camera sees, so huge chunks of information are discarded. With a Raw image, you get the whole story. In a JPEG photo, gradations can look like distinct bands of colour. A Raw shot

will capture subtler blends of colour (like a graduated sky) without artefacts. Another important fact about Raw is you can’t modify the original file. The Camera Raw plug-in describes changes to the shot’s colour and sharpness, for example. You can then create a TIFF or JPEG copy of the file that shows these changes, but the original data will be safely stored in the Raw version of the shot. Over the next six pages, we’ll show you how to get the most from Raw using Adobe’s Camera Raw plug-in…

Photoshop versus Elements Owners of Photoshop Elements can also edit their shots using Camera Raw, which is included when you buy the program. Although the plug-in software itself is exactly the same as what you get with Photoshop, Elements restricts its feature set, with some tabs and tools made invisible. This is because Elements is typically aimed at a less experienced user than Photoshop itself. Elements offers access to three of the adjustment tabs: Basic, Details and Camera Calibration. This means that you can use ACR to fix colour and tonal problems with ease as well as sharpen shots and reduce noise, covering the major tasks that any user would want the plug-in for. Some options are also concealed in the top toolbar: the Spot Removal Tool is absent, for example, so you’ll need to venture into the main Elements interface to remove sensor spots.

The ACR interface Your at-a-glance guide to the goodies in Adobe’s Raw editor

Adobe Camera Raw contains all the tools you need to process your photos direct from your camera. Some tools may be familiar to Adobe Lightroom users, as the Raw plug-in has pinched many of that package’s powerful Raw editing features. It’s easy to tackle tonal problems thanks to tools such as the Fill Light slider. You can also target specific tonal adjustments (such as revealing detail in underexposed midtones) without washing out your shot’s blackest shadows or dulling its brightest highlights, for example. Here’s a guide to some of ACR’s most useful features.

1 Retouching tools Spot and Red Eye Removal enable you to do photo fixing. This saves you from moving your shot into Photoshop’s main editor to remove artefacts, so you can spend longer editing it as a Raw file. 2 Full screen You can streamline your Raw editing workflow by clicking on the Toggle Full Screen Mode icon. This hides distractions such as other open applications and desktop wallpaper, enabling you to focus entirely on fine-tuning your Raw shot’s colours and tones.

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3 Clipping warnings In some earlier releases of the Raw plug-in, you had to tick a box to turn the shadow and highlight clipping warnings on or off. Now you can click an icon to display clipped shadows in blue and clipped highlights in red. Clipped pixels occur when their colour is brighter or darker than overall settings permit. 4 Tabs Earlier Raw editors’ image-editing tabs came with bulky text labels. Camera Raw now uses space-saving icons, enabling more tabs in its interface.

ACR overview

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5 Tone Curve Curves are tricky tools to master, and you can easily lose control and end up in trouble. The Tone Curve tab’s sliders enable you to harness the power of Curve editing with a lot more ease, which means you can fine-tune more effectively.

8 Split toning This tab of image-editing sliders has been pinched from Lightroom, and provides ways to create amazing colour effects, such as cross-processing. You can tint shadows and highlights and fine-tune using the Balance slider.

11 Presets Once you’ve tweaked a particular shot using the many image-editing tools at your disposal, you can save the setting you’ve used as a preset. You can then use the Preset pane to load in all of the saved slider settings in one click.

6 Detail The revamped Detail tab contains some useful additions. The Masking slider is particularly welcome, as it allows you to keep edge artefacts at bay.

9 Lens corrections The Lens Correction tab comes with a Defringe Tool, which desaturates any remaining colour fringes that stubbornly cling to the edge of contrasting objects.

12 Super sliders The ACR interface has handy imageediting sliders. The Recovery slider claws back detail from burnt-out highlights, while the Vibrance slider boosts colour.

7 HSL/Greyscale You can target a specific colour using the sliders in the Saturation tab and boost its saturation strength without altering other colours in the shot. You can produce effective black-and-white shots with the Greyscale Mix sliders.

10 Camera calibration The Raw editor uses colour profiles to render your colours. The sliders in the Camera Calibration tab can fine-tune the hue of your image’s reds, greens and blues. The Shadows slider helps remove green or magenta tints from darker areas.

13 Workflow options This section took up a lot of on-screen space in older Raw editors. The streamlined text label opens up a dialog window, enabling you to increase exposure to 16 bits per channel for greater quality and colour reproduction.

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Welcome to Camera Raw

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Fine-tuning exposure 1

1 Healthy histogram The reprocessed landscape’s histogram now has pixels stretching throughout its full range, indicating a healthier spread of shadows, midtones and highlights. 2 Full exposure A Raw image enables you to increase or decrease the image’s exposure by the equivalent of an f-stop or two. By dragging the Exposure slider to +1.00, we can brighten the highlights.

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3 Fill Light Some adjustment tools enable you to target tonal problems without affecting other pixels. The Fill Light slider brightens midtones without touching deep shadows or bright highlights. 4 Blacks The Blacks slider enables you to restore detail to a shot’s clipped shadows by moving it to the left. It doesn’t have much influence on the shot’s midtones, however.

Handling contrast A common challenge for any digital camera is to capture shadow and highlight detail in a location that features dramatically contrasting lighting. In our example shot, the camera has been set to capture detail in the backlit clouds, causing the foreground figure to be rendered a silhouette. The camera has struggled to capture all of the cloudscape.

Some of the cloud detail has been lost in the brightest highlights and the shadows. The oldschool Brightness and Contrast sliders are fairly ineffective when faced with highcontrast shots like this, and fail to rescue detail in clipped pixels. Fortunately, ACR packs plenty of other tools to tackle contrast and tone problems.

1 Recovery The Recovery slider helps restore blown-out highlight detail. A value of 20 removes all red clipping from cloud edges and reduces pixels close to blowing. 2 Fill Light By bumping up the Fill Light slider to 50, we can restore detail to the figure. The image then appears washed out, but tweaking the Tone Curve improves this.

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3 Blacks By dragging the Blacks slider to 0, we can remove most of the blue shadow clipping warning pixels from the silhouetted figure, restoring detail in the shadows. 44 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

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Original shot

Original shot

ACR overview

WorldMags.net Our eyes deal with contrasting lighting much more effectively than our digital camera’s artificial eye. Cameras tend to compromise highlight detail to capture detail in the shadows and midtones, for example. To see if a shot is over or underexposed, first examine the Raw editor’s histogram. In our unprocessed landscape shot, the graph is crushed towards the left of the histogram, indicating the pixels in the photo are predominantly shadows and midtones. The highlights at the right of the graph fail to spread into the far right of the histogram where the brightest values lie. The Shadow clipping warning indicates that some of the darkest pixels will print as pure black, losing any detail. To give the image’s brightest pixels a healthier highlight value, drag the Exposure slider to the right. To add more detail to the midtones, drag the Fill Light slider to the right.

Expert tip Workflow

When fine-tuning a shot’s tonal range, start off using the tools in the Basic tab. Begin by tweaking the image’s overall exposure value. You can then work down the panel, slider by slider, to fine-tune specific problems, such as recovering highlight detail with the Recovery slider or boosting washed-out shadows with the Blacks slider.

Enhancing colour

Original shot

Although you can set your camera to increase the saturation of a shot as you capture it on location, you’re much better off boosting colours in the Raw editor during the post-production stage: this gives you greater control of the finished image’s colours. Start off by checking for colour casts. If the shot is too blue (cold), you can warm it up by dragging the Temperature slider to the right. Cool down a warm orange tint by dragging the same slider to the left. Alternatively, you can click with the handy White Balance eyedropper on an area that should be white. Photoshop will then automatically cool down or warm up the sampled area and adjust the image’s overall colour temperature at the same time. To enhance our colourful source file, we used the Vibrance and Clarity sliders to boost colour without clipping detail. 1 Clarity Zoom into your shot at 100 per cent. A value of 50 gives the shadows extra oomph. The Clarity slider can add halos to contrasting edges, so use it with care. 2 Vibrance A value of +42 for the Vibrance slider enables you to create more vivid-looking colours without clipping. It also avoids over-saturating skin tones.

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3 HSL/Greyscale The Saturation section enables you to focus on increasing or reducing the saturation level of specific colours without changing the strength of other colours. A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop 45 WorldMags.net

Original shot

Welcome to Camera Raw

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Sharpening Raw files One of the most common challenges faced by digital photographers is capturing a sharp shot of the subject. This can be especially challenging when shooting with a zoom lens: camera shake becomes exaggerated, leading to a blurred photo. Shallow depth of field can also cause important details to blur. This can cause your subject’s body to be in focus but their face could be out of focus. Photoshop creates a sharper-looking shot by increasing the contrast around the edges of objects in a photo (like the outline of our bird of prey’s beak and eyes). This helps add definition to blurred details and gives the shot more impact. However, sharpening is a double-edged sword – you can create a sharper shot but there’s a risk of adding artefacts, such as unsightly halos around contrasting edges. Fortunately, ACR has tools designed to help you sharpen your shot with the minimum of artefacts. Recent versions see some welcome additions to the Details panel’s sharpening tools. 1 Amount Zooming in to 100 per cent enables you to accurately assess any focal problems. Drag the Amount slider to the right to begin sharpening. 2 Radius By increasing the value of the Radius slider, you increase the size of the area that becomes sharpened. Stick to a value of less than 2.0 pixels or those dreaded halos will appear. 3 Detail Low Detail values restrict sharpening to the object’s main edges. Higher values restore finer detail – such as our bird’s delicate feathers here.

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4 Masking Hold [Alt] as you drag the Masking slider. Pixels that will be sharpened appear in white and pixels that will be ignored appear as black.

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After

Before

ACR overview

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Dealing with noise Noise (or grain) can be added to a shot when using high ISO settings. You’ll also spot more noise when shooting a long exposure. Noise in itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A bit of grain can add an extra layer of texture to a shot, especially if you’re creating a gritty documentary-

style scene. Some noise can spoil shots, though, especially unsightly pixels of colour noise. ACR’s Noise Reduction controls give you the option of preserving a little grain to give some texture while eradicating garish colour noise. You’ll find the sliders in the Detail panel.

1 Luminance This slider tackles standard picture noise). It’s worth tackling the Color slider first, as colour noise does the most damage. A Luminance value of 47 takes the edge off our image’s noise without blurring important details. 2 Color This slider is highly effective at targeting the distracting specks of colour noise created by a long exposure or a high ISO setting. We have to drag the slider to 100 per cent to remove all specks of colour from our Raw source file.

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Fixing colour fringes One of the most unsightly lens-related artefacts you’ll encounter is chromatic aberration. The term refers to ugly fringes of colour that can be seen clinging tenaciously to the edge of contrasting objects. In our example source image, you can see red and cyan colour fringes around the edge of the crane’s silhouetted metal girders. This phenomenon is caused by the camera’s inability to focus different wavelengths of light onto the same spot. You could open the shot in Photoshop’s main interface and use the Sponge Tool to reduce the strength of these colour fringes, although this will lose you the image-quality benefits of editing in Raw. Check out the goodies in the Lens Corrections panel to banish colour fringes with ease without leaving the Raw editor. 1 Fix red/cyan fringe The standard Photoshop interface has a Fix Red/ Cyan Fringe slider, but it does a poor job. By using the same slider on the Raw version you can shift magenta and blue fringes to hide them.

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2 Fix blue/yellow fringe Chromatic aberration induced colour fringes come in different flavours – so Camera Raw offers a choice of sliders in the Lens Corrections panel. 3 Defringe This tool does a similar job to the standard interface’s Sponge Tool. It’s a great idea in theory, but it hasn’t made any impact on this problem shot.

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Welcome to Camera Raw

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ACR palettes Adobe Camera Raw is designed to process your Raw files, and its sheer processing power is impressive. The amount of work you can do with colour, exposure and detail in your photos is staggering. And, of course,

Basic

The Basic tab is where you’ll find the most essential tools for correcting your images in Camera Raw. The Auto feature is a fairly good starting point, but you can also hit the Default button to reset all the sliders to the basic settings. Always begin by adjusting the Exposure slider to get the best possible dynamic range in your image. Keep an eye on the histogram at the top, which tells you where the pixels are spread. To see clipping in the shadows and highlights, click the triangles in the histogram corners.

the quality is going to be fantastic. Some features are lacking, however, such as cloning, dodging, burning and layers, but that’s not what ACR is all about. ACR is a perfect tool for prepping your images for

Tone Curve

The Tone Curve tab holds the tools for adjusting the exposure curve of an image. The Parametric adjustment offers a far smoother level of control over the contrast than the Point adjustment offers. It also feels far more organic to use. Parametric enables you to adjust the contrast over the entire image, but the tweaks it allows give greater accuracy when increasing or decreasing contrast in specific parts of an image. If you’re going to be doing some serious editing, leave the full tonal range of contrast adjustments alone until you can see the effects of your other adjustments.

48 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

Detail

proper unrestricted editing under the ‘virtual’ enlarger. It might help to think of the Raw file as a colour film and the Camera Raw plug-in as the developing process, offering a wide choice of chemicals and developing times.

It’s here that you’ll find noise reduction and sharpening tools. ACR does a fairly good job of reducing noise, especially in deep shadows, and it’s a good time to apply it – any further editing on the image in the digital darkroom will amplify the noise as you complete more adjustments. It’s also a good time to add sharpening to your shots. You can only see the true effect by zooming in at 100%. As you apply sharpening, keep Amount at 100 and Radius at 1 or 2 pixels. Take the Detail and Masking sliders to around 50, keeping [Alt] pressed to see how the effect works.

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HSL/Grayscale

The Hue/Saturation/ Luminance/Grayscale tab takes care of the colours, and offers broad adjustments. Do all your colour tweaks here before you open the image in Photoshop: your results will be of much higher quality. The panel is split into three tabs, enabling adjustment for Hue, Saturation and Luminance with eight colour sliders for the spectrum. If you tick Convert to Grayscale, the image will be rendered in mono, but with all the colour information still contained in the image. This enables you to use loads of great black-and-white effects.

ACR overview

WorldMags.net To maintain your image quality, you should aim to get your Raw files as close to perfection as possible using only the plug-in controls, only then transferring to Photoshop to handle any tasks that ACR cannot. You do

Split Toning

The Split Toning panel enables you to adjust the toning of highlights and shadows separately. This is useful when you get a cast that only appears on the highlights or shadows. Be cautious when using this adjustment for your colour images, especially if you’re not certain whether your monitor is correctly calibrated: you could introduce subtle casts that will need further correction. If you turn your image into mono using the previous HSL tab, Split Toning will help you to transform the image by colour-toning it.

this by adjusting the common controls shown below. White balance and colour temperature can be set properly, including exposure tweaks and recovering lost detail in shadows and highlights. Curves, sharpness and even

Lens Corrections Even costly lenses can suffer from chromatic aberration. The horrible red/cyan and blue/yellow signs of fringing usually appear closer to the edge of the frame and occur on hard edges between high-contrast subjects, such as a dark edge against a blue sky. The Lens Corrections tab deals with any fringing. Zoom in to 400% and find a hard edge, then tweak the sliders until the fringing disappears. Selecting All Edges from the Defringe drop-down menu will clean up any nasty fringing throughout an image, not just in higher-contrast areas.

Camera Calibration

lens corrections effects such as fringing can all be taken care of at this stage with minimum fuss before you open the image to edit it in Photoshop or Elements proper. It really couldn’t be much easier...

The Camera Calibration tab provides accurate colour rendition by matching your camera’s white balance and colour profiles manually. The process requires you to photograph a colour chart then match the colours on-screen by adjusting sliders. Calibration is required for each lighting type, such as tungsten, daylight or flash. It can take some time to fine-tune, but the colours from your camera will then be constant when processed using the same profile in Camera Raw.

Presets The Presets tab enables you to save and load adjustments made to your images. This is great for batch processing, especially in situations where you’ve shot in mixed lighting and need to make lots of fine adjustments. Saving the adjustments from your first image enables you to apply it with one click to all the rest from the same shoot.

A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop 49 WorldMags.net

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On the disc Look in the Tips folder on the DVD

How to…

Get more from Raw

Make more of the powerful tools in the Camera Raw editor and improve your image processing The Adobe Camera Raw editor is a fantastic option for perfecting the exposure and white balance of your images. Newer versions of the editor also include some superb tools for further adjustments and effects, from

removing lens artefacts and distortions to split-colour toning. ACR is designed for Raw files, of course, which contain the full tonal and colour information captured by the camera sensor;

but you can also use it on your JPEGs: go to File > Open As, navigate to your image, and choose Camera Raw in the Open As menu; or in Bridge, right-click and then choose Open in Camera Raw from the menu.

Get it white

Correcting white balance is one of the primary functions of ACR. The presets in the White Balance menu each have the same effect as selecting that setting in-camera, so pick the one that best represents the lighting conditions when you took the shot, then finetune with the Temperature slider if necessary. Even simpler is the White Balance Tool: click with it on a spot in your image that should be a colour-neutral grey – light greys or diffuse whites work best. As a check, use the Color Sampler Tool to place a few markers in any spots that you think should be a colour-neutral grey: once you’ve corrected the white balance, these spots should have equal R, G and B values (such as R120, G120, B120 or R30, G30, B30).

TIP

Rather than taking pot luck with the White Balance Tool, use the Color Sampler Tool to pinpoint and mark areas of neutral colour.

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Fix tricky exposures

Photoshop technique

WorldMags.net Rescue highlight detail

Digital cameras are much more sensitive to highlight information than film models, and often capture detail even in areas that seem burnt-out. You can often pull back detail from blown highlights using the Recovery slider. First enable the highlight clipping display by pressing [O] (for ‘overexposed’): clipped highlights will show up in the image as red, but they might be clipped in only one or two channels, with detail you can rescue in the remaining channel(s). Make any larger-scale exposure correction with the Exposure slider, then nudge the Recovery slider to the right and watch for any remaining red overlay to disappear. Take it gently – Recovery adjustments can darken other, correctlyexposed highlight tones, dulling the image down and causing it to look flat, so you might just need to live with some highlight clipping.

TIP

Spot burnt-out highlights by activating the clipping display, then pull back detail in these areas using the Recovery slider.

In bright conditions, capturing a perfect exposure can be all but impossible. Expose for the sky, and the ground will end up deep in shadow; expose for the foreground, and the sky will be blown out.If you’ve not got a graduated ND lens filter with you, one solution is to try ACR’s targeted sliders back in the digital darkroom: Exposure and Recovery to adjust highlights and brighter midtones, then the Blacks and Fill Light sliders for the shadows. The latter two sliders are relatively blunt instruments, though, and ACR’s Tone Curve (available if you’re running ACR under Photoshop) is a much more precise way of adjusting parts of the tonal range selectively.

TIP

For targeted tonal adjustments, use ACR’s Tone Curve or the Targeted Adjustment Tool.

2

Target points

To target specific tones in your image, simply hold down [Ctrl] and click on the area you want to adjust in the image. A control point will appear at the corresponding point on the curve, which you can then adjust.

Give your shots an edge

Vignetting is very common when using wideangle lenses, particularly at extreme settings for the widest angles of view. Although vignetting is often regarded as a flaw, it’s also sometimes added as a popular creative effect to ‘frame’ an image and draw attention where it’s wanted – in wedding portraits, for example – but it can be just as tricky to control in-camera as it is difficult to avoid when you’re out shooting a sweeping landscape. The digital

1Vignetting controls

Push the Lens Vignetting Amount slider to the right to lighten the edges of the image, or to the left to darken them. Use the Midpoint slider to control how far your adjustment extends.

2 Creative framing

Pull the Amount slider hard to the left to really darken the frame edges, then use the other sliders under Post Crop Vignetting to adjust the extent, shape and fade of the effect.

1 Shape the Curve

Click the Tone Curve tab, then Point rather than Parametric. The curve works just like Photoshop’s own Curves dialog: click on the line and pull the curve upwards to lighten tones in the image, and pull down to darken.

3Targeted Adjustment Tool

This is a quick way to apply local Curve and other adjustments: select the tool, rightclick in the area you want to adjust, pick an adjustment type, then simply click and drag left or right to adjust those tones.

darkroom gives you much more control, so whether you want to remove the effect or add it, try the sliders under Camera Raw’s Lens Corrections tab – the Post Crop variant gives you extra control over the vignette shape and how far it reaches into the image.

TIP

Remove vignetting or add it for creative effect using the sliders under ACR’s Lens Corrections tab.

3 Fix that fringing

The Lens Corrections tab also includes tools to tackle colour fringing along highcontrast edges. Zoom in close to identify the problem colours.

A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop 51 WorldMags.net

Welcome to Camera Raw

WorldMags.net How to…

On the disc Look in the Histogram folder on the DVD

Read a histogram

Learn how to evaluate a photo’s tonal range using its graphical shape WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop Elements 6 or Photoshop CS, or above WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How to see an image in terms of its tones; how to read different histogram shapes IT ONLY TAKES 5 minutes As a general rule, we often recommend exposing your shot so that you get a nice, bell-shaped

curve in the middle of your histogram, and that’s fine for scenes that contain typical tonal values. But if you’re exposing for, say, a moody seascape at dusk, you’ll want it to look as dark on screen as it did in real life. The problem with the light meter in your camera is that it can’t make this sort of judgement for you – unless you override it by over- or under-exposing, it will assume you want your image to contain an average tonal range.

1 Classic bell shape

In our seascape example, your camera’s light meter would suggest an exposure value that would brighten the scene up, making it look washed out rather than moody. Of course, if you don’t get exposure right in camera, you can always correct it in Photoshop. To that end, here are four classic histogram shapes you should learn to recognise. Look out for these when you‘re editing your own images in Adobe Camera Raw.

2 High key

A bell shape in the middle of the histogram indicates a healthy range of midtones, and a few shadows and highlights. An image with no dark shadows or highlights will have a bump in the middle but nothing at either end – which is fine for a low-contrast scene.

The surge at the far right shows that the shot contains lots of light tones and highlights, hence the term ‘high key’. If we tried to ‘correct’ our exposure so that the graph was in the middle, all the white pixels would become grey: this is why snowscapes shot on your camera’s Auto settings look grey.

3 High contrast

4 Low key

You might think that a flatter histogram indicates flatter tones. In fact, it means the image has an equal number of shadows, midtones and highlights: the stronger the shadows and highlights, the greater the contrast. The spike at the far left represents the darkest shadows in the rocks. 52 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

The ‘hump’ to the left indicates that the shot contains lots of dark tones and few highlights, hence the term ‘low key’. If we tried to ‘correct’ the exposure so that it was more in the middle, it would brighten up the deep shadows and colours and make the whole image look flat and washed out.

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Because image is everything... WorldMags.net

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First Steps

3

Accessible projects to help you explore what you can achieve in Camera Raw, with sample images and video help on the DVD Use Camera Raw in Photoshop & Elements

56

Get higher-quality photos with Raw

62

Give a portrait a digital makeover

66

Enhance your outdoor scenes

68

Fine-tine landscape colour and tone

72

Improve skin tones in your portraits

74

Combine Raw shots

76

Merge shots with a mask

80

Create an HDR landscape photo

82

Speed up your workflow

86

Find a faster way to process images

89

Make selective tonal adjustments

92

Make your images sparkling clean

94

A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop 55 WorldMags.net

First Steps

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Use Camera Raw in Photoshop & Elements Camera Raw works in both Photoshop and Photoshop Elements, but the way it works in each is different. Find out how here

WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop Elements 6 or Photoshop CS3, or later WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How the controls within Adobe Camera Raw differ between Photoshop and Elements IT ONLY TAKES 20 minutes The Camera Raw plug-in works in both Photoshop and Photoshop Elements – but the two programs treat the plug-in differently. Essentially, Camera Raw inside Elements doesn’t show all the

options that it would inside Photoshop. Elements owners may not enjoy access to all the tools that Photoshop users have, but there’s still plenty you can achieve with Camera Raw in Elements. Whichever host software you’re using, stick to the principle of making as many as possible of your changes to your photos in Camera Raw, to preserve the integrity of the image information, before making additional changes in the main program. Here, we look at how you can process the same landscape shot using Camera Raw in both programs.

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Photoshop & Elements

WorldMags.net Original shot

On the disc Look in the Process Landscape folder

A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop 57 WorldMags.net

First Steps

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Process a Raw image with Photoshop Elements & Camera Raw

1 Colour balance and white point

2 Adjusting shadows

3 Adjust the midtones

4 Contrast, clarity and saturation

Select File > Open and choose your Raw file. The image opens in the Camera Raw editor. Set the colour balance by clicking an off-white area in the image with the White Balance Tool. Keeping an eye on the histogram, use the Exposure slider to extend the highlights to the end of the histogram itself. Use the Recovery slider to restore detail in any blown highlights.

With the Fill Light slider, you can lighten the shadows in the image without affecting the Black Point you’ve just set. It’s best to take your time and make very small, gradual adjustments here. Adjust the Brightness slider to modify the midtones in the image: drag it to the right to darken the midtones and to the left to lighten them.

The Blacks slider can be used to set the Black Point, which governs the shadows. Adjust this slider in conjunction with the Exposure slider to establish the lightest and darkest areas in your image. Although each of the sliders is essentially independent of the other, you need to establish a balance between them.

The Contrast slider modifies the Midtone Contrast. In this image, you want a fairly pronounced midtone contrast, so it’s best to use a high value. The Clarity slider is useful for sharpening the edges in the image that tonal adjustments may have softened. Finally for this image, you should lower the Saturation slider a little.

Expert tip Raw and post-processing Adobe Camera Raw in Photoshop Elements is rather more basic than the version you’ll find in Photoshop, because you don’t have access to the Raw Tone Curve as you do in the latter program. But you can still achieve stunning results, especially with a little postprocessing back in the Photoshop Elements workspace. When you’re done with your basic adjustments in

Camera Raw, click Open Image to send the image to the Elements workspace. Now you can tweak the tones in the image via Levels and Color Curves to achieve the ultimate in tonal perfection. Here you can see the adjustments we made via Color Curves to make a few small but vital tweaks. See the Tone Curve tip box opposite to see how closely it resembles Elements’ Color Curves feature.

58 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

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Photoshop & Elements

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Process a Raw image with Photoshop & Camera Raw

1 Correcting white balance

2 Adjusting white and black points

3 Initial tone curve adjustments

4 Targeting and tweaking tonal ranges

From Bridge, choose your Raw file and hit [Ctrl]+[R] to open it in Camera Raw. Choose the White Balance Tool and click on an off-white area to set the Colour Temperature. Alternatively, choose a preset from the White Balance options, or adjust the Color Temperature slider, dragging it to the left to cool the image or to the right to add warmth.

Beneath the histogram, choose the Tone Curve icon. Click the Point tab. Start by choosing Medium Contrast from the Curve presets. Now pull the top point up a little to brighten the highlights, and drag the lower two points down to darken the shadows. Refer to the box below as you target particular midtones, either pulling them up or down.

Hit the Default option. Observe the histogram and drag the Exposure slider until the highlights in the histogram reach the far right of the graph. Now do the same for the Black Point by moving the Blacks slider. Your adjustments here need only establish the main highlights and shadows. Reduce the Saturation slider a little.

You can see the shape of our final curve here. Very small adjustments to targeted points can make a huge difference. Take your time to carefully target tones and manipulate them. Once you’re happy with the image, hit Done to save the changes to the original Raw file or click Open Image to open the adjusted image in Photoshop.

Expert tip Tone Curve: Take Ctrl! That [Ctrl] key sitting at the bottom left of your keyboard is an extremely powerful tool when it comes to working within the Tone Curve in Photoshop CS Camera Raw. First, it’s invaluable when it comes to locating exactly where on the curve a particular tone sits. To do this, simply hold down the [Ctrl] key and hover your cursor (which will resemble the Eyedropper Tool in this

mode) over a particular tone in your photograph, and its precise location will appear on the curve. To place a point there on the curve, simply click the mouse button while still holding down the [Ctrl] key. Also, if you hold down this key and repeatedly hit the [Tab] key, you can scroll through the various points on the curve until the one you want to adjust is selected and active.

A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop 59 WorldMags.net

First Steps

WorldMags.net Fine-tuning in Photoshop In contrast to Photoshop Elements, Adobe Camera Raw in Photoshop has a group of far more accurate and advanced controls. The Tone Curve gives you the ultimate in

precision when it comes to adjusting specific tonal ranges in your image, much as the Curves command does in Photoshop itself. You also have the facility to control colour

1 The Tone Curve: lightening shadows

The Camera Raw Tone Curve works in exactly the same way as the Curves dialog in the Photoshop workspace. The lower third of the curve controls shadows, so to lighten these click in this quadrant to add a point, then pull it upwards slightly. It’s often more accurate to use the up and down arrow keys on your keyboard rather than drag with the mouse.

2 HSL/Grayscale: high-contrast B&W

Click on the HSL icon, then choose the Luminance tab. Click the Convert To Grayscale box, then click the word Default. Now you can adjust each of the colours to either lighten or darken that particular range of colours. You can still use the Tone Curve to fine-tune your black and white image and introduce more contrast.

3 The Detail tab: sharpening

Sharpening works in a similar way to the conventional Unsharp Mask command. Use a small radius value for the most realistic results. Small values entered for the Detail slider will sharpen edges while larger values will sharpen very small textures too. You can reduce noise by increasing the Luminance slider.

60 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

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and create stunning monochrome images via the HSL feature. We’ll look at both of these features here, and we’ll also examine sharpening in Camera Raw.

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The essential piece of kit for today’s photographer! WorldMags.net

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On the disc Look in the Master Raw folder on the DVD

Paul Newman

First Steps

Original shot 62 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

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Raw editing basics

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How to…

Get higher-quality photos with Raw

Discover how to retain the best possible image quality from your D-SLR camera in our no-nonsense guide to the basics of converting Raw files

WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop Elements 6 or Photoshop CS, or later WHAT YOU’LL LEARN Simple steps you can take to make your photos look better IT ONLY TAKES 20 minutes Raw image files give you the ultimate in digital photo quality. The reason why Raw offers better quality images is simple. Unlike JPEG, Raw isn’t a compressed file format. With compressed file formats, some of the scene data your camera records is discarded to create the photo. Raw, by contrast, gives you the complete unadulterated information captured by your camera. This means that you can make changes to the photo after capturing it – for example,

1Guarantee the highest quality

Raw gives you much more flexibility to adjust the white balance and the exposure after the event. You can also save Raw files in a much larger format than JPEGs, which retains the information that makes up your image and enables you to create higher quality prints. It’s true that your photos will take up more space on your hard drive, but the increase in image quality more than compensates for this minor inconvenience. The only drawback of capturing photos in Raw format is that you need a Raw converter to open and edit them. As we’ve seen, both Photoshop Elements and Photoshop CS have a built-in Raw converter called Adobe Camera Raw. Although the precise features may vary between Elements and CS, the overall principles of how you should process each

Open the file Raw_start.cr2 from this tutorial’s folder on the disc. Adobe Camera Raw will open. Before doing anything else, click on the blue link at the bottom of the window and make sure 16 Bits/Channel and 300 pixels/inch are selected to guarantee the highest quality.

photo are the same. Here, we go through the basic workflow you should expect to follow – although obviously the decisions you take with each photo will be different. We’re focusing on the CS version, which provides a few more tools, but you’ll get impressive results with either. The lesson on the DVD that accompanies this guide shows you how to do the same in Photoshop Elements. Adobe updates Adobe Camera Raw regularly, so visit www.adobe.com to see if there’s a new version available to download. VIDEO TUTORIAL Follow our step-by-step

guide to the Raw editing workflow IMAGE FILE Use the image Raw_start.cr2

in the Master Raw folder on the DVD

2Improve the colour balance

Select the White Balance tool and click on the whitest part of the fur. Use the RGB readout under the Histogram to try and find a value as close to R: 255, G: 255, B: 255 as possible. The image is a little warm, so this will cool it down a bit.

A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop 63 WorldMags.net

First Steps

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3Fine-tune the colour

4Remove distracting tints

5Fix the Exposure

6Know how far to go

You can also use the Temperature and Tint sliders to adjust the white balance. Dragging the Temperature slider cools the image down by adding blue and removing yellow, while dragging it right warms the image up by adding yellow and removing blue.

Tint controls how much green and magenta appears in your image. Drag it to the left and you’ll remove magenta by adding green; drag it right and you’ll remove green by adding magenta. Type settings into the boxes to set these values manually.

By dragging the Exposure slider to the left you can decrease the exposure. Alternatively, drag it to the right and you’ll increase the exposure. You’ll need to decrease the exposure of this photo slightly. Try not to increase or decrease the exposure by more than one stop for the best results.

You’ll get a good idea of where to position the Exposure slider by holding down the [Alt] key as you drag. The photo will turn black, and overexposed areas will be highlighted in red and yellow dots. Drag the slider to the left until they disappear.

7Recover lost detail

8Improve the lighting

Dragging the Recovery slider to the right lets you recover overexposed areas. Each of the sliders is closely related, and the key to processing Raw files lies in trying different combinations of settings to arrive at the desired result.

64 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

The Fill Light slider enables you to improve the lighting of dark areas within your image. By dragging to the right, you can bring out more detail in the platform the cheetah is lying on. The Blacks slider enables you to increase the intensity of black areas within the photo.

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Raw editing basics

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9Give your photo a boost

10Enhance the colour

The Brightness and Contrast sliders do pretty much exactly what the names suggest. Dragging them to the right will increase either the brightness or contrast of the photo. Dragging them to the left has the opposite effect. Experiment with both sliders for the best results.

The Vibrance and Colour sliders let you adjust the colour of your image. Vibrance is useful for portraits, because it’ll boost colour without ruining skin tones. Drag the Saturation slider to the left to decrease colour intensity, or drag it to the right to increase it.

11Perfect the composition

12Develop your Raw file

To finish, you can remove some of the distracting background by dragging the Crop Tool over the parts you want to keep. The image won’t actually be cropped until you open it in Photoshop. Right-click on the photo and select Clear Crop to cancel the crop.

When you’re happy with the adjustments you have made, click the Open Image button to take the photo into Photoshop, where you can carry on editing. When you’re finished, save the file down as a TIFF file so you preserve as much as possible of that high-quality image data.

How we processed our Raw file

Take a quick look at the improvements we’ve made 1 White balance Our shot had a warm colour cast and a magenta tint. We’ve cooled down the colour temperature and removed the tint. 2 Shadow recovery Dragging the Fill Light slider to the right enabled us to restore shadow detail hidden in the darkest parts of the image. 3 Colour We’ve used the Vibrancy slider to boost the colour of the cheetah’s fur and make it stand out clearly from the background. 4 Exposure The original photo was slightly overexposed. There’s now a healthier tonal range of shadows, midtones and highlights thanks to adjustment sliders such as Exposure and Recovery.

3 2

1

4

A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop 65 WorldMags.net

First Steps

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How to…

Original shot

Give a portrait a digital makeover

On the disc Look in the Makeover folder on the DVD

Tweak a portrait to perfection by creating a healthy-looking complexion and balancing skin tones with hair and face highlights WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop Elements 5 or Photoshop CS, or later WHAT YOU’LL LEARN Boost colour and contrast, enhance skin tone IT ONLY TAKES 15 minutes A high-resolution digital camera that’s equipped with a decent lens has the potential to capture stunning looking highquality portraits, but even the professionals need to spend some time tweaking colour and tone in Photoshop to make the shot look perfect. Odds are the contrast might be a little flat and the shot may need a bit of

sharpening to bring out finer details like hair and eyelashes. The colours may also need to be tweaked to create a more natural-looking skin tone: skin is difficult to capture in a photo becuase of the complicated way in which it reflects light. As well as having technical problems to overcome, the subject of the photo may be having a bad skin day so the shot may need some subtle retouching to make them look his or her best. By shooting in Raw format you can give yourself the edge in the battle for quality, so you should aim to do as much image enhancement as you can in the Adobe

66 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

Camera Raw editor before popping into your standard editor to make use of its extra imageenhancing tools. Follow our step-by-step guide to making a good portrait look even better using a variety of image enhancing tips, tricks and techniques. Use the portrait on the DVD to get used to the concepts. VIDEO TUTORIAL Follow our step-by-step

guide to performing essential portrait enhancements on the DVD IMAGE FILE The image MakeOver_Start.cr2 is in the Makeover folder on the DVD

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Raw portrait basics

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Expert tip

Retouch the portrait shot with Camera Raw Most Photoshop users are familiar with using the Spot Healing Brush to remove moles, freckles and skin blemishes. Photoshop CS users can also retouch unwanted spots without leaving the comfort and quality zone of the Adobe Camera Raw editor. Grab the Retouch Tool [B] and set it to a diameter that’s big enough to cover any spots. Set Type to Heal. Click to select a spot with the Retouch Tool’s red overlay circle. Drag the adjacent green overlay circle to a clear patch of skin, and Photoshop will replace the unwanted spot with clear skin.

1 Getting warmer

Open the unprocessed Raw file, MakeOver_Start.cr2. The unprocessed Raw file looks a little too cold due to the camera’s white balance setting. There’s a slightly blue colour cast. Warm up the shot a little by dragging the Temperature slider right to 5550 degrees Kelvin.

2 Clobber clipping

3 Enhance the hair

4 Saturation

5 Sharpen

To check the portrait’s exposure, click the Highlight clipping warning in the top-right of the histogram. A few specks of red appear on the blown-out highlights on her shiny skin. Drag the Recovery slider right to around 15 to restore more printable detail to these flash-induced shiny hotspots.

The Raw shot still looks a little desaturated, producing a pale-looking model. You could try boosting the value of the Saturation slider but this will tint the model’s skin tones a fake-tan orange. For a subtler and natural colour enhancement, drag Vibrance up to +40.

To reveal more hair detail, drag the Fill Light slider up to 20. This brightens up the midtones without messing with the correctly exposed highlights. It also boosts the shot’s saturation a little. For a wider contrast, drag Blacks to 11. This darkens the shadows a bit more.

By default, the Camera Raw editor sharpens the shot. It may also have been sharpened in the camera. Too much sharpening can introduce artefacts, so click on the Detail tab and take Amount down to 0.

A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop 67 WorldMags.net

Chris George

First Steps

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Original shot

How to…

Enhance your outdoor scenes

On the disc Look in the Essentials folder on the DVD

A bright, sunny day and a busy tourist venue create their own set of challenges when you’re sitting at the computer – but Camera Raw stands ready WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop Elements 6 or Photoshop CS, or above WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How to enhance brightly lit outdoor scenes IT ONLY TAKES 20 minutes Tourist destinations are among the most popular subjects you can shoot, but capturing

them perfectly isn’t easy. You often have to take spontaneous photos rather than planning when and how to shoot them, while urban locations and the high contrast of sunny days can conspire to generate shots that lose a little magic compared to the real thing. Fortunately, Raw enables you to change key camera settings when you get home and gives

68 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

you tremendous scope to adjust brightness and contrast on your computer. You can make similar changes with JPEGs, but Raw files can be manipulated more intensively. IMAGE FILE Use the image elements_start. cr2 in the Essentials folder on the DVD

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Outdoor scenes

WorldMags.net Get to know... the Basic tab

Explore the area where you’ll make most of your adjustments White balance controls

8 Blacks The Blacks slider targets the dark tones, making them darker or lighter. Use this to recover detail in areas of shadow.

1 White Balance The White Balance window gives you a range of presets designed to compensate for common indoor and outdoor shooting situations. 2 Temperature The Temperature slider enables you to tweak the colour balance precisely, making it feel colder or warmer.

9 Brightness Brightness places its emphasis on the photo’s midtones as it lightens or darkens the image.

3

Exposure and tone controls

5

5 Exposure Exposure makes the whole image brighter or darker. A value of -1 or 1 is equivalent to an f-stop. 6 Recovery The Recovery slider can be used to rescue blown-out highlights.

4

6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Other controls 11

Clarity

Clarity makes your pictures look sharper by increasing contrast at subject edges. This feature is worth using, but don’t overdo it, or the picture will start to look artificial. 12

Vibrance

The best way to make your image look more colourful. Unlike the Saturation slider, it works harder on colours that aren’t already saturated. 13

Saturation

This can be used to beef up colours, making reds even more red, for example, or to desaturate the image, giving a more monotone result. If in doubt, start with the Vibrance slider.

7 Fill Light The Fill Light slider selectively lightens the shadow areas.

1Adjust the colour balance

Contrast

This takes overall tonal values closer together or further apart. It’s best used when the five sliders above have already been set.

2

3 Tint An advanced option for fine-tuning, affecting green and magenta hues.

4 Auto and Default Click Auto to see ACR’s suggested values for this set of controls. Click Default at any time during editing to return to the image’s original settings.

10

1

Open elements_start.cr2 from this tutorial’s folder on the disc. The image will automatically open in the Adobe Camera Raw interface. Tweak the overall colour balance using the Temperature slider, moving it to the left (from 5,100K to around 4,600K) to make the scene look more blue.

2Use Threshold to set exposure

The Exposure slider makes an image darker or lighter. You can judge the effect visually or use the histogram. Switch to Threshold View by holding down [Alt] as you move the slider. This shows clipped pixels. Move the slider to around -30 to improve the exposure and restore detail to the brightest areas.

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First Steps

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3 Tame the highlights

4 Lighten up the shadows

5 Brighten things up

6 Look sharp!

7Crank up the colour

8Get with the program

The Recovery slider is great for rescuing burnt-out areas. Use the Threshold view to set this precisely. Hold down [Alt] as you move the slider to the right until most of the red areas disappear. Here, a setting of 22 does the trick. Don’t worry if small areas of reflection on shiny objects still look clipped.

The Brightness slider does a different job to the Exposure control. Rather than brightening up all the pixels in the picture, it has most effect on the midtones, so used with care it can make the image look lighter and brighter without blowing out the highlights. We’ve used a setting of +69 for this shot.

You can use the Vibrance and Saturation sliders to give images more punch. However, Vibrance is the intelligent choice because it adjusts saturation selectively, enabling you to beef up the hues without overcooking the colours that are already rich. Don’t overdo it, though; +25 is more than enough here. 70 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

Fill Light helps tone down shadows and reduce the overall contrast of a sunlit scene. Don’t overdo it, or the picture starts to look unnatural. You can’t use the Threshold view with this slider, but notice how the histograms left-hand side moves in as you push the slider right. Go for a setting of about 8.

The Clarity slider offers a handy way to add local contrast. Like a pinch of salt in your cooking, it’s worth using a small amount to increase the apparent sharpness of all your pictures. A setting of +12 does the trick here. The effect is particularly noticeable in the palace windows in the distance.

You can do most essential adjustments with Camera Raw, but you’ll undoubtedly need to open the image in Photoshop Elements to finish the job. Click Open Image and use the Rubber Stamp Tool to remove some of the black blobs in the sky. You can also apply other effects here. Use Unsharp Mask to sharpen the edges of the image before saving it.

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Outdoor scenes

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Get more from Raw Use these handy shortcuts to speed up the image-editing process The number of tools and options you have available in Adobe Camera Raw depends on the version you’re using. For example, you get more tools and features with the version of ACR that’s designed for CS4 than you do with the one for CS3. Similarly, the Camera Raw plug-in designed for CS3 will be more advanced

than the version you get with any version of Photoshop Elements. Despite these differences, Elements users still get a huge array of buttons and options to work with – on top of the essential sliders that we’ve looked at over the last three pages – so there are plenty of tools at your fingertips.

1 Straighten up

Here’s our choice of four top additional effects and tools that are worth using with your version of Camera Raw, whichever software you’re using to hose the plug-in. They’ll help you straighten images, crop your composition and more besides. Try them out and improve your shots in an instant.

2 Crop in proportion

Open the file elements_start.cr2 in Photoshop Elements. This launches Camera Raw. Use the Straighten Tool to ensure that horizons and buildings are perfectly level. Click on the icon, then drag along a line in the picture that’s meant to be either vertical or horizontal. For architectural shots such as this, draw down a line in a building in the centre of the frame (not at the side, as this may be affected by lens distortion).

You can also use Camera Raw to crop the image. The advantage of cropping in ACR is that the original Raw file isn’t affected, so you can return to the uncropped image at any time. A neat refinement to the Crop Tool is its drop-down menu, which provides preset aspect ratios. We chose a ratio of 2 to 3, because this ensured that however we cropped the shot it would have the same proportions as the original camera image.

3 Highlight alert

4 More of the same

Click the triangle at the top right of the histogram to toggle Highlight Clipping Warning. With this on, you can see any areas of the image that are burnt out, then use the Exposure and Recovery sliders to correct the problem. This can sometimes be easier to use than the Threshold view. It’s not so useful, however, if large areas of your image are already red.

You can process several files at once in Camera Raw, but there are other ways of re-using your settings so that you don’t have to start over with every Raw file you open. Pick Previous Conversion from the drop-down menu (the icon to the right of the word Basic). This is ideal for processing the next shot you took of the same scene. If the lighting and exposure were similar, you could process the shot in one easy step.

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Original shot

On the disc

Ben Brain (Future)

How to…

Look in the Tune folder on the DVD

Fine-tune landscape colour and tone Make adjustments to your landscapes in Adobe Camera Raw and get a well-exposed shot with detail in the shadows, midtones and highlights WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop Elements 6 or later WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How to restore any clipped highlights; how to make colour more vivid; how to produce deeper tonal contrast in landscapes IT ONLY TAKES 25 minutes By shooting your landscapes in Raw format, you can give yourself a safety net that enables you to take a more relaxed attitude to setting your shutter, aperture and even white balance settings while on location. Thanks to

the extra information about colour, exposure and tone that’s packed into every Raw file, you can adjust your landscape with ease without jeopardising image quality. Raw files are much more forgiving than compressed JPEGs when it comes to clawing back detail lost in the shadows – or rescuing textures in apparently blown-out highlights. If you push a JPEG too far, you’ll end up adding artefacts, such as noise or halos, to the shot. In a compressed JPEG, there’s less information to work with, so existing artefacts such colour fringes caused by chromatic aberration are

72 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

much more difficult to remove. Raw files give you more editing options, which is why it makes sense to shoot in this superior format. In this project, we’ll take a fairly well-exposed landscape and tweak its attributes to give it a wider contrast range and more vivid colours, and we’ll restore detail hidden in the midtones and highlights. VIDEO TUTORIAL Follow our step-by-step

guide to improving tone and detail IMAGE FILE Use the image Raw_start.cr2 in

the Tune folder on the DVD

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Landscape basics

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1 Open your Raw file

2 Boost exposure

3 Clobber clipping

4 Fill in the midtones

5 Increase the blacks

6 Vivid colour

Open Raw_start.cr2 in the Adobe Camera Raw editor. By default, Photoshop tries to produce a wider tonal range of shadows and highlights by setting the Contrast to +50 and Brightness to +25. This can cause the cloud highlights to lose a bit of detail, so reset Brightness, Contrast and Blacks to 0.

Click on the Highlight Clipping Warning triangle in the top-right of the histogram. The brightest highlights show up as red patches. These blown-out areas will print as pure white, meaning fine tonal detail is lost. To restore this highlight detail, drag the Recovery slider to 16. The red clipping warning patches will vanish and you’ll see more detail.

For an even more striking contrast between shadows and highlights, increase Blacks to 4. This darkens the blackest shadows. Create a wider range of tones by sliding Contrast up to +13. The histogram now looks more balanced, with plenty of tonal information in the shadows, midtones and highlights.

You can now see the Raw file as it was originally shot. The histogram has plenty of information at the left (shadows) end of the tonal range and in the middle (midtones). There aren’t as many pixels towards the far right (highlights), which means that our shot is slightly underexposed. To brighten up the image, drag the Exposure slider to +0.80.

Now the shot looks brighter and the contrast is less flat. The bridge is a prominent feature and consists mainly of midtones. Reveal the texture in its midtones a little more by dragging Fill Light up to 12. The midtones in the distant treeline are now a little washed out, though, so gently darken them by dragging Clarity to 27.

To give your landscape a final polish, you can boost its rather desaturated colours and ensure that your final print has plenty of punch. The Vibrance slider enables you to enhance typical landscape colours, such as blues and greens. Whack it up to +63 to produce colours that are much more vivid.

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First Steps

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On the disc

How to…

Look in the Raw Portrait folder

Original shot

Improve skin tones in your portraits It’s easy to enhance your portraits in Camera Raw by tweaking colour, improving skin tones and removing blemishes. Read on to find out how... WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop Elements 6 or Photoshop CS, or above WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How to achieve correct skin tones in portrait shots IT ONLY TAKES 15 minutes Photographing portraits in Raw format means you can relax while you shoot. There’s enough pixel info crammed into every Raw file for you to edit your way out of trouble if necessary. If you’ve slightly overexposed your shot, as we have with our example portrait above, Photoshop enables you to open up the image by a stop or two and correct the exposure. Lesser-quality file formats, such as JPEG, would

become rife with unwanted artefacts under such editing processes, but the extra image data stuffed into Raw files helps to overcome this, reducing ugly noise and aberrations. Another great thing about shooting in the Raw format is that the original file always remains unaltered by the editing process. Whenever you edit in the Adobe Camera Raw editor, Photoshop creates a ‘sidecar’ file that stores the changes you’ve made. You don’t actually change a single pixel in the Raw file, which gives you confidence to experiment with your editing. In this Raw workshop, we’ll show you how to tweak an overexposed portrait, darkening

74 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

the shadows to make our lighter-toned subject stand out from her pastoral background. You’ll also retouch the image to remove blemishes from her forehead and boost the shot’s colours without spoiling her skin tone. We’re working in Photoshop here, but steps 1-5 can be completed in any version of Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. The final step requires the expanded ACR toolset in Photoshop. VIDEO TUTORIAL Follow our step-by-step

guide to improving tone and detail IMAGE FILE Use the image raw_start.dng in

the Raw Portrait folder on the DVD

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1 Check exposure

Skin tones

2 Clobber clipping

Open raw_start.dng from this tutorial’s folder on the disc. To discover where the exposure problems lie, click the Highlight Clipping Warning icon above the histogram (the white triangle, shown top right). Overexposed highlights appear as patches of red, which indicate areas that will print as flat white.

To recover the detail in the shot’s blown-out highlights, drag the Exposure slider down half an f-stop to -0.50. The clipped red patches will reduce in size, revealing detail lost in the highlights. To target the remaining clipped highlights without affecting the shadows, drag the Recovery slider to 40.

3 Improve contrast

4 Darker shadows

5 Colour correction

6 Skin care

There’s not much contrast between the brightly-lit highlights of the girl’s skin and the midtones of the background grass. To make her stand out more, try dragging the Brightness slider down to +25 and increasing the Contrast to +20. This creates a broader range of tones and emphasises our subject.

To gently boost the colour of the subject’s skin, increase Saturation to +10. It’s best to resist going any higher, because her skin will start to look orange. For a more vibrantly coloured background, drag the Vibrance slider up to +35. This boosts the colour saturation of the grass and greenery, but leaves the subject’s healthy-looking skin unchanged.

To increase the contrast even more, drag the Blacks slider up to 21, which makes the darkest shadows look even darker. The shadows on the girl’s face may become clipped, but you don’t need to see detail in this area. A little clipping is acceptable when you’re creating a wider range of tones.

Now, zoom in to 100%. To remove imperfections on the subject’s forehead, select the Retouch Tool [B]. Set Type to Heal, then drag the red circle over a spot. Once this is done, a green circle will appear. Drag this over a clear area of skin and your selection will replace the red circle’s blemish.

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First Steps

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Exposure 1 Exposure 2 76 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

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Combine Raw shots

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How to…

Combine Raw shots

On the disc Look in the Combine folder on the DVD

Create and combine two outdoor exposures to get a shot with a wider range of tones WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop Elements 6 or Photoshop CS, or above WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How to optimise a photo to either ideal shadows or highlights; how to combine two exposures IT ONLY TAKES 15 minutes When you view a landscape, your eyes can quickly adjust to see a wide dynamic range of tones, from the darkest shadows of back-lit trees to the brightest highlights of sun-lit clouds. This enables you to see much more detail with the naked eye than your D-SLR can with its sensor. When shooting that scene, the camera must compromise between capturing detail in the brightest and darkest parts. If the sky is bright the camera may close down its aperture to avoid over-exposing highlights in the clouds, which could plunge the trees into shadow.

You could try opening the aperture to restore detail to the clipped shadows, but this would blow out your highlights. Luckily the Raw format enables you to capture a wider dynamic range than JPEG, and you can exploit all the extra information in a Raw file to reveal hidden shadow and highlight detail. Here we’ll show you how to take a Raw image and use the Camera Raw plug-in to create two versions of the original. One will show the detail in the brightest highlights; the other will brighten the scene’s shadows and midtones. You’ll then combine the two exposures to create a shot that shows detail in the shadows, midtones and highlights. VIDEO TUTORIAL Follow our step-by-step

guide to combining Raw shots IMAGE FILE Use the image combine_start.

cr2 in the Combine folder on the DVD

Create and combine two Raw exposures

1Maximise image quality

Open the file combine_start.cr2 from the Combine folder on the disc. The Adobe Camera Raw editor will open. To exploit all the picture information hidden in the Raw file, set Depth to 16 Bits/Channel instead of the default 8.

2Turn on clipping warning

To find out where your exposure problems lie, turn on the clipping warnings in the top and right corners of the histogram. All of the blown-out (or clipped) highlights will now appear as patches of red. Clipped shadows, on the other hand, will be shown as blue patches.

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First Steps

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3Use the histogram

4Recover lost highlights

On the histogram you’ll see the clipped highlights peaking in red at the far right of the graph. There are plenty of clipped shadows, too, as you can see from the blue peak on the left. The graph will change as you edit, helping you to see the changes as you work.

Get started by creating a version of the Raw file that shows more highlight detail. At this stage, we’re not interested in the shadows at all, so it’s not a problem if they become even more clipped: you’ll create a separate version showing shadow detail later on.

5Instant recovery

6 Retaining detail

7Tweak exposure

8Open in Elements

Drag the Recovery slider up to 30 and watch most of the clipping warning vanish. Recovery is designed to recover lost highlight detail without altering other tones such as shadows and midtones. The blown-out highlights around the edge of the clouds now show more detail.

You’ve recovered lost detail in the blown highlights, but the sky is still too bright. Drag the Exposure slider to -0.75 to darken the whole area. This helps restore some colour to the blue sky and the midtones of the back-lit clouds. The distant hills will become more emphasised too. 78 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

Check out the histogram again. You’ll notice that the red highlight section of the graph on the right is no longer shooting up to the top. This means that the brightest pixels in the image are now within Photoshop’s dynamic range, so they will print with their detail intact.

Now that you’ve optimised the Raw image’s sky detail and recovered detail in the blown-out highlights, click Open Image. This will open the edited shot in the standard Photoshop Elements editor. Now go to File > Save and rename the image ‘Recovered Highlights’. Leave the file open.

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Combine Raw shots

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9 Restore shadow detail

10 Marvellous midtones

11Create two layers

12Combine the layers

Go to File > Open Recently Edited File and open the original Raw file in the Camera Raw editor. Click Default to clear the settings you used to restore the highlights. To create a version that reveals the shadows, drag Blacks to 0. The blue clipping warning will vanish.

Choose Select >All, Edit > Copy. Select the Recovered Highlights version and go to Edit > Paste. Click Convert Depth. The document’s top layer will be optimised to show shadow detail and the bottom layer to show highlight detail.

Most of the landscape’s midtones have been lost in the shadows. Drag the Fill Light slider up to 30 to brighten up the midtones and restore hidden detail. Now you have a version of the shot that features detail in the shadows and midtones. Click Open Image.

Grab the Eraser Tool and choose a 300-diameter soft airbrush from Brush Presets. Set Opacity to 20%. In the shadow layer, spray the Eraser to remove the over-exposed sky, revealing the well-exposed sky from the highlight layer below.

How we processed our Raw file

We increased our shot’s dynamic range in four steps 1 Highlight recovery Our shot’s highlights were blown out. We used the Recovery slider to create a version of the shot that displayed more detail in the highlight areas. 2 Midtone detail The trees were under-exposed in the original, which plunged them into darkness. The Fill Light slider recovered lost midtone detail.

1 4 2

3

3 Clipping The darkest shadows were clipped, causing them to print out as pure black. The Blacks slider helped to restore detail hidden in the original Raw file. 4 Beautiful blends We created two differently exposed versions of the image and used the Eraser tool to blend the correctly exposed parts of each image together. The result? A shot with a wider dynamic range.

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On the disc Look in the Combining folder on the DVD

George Cairns

First Steps

How to…

Merge shots with a mask

Original shot

Process a Raw file three times, using different settings for each, then combine them in Photoshop to uncover detail in both the sky and the foreground WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop Elements 6 or Photoshop CS, or above WHAT YOU’LL LEARN Advanced merging techniques using masks IT ONLY TAKES 15 minutes One of the biggest challenges photographers face when shooting a landscape is the dramatic difference in light levels between the sky and the ground. If you set your exposure to capture detail in the sky, often the ground can become too dark and

under-exposed, causing important details to disappear. However, if you meter your camera to expose for the darker foreground, the brighter sky can become blown out and overexposed, producing clipped pixels. By shooting in Raw format, you can capture a shot that contains all the information you need about the tones in a high-contrast landscape. However, it can still be a struggle to get Camera Raw to reveal a decent amount of detail in both the shadows and the highlights at the same time. Fortunately, you can use the tone-tweaking tools to create three differently

80 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

exposed versions of the same scene, revealing detail in both the sky and the ground. Here, we’ll show you how to combine these separate exposures in Photoshop’s standard editor to achieve a more balanced exposure that reveals detail throughout a shot. This workshop builds on principles explained in the previous tutorial on page 76, introducing ideas like masking part of the shot. IMAGE FILE Use the image combined_start. cr2 in the Combining folder on the DVD

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Mask out Raw exposures

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1 Get started

2 Expose for the sky

Open the file combined_start.cr2 from the disc in Photoshop: it will automatically open in Camera Raw. Our source file features foreground detail, but the clouds and mountains are over-exposed. By turning the highlight clipping warning on (the right-hand arrow above the histogram) you can see the red patches that will print without detail.

To add detail to the sky, drag the Recovery slider to 22: the patches of red will start to disappear. Slide Exposure to -1.45 to darken the sky. Increase Brightness to +61 and Contrast to +79. To add definition to the cloud’s subtle midtones, drag Clarity up to +50. Click on Open Image, then save the shot as ‘SkyExposure.psd’.

3 Expose for the ground

4 Combine the images

5 Create a mask

6 Delete the over-exposed sky

Go to File > Open Recently Edited File and choose combined_start.cr2 again. Click Default to restore the shot to its unedited state. Set Brightness and Contrast to 0, take Vibrance to +28 to enhance the colours and click Open Image. Save this second version as ‘GroundExposure.psd’.

Go to File > Open Recently Edited File; choose combined_ start.cr2 again. Click Default. Take Exposure to +1.50 to create a white, detail-free sky. Click Open Image and copy and paste this version into the main layered document, as in step 4. Grab the Magic Wand Tool, untick the Contiguous option and Shift-click around the image to select the sky and mountains.

With GroundExposure.psd open, go to Select > SelectAll, then choose Edit > Copy. Next, swtich to SkyExposure.psd and then choose Edit > Paste. Go to Window > Layers to open the Layers palette, then double-click on the Layers’ icons to label the two layers.

Tick the Eye icon next to the over-exposed sky layer to hide it, then choose the ground exposure layer. Press [Backspace] to delete this layer’s washed-out sky and reveal the correctly exposed sky from the layer below. Click inside the selection to deselect it: you should now be looking at a composite image that has detail in both the sky and the ground.

A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop 81 WorldMags.net

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On the disc Look in the HDR Project folder

Ben Brain

First Steps

Original shot 82 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

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HDR photography

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How to…

Create an HDR landscape photo Overcome exposure problems by combining three different versions of a lacklustre Raw file to create a striking, balanced landscape image

WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop Elements 6 or Photoshop CS, or above; Photomatix Pro WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How to merge three exposures into a single HDR image IT ONLY TAKES 25 minutes When you shoot on full Auto mode your D-SLR camera may struggle to capture detail in a scene’s highlights, midtones and shadows. If it opens up the aperture to reveal shadow detail, the highlights in the sky can become over-exposed. But by capturing

1Open the source file

a well-exposed sky you risk creating clipped shadows. One way of producing a shot with detail throughout the tonal range is to switch to one of the Creative Zone shooting modes and select the Raw quality setting. You can then create three differently exposed versions of the image and combine them to make one composite shot that’s rich in detail throughout the whole tonal range. This sort of shot is known as an HDR or high dynamic range image. Specialist cameras are capable of capturing an entire HDR photo on location, but you can use the technqiues here

To start creating the three differently exposed images from your single Raw file, first launch Photoshop Elements and click on the Edit button on the opening splash screen. Next, go to File > Open and browse to the HDR_start.cr2 source file on your disc. The Raw image will open in Elements’ Adobe Camera Raw interface.

to create your own on your computer, using three different exposures. This workshop uses a program called Photomatix Pro to merge your three exposures into a single image. If you don’t own Photomatix, you can download a free trial version from www.hdrsoft.com. VIDEO TUTORIAL Follow our step-by-step

guide to faking an HDR-style image IMAGE FILE Use the image HDR_start.cr2 in

the HDR Project folder on the DVD

2Expose for the highlights

The camera has captured a shot with very flat tones. The shadows could be darker and the highlights could be brighter. To create more detailed highlights for your composite HDR image, drag the Exposure slider left to -2.00. In effect, this closes the camera’s aperture by two stops. Click Open Image, go to File > Save and save the shot as ‘HighlightDetail.jpg’).

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First Steps

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3Work on the shadows

4Expose for the midtones

5Open Photomatix Pro

6Perform Tone Mapping

Go to File > Open Recently Edited File and choose HDR_ start.cr2 again. This time, drag the Exposure slider up to +2.00. This will overexpose the highlights, blowing out areas of white, but reveal much more detail in the shadows. Click Open Image, go to File > Save and save the shot as ‘ShadowDetail.jpg’.

Open HDR_start.cr2 one more time. Photoshop will remember the last Exposure adjustment you made. To reveal the shot’s midtones, drag the Exposure slider to 0.00 (or click the Default button to restore the Exposure slider to its original 0.00 setting). Open the image in Photoshop’s standard editor and save it as ‘MidtoneDetail.jpg’. Now open Photomatix Pro.

In Photomatix, click Generate HDR Image. Browse to your three source files and [Shift]-click to add each to the selection. Click OK. You can tell Photomatix about the images’ different exposures by selecting 2 from the EV Spacing drop-down menu. Click OK. Ignore the Options window’s settings, then click OK to generate an HDR composite image.

Press the Tone Mapping Button. In the Details Enhancer tab, set Strength to 95, take Colour Saturation down to 36, change Luminosity to 4 and set Smoothing to Very High. In Tone Settings, set White Point to 0.199% and Gamma to 0.85. Click Process. Now go to File > Save As, choose TIFF 8-bit and name the file ‘ToneMapped.tif’.

7Tweak the tones

8Finishing touches

In Elements, go to File > Open and select the composite image. Go to Enhance > Auto Colour Correction to cool down the slightly warm tint. Tweak the tones by selecting Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Levels. Set the Shadow Input Level slider to 15, the Midtone slider to 0.94 and the Highlight slider to 238.

84 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

Click the Create Adjustment Layer icon and select Hue/ Saturation to add an adjustment layer. Take the Master Saturation slider to +30 and click OK. Finally, grab the Sponge Tool from the Tools palette and set Mode to Saturate and Flow to 20%. Select the background layer and spray along the water’s edge to enhance the bluey-green hue.

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Choosing the right Canon gear isn’t easy...

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Fortunately, choosing the right photo magazine is much simpler! Canon Edition

the only magazine for Canon Slr uSerS Every issue is packed with advice on getting better shots with your Canon digital SLR, with reviews of the latest models and accessories and much more. Plus each issue comes with an exclusive free Video Disc packed with Photoshop lessons.

www.photoradar.com/magazines WorldMags.net

First Steps

WorldMags.nettheOndisc Look in the Batch folder on your DVD

How to…

Speed up your workflow

Original shots

If you have numerous images of one subject or location, try applying the same edits to the whole lot with a just a few clicks in Adobe Camera Raw WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop Elements 6 or Photoshop CS, or above WHAT YOU’LL LEARN Batch-process images IT ONLY TAKES 20 minutes Shooting in your D-SLR’s Raw format gives you a whole new way to process your images, but it also throws up the problem of having to spend that little bit longer working on them in Photoshop, compared to JPEG. This longer editing process can be enough to put some photographers off shooting in Raw – but if you take the time to learn the software,

you’ll discover that there’s a nifty, labour-saving way of processing large numbers of images simultaneously, actually saving you time. Adobe Camera Raw can batch-process hundreds of similar files at the same time, speeding up your Raw processing before opening the files in Photoshop for finer adjustments. Any alterations you make to one image, such as changes to the exposure or sharpening, will take place on all of the images you’ve selected, so this editing method works best when you group together images that have been taken in similar light – a batch of shots

1 Open your shots

Launch Photoshop Elements, go to File > Open and navigate to the Batch folder on your disc. Click the first image in the folder, hold down the Shift key and click on the last image. This will select all of the files in between. Click Open and the images will open in Adobe Camera Raw. Select a shot in the thumbnail bar and click Select All. 86 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

from a day’s landscape shoot or a selection of portraits from a single sitting, for example. While editing multiple images in a batch can save you time, on the following pages we’ll also show you how to fine-tune each image individually for more precise adjustments. Read on to find out more... VIDEO TUTORIAL Follow our step-by-step

guide to batch-processing images IMAGE FILE Try this now – the images are in

the Batch folder on the DVD

2 Rotate the images

Now any adjustments you make to the image in the central display will be replicated across each of the selected images in the left-hand bar. First, you’ll need to rotate the images to the correct orientation - in this case, vertical. The fastest way to do this is to hit the [R] (right) or [L] (left) keys on your keyboard to rotate the images in the direction you want.

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Batch-process images

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First Steps

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3Brighten things up

4Boost the colours

5Sharpen and reduce noise

6Make individual edits

Toggle between the images in the left-hand bar, using the arrow keys to the bottom right of the central image. Select a shot that’s representative of all the images in the group (we chose IMG_8444.cr2), then start making your adjustments. First, move the Exposure slider to -0.45, then move Contrast to about +35 to make the image more dramatic and less flat.

Click on the Detail tab (triangle icon) to sharpen and reduce noise. Sharpening should be subtle, so set Amount to 40, Radius to 1.2, Detail to 4 and leave the Masking slider at 0. If you have a really noisy shot, drag the Luminance and Colour sliders to the right (depending on the amount of noise, the further right you drag the sliders, the more it will be reduced). See our annotated guide to the Detail panel for more.

Drag the Blacks slider right to about 12 to deepen the blacks in the image, then give the colours a boost by dragging the Vibrance slider to about 10. This is a safer way of increasing colour saturation than using the Saturation slider alone, because coloured areas will not become oversaturated. Don’t forget that the changes are being applied to every image.

Now that you’ve made global adjustments to all of the images simultaneously, you can fine-tune any shot you like individually, if necessary, by clicking on the image you want to work on in the left-hand thumbnail panel. This deselects all the other images and enables you to tweak any of the edits made in the previous steps, so you can make precision changes to the shot.

Get to know... the Detail panel

A quick guide to the sliders used to sharpen your shots Sharpening 1 Amount The first slider in the Detail panel controls the amount of sharpening that’s applied to your image by adjusting edge definition. 2 Radius Determines the degree of contrast between light and dark edges. The higher the number, the greater the contrast. 3 Detail Use the Detail slider to sharpen fine detail in your shot. This will also include any noise that may be present in the image.

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1 2 3 4 5 6

4 Masking The final Sharpening slider masks off areas from being sharpened. Zoom in and hold down the [Alt] key when dragging the slider, and areas of the image that appear black won’t be sharpened.

Noise Reduction 5 Luminance The Luminance slider reduces greyscale noise (specks that appear black and white and give shots a grainy look). 6 Colour Reduces chroma noise (visible coloured artefacts).

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Batch-process images faster

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On the disc

Chris George

Look in the Raw Workflow folder

How to…

Find a faster way to process images

Don’t waste time editing your shots one by one: use our high-speed method to manipulate a batch of Raw shots all at once WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop Elements 6 or Photoshop CS, or above WHAT YOU’LL LEARN More advanced batchprocessing methods IT ONLY TAKES 10 minutes There are lots of advantages to shooting in Raw, but the downside is that shots in this top-quality format take longer to process than their JPEG counterparts. The ability to tweak exposure, contrast and colour without losing quality might be a convincing

reason to use Raw whenever possible, but the extra steps involved on the computer can be a real pain when you have lots of pictures that need processing quickly. Fortunately, there’s a way to speed things up by working on a group of Raw files simultaneously. Not many people realise that ACR is capable of processing a whole group of Raw images at the same time, even allowing you to apply the same adjustments to a sequence of images simultaneously. Here, we build on the basic principles of batch-processing that we outlined in the

previous workshop, showing you some of the more advanced techniques you can use to manipulate loads of photos at once when you have the chance, while switching quickly to make individual edits when that’s your best option. Master these principles and you could save yourself hours at the computer. VIDEO TUTORIAL Follow our step-by-step

guide to batch-processing images faster IMAGE FILE Try this with the images in the

Raw Workflow folder on the DVD

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First Steps

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1 Open several files together

2 Multi-tasking with ACR

Launch Photoshop Elements and select File > Open. From here, you can choose images to process as a batch. It’s best to group together shots taken in the same lighting: for this tutorial, you can use the eight Raw files supplied on the disc. Click the upper file, then hold down the [Shift] key and click the lowest file, selecting everything in-between. Now click Open.

The files open in Adobe Camera Raw and are displayed on the left-hand side of the screen. If you click each in turn you can make individual changes, but you want to edit them all simultaneously. Click Select All. You’ll only see one picture in the central image area: if it isn’t representative of the group, select a better shot from the thumbnails, then click Select All.

3 Rescue highlights and shadows

4 Brighten up the image

5 Standard settings

6Crop the lot

The bright day has created a series of high-contrast portraits. The unprocessed files don’t show Lewis Hamilton’s face clearly, and some areas are too bright. The first step is to adjust the Recovery and Fill Light sliders. Notice how the Histogram in the top right squeezes inwards, reducing the highlights and shadows.

The Clarity and Vibrance sliders are almost always worth adjusting upwards. The Clarity slider improves apparent sharpness, while Vibrance improves saturation in a much more subtle and controlled way than the Saturation slider. Remember, at this point you’re still making adjustments to all eight images. 90 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

Although you have improved the contrast, the image now looks flat and Hamilton’s face is still too shadowy. Use the Brightness slider to lighten the image. Adjusting this, rather than Exposure, ensures you don’t blow out the highlights you’ve just rescued.

All the shots need some cropping. Because the composition of each photo is different, you can’t apply the same crop to all eight. However, because you want to save these images as a group, it will look neater if they’re cropped to the same proportions. Click the Crop Tool and choose an Aspect Ratio that suits the set – try 4 to 5.

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Batch-process images faster

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7Individual editing

8Remove unwanted images

Click on each of the images in the left-hand thumbnail list in turn. Crop each photo to maximise the impact of each shot and lose as many of the bystanders in the background as possible. At this stage, you can also fine-tune the Exposure and Contrast sliders so that they’re perfectly suited to the particular frame you’re working on.

There may be some shots in your sequence that aren’t worth keeping: this is the perfect time to cull images that are out of focus or blurred. In this shot, Lewis Hamilton is looking away from the camera. If you press the [Delete] key on the keyboard, the shot is marked for deletion and will be moved to the Trash when you have finished.

9Select the images again

10Open the images to save

When you’ve made your final adjustments to the images individually and weeded out any shots that you don’t want, it’s time to save your sequence. To do this, first click Select All in the top left corner again, so that all of your chosen images are highlighted once more.

If you’re using Photoshop, you can use the Save Images option to save your files as JPEGs quickly and easily. With Photoshop Elements, however, this option is not available and Save Images only allows you to save your shots as DNG files. Press the Open Images button instead.

11Take action with the Photo Bin

12Save your set

Your selected images will now open in Photoshop Elements’ Full Edit mode. You don’t need to make any more adjustments – just save each of the images as JPEGs. Ensure the Photo Bin is open so that you can see thumbnails of your chosen images. Click on Bin Actions above the thumbnails and choose Save Bin as an Album from the drop-down menu.

It’s worth creating a new folder to keep all your edited shots together. Choose the JPEG option from Format, then choose a quality setting of five or six to reduce the file size down to something sensible. Keep the Format Option at the Baseline Standard.

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First Steps

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Original shot

How to…

Make selective tonal adjustments

On the disc Look in the Adjustment Brush folder

Thanks to Adobe Camera Raw’s Adjustment Brush, you can target and improve specific areas in your photos without switching to Photoshop The Raw source file we’ve provided for this tutorial suffers from dramatically blownout highlights: you can see them on the gramophone’s reflective metal surface in the original above. If you tried to restore detail in the highlight areas simply by decreasing the exposure, you would under-expose the rest of the shot. Instead, you need to make a targeted adjustment, altering only the affected areas and leaving the rest of the image

untouched. To do this, you could open the Raw file in Photoshop CS or Photoshop Elements’ standard editor and use the Burn tool to selectively darken these blown-out highlights. However, the Adjustment Brush in the Camera Raw editor means you can make all your image adjustments (both global and selective) in one package, and preserve image quality too. The Adjustment Brush gives you all the functionality of Photoshop’s Burn tool, and

92 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

can be used to target and restore detail in our shot’s blown-out highlights without making exposure changes to the image as a whole. You can also tweak the intensity of the Brush’s tonal adjustments with ease and use masks to fine-tune the edited areas until you’re happy with the overall effect. Read on to find out how it works... Note that this tool is available only in Photoshop: you can’t access it with Camera Raw in Photoshop Elements.

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Adjustment Brush

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1 Open the source file

2 Set up the Adjustment Brush

Open CS4_start.cr2, then turn on the Highlight Clipping Warning by clicking on the triangle at the top-right of the histogram. The red patches indicate blown-out highlights. Dragging Recovery to 100 fails to restore all the detail, and reducing Exposure to -1.95 under-exposes most of the image. Press [Alt] and click Reset. Reduce Exposure to -0.25 and set Clarity to +80.

Click the Adjustment Brush icon. This opens up the Adjustment Brush window, which gives you access to a range of editable attributes, such as Exposure and Saturation. Set Exposure to -2.00 and Size to 7. Next, give the brush a soft edge by setting Feather to 68, then set Flow to 50 and Density to 59. This will help to blend the burnt-in highlight details more effectively with their unedited surroundings.

3 Reveal the detail

4 Modify your adjustment

5 Darken the shadows

6 Finishing touches

Press [Ctrl]+[+] to zoom in on the gramophone’s horn. Now spray the Adjustment Brush over the clipped highlights; this will reduce the red clipping warning patches and reveal more highlight detail in the shot. To view the restored highlight details appearing as you spray, turn off the clipping warning. Try to avoid spraying over any of the darker tones.

Next, click New in the Adjustment Brush pane and set Exposure to -2.80. Set Size to 20, then spray the brush over the horn’s shadows to darken them. This creates a wider range of tones and makes the image look less flat. A new pin appears, enabling you to fine-tune the selective shadow exposure independently of the highlight-altering brush strokes.

Click the Mask Overlay Colour icon at the base of the Adjustment Brush pane, then choose red. Tick Colour Indicates Affected Areas, then click OK. Move the cursor over the Adjustment Brush’s grey pin icon. The areas affected by the stroke now appear in red. Darken the exposure adjustment further by dragging the Exposure slider down to -2.75.

Click New to create an independent group of exposurealtering strokes. Set Exposure to -3.10; spray carefully over the turntable and the blown-out flowers just behind it to darken them. Click the Zoom Tool to leave the Adjustment Brush window. Finally, move the Vibrance slider up to +55 to bring out the shot’s striking colours and give it added impact.

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Graham Dunn (www.grahamdunn.co.uk)

First Steps

Original shot

On the disc

How to…

Look in the Clean folder on the DVD

Make your images sparkling clean Process your Raw files to perfection as you tackle dust, sensor spots and more in your quest to produce pristine-quality images WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop CS WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How to remove artefacts, address lens distortions and enhance the image’s colour and detail IT ONLY TAKES 15 minutes To finish this chapter on the basic principles of editing Raw photos, we’ll take a look at some of the detail work you should be doing – polishing your images until they’re as close to perfect as you can get. As great as the most recent generations of D-SLRs

have become, it’s still possible for the lens mechanism to introduce imperfections – but it’s just as possible to remove using the power of the Camera Raw plug-in. Even if you obsess over keeping your camera lens clean, you’re unlikely to escape the effects of dust and other particles in the atmosphere. It’s also possible for particles to enter the camera and affect the sensor directly, causing telltale black sensor spots. Wide-angle lenses give you the opportunity to take shots you might not achieve otherwise, but they can also cause a vignette effect,

94 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

where the image darkens near its far corners. Add in the effect of visual ‘noise’, which is especially noticeable in some low-light shots, and you’ve got some work to do to clean up your photos. Read on to discover how Camera Raw can make the job much easier... VIDEO TUTORIAL Follow our step-by-step

guide to enhancing your images by removing dust and correcting lens issues IMAGE FILES Use the start image Raw_ Before.cr2 in the Clean folder on the DVD

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Image clean-up

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Remove dust and unwanted elements Indulge in a bit of digital dust-busting to remove unwanted artefacts such as sensor spots and improve a shot’s quality Sensor spots are among the most irritating artefects to discover in your photo after you view it on your computer. These tiny bits of dust show up in the photo as ugly dark blotches. Although it’s a straightforward job to remove sensor spots using the Adobe Camera Raw editor’s Retouch Tool, it’s well worth giving your camera’s sensor a regular clean to reduce the amount of retouching you need to do. To clean a sensor on an SLR, lock the camera’s mirror to an open position to access the sensor. Make sure the camera is fully charged so that it doesn’t fail during the cleaning process. Use a rubber brush blower to blast away dust spots. Be careful not to insert the blower tip beyond the lens mount in case the power fails and the blower damages the closing shutter. If in doubt, get the camera cleaned professionally.

Open Raw_Before.cr2 from this tutorial’s folder on the disc. For a better look at the offending sensor spots, grab the Zoom Tool. Click to zoom in to 100%. Hold [Space] to trigger the Hand Tool and drag the cursor around to discover the dust patches.

2 Select the Retouch Tool

3 Draw overlays

4 And repeat

5 Hide overlays

Grab the Retouch Tool (or press [B] to activate it). Set the Type drop-down menu to Heal. The Heal mode will cause clear patches of transplanted sky to blend seamlessly with the pixels surrounding the unwanted dust spot.

Click to place new overlays on top of other patches of dust. You can add as many as you like. You can fine-tune the size and position of the overlays at any time (even after closing and re-opening the Raw file). To remove unwanted overlays, select them and hit [Backspace].

1 Spot of bother

Place the cursor over a spot, then drag to draw an overlay circle. Drag inside the red circle to position it over the unwanted sensor spot. Drag inside the circular green overlay and place it over a clear patch of sky. Clear sky will replace the sensor spot.

Multiple red and green overlays can be distracting. To see the edited shot’s dust-free sky without viewing the Retouch Tool’s overlay circles, untick the Show Overlay box. You can also click Clear All to remove every overlay and start dust-busting from scratch, if need be.

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First Steps

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Original shot

Enhanced shot

How to…

Improve tones for extra impact Tweak your shot’s colour and tone to perfection, creating a well-exposed, more colourful image Most Raw shots need a little editing to give the image a wider range of shadows, midtones and highlights. The Adobe Camera Raw editor boasts an extensive suite of tools to help you produce perfect colours and tones. Our source file’s histogram shows pixels clustered in the middle of the graph, indicating that the shot consists mostly of midtones. We can tweak the tones to produce greater contrast. The ACR editor provides many ways for you to target and change specific tones, so that you don’t alter the image as a whole. As well as using sliders in the Basic tab, explore more sophisticated tone-tweaking tools such as the ones found in the Tone Curve tab. These enable you to alter narrow ranges of tone independently. We’ll also show you how to coax out subtle textures hiding in our snowdrift’s light blue shadows.

The tree is the focal point. To make it stand out even more, click the Tone Curve tab. Drag the Shadows slider left to –44 to darken the darkest pixels without messing with the midtones or highlights. Take Darks down to –10 to create stronger blue shadows in the snow.

2 Enhance texture detail

3 Boost colour

To gently lift out more detail in the light blue shadows of the snowdrifts, go to the Basic tab and drag the Clarity slider to +50. Drag the Recovery slider to 10 to avoid clipping the brightest highlights. Clipped areas lose all detail and could cause the shot to be rejected. 96 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

1 Boost the shadows

Push Vibrancy up to +20 to enhance the landscape’s rich blues. The vivid blues help draw attention to the texture of the landscape, giving the shot variety and more impact.

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Image clean-up

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Remove vignetting and noise effects Complete the edit by banishing any features that could make the image fail a quality-control inspection

Original shot

Enhanced shot

1 Quality control

Zoom in to 100% and double-check every inch of sky for sensor spots. There are many subtle sensor spots hiding in our source file for you to find. To continue, choose Fit In View from the Select Zoom Level option...

Although your shot may have perfect colours and tones, and be free of sensor spots, it could still fall at the final hurdle. Depending on the type of lens you used for the shot and the exposure you chose for the prevailing light conditions, it’s possible that unwanted visual effects have been added to the Raw image. You might think of visual noise as the digital equivalent of film grain, but it’s actually the effect of random errors introduced into the shot as it’s taken. Carefully managed, noise can actually add interest to a photo, especially if you want an old-fashioned look, but typically it’s something you’ll want to reduce as much as possible. Vignetting, meanwhile, is an effect caused by some wide-angle lenses.

2 Remove vignetting

The corners of the shot are darker than the rest of the sky. Vignetting is common on zoomed-out wide-angle lenses. Click the Lens Corrections tab and push the Lens Vignetting Amount slider to +23 to lighten the corners.

Expert tip

Freedom to experiment The beauty of editing a Raw file is that you can’t change a single pixel on the original shot. When you adjust sliders to alter colours or remove sensor spots with the Retouch Tool, all the changes are recorded in a separate file. This means you can restore the Raw shot to its original status at any time by clicking Default.

3 Final check

Look at the shot’s metadata below the histogram. Our image was captured using an ISO speed of 50, so it’s unlikely to suffer from noise artefacts. Shots of ISO 200 or more will be noisier and you may need to boost the value of the Noise Reduction sliders in the Detail tab. A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop 97 WorldMags.net

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Exposure

4

Make essential fixes to your photos: correct exposure and tone across the entire image, or go selective to be creative Improve exposure for a balanced shot

100

Control a high contrast

102

Enhance tones and transform your shots

104

Rescue under-exposed shots

108

Make selective adjustments

111

Explore Raw graduations

112

Improve exposure in low-light shots

114

Hold on to details

116

Recover blow-out highlight detail

118

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Exposure

On the disc

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How to…

Look in the Exposure Boost folder

Original shot

Enhancing your images in Photoshop Elements’ Raw editor is more intuitive than you might think… WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop CS or Photoshop Elements 6, or above WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How to use Camera Raw to correct the exposure levels in your photo IT ONLY TAKES 5 minutes Many people find the whole idea of shooting and editing in Raw a bit daunting. But once you get the hang of it, it’s surprisingly intuitive.

If anything, it’s easier than using your standard image editor – partly because the most important controls can be found in one simple interface and partly because Raw images contain so much more information than JPEGs. A Raw file contains every last scrap of colour and tonal information captured by your camera’s sensor. This makes Raw files much more forgiving when it comes to fine-tuning exposure or boosting colour and contrast. In

100 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

Ben Brain

Improve exposure for a balanced shot

this walkthrough, we’ll show you how to use Elements’ Raw editor to tweak a shot’s tones to perfection, and how to boost colour and contrast in a matter of seconds. VIDEO TUTORIAL Follow our step-by-step

guide to enhancing Raw files in ACR IMAGE FILES raw_before.dng is in the

Exposure Boost folder on the DVD

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Exposure basics

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1 Evaluate the exposure

2 Tweak the tones

Launch Photoshop Elements in Edit mode and open raw_ before.dng from the Exposure Boost folder in Adobe Camera Raw. You’ll see in the histogram that the graph doesn’t stretch all the way to the right, indicating the image is under-exposed. This is why the white helmet looks grey.

Click on the Highlight Clipping Warning icon above the histogram and drag Exposure right until red patches appear on the helmet. Drag the slider back a little until they disappear. The shot now boasts a full range of shadows, midtones and highlights. Tick and untick the Preview box to see the change.

3 Boost the Blacks

4 Brighten it up

5 Correct the colours

6 Reveal shadow detail

Adjusting the exposure has shifted the histogram to the right and flattened it, weakening the shadows slightly. To deepen the shadows and improve contrast, click the Shadow Clipping Warning icon in the top left, then drag the Blacks slider right until blue patches start to appear. Drag it left until they disappear.

The colours still look a bit flat, so drag Vibrance to +40 to boost blues and browns and Saturation to +20 to boost reds and yellows. Unlike Vibrance, Saturation focuses on colours that are already quite rich, such as reds and yellows, so don’t be tempted to go any further, as your image will start to look garish.

To brighten the image and bring out detail in the shadows without losing all texture in the clouds, drag the Brightness slider to +40. This works on the midtones rather than the shadows or highlights, so these should be unaffected. The contrast is already quite strong, so leave Contrast and Clarity as they are.

Click on Open Image to open your shot in Elements’ main editing window. As a final tweak, go to Enhance Adjust Lighting > Shadows/Highlights. In the new window, drag Lighten Shadows to +20 and Midtone Contrast to +15. This reveals detail in the shadows without blowing out the highlights.

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Exposure

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On the disc Look in the Dog folder on the DVD

How to…

Control a high contrast

Want a pet portrait with a healthy range of tones? We show you how Adobe Camera Raw’s histogram can help WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop Elements WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How to analyse the spread of tones in a shot and how to create a wider tonal range IT ONLY TAKES 10 minutes Photographing animals can be a rather hit-and-miss affair. Even if you manage to catch them in a good pose, you may not have time to set your camera’s aperture and shutter speed to ensure a decent exposure. This can lead to

shots that suffer from weak-looking shadows and flat contrast. By shooting in Raw, you can fix problems at your leisure in Photoshop, confident that there’s plenty of information in the file. It’s possible to recover detail lost in shadows or highlights, without adding nasty artefacts. Before operating on a patient, a surgeon will refer to an X-ray to discover precisely where the problem lies. The Camera Raw editor’s histogram does a similar job, enabling you to diagnose an image’s exposure problems

102 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

Lee Beel

Original shot

with precision, so that you can edit them effectively. Here, we’ll show you how to tweak a pet shot’s colours and tones to perfection. The shot contrasts a dark background with the fluffy white of the dog’s chest, making it harder to show all the detail. VIDEO TUTORIAL Follow our step-by-step

guide to enhancing a Raw image IMAGE FILE The start image, Histogram_

before.dng, is in the Dog folder on the DVD

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Correcting strong contrast

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1 Reading the graph

2Highs and lows

Open Histogram_start.dng. Take a look at the histogram for tonal information. The histogram’s graph stretches from the shadow end at the left, to the highlight end at the right, indicating that there are some black shadows and white highlights in the photograph.

The graph rises and falls to show the strength of shadows, midtones and highlights in the image. The peaks occur where shadows begin to blend the midtones. The darkest shadows at the left aren’t as strong as they could be. The same goes for the brightest highlights on the right.

3 Tackle the tint

4Darken the shadows

5Lighten the highlights

6 Colour correction

The image is too warm and has a magenta tint. Drag the Tint slider left to -20 to counteract this. The histogram’s shadows slide to the left as they get a little darker. Create a more natural-looking daylight white balance by cooling the Temperature to 4400.

Push Exposure up to +0.25 and increase Brightness to +68. This increases the height of the highlight pixels on the far right of the histogram. Now boost the Fill Light to 9 to lighten the midtones without also altering the darkest shadows or the brightest highlights.

To increase the contrast between the shadows and the highlights, the peaks on the far left and far right of the histogram can be increased. For darker shadows, drag Blacks to 9. The histogram displays the darkest pixels in the shot as a higher peak at the left of the graph.

Clarity enhances the contrast of delicate midtone areas, which is a great way to bring out subtle details in the dog’s white fur. Drag the Clarity slider to +40. This helps to sharpen up our subject’s fur. Boost weaker colours by pushing Vibrance up to around +58.

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Exposure

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104 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

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On the disc Look in the Curves folder on the DVD

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Curves

Enhance tones and transform your shots Camera Raw’s powerful Curves controls enable you to fine-tune a Raw shot’s colours and tones for an instant boost WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop CS WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How to tweak colour temperature, how to fine-tune tone, how to edit curves IT ONLY TAKES 10 minutes When we view objects, we take it for granted that we’re seeing accurate colours. Unlike the human eye, however, digital cameras are more susceptible to being confused by high-contrast scenes and changing colour temperatures. Your camera

sees daylight as blue and indoor light as orange. The Auto White Balance (AWB) setting is designed to warm up or cool down a shot to remove colour tints, but it can sometimes fail to do a good job. You can give the camera a clue to the lighting conditions it’s shooting in by using white balance presets such as Daylight or Tungsten. This will increase your chances of capturing natural-looking colours. The camera’s Auto mode works well if you don’t have time to set the exposure manually, but if you do end up with a tinted and under-exposed Raw shot, don’t panic – you

can tweak the colours and tones in Adobe Camera Raw. You’ll then be able to fine-tune your image with the powerful Tone Curve controls. Raw shots are packed with information about the scene’s colours and tones, and you can use curves and white balance tools in Photoshop to dramatically improve the look of a disappointing shot.

IMAGE FILE The start image, RawCurves_ start.dng, is in the Curves folder on the DVD

Original shot

Chris George

1 Open your image

2 Diagnose the problems

Open the file RawCurves_start.dng from the Curves folder on your disc. We saved this as a digital negative (.dng) file to preserve it as an uncompressed Raw file.

The histogram peaks towards the shadows end at the left, telling us that the shot consists mostly of shadows and midtones and needs brightening up.

3 Warm it up

4 Adjust colour hue

Warm up the shot by dragging the Color Temperature slider to the right until it reads 5,200K (Kelvins) – a typical daylight setting. The precise value isn’t critical.

This shot also has a slightly greenish hue. Go for a more natural-looking range of colours by dragging the Tint slider to the right, to around -5 or so.

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Exposure

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5 Clipping warning

6 Tone curves

Another way to check a shot’s exposure is to click on the Shadow Clipping Warning button at the top left of the histogram. This will turn all clipped shadows into patches of blue. By pushing Exposure up to +40 and increasing Fill Light to 40, you can brighten up the image’s shadows and reveal previously hidden details.

If you’re using Elements, you can make a dramatic difference to the shot by adjusting Exposure and tweaking the Fill Light sliders. Photoshop users can continue fine-tuning the shot by clicking on the Tone Curve icon. Click on the Point Curve tab. Set the Curve drop-down menu to Linear. A linear (or straight) curve makes no change to your shot.

7 Play with presets

8 Do it yourself

To see how curves alter tone, choose the Strong Contrast preset from the Curve drop-down. The point at the top right of the curve has moved up, brightening the highlights. The point on the bottom left dips down, dragging the image’s shadows into darker territory. The middle point controls the midtones, and has stayed the same.

Select the point near the bottom of the curve and drag it up so that input reads 25 and output reads 38. This remaps the darker shadows and gives them a lighter value. Carry on up the curve and push the next point upwards so that its input is 65 and output is 72. Next, pull the highlight point down to input 193 and output 188.

Expert tip

Histograms and curves

Histograms describe the input levels of a shot’s shadows, midtones and highlights, using a scale of 0 for black through to 255 for white. Photoshop puts a curve on top of the histogram so you can see how the two relate. Curves use the same scale to remap the input levels to new output levels. You can adjust the left side to lighten the shadows, or tweak the right side to change the highlights.

A linear shape means the curve has not re-mapped any histogram values, so tones haven’t been edited.

106 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

This S-shaped curve shows darkened shadows and brightened highlights, indicating an image with strong contrast.

Here, the bulge in the middle of the Parametric curve brightens up pixels in the midtone range of the image.

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Reducing the curve’s Highlights slider causes the main histogram’s highlight pixels to slide to the left.

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9 Restore detail

Curves

10 Point vs Parametric

By pushing the lower curve control points upwards, you’ve brightened up the shot’s shadows and midtones, giving them a higher output level. You’ve also reduced the highlights’ output levels a little, restoring detail to the frost. The blue clipping warning has shrunk, proving that more background detail has become visible.

The Point Curve is very powerful and you can easily end up over-editing the shot, adding horrible posterised effects to the image. Set the Point Curve drop-down menu to Linear to reset the curve. Photoshop has another curve-based editing tool that’s much easier to use – click on the Parametric Curve tab to open it.

11Use sliders instead

12 Tweak those tones

The beauty of the Parametric curve is that it enables you to use sliders instead of points to alter the curve. These sliders are dedicated to changing the output levels of four different regions – Shadows, Darks, Lights and Highlights. This lets you focus on problem tones without altering other areas. Drag Shadows right to about -50.

Drag the Darks slider right to -82. This brightens up pixels in the image nearer the midtone range, restoring detail to the clipped areas. The lower end of the curve has risen, brightening the output levels of the darker pixels without interfering with the healthier highlights. Drag Highlights left to -22 to reveal more detail.

Expert tip How we tweaked our tones

True colours

Tweak Exposure

Curve correction

Adjust Highlights

We tweaked colour temperature and hue in the Basic editing pane to create a warmer and less greentinted shot.

We lightened up the shot’s shadows and midtones a touch by increasing the values of the Exposure and Fill Light sliders.

We revealed more detail in the shadows and midtones by using the Parametric curve’s Shadows and Darks sliders.

The Parametric curve’s Highlights slider helped us regain detail previously hidden in the brightest frosty pixels.

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Ali Jennings (Future)

Exposure

How to…

Original shot

Rescue underexposed shots

Disappointed by a dull landscape that lacks detail? We reveal how to improve dark shots by boosting the shadows, contrast and colour WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop Elements 6 or Photoshop CS, or larer WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How to use Camera Raw to recover shadow detail in an under-exposed shot without introducing noise IT ONLY TAKES 20 minutes Getting exposure right when shooting at slow shutter speeds can be tricky. To get decent shots, you need a careful balance that avoids burnt out highlights while still allowing enough light through the lens to retain detail in the shadows. As a general

rule, it’s easier to recover shadow rather than highlight detail when editing shots in the digital darkroom, but this can also increase the chances of adding noise in areas of dark or neutral tone. Our example image is a little under-exposed, but this does mean that detail has been captured in the highlights of the flowing water. If we tried to correct the exposure in Photoshop Elements using a simple Levels adjustment technique, the noise from those shadows would instantly jump out, so to keep ugly noise at bay, we’ll show you how to make adjustments in Adobe Camera Raw. ACR

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enables changes to the tones of a Raw file that will maximise the improvements in exposure while keeping noise to a minimum. Once finished in ACR, we’ll then show you how to make a few simple adjustments in Photoshop Elements itself to boost the overall contrast and colour. So let’s get started... VIDEO TUTORIAL Follow our step-by-step

guide to recovering colour and detail in under-exposed Raw files IMAGE FILE underexpose_before.dng is in the Recover folder on the DVD

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Under-exposed photos

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1 Correct the white balance

2 Fix the exposure

Open the image underexpose_before.dng from the Recover folder in Elements’ Camera Raw editor. Before adjusting the exposure, click on the White Balance tool and click into an area of neutral colour. Set the Temperature slider to 5,500 to fine-tune the balance, then set Tint to -12.

As you can see from the histogram, the Raw file is quite under-exposed, with the bulk of the data showing in the left-hand (shadow) area of the graph. To lighten the image, move the Exposure slider to +0.75 so that the main curve of data in the histogram moves towards the middle.

3 Recover the shadows

4 Increase brightness

5 Boost vibrance

6 Reduce the noise

Switch on the Clipping Warnings by clicking on the triangles above the histogram or by pressing [U] and [O]. Now areas of shadow will appear as blue patches, and highlights as red. Move the Fill Light slider to 55 and the areas of blue will reduce, revealing more detail in the shadow areas.

The under-exposure issues have left the colours in the image looking a little washed out, but this is easily fixed. To improve the colour, move the Vibrance slider to 25. This clever tool will help to boost the less saturated colours while leaving the more saturated colours untouched. Increase Clarity to 20.

The image’s exposure is almost correct now, but to brighten the detail without losing contrast, increase the Brightness slider to 85. As you do this, you may find that the highlight areas start to become clipped (patches of red will reappear). To counter this, increase the Recovery slider to 50.

If you look carefully at the shadow areas, you’ll start to see the introduction of speckled coloured noise. To reduce this, click on the Detail tab and increase the Colour Noise slider to 45. Now click on Open Image to exit Camera Raw and open the image in the main Photoshop Elements interface.

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Exposure

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7 Add impact with contrast

8 Selective colour enhancement

9 Boost the contrast

10 Dodge and Burn

In Photoshop Elements, drag the Background layer onto the Create a New Layer icon to duplicate it. To boost the contrast, go to Enhance > Adjust Colour > Adjust Colour Curves. On the left-hand side of the screen, you will see a series of adjustment presets. Select Increase Contrast.

The image should now have detail in both the shadows and highlights. To finalise the contrast adjustments and add a little more impact, go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Levels. Set Shadows to 6, Midtones to 1 and Highlights to 240. Use the layer options drop-down menu to select Flatten Image.

You can now use the four sliders to fine-tune the contrast, then, when you’re happy with the results, click OK to apply the changes. To give the colour a gentle boost, go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Hue Saturation, and use the Edit drop-down to boost the Saturation of Reds to 30 and Yellows to 20.

Select the Dodge Tool and in the top Options bar select a soft brush with a Radius of 300px. Make sure that Exposure is set to around 5%, then use the brush to draw out some of the highlight detail in the stones and rocks. Switch to the Burn Tool and repeat the process on the tops of the rocks.

Expert tip

How to avoid noise When dealing with under-exposed shots, simply adjusting the Levels to brighten the shadow areas will almost definitely introduce noise. To keep noise to a minimum, make sure you keep an eye on the shadow areas at 100% after each adjustment you make, and undo that change if necessary.

11 Sharpen up

Finally, sharpen the image for a quality finish. Due to the small amount of noise, it’s best to use the Unsharp Mask filter. Go to Enhance > Unsharp Mask, then set Amount to 60% and Radius to 1.6. Increase the Threshold slider to 6: this will help to reduce the effect of sharpening on the noisy areas.

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Fine exposure control

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Make adjustments

On the disc Look in the Selective folder on the DVD

Use Photoshop’s selective Adjustment Brush to reveal detail in backlit subjects child’s midtones without altering the background highlights. It works much like Photoshop’s Dodge Tool, but the advantage of Raw is that you can undo or edit your changes at any time. VIDEO TUTORIAL Follow our step-by-step guide to

revealing detail in backlit subjects IMAGE FILE The start image, selective_start.cr2,

is in the Selective folder on the DVD

1 Open the start image

Original shot

2 Set up the Adjustment Brush

Launch Photoshop and go to File > Open. Navigate to the file selective_start.cr2 in the Selective folder on your DVD and click on Open. As the photo is a Raw file, Photoshop will open it up in the Camera Raw editor. To turn the landscape-oriented original the right way up, click once on the Rotate Image 90˚ Counter Clockwise icon. You now have a portrait-oriented shot.

Select the Adjustment Brush icon at the top of the main editing window. In the Adjustment Brush pane, set Brightness to +120, Contrast to +72, colour to white, and Size to 10. Set Feather to 41 to give the brush a softer edge and ensure that the lightened areas blend in with the rest of the image. Start to spray over the child to reveal more midtone detail.

3 Add a new adjustment

4 Fine-tune the exposure

Adjusting the toddler’s tones this way produces a similar effect to using a burst of fill flash to add shadow detail. Once you’ve lightened up the toddler, click the New button in the Adjustment Brush pane and set Brightness to +101 and Contrast to +53. Spray over the cereal to make it stand out. Click the Erase button to undo any changes.

By dodging in detail using the Camera Raw editor, you’re making non-destructive tonal adjustments. This enables you to fine-tune these adjustments with ease. Click on the Pin icon on the child. A red mask will show you which areas of the shot this particular pin is adjusting. Drag the Brightness slider down to +100 to produce a more subtle effect.

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Paul Grogan

When you shoot a subject that’s backlit by a bright light source, there’s a risk that the camera will try to balance the exposure to capture detail in both the shadows and highlights. In the start image, our main backlit subjects are under-exposed. We could try boosting the Exposure slider’s value, but this would also blow out the background highlights. The selective Adjustment Brush in Camera Raw for Photoshop enables you to lighten the

Exposure

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Adjust exposure with....

On the disc Look in the Raw Grads folder on the DVD

Raw grads

Correcting exposures or adding drama is easy with Adobe Camera Raw’s Grad Filter WHEN SHOULD I USE THIS TECHNIQUE? After making your normal adjustments, use the Graduated Filter to apply the effect you want. WHICH PICTURES DOES IT SUIT? Landscapes are obvious, as you can change the effect of selected areas – perfect for enhancing skies.

Original shot

Ali Jennings

Graduated filters are an essential part of any landscape photographer’s kit, and are great for applying colour effects or tackling tricky lighting conditions when shooting. A basic filter kit is relatively inexpensive, and you’ll soon find that you’re carrying around a selection on the off chance. For many, filters can quickly become an obsession. As a basic setup, a couple of Neutral Density (ND) grads are always handy, and will enable you to capture shots that would have otherwise been impossible because of exposure differences. However, if the exposure difference is just a couple of stops, then you can always use Evaluative Metering and then level out the differences in the digital darkroom.

Graduation class

Included in Adobe Camera Raw is is the Graduated Filter, which enables you to apply ND and Colour-style effects to your pictures. Effects can then be fully adjusted to suit your needs. Once you’ve taken your shot and have the image open within ACR, you’ll find the Graduated Filter tool in the top toolbar. Once activated, all you need to do is click at the top of the screen and drag down. As you do this, you’ll see a line being drawn across the image signifying where the gradient will appear. Once the mouse is released, the effects can then be applied using the slider options on the left. There are two types of traditional graduated effects that can be applied: ND and Colour grads. To apply an ND-style effect, all you need to do is adjust the exposure. In the same way as a real ND grad, you have the ability to do so from -4 to +4. To apply Colour grads, you can use the colour picker at the bottom of the options, and as you choose a colour you’ll instantly see the effect on screen. The Graduated Filter is a powerful enhancement tool and can be adapted for many types of image. Used as part of your usual Raw enhancements, you’ll be amazed at the difference that it can make.

Graduated filter The Graduated Filter. is quite easy to use: simply draw a line vertically down the image to the horizon, and the gradient’s area is marked. Then you can adjust Exposure, Colour and Clarity with the Adjustment sliders to the right.

1 ADJUST EXPOSURE As long as there’s some detail in the sky, the +/-4 Exposure adjustment can quickly correct most exposure problems.

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1 3 2

2 COLOUR CHOICE The colour swatch at the bottom of the options enables you to apply any Graduated Colour you like to add drama to a scene.

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3 CLARITY Clouds can often lack form, but with the Clarity slider you can quickly enhance and pull out any detail that’s in the skies.

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Exposure

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the disc Look in the Night Shots folder

Original shot

How to…

Improve exposure in low-light shots

Struggling to get your night shots right? Lighten shadows, remove colour casts and get rid of grain using the powerful features of the Camera Raw editor Switching your camera’s quality setting to Raw improves your ability to process pictures perfectly, whatever subject you choose to photograph. This is particularly true when shooting in tricky lighting situations, where it’s hard or even impossible to get the camera settings spot-on. Shooting after dark or in low light typically results in high-contrast scenes, where the difference between the brightest highlights

and the darkest shadows in the picture are too great for your camera’s sensor to cope with. The brightness and contrast of the resulting compromise can be much more successfully adjusted, without affecting overall image quality, if you shoot in Raw rather than JPEG, because you have the maximum amount of picture information to work with. As well as providing precise adjustments for exposure, the Camera Raw plug-in also

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enables you to fix colour cast problems and reduce visible grain, or ‘noise’ – both of which are typical of low-light photographs. Try this workshop to understand the principles. VIDEO TUTORIAL Follow our step-by-step

guide to enhancing a low-light image IMAGE FILE The start image, elRAW_start.

cr2, is in the Night Shots folder on the DVD

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Low-light photos

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1 Lose the orange glow

2 Shift the spread

Choose File > Open from the Full Edit option in Photoshop Elements. Find the shot called elRaw_start.cr2 on the DVD and click Open. The image will open in Adobe Camera Raw. Now change the White Balance setting from As Shot to Tungsten to remove the orange colour cast. Notice that the Temperature slider automatically moves from 3,700 to 2,850 Kelvin.

Typically for a high-contrast scene, the histogram at the top right of the interface spreads right across the graph, but the shot still looks a bit too dark. The first step to correcting the exposure is therefore to move the Brightness slider up, which increases the brightness of the midtones without affecting the shadows and highlights. Try a setting of +111.

3 Make a limited recovery

4 Fine-tune exposure and contrast

5 Pay attention to detail

6 No more noise

Over-exposed highlights are usually a problem in digital images, but can often be rescued using the Recovery slider. Press the [Alt] key as you click on the slider to engage the Threshold View and monitor the problem areas more closely. It’s impossible to rescue the really bright lights, but using a Recovery setting of 53 improves highlight detail significantly.

Long exposures and high ISO settings mean that low-light images often look grainy when you zoom in, and this shot is no exception. Click on the Detail tab (the two triangles). Leave the four Sharpening sliders alone. Zoom in to 100% (using the menu at the bottom left), then press the space bar and click-and-drag to find an area of the shot where grain is obvious.

You can now use the remaining sliders to tweak the exposure so that the image looks its best. Moving Fill Light to 14 and Blacks up to 12 will improve the exposure in the darker areas of the shot. Now move the Contrast slider to +29 – this secret weapon increases contrast in the midtones alone, helping to improve detail in the church spire.

The secret to setting the Noise Reduction sliders is to move them up to minimise the grain, without losing detail from the key focal points of the image. Here, we’ve left the Colour slider at the default 25, but moved the Luminance slider to 50. To finish, click Open Image to enter Full Edit mode and use the Clone Stamp tool to remove the glare spots from the sky.

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On the disc Look in the Water folder on the DVD

Ali Jennings

Original shot

How to…

Hold on to details

We show you how to pull the most detail from fast-flowing waterfall shots by recovering information from tricky highlight and shadow areas WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop CS3/Elements 6.0 WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How to make subtle adjustments within ACR, read the histogram using Clipping Warnings and master the image controls IT ONLY TAKES 30 minutes Fast-flowing water captured using a slow shutter speed can be a tricky subject to process correctly, but with a few pro guidelines, you can ensure that you have the best quality image, ready for printing at maximum resolution. The aim is to make subtle adjustments within Abode Camera Raw that enable you to avoid the usual pitfalls of lost detail in the shadow areas and blown highlights within the flowing water.

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In this tutorial, you’re going to learn how to read and understand the histogram for water shots by using the Clipping Warnings. The Clipping Warnings show any danger areas that will affect the tonal range of your photograph. You’ll also learn how to use the image controls that are available in Abode Camera Raw to recover lost detail, which helps to avoid overly white areas. VIDEO TUTORIAL Follow our easy step-by-step guide to recapturing

detail using Camera Raw IMAGE FILES The start pictures, Raw_Waterfall_Before.tiff and

waterfall done.jpg, are in the Water folder on the DVD

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Recover detail

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1 White balance and exposure

2 Adjust the midtones

Open the Raw image via File > Open in Photoshop. In the Camera Raw dialog, click the Highlight Clipping Warning arrow. Choose a White Balance setting, then grab the Exposure slider and drag it to the left until the Highlight clipping disappears.

Use the Recovery slider to remove the last traces of clipping and bring the waterfall’s detail back. Now drag the Brightness slider to the right to open up the midtones. Be careful not to drag it too far, or you’ll lose the subtle detail.

3 Contrast and saturation

4 Clarity and sharpening

Add a little more contrast by dragging the Contrast slider to the right. You can also drag on the Fill Light slider to add a little light to the shadow areas. To get an effect similar to shooting on Velvia film, you can crank up the Saturation slider.

Zoom into a 100% view. Now use the Clarity slider to add more midtone contrast and the illusion of sharpness. You may need to hit the Details button and use a little Luminance and Color Noise Removal, and also add subtle sharpening.

Expert tip

Shadow and highlight clipping With all images, but particularly ones featuring waterfalls, it’s important that you don’t clip highlights, as this will result in severely ‘burnt out’ areas of water with no detail in them. Fortunately, within the Camera Raw dialog you have access to Clipping Warnings that can help avoid this. The Clipping Warning markers sit above the ends of the histogram, and you can activate on-screen clipping overlays by clicking these. The object is to make sure, through use of the Exposure and Recovery sliders, that there’s no clipping showing over the lightest parts of the image. The Clipping Warning will change colour depending on which colour channels are being clipped. It’s important to keep your eye on the histogram as you edit: clipping will show as vertical spikes at either end of the graph.

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Exposure

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On the disc Look in the Highlights folder on the DVD

Recover blown-out highlight detail We demonstrate how to restore missing detail caused by harsh lighting conditions

Original shot

WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop Elements 3 or Photoshop CS2, or later WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How to use a single Raw image to restore detail to blown highlights IT ONLY TAKES 20 minutes

The human eye can deal with high-contrast lighting and discern details in a scene’s shadows, midtones and highlights. However, when it comes to capturing a healthy tonal range in bright sunlight, your camera will struggle to create a balanced exposure. When taking this shot, we set the aperture to capture shadows and midtones, causing overexposed highlights to ‘blow’. Because our source file is in Raw format, we can create two separate high-quality exposures from the original to display detail in the dark and light areas. Here’s how you can do the same...

George Cairns

VIDEO TUTORIAL Follow our step-by-step guide to recovering highlights IMAGE FILE Start image Swan_Mag.cr2 is in the Highlights folder on the DVD

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Fix blown-out highlights

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1 Open the source file

2 Adjust highlights

3 Adjust shadows

4 Copy and paste

5 Erase unwanted areas

6 Finish the composite image

In Photoshop, go to File > Open and select the file Swan_ Mag.cr2. This will open the image in Camera Raw. Click Default to see the image as it was shot. Click the Highlights Clipping Warning icon: the red areas indicate which pixels will print as pure white, blown-out highlights.

Open the original Swan_Mag.cr2 file. This time, focus on healthy-looking shadows and midtones for the surroundings. Don’t worry about the clipped highlights at this stage. Set Contrast to 44 and Brightness to 74. Click Open Image and save this version as ‘Shadow Detail.psd’.

Label the top layer Shadow Detail and the bottom layer Highlight Detail. Grab the Eraser Tool [E]. Set the Opacity to 46%. Target the Shadow Detail layer and brush over the blown-out areas, to start revealing the correctly exposed highlights from the layer below.

Drag the Exposure slider to the left. A value of -1.80 will restore detail to the highlights. Don’t worry yet about the shadows and midtones being too dark. Click Open Image to open this version of your photo in Photoshop. Save the image in Photoshop format as ‘Highlight Detail.psd’.

You should now have two saved versions of the shot: one that contains all the shadow detail and the other with your highlight detail. You can now begin to merge them. Go to the Shadow Detail image and choose Select > All, then Edit > Copy. Open the Highlight Detail shot and choose Edit > Paste.

Keep brushing the Eraser on the top layer to reveal the correctly exposed swan’s feathers from the layer beneath. Be careful not to erase any of the correctly exposed shadow and midtone details on the top layer. You’ll get a composite shot containing healthy highlights and correctly exposed shadows.

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Corrections

5

Fix problems and make enhancements: reduce noise, solve lens distortions and banish haze from your photos Reduce noise in low-level images

122

Tackle lens-related problems

126

Use Raw editing tools to rescue hazy shots

129

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Corrections

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On the disc Look in the Noise folder on your DVD

Reduce noise in low-light images Reduce noise with Photoshop as we explain how to use Camera Raw and regular noise filters to cut down the digital din in your photos ISO 50

ISO 100

ISO 125

WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop CS2 or Photoshop Elements 3, or later WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How to reduce image noise using both Camera Raw and the Noise filter built into Photoshop IT ONLY TAKES 20 minutes Short days and long nights make winter a perfect time of year for experimenting with a little low-light photography – but unfortunately the high ISO settings often needed for this type of photography will usually produce noisy, gritty pictures. With the use of a tripod, you can reduce the ISO, which will help with some noise issues, but the noise may still sneak into areas of even tone and shadow. When it comes to enhancing the image with Photoshop – altering levels, increasing saturation and adding sharpness – that noise will become even more prevalent. 122 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

ISO 160

ISO 200

There are two basic types of noise you need to tackle in your pictures. The first is chrominance noise, which introduces itself with higher ISO shots and can be recognised by its distinctive coloured speckling in shadowed or even-toned areas. The second is luminance noise, which is more tricky to remove and can be seen in the form of random variations of brightness between pixels. Reducing this can result in a loss of overall image detail. In this tutorial, we’ll take a look at a variety of techniques to reduce both types of noise while preserving quality. Try the techniques with our sample image, then use them on your own pics.

VIDEO TUTORIAL Follow our guide to reducing noise in low-light photos IMAGE FILE The start image CDnoise_mag_ start.tiff is in the Noise folder on the DVD

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ISO 250

Reduce noise

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ISO 320

ISO 400

ISO 500

ISO 640

ISO 800

ISO 1000

ISO 1250

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Corrections

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1Initial enhancement

2Prepare for noise reduction

3Tackling chrominance noise

4Reduce luminance noise

Open a Raw low-light image of your own in Camera Raw or use mag_noise_start.tiff in the Noise folder on the disc. Before you start to reduce the image noise, make some initial adjustments by setting Exposure to +1.25, Recovery to 25, Fill Light to 10, Blacks to 0, Brightness to 50 and Contrast to 0. You’ll see the amount of noise within the image increase.

The first area of noise to tackle is the chrominance variety. You can see this in the shadows along the tree line – it looks like speckled colour. Increase the Color slider to 16 and you’ll see the colour noise disappear. Use the Hand Tool [H] to move around the image and check that the noise has been reduced in both the sky and shadow areas.

With the basic Raw enhancements complete, you now need to have a look at noise. To start this process, click the Detail tab. Make sure that all the Sharpening and Noise Reduction sliders are set to 0 (Radius should be 0.5), and that the Preview window is at 100%. Initially, you should see a fair amount of colour noise appearing in the shadow and sky areas.

The second noise type comes from the random variation of brightness between pixels, and is trickier to remove. If you move the setting too high, you’ll have an image that looks painted rather than photographed. Increase the Luminance slider to 20 to start reducing noise; further reduction will need to be done later using Photoshop’s noise filters.

Expert tip Using HDR

One of the most effective routes for the more experienced Photoshop user is to eradicate noise using the Merge to HDR function. The High Dynamic Range feature would usually enable you to blend exposures to produce an image with perfect exposure throughout. You can, however, use this technique to combine two images with different exposures, one being overexposed, in order to cut down noise. Merge to HDR uses the lighter exposure to lighten the shadow regions, increasing the overall tone and producing a higher signal-to-noise ratio in those troublesome shadow areas. Once the HDR window has opened, change the bit depth to 8 or 16 bit and use Local Adaptation to adjust the curves until you get the desired effect, with greatly reduced noise. 124 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

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Reduce noise

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5The Reduce Noise filter

6Reducing luminance noise

7Preserve image detail

8Sharpen up

Now click Open Image to edit the image in Photoshop or Elements. Go to Filter > Noise > Reduce Noise. Set all values to 0 and make sure Preview is set to 100%. Before adjusting Strength, try the Color Noise slider. This should have no effect, as we tackled this at the Raw stage. If it does, just increase it slightly to remove any last remnants of colour noise.

Although we’ve reduced the strength of the noise reduction, there’s still something of a major problem: the detail within the image has been smoothed and finer detail has been lost. Regain this detail by increasing the Preserve Detail slider setting to 25%. Once you have a good balance between noise and detail, click OK.

Even with the colour noise removed, you’ll see that noise is still present. This is luminance noise and is trickier to remove. Increase the Strength slider to a maximum of 10: you’ll see the noise reduce, but details within the image will be smoothed. Reduce the slider to 7, which will reduce the noise but still preserve the main detail.

As with any enhancement, sharpening should come after you’ve made your noise reduction. Go to Enhance > Adjust Sharpness. With an image that has contained a lot of noise, the amount of sharpening that can be applied will be considerably less than a low-noise image, so apply sharpening in moderation to avoid reintroducing noise.

Expert tip

Photoshop’s Noise filter Noise reduction in Photoshop gives you much more control than Elements because of its ability to tackle noise in the separate colour channels. Once in the Noise dialog box, you can use the sliders in the Basic window to affect the image in much the same way as in Elements, but with the added feature of being able to sharpen detail as you apply the filter. However, many images are affected by noise of different degrees in different colour channels. In other words, much of the noise can often appear in just one of the red, green or blue colour channels. Click the Advanced tab, and you can adjust the influence of the filter per channel, rather than over the whole image. By using this technique, you can dramatically improve the actual noise reduction, as it’s closer tuned to the affected areas, resulting in better detail and less smoothing in the final picture. Top tip: one of the noisiest channels is usually the blue channel. A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop 125 WorldMags.net

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On the disc Look in the Lensrelated folder

Original shot 126 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

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Chris George

Corrections

Correcting lens issues

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How to…

Tackle lensrelated problems

We explain how you can correct the effects of vignetting and chromatic aberration with the capable help of Adobe Camera Raw

WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop Elements 6 or Photoshop CS, or above WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How to get rid of chromatic aberration, how to add or remove vignetting and how to counteract distortion IT ONLY TAKES 10 minutes

Under some conditions, Raw files can suffer from lens-related flaws, or artifacts. High-contrast objects (the sails on our windmill, for example) can be affected by chromatic aberration – where red

1 Getting started

or cyan fringes appear along edges. This occurs when a lens fails to focus different wave-lengths of light on the same part of the sensor. Other side-effects of shooting with wide-angle lenses include curved horizons, caused by lens distortion (or ‘barrelling’), and vignetting (dark areas in the corners of your shots), which occurs when the front edge of your lens (or filter) limits the amount of light entering the lens. Vignetting is most common at wide apertures in SLRs with full-frame sensors

First, open Raw_start.CR2 from the Lens-related folder on the CD. The software will recognise that this is a Raw file and open it in the Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) editor. As well as lens-induced ‘barrelling’ and colour fringes along the edges of the windmill’s sails, you’ll notice that the shot tilts a little to the right, so there’s plenty of work to be done.

and it can be removed (or added) by lightening or darkening the corners. Here, we’ll show you how to banish each of these common artifacts using Camera Raw and Photoshop’s Lens Correction filter, plus how to add a touch of vignetting to creatively frame your shots. VIDEO TUTORIAL Follow our step-by-step

guide to correcting lens issues IMAGE FILE The start image, Raw_start.

CR2, is in the Lens-related folder on the DVD

2 Tweak the tones

The histogram reveals a broad spread of shadows, midtones and highlights, so the shot’s exposure is relatively healthy. Click the Shadow Clipping Warning icon (the white arrow) at the top left of the histogram, and the darkest parts of the shot will appear as blue patches. To reveal a little more detail in these areas, drag the Blacks slider to about 2.

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Corrections

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3 Straighten it up

4 Chromatic aberration

5Remove the fringe

6 Tweak the colours

7 Banish the barrelling

8 Add a vignette

The windmill is tilting slightly to the right. Grab the Straighten Tool from the top toolbar and use it to draw a line along the windmill’s horizontal wooden rail. This tells Photoshop which features should run parallel with the bottom edge of the frame. A rotated crop box will appear. Drag the crop handles in a little to lose some of the curved fence and sky.

Click the Lens Corrections tab, then drag the Fix Red/Cyan Fringe slider left to a value of -22. This erases the fringe, leaving a clean, white sail. You could use the Lens Vignetting slider to darken the corners, but as we’re going to crop the edges when we remove the ‘barrelling’, we’ll add a vignette later.

Go to Filter > Distort > Lens Correction, and a grey grid will appear. This will help you straighten out the curved horizon. Move the Remove Distortion slider to +23 to reduce the ‘barrelling’, then drag the Scale slider to 119% to lose the transparent edges that were produced as a by-product of the lens correction procedure.

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Grab the Zoom Tool from the top toolbar and click a few times on the top-right sail to zoom in to 300%. You’ll see that there’s a fringe of red clinging to the top edges of the white struts. This example of chromatic aberration is quite subtle, but it’s still something you should address.

To create richer-looking blues and greens, click the Basic tab and push the Vibrance slider up to +25. At this stage, you can’t see the straightened horizon; to do that you need to open the edited image in Photoshop, which has the tools you need to banish the ‘barrelling’. Click Open Image to view it in Photoshop.

Untick Show Grid to see the image clearly. The horizontal distortion has been eliminated. This image doesn’t suffer from unwanted vignetting, but you can add a vignette to give texture to a bland blue sky and help draw attention to your subject. Drag Vignette Amount to -12 and push it to the corner edges by changing Midpoint to +41. Click OK.

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Fixing hazy photos

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Original shot

On the disc

How to…

Look in the Haze folder on the DVD

Use Raw editing tools to rescue hazy shots Whether you’ve taken a photo from a plane or just been unlucky with the conditions, Adobe Camera Raw can rescue a surprising amount of detail

WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop Elements 6 or Photoshop CS3, or later WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How to boost colours, how to recover highlight detail, how to enhance contrast IT ONLY TAKES 10 minutes

Whenever you fly, why not treat the trip as a photo opportunity and snap some stunning aerial shots from your unique vantage point high above the ground? You’ll get some great shots during landing and take-off, especially if the plane banks to alter its trajectory. It can be a challenge to get a decent aerial

image, though, as you can see from our original Grand Canyon shot above. Because we were shooting from a high altitude, more of the landscape is diffused by atmospheric haze. This mist has made the shot’s colours appear desaturated. The shadows, midtones and highlights are washed out too, which has obscured many of the finer details in the distance. When it comes to editing a Raw file’s colours, Adobe Camera Raw’s welldesigned interface has the tools you need to reduce the effects of atmospheric haze, restore missing detail in the highlights and darken washed-out

shadows. We’ll also show you how to boost desaturated colours to produce a picture with more punch. By avoiding the economy class of Photoshop’s standard editor, you can preserve the Raw file’s quality and have much more colour information to work with. This minimises unwanted artifacts such as noise and produces a higherquality photograph. VIDEO TUTORIALS Follow our step-by-step

guide to rescuing hazy photos IMAGE FILES The start image Raw_start.cr2

is in the Haze folder on the disc

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Corrections

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1 Set the depth

2 Check the histogram

3 Spot clipping

4 Make a quick recovery

5 Blacker blacks

6 Misty midtones

Open the file Raw_start.cr2 on the disc. The image will open up in the Adobe Camera Raw editor. Navigate to the bottom of the interface and set the Depth drop-down menu to 16 Bits/Channel. This gives you the maximum amount of colour information, which helps to minimise noise.

Before you start editing, click the Highlight Clipping Warning icon at the top right of the histogram graph. You’ll see that red patches now appear in the main window, showing areas of blown-out highlights. These are especially noticeable on the specular reflection from the water’s surface.

To darken the washed-out shadows, drag the Blacks slider to a value of around 17. Notice that the shadow section of the histogram graph slides to the left to show you that the shot’s shadows have been remapped to a darker level. The shot now has a wider tonal range of shadows, midtones and highlights. 130 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

You can see that the colours are weak and the tones washed out. For a more accurate assessment of the photo’s tonal range, look at the histogram. The darkest pixels at the left of the graph don’t extend all the way to the far left, indicating that the shadows are not as dark as they could be.

To recover some of the detail lost in the brightest parts of the shot, drag the Recovery slider to the right (about 75). This will reduce the amount of clipping and restore some of the detail to the mountains. A little clipping is acceptable in areas such as reflections, so you don’t need to remove every spot.

The midtones are still washed-out because of the haze, but you can darken them without interfering with your shadows and highlights. Drag the Contrast slider to about +32 to darken the midtones. The middle of the histogram where the midtones lie will slide to the left, giving the midtones more impact.

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Fixing hazy photos

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7 Extra clarity

8 Boost colour strength

The hills on the horizon are still lost in the mist and are hard to see. To reclaim some of the detail hidden in these highlights and recover some distinction, try dragging the Clarity slider to a value of about 60. This should pick out subtly contrasting details such as the distant mountain range.

By editing a shot’s tones, you alter its colours at the same time. This is why it’s a good idea to turn your attention to enhancing colour once you’ve finished improving the photo’s tonal range. Drag the Vibrance slider up to +30 to increase the saturation of the bluer pixels in the distant mountains.

9 Super saturation

10 Getting warmer

The Vibrance slider is designed to boost natural colours such as blues and greens, while minimising changes in skin tones. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have a huge effect on our mountains. To boost the warmer colours in the shot, try dragging the Saturation slider up to a value of about +17.

You’ve added more colour and contrast to the washedout shot, so you could stop editing at this point. But for added effect, enhance the photo’s warm colours and make them even richer by dragging the Temperature slider up to 6,000. Click Done to close the file and save your settings.

How we processed our Raw file

1 Highlights

3 Midtones

By dragging the Recovery slider to the right (to a value of 74), we were able to restore some detail lost in the brightest highlights, which were marked by red patches.

By setting Contrast to +32, we darkened the midtones and created a more balanced tonal range with plenty of detail in shadows, midtones and highlights.

2 Shadows

4 Colour boost

We strengthened the shot’s washed-out shadows by dragging the Blacks slider to 17. This re-mapped the shot’s darkest pixels to a stronger black.

The Vibrance and Saturation sliders gave the shot’s colours more punch and the warm hues were improved by increasing the Temperature slider.

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Colour

6

Make your images sing by boosting the colour and ensuring accurate hues when you follow our colour workshops Enhance colour and saturation

134

Achieve perfect colours in your photos

136

Become a Raw colour master

139

Get vivid colour in your photos

142

Boost colours for impact

144

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Colour

WorldMags.net On the disc Look in the Skin Colour folder on the DVD

Ed Godden

Original shot

How to…

Enhance colour and saturation

Getting skin to look right may seem complicated, but Camera Raw is fully equipped to quickly and easily tackle all your colour needs WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop CS or Photoshop Elements 6, or above WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How to use Adobe Camera Raw to correct ugly colour casts IT ONLY TAKES 5 minutes Colour correction is essential to the image-editing process. The good news is that Photoshop’s Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) editor makes it simple. Most colour

corrections should only take a few seconds to complete, but if you’re unfamiliar with ACR’s three key tools, the process can be daunting. Rather than grouping the colour correction tools together, Adobe has separated them into three areas. The first is the White Balance Tool, found in the Tools palette. The Temperature slider, at the top of the Basics tab, can be used to warm up or cool down your shots, and the Vibrance and Saturation sliders, at the bottom of the Basics tab, give an overall colour boost.

134 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

The key is to use these tools as they appear, working from top to bottom. Some shots need all three adjustments, others just one or two. Here, we’ll show you the basic techniques that should form the basis of your Photoshop work. VIDEO TUTORIAL Follow our step-by-step

guide to improving colour and saturation IMAGE FILE The start image, colour_before.

dng, is in the Skin Colour folder on the DVD

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Improve skin colour

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1 Set the white balance

2 Temperature control

Select the White Balance Tool from the top toolbar. Find a neutral area in the photograph and click on it. (If you can find a grey area, that’s ideal.) For this particular portrait, try clicking on the shadow area in the whites of the model’s eyes.

The colours still look a little warm – especially in the skin tones. Although it’s now more neutral than before, there’s still a definite orange hint to the skin. To cool the warmth of this area, move the Temperature slider to 4,000. If you go too far, you’ll start to see the image turn a definite shade of blue.

3 Let there be light

4 Expose for colour detail

5 Increase Vibrance

6 Boost the contrast

The right-hand side of the face is slightly cast in shadow. With the clipping masks on (hit the [U] and [O] keys on your keyboard), the blue mask shows that some shadows on the right-hand side are clipped. Adjust the Fill Light slider to about 30 to bring back missing detail and lighten the skin tones.

The tone of the skin could do with a slight colour boost. To do this, simply move the Vibrance slider to +10. It’s best to use Vibrance rather than Saturation: Vibrance will increase the saturation of the less-saturated colours, while leaving the saturated colours alone. This gives a more natural effect.

Next, increase the Exposure slider to 0.30 to brighten the tone of the skin. As you increase Exposure, keep an eye on the lighter areas of the subject’s face. Essential detail can be lost or bleached out if you don’t pay close attention while adjusting the Exposure and Temperature sliders.

Click Open Image to open the image in Photoshop. Go to Enhance > Adjust Lighting > Levels and move the white Highlight slider to meet the right-hand edge of the histogram. Now go to Enhance > Adjust Colour > Adjust Colour Curves and move the Midtone Contrast slider to the right. Click OK.

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Colour

WorldMags.net On How to… the disc

Achieve perfect colours in your photos

Look in the Perfect Colour folder

Master your Raw editor’s colour-tweaking tools to get vibrant, well-balanced images

By shooting and editing Raw files you have more colour information to work with than with a JPEG file. This means you can approach the task of improving a Raw file’s colour with confidence, safe in the knowledge that you’ll get great results, without any nasty artefacts or unprintable, oversaturated colours. The Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) editor in Photoshop CS or Elements has many colourtweaking tools and sliders, and this can lead to confusion about which ones to use, and when. There are, for example, several ways to adjust an image’s colour balance. You may also

find yourself trying to work out what the actual difference is between Temperature and Tint, or between Vibrance and Saturation. In this tutorial, we’ll put the Raw editor’s colour-correcting tools through their paces to improve our colourful source file. By seeing these tools in action, you’ll be able to choose the right one for your own colour-editing jobs – and produce stunning shots that have a correct colour balance with vibrant, but not oversaturated, colours. VIDEO TUTORIAL Follow our

step-by-step guide to getting perfect colours IMAGE FILE The start image, raw_start.cr2, is in the Perfect Colour folder on the DVD

Remove unwanted casts

1 Not so perfect presets

Open the source file raw_start.cr2 from your DVD. Click the Rotate Image Counter Clockwise icon to see it the right way up. The child’s face is a bit too orange, but you can cool it down a little for more neutral-looking skin tones. It’s worth trying the Auto preset from the White Balance drop-down menu, but in this case the shot looks too cold... 136 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

Original shot

2 Tackle the temperature

On Auto, the Temperature slider shows a ‘cool’ value of 4250, which adds a blue colour cast. Set White Balance back to As Shot using the drop-down menu and you get 6250 – and skin that’s too orange. Drag the Temperature slider to about 4500 to cool the skin tones down but preserve the candle’s glow. This creates a Custom setting to suit the shot.

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Paul Grogan (Future)

WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop Elements 6 or Photoshop CS, or above WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How to remove unwanted colour casts, how to boost saturation subtly, how to avoid adding artifacts IT ONLY TAKES 10 minutes

Perfect colour

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Colour

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3 Tweak the tint

4 Boost saturation

5 Avoid garish colours

6 Why Vibrance is your best friend

On Auto White Balance, your camera tries to cool down or warm up a scene’s colour temperature to avoid orange or blue colour casts, which can introduce a magenta or green tint. To tame a green tint, you’d drag the Tint slider to the right; for a magenta tint, you’d take it to the left. In this case the shot is tint-free, so leave Tint at 0.

After tweaking the temperature for natural skin tones, you’ll want to boost other colours for a more striking print. Old versions of the Camera Raw editor lacked a Vibrance slider, so let’s take a look at Saturation first. Pop Saturation up to +40 and you’ll enhance the candles and cake, but you’ll overdo the little boy’s face.

The problem with the Saturation slider is that it makes a global adjustment, boosting weak and strong colours by the same amount. This is why the initially unsaturated candles looked more vibrant, and the already well-saturated face develops garish clumps of posterised colour. Set Saturation back to 0 for now.

Drag Vibrance up to +50: it boosts weak colours yet leaves strong colours alone. It’s designed to avoid creating oversaturated flesh tones while making clothing more vibrant. You can now drop Saturation to -16 to reduce the red blotches on the child’s cheeks. Click Done or Open to finish editing the shot’s colours.

Get to know... the colour sliders 1 Preview As you make changes to the colours, tick the box here to compare your edited image with the original. 2

White Balance presets

Travel back in time to change the White Balance setting used to capture the shot.

3 Temperature Manually warm up or cool down the shot’s colour temperature. Use this slider when the presets don’t do a good job. 138 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

4 Tint To remove a magenta tint, drag this slider towards green (and vice versa).

1 2 3 4 5

6 7

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5 Exposure Be aware that the tone tweaking tools can also alter the shot’s colours. 6 Vibrance Boosts weaker colours while leaving stronger colours untouched. Helps avoid oversaturation. 7 Saturation Boosts all the colours equally, which can lead to overcooked skin tones.

Colour-correction tools

WorldMags.net How to… On the disc

Become a Raw colour master

Look in the Colour Correct folder

Take advantage of the full range of colour-correction tools when you use Camera Raw through Photoshop CS Adobe Camera Raw is a capable tool inside Photoshop Elements, but inside Photoshop, it’s a powerhouse. There are few situations in which the might of this combination is demonstrated better than when you’re correcting colour in the image. Here, we show the full range of the colour-correction tools you can access in Camera Raw via Photoshop. We start with a run-down of what’s available and why you’d want to use each tool, before continuing with a project designed to help you make the most of Camera Raw when you’re addressing colour in your own shots. The landscape we’ve chosen offers an intriguing balance of hot and cool areas, with plenty of subtle variation. So let’s get started...

White Balance Tool

Correcting any colour casts within your image should always be your first actual correction when enhancing images. Start off by locating a neutral colour area within the image (an area where RGB values are similar) and then click to change the White Balance.

Colour Sample Tool

The Colour Sample tool is often overlooked, but it’s essential for colour correction. As you drag the cursor over the image, it’ll display the content of the area, which enables you to pick a neutral colour area when using the White Balance Tool.

Tint

Tint can be a useful slider, especially when you want to enhance the colours within an image. It works in a very similar way the Hue slider within Photoshop, so should be used with caution if you want to avoid extreme, psychedelic effects.

Vibrance

A relatively new addition to Camera Raw, the Vibrance slider enables you to enhance the subtler colours within the image to a greater degree than the more saturated ones. It’s perfect for enhancing the sea without clipping the orange of the sky.

Temperature

Once you have corrected the white balance, you can then decide if you want to warm or cool the image. This slider basically enables you to change the colour temperature: drag it to the right to warm things up and left to cool the image down.

Saturation

After the Vibrance slider has been used to help saturate the subtler colours within the image, the Saturation slider can then be used to increase the colour within the entire image. This slider should always be used in moderation to avoid clipping any colours.

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Colour

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1 Find a neutral space

2 Correct colour casts

3 Change the temperature

4 Recover burnt out highlights

Open Sunset_Before.nef in Adobe Camera Raw and make sure that you have the clipping warnings switched on: the short cuts for these are [U] and [O]. In the tool bar across the top, select the Color Sampler Tool and hover over the image until you find a neutral area.

When you set the white balance, the temperature and tint will update. Move the Temperature slider to a value of 8000, which will give a cold look to the sea while keeping some warmth in the clouds. To give the rocks and the sky a boost of colour, increase Tint to 6.

Using the Colour Sampler, select several points and then the White Balance Tool. Click on each of the points in turn to choose which works best. Once you have made your colour correction, make sure that you select the Hand Tool to avoid readjusting the balance later.

Increase the Exposure slider to 0.70 to help lighten the rock and sea. As you do this, you will see a few areas of the sky start to burn out. To help draw back detail, take the Recovery slider to +30. This should eliminate most of the red clipping masks.

Expert tip

Adding warmth The easiest way to add warmth to your images is during the initial enhancements in ACR. To get started, correct any colour casts by using the White Balance Tool. You may find you need to click around to find the right point. As you click into neutral areas, you’ll see the image warm or cool depending on the colour information of that point. Try to locate a point that neutralises the colour casts rather than influencing the overall temperature. When a neutral point is found, all you need to do to warm the image is to increase the value of the Temperature slider. As the values increase, you’ll instantly see the colours warm. If you want to add a little more warmth, select the HSL/Greyscale tab and increase the Saturation of warm colours such as Red, Orange and Yellow.

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Colour-correction tools

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5 Improve contrast and clarity

6 Improve the midtones

Now, looking at the fine detail in the image, increase Fill Light to lighten some of the detail in the rock, then increase the Contrast and Clarity. Finally for the Basic section, increase Vibrance to +30 and Saturation to +15.

Click the Tone Curve tab and select Strong Contrast from the preset Curve dropdown. Increase the contrast by moving the two points around the centre point in towards the middle on the horizontal. Now make a point in the highlights and reduce it to recover the clouds.

7 Selectively boost the colours

8 Dodge and burn

Click the HSL/Greyscale tab and then the Saturation tab. Start to increase the Red then Orange and Yellow sliders to strengthen the colours in the sky and rock. If you want to boost the colour further, click back on the Basic tab and readjust Vibrance and Saturation.

Click Open Image to enter Photoshop. Select the Dodge Tool: make sure that the range is on Highlights and the exposure is set low to 5%. Now brush over the rock and sea to lighten. Switch to the Burn Tool with Shadows selected, and burn in the sky and the sea.

Expert tip

Cooling the image Just as you can warm an image, you can also apply a subtle cooling effect to it in ACR. As with warming, simply correct any colour casts with the White Balance Tool, then reduce the Temperature slider. The effect can then be further enhanced by adjusting the saturation of the relevant cooling colours under the HSL tab. However, if you have finished the adjustments to the Raw file and now have the image opened in Photoshop, you can use the Photo Filter to apply a more dramatic cooling effect. The beauty of this filter is that it can be applied through an Adjustment Layer, which gives you complete control over its application. Once you have created the Adjustment Layer, you can either choose from the long list of predefined colour filters, or you can pick your own. To select your own, just click on the colour swatch in the Photo Filter, then pick from the usual Photoshop colour selector.

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On the disc Look in the Colour folder on the DVD

Andrew Gibson

Colour

How to…

Original shot

Get vivid colour in your photos

Give your Raw shots a boost by targeting and adjusting specific colours to change their hue, saturation and luminance (HSL) values WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop Elements 6 or Photoshop CS3, or above WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How to use the HSL/ Greyscale tab, adjust specific hues and brighten individual colours IT ONLY TAKES 15 minutes Photoshop and Photoshop Elements both enable you to edit a Raw file’s colours and tones. You can tweak the Saturation and Vibrance sliders in both packages to give your shots more vivid-looking

colours and produce prints with more punch. In Photoshop’s Camera Raw editor, however, you can make edits to individual colours and emphasise objects in your Raw file that aren’t always noticeable when viewing the unprocessed version. In the following walkthrough, we’ll put the HSL/Greyscale tab through its paces and enhance the colours in this Raw landscape. As well as improving the overall tones of the image, we’ll adjust the hue of the blues to add an intensity to the sky and sea that suggests the image was taken with a polarising filter.

142 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

We’ll also show you how to boost the saturation of specific colours using the sliders in the HSL/Greyscale tab’s Saturation sub-tab and brighten colours to increase contrast. (As its name suggests, the HSL/Greyscale tab can also be used to to turn a shot to monochrome to produce striking prints.) VIDEO TUTORIAL Follow our step-by-step

guide to achieving brighter colours IMAGE FILE The start image, raw_start.cr2,

is in the Colour folder on the DVD

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1 Let’s get started!

Vivid colour

2 Tweak exposure

Open the file raw_start.cr2 from the Colour folder on the included DVD in Adobe Camera Raw. The unprocessed shot looks washed out, with no strong shadows. The histogram confirms that the shot is overexposed, because most of the pixels are clumped to the right of the graph. The brightest clouds are also clipped.

Drag the Exposure slider left to -0.50 and the Recovery slider to 20 to darken the highlights, midtones and shadows. The histogram graph slides to the left, indicating less intense highlights and stronger midtones. There are no pixels at the far left yet, indicating that the shot still lacks shadow tones. Use the Straighten Tool to correct the wonky horizon.

3 Better blacks

4 Improve the blues

5 Souped-up saturation

6 Adjust luminance

To create stronger shadows, drag the Blacks to 25. The histogram graph will stretch out to fill the shadow section on the left. To tweak the tones further, move Brightness to +50, contrast to +40 and Clarity to +25. The shot should now have a spread of shadows, midtones and highlights.

To target and boost specific colours within the shot, first you need to click on the Saturation tab. Now drag the Blues slider up to +40 to create a more vivid-looking sea and skyscape in the image. This will also help to enhance the reflection of the sky in the sea, which is a little desaturated in the original Raw file.

Click the HSL/Greyscale tab. Here, you can give the shot’s dull and washed-out blues a bit of a boost by dragging the Hue tab’s Blues slider to -20. This will add richness to the blues, and this increased intensity gives the impression that the scene was photographed using a polarising filter.

Finally, click on the Luminance sub-tab. You can use the sliders in this window to lighten and darken the brightness of specific colour within your image. To darken the sky a little, try dragging the Blues slider to -20. This will help to create more contrast between the azure blue sky and the white clouds, revealing more detail in this area.

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Colour

WorldMags.net How to…

Boost colours for impact

On the disc Look in the Enrich folder on the DVD

Inspired by Martin Parr’s punchy images of British culture, we show you how to enhance colours like a pro WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop Elements or Photoshop CS WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How to selectively boost colour using Raw and Adjustment Layer techniques IT ONLY TAKES 15 minutes Vivid colours and unusual perspectives are the hallmarks of award-winning photographer Martin Parr’s work. His iconic images cleverly bridge the gap between snapshots and fine art. Parr takes mundane scenes and transforms them into magical images with hyper-real colours and intriguing details. His work typically features nostalgic images that he has often given a humorous or dream-like twist to with unusual camera angles and saturated colours. Inspired by his style, we took a selection of photographs at a uniquely British location – the Grand Pier in Weston-super-Mare, before it was destroyed by fire in 2008. This angled shot has captured the colourful subjects that define the amusement arcades to be found at traditional English seaside resorts. This tutorial will show you how to push the levels and colours of the image in order to capture some of that Martin Parr look. Use the sample image on the disc to try the techniques before you apply them to your own shots.

Original shot

VIDEO TUTORIAL Follow our step-by-step guide to enriching images with

selective colour on the DVD IMAGE FILES You’ll find the start images – Enrich_before.tiff and Enrich_

After.jpg – in the Enrich folder on the DVD

1 Show clipping

Camera Raw contains many helpful features for the processing of Raw files. To visually gauge the effect of your adjustments on the highlights and shadows, hit [U] and [O] on your computer keyboard to reveal clipping masks.

2 Bring out detail

Starting with the highlights, increase Recovery to 40, which will reduce the red mask, showing that you now have a greater amount of detail in that area. You can then use a similar process for the shadows by increasing Fill Light to 30.

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3 Enhance colour

Now, looking at the shadows, reduce Vibrance by -30, which will take the colour cast out of the less vibrant areas. Then increase Saturation to 40, which will boost the vibrant colours without making the subtle colours look unnatural.

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Enrich colours

Lucy Sparrow

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4 Correct colour

Exit ACR by clicking Open Image. To neutralise colour casting, create a new Levels Adjustment layer, select the Grey Point Pipette and click a grey area of the image. You may need to click around to find the right point for a natural look.

5 Selectively boost colour

Rather than boosting all the colours, you want to selectively enhance some of the brighter ones. Create a new Hue/ Saturation Adjustment layer and, using the Edit drop-down, increase Cyan and Magenta Saturation to 30.

6 Apply subtle sharpening

In the Layers palette, click on Layer Options and choose Flatten Image. Now apply subtle sharpening. Go to Enhance > Adjust Sharpness. Making sure the preview is at 100%, increase Amount to 60 and Radius to 1.4, then click OK.

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Mono

7

Explore the glory of black-and-white as we show you how to use Camera Raw to creates images full of contrast and tone How to go mono: ACR and the alternatives in Photoshop

148

Convert a landscape to monochrome

152

Get better black-and-white in Photoshop CS4

156

Prepare your portrait for mono

158

Enhance mono portraits

162

Enhance light and shadow

164

Add impact with high-contrast mono

166

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Mono

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How to go mono Learn how to transform colour photos into powerful black-and-white images using our expert digital darkroom techniques In this chapter, we look at converting images to mono using Adobe Camera Raw – but there are several other methods you can use in Photoshop. Depending on the image and the level of contrast it has, there are occasions

when one of these other methods might give you good results faster than using ACR. To get the benefits, of course, you must first process your Raw images properly, optimising exposure, contrast and brightness, then saving as a TIFF.

Photoshop’s Black & White Tool Once regarded as the ultimate in Photoshop mono conversion tools, the Channel Mixer has been usurped by the Black & White Tool, which offers a simpler, more intuitive and more flexible way of working. It works by letting you independently vary the luminance levels of eight individual colour ranges and thereby control their

influence in the final conversion. It’s best to use the Black & White Tool in the form of a non-destructive Adjustment Layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Black & White): that way, you can easily tweak the values any time you like by double-clicking on the Adjustment Layer in the Layers palette.

WARNING!

Messing about with colour channels without restraint can quickly lead to serious image quality issues such as haloes, blocking and noise. For this reason, it’s vitally important to keep a close eye on your image at 100% magnification as you make changes.

1 Using the sliders

Dragging a colour slider from left to right makes the grey tones of that colour range darker or brighter. The strip above the slider shows how light the tone will be.

2 Being more precise

Click within your image and drag to the right or the left to lighten or darken those tones. Click the Preset Options button to save your greyscale mix to re-use on other images.

The Black & White conversion palette Elements’ Black and White tool Photoshop offers ten ready-made mono conversion recipes via the drop-down Preset menu.

To reveal your image’s original colouring, uncheck the Preview box.

As with CS, Elements has an built-in Black & White Tool: although it’s light in comparison and has no Adjustment Layer option, it’s still a powerful asset. To access this feature, go to Enhance > Convert to Black and White. Here you can select from a series of preset conversions, or try out the RGB sliders.

You can adjust the colour sliders manually or click and drag on the image to adjust the slider for a particular colour range. Add a pro-style tint to your mono pics – just click the Tint box, choose a colour via the Hue slider and set the intensity via the Saturation slider.

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Mono basics

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Photoshop conversion

Rob Bowen

Original shot

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Mono

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On the disc Look in the Mono folder on your DVD

Mono conversion methods There are many ways to convert an image to mono in Photoshop. We compare seven popular methods with using Adobe Camera Raw

Greyscale Simply changing the Mode of your image from Colour to Greyscale actually offers a pretty reasonable mono conversion. Click Image > Mode > Greyscale, then click OK when asked if you want to ‘Discard colour information’. The problem is that you have

Lab Colour zero control over the result. Switching to Greyscale also blocks many Adjustments and Filters: you need to choose Image > Mode > RGB Colour to free them up again. If you’re really pressed for time, though, this might be just the job.

Lab Colour is another quick and easy conversion technique. Again, there’s no control, but it does generate a particularly light, airy and smooth looking result that’s well suited to delicate subjects and/or high-key or low-contrast treatments. Click Image > Mode > Lab Colour. Now click Window > Channels and click on the Lightness channel. To finish, choose Image > Mode > Greyscale and click OK.

✔ Reasonable results almost instantly ✘ No control over result

Desaturation Clicking Image > Adjustments > Desaturate is even quicker than converting to Greyscale, but the result is just slightly rougher, and again you have zero control. Desaturation via Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Hue/Saturation,

however, provides much more control and more pleasing results. First drag the Saturation slider to -100, then use the drop-down Edit menu to selectively vary the Lightness of the Reds, Yellows, Greens, Cyans, Blues and Magentas.

✔ Lightness control over individual channels ✘ Limited control compared with Raw 150 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

✔ Creates smooth, airy results quickly ✘ No control over result WorldMags.net

Mono basics

Calculations

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Calculations (Image > Calculations) enables you to blend two source channels to create a mono conversion. By default, the channels are set to Red and the Blending mode to Multiply. It’s worth trying out different combinations, but for non-portrait shots, this set-up plus a reduction in Blending Mode Opacity will usually produce the best results.

Gradient Map For harder, high-contrast results, try the Gradient Map. Go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Gradient Map and click OK. Set your Foreground Colour in

the Tools palette to Black, choose the Foreground to Background gradient and click OK. Refine the contrast by dragging the Colour Stop and Smoothness sliders.

✔ Punchy results, with fine-tuning available ✘ Best for mid- to high-contrast subjects only

Adobe Camera Raw: HSL/Greyscale ✔ A quick way to create dramatic results ✘ Limited number of conversion settings

The Camera Raw HSL/Greyscale tab offers an effective method for converting Raw images to mono. Once you’ve primed your shot using the standard Camera Raw controls, click the HSL/Greyscale tab and

choose Convert to Greyscale. You can then separate and enhance the individual tones using the eight Greyscale Mix colour controls. Further refinements are then possible within Photoshop.

Channel Mixer The Channel Mixer enables precise blending of the Red, Green and Blue channels to create a wide variety of mono effects. Choose Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Channel Mixer. Check the Monochrome box and vary the Source channels, ideally keeping the overall percentage total to around 100. It takes some getting used to.

✔ Offers vast array of controls and effects ✘ Changes must be applied to entire image

Plug-ins In Photoshop you can re-create virtually all of the effects offered by third-party plug-ins such as Black & White Studio and Film Grain by Power Retouche. For example, you could track down grainy traditional 35mm films, scan them in and turn them into mono grain filters. For those without the time or inclination to do this, dedicated plug-ins can be used.

✔ Great control and good results ✘ Requires time and experimentation

✔ Extensive new controls and effects ✘ Quality plug-ins don’t come cheap A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop 151 WorldMags.net

Mono

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Original shot

152 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

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Mono conversion basics

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On the disc

How to…

Look in the Mono Landscape folder

Convert a landscape to monochrome Adobe Camera Raw running under Elements may have limitations, but it can still convert an average colour shot into a high-contrast mono masterpiece

WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop Elements 5 or Photoshop CS, or above WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How to adjust tone and contrast; how to read Levels; how to mix layers IT ONLY TAKES 15 minutes Photoshop and Elements use exactly the same Adobe Camera Raw plug-in to process Raw files, but it offers different options depending on which host program you’re using. At first glance, the ACR editor running under Photoshop seems to kick sand in the face of the Elements version, especially when it comes to making mono conversions of colour Raw files. Elements’ pared-down Raw editor initially turns a drab

1 Open your source file

colour shot into a wash of dull midtones with its Saturation slider. However, its other image-editing sliders can rescue the image from mediocrity and instead create striking black-and-white images, featuring a healthy range of shadows, midtones and highlights. The source file we’re using was shot on an overcast day, and the resulting image has flat lighting and dull colours. It also offers little tonal variety. By using ACR to convert the shot to mono, you can adjust its tones to bring out shapes and details that are missing in the colour version. You can also emphasise the highlights of the waterfall and contrast them with the midtones of the grass, before creating darker shadows for the slow-moving river in the foreground.

Open raw_start.dng from your DVD. Different makes of camera – and often different models – use different Raw formats. We’ve converted our CR2 source file to Adobe’s universal Digital Negative (DNG) format so that it’s accessible by all versions of Camera Raw.

Camera Raw under Elements 5 may lack the powerful greyscale conversion sliders of its bigger brother, but you can still wrestle a decent mono conversion from the software using sliders such as Blacks and Fill Light. In this workshop, you’ll learn how to measure the precise red, green and blue levels of the mono version’s shadows, midtones and highlights to ensure the final image has a healthy tonal range. We’ve used Elements here, but you could also use Photoshop to achieve effects every bit as good. VIDEO TUTORIAL Follow our step-by-step

guide to converting to mono IMAGE FILE The start image, raw_start.dng,

is in the Mono Landscape folder on the DVD

2Reduce saturation

Drag the Saturation slider right down to -100 to discard all colour information. This new mono version contains mostly shadows and midtones. Look at the histogram, which shows that many of the mono version’s pixels are clumped towards the shadows end of the graph.

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Mono

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3Check highlight levels

4Watch out for clipping

5Examine the midtones

6Improve the highlights

7Find missing midtones

8Check the shadows

Move your cursor over the waterfall. The brightest pixels in an image (the highlights) should have a maximum value of 255 in the Red, Green and Blue channels. Look at the R, G and B values below the histogram – the waterfall’s white pixels show weak highlight values of around 140 to 170.

The midtones on the grass display an RGB reading of between 60 and 90, so many of them are stuck in the darker end of the midtone range on the 0 to 255 scale. You will see from the histogram that the graph dips significantly in the middle, so there’s not a lot of detail in the midtone areas.

You can target the underexposed midtones without messing with your highlights. Drag the Fill Light slider to around 30. This brightens up the initially dull midtones, revealing much more detail in the grass and trees than before. A quick level check of the midtones will reveal brighter pixels ranging from 80 to 140. 154 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

Click the Shadow Clipping Warning icon in the histogram. This causes clipped shadows to be displayed in the image window as patches of blue. The patches will have RGB values of 0, 0, 0, indicating that they will print as pure black, and subtle dark tones have been lost or ‘clipped’ in these areas.

Because the shot is a little underexposed, drag the Exposure slider to the right to a value of +0.60. This will shunt the histogram towards the highlight end of the graph at the right, brightening up the image’s midtones and highlights. The waterfall now displays stronger highlight values.

Your highlight and midtone tweaking will push the whole histogram to the right, and many of the shadows will have turned into midtones. The shot now lacks contrast – but you can boost the blackest pixels without messing up your carefully restored midtones or highlights by boosting the shadows.

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Mono conversion basics

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9Improve the Blacks

10Save a new version

11Expose the sky

12Combine your shots

To enhance the overall contrast between shadows and highlights, drag the Blacks slider to the right to a value of about 12 or 13. This creates striking black shadows around the river, which helps it stand out from the midtones of the grassy riverbank and the highlights of the foaming water.

Now go to File > Open and open the raw_start.dng file again. Elements will remember the slider settings you last used, but we want a new version with more sky detail. Drag Exposure to -0.15 and Recovery to +90. Click Open Image again: you now have two different versions open in the Elements workspace.

Your shot should now feature a much stronger contrast between the varying tones, although the sky is still rather blown out. To fix this, first click Open Image to apply your changes and open the shot in Elements’ main interface. Go to File > Save As and save this new version as ‘ground_exposure.tif’.

In your new sky exposure file, go to Select All and then Copy. Now Paste the sky exposure image on to the ground_ exposure.tif file. You can then add a mask to this layer and use a black brush to hide the landscape from the sky layer. This will reveal the correctly exposed areas from the layer below.

Conversion overview How we improved our photo’s contrast for a better result 1

Midtones

The initially drab midtones now stand out from the shadows and highlights thanks to the adjustments we made with the handy Fill Light slider.

2

Highlights

By tweaking the Exposure slider we made the underexposed highlights brighter and have created more contrast, making the waterfall an effective focal point in the image.

3

4

Shapes

The original mono conversion was a flat wash of greys. The improved contrast helps to define features in the landscape, such as the river and the riverbank.

4

Sky recovery

We decreased the exposure in a different version of the shot to add detail to the blown-out sky. The two shots were then mixed using layers and masking techniques.

2

1 3

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Ali Jennings

Mono

On the disc

How to…

Look in the CS4 Mono folder on the DVD

Original shot

Get better blackand-white in CS4 Use the powerful new conversion tools in Photoshop CS4’s Adobe Camera Raw editor to create a striking monochrome landscape WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop CS4 WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How to make striking black-and-white conversions using Adobe Camera Raw IT ONLY TAKES 10 minutes Creating a decent mono image can be a challenge. By simply desaturating a shot you can end up with a bland wash of greyscale colours and lose any distinctive shapes and textures that were proudly visible in the original colour version. However, thanks

to the amazing tools in Adobe Camera Raw, you can convert a shot to black-and-white, then lighten or darken specific colours in the photo to make objects and textures stand out. This workshop uses tools available in the latest version of ACR, 5.6, installed with Photoshop CS4. The HSL/Greyscale tab enables you to drag colour sliders around to lighten or darken corresponding colours in the main image. This echoes the traditional technique of placing coloured filters over the lens when shooting with black-and-white film. For example, a red filter will darken blue

156 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

skies and help make white clouds stand out. We’ll also show you how the Targeted Adjustment tool helps you tweak the tones of specific areas, and how to lighten areas and emphasise features with the Adjustment Brush. We’ll finish off by using Tone Curves to create a contrast between black and white. VIDEO TUTORIAL Follow our step-by-step

guide to converting Raw files to mono IMAGE FILE CS4mono_before.dng is in the

CS4 Mono folder on the DVD

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Mono conversion in Photoshop CS4

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1 Brighten the highlights

2 Darken the sky

Open CS4mono_before.dng in the Adobe Camera Raw editor. You’ll see that the histogram’s brightest pixels don’t reach the far right, meaning the image is slightly underexposed. To boost the highlights without messing with the shadows or midtones, drag the Exposure slider right to +40.

Click the Graduated Filter tool’s icon (or press [G]). In the Graduated Filter pane, set Exposure to -2.40. Set everything else to 0. Click at the top of the image and draw a short vertical line downwards to gently darken the sky. Click the Zoom tool icon to exit Graduated Filter mode.

3 Make it mono

4 Targeted tweaks

5 Selective adjustments

6 Boost the contrast

To convert the shot to black-and-white, click on the HSL/ Greyscale tab. Click the Convert to Greyscale box, then move the Oranges slider to +100 to lighten the grass. Drag Reds to -50 to darken the distant boat and make it stand out. The contrast change enhances the shapes of different objects.

Click on the Basic tab, then press [K] to activate the Adjustment Brush. Set Brightness to +160, Contrast to +52, Size to 6 and Feather to 41. Spray over the plants to lighten them up a bit. Now reduce Size to 2 and spray again to lighten up the frosty patches on the boat.

Grab the Targeted Adjustment tool. Click on a patch of dark soil, then drag the cursor left. The tool will sample the colours from the original shot and adjust the appropriate sliders to darken the sampled colours. Drag the tool to the left on the sea to darken that area too.

Press [Z] to exit the Adjustment Brush mode. To widen the contrast between the dark and light areas, click on the Tone Curve tab. Drag Darks down to -30 to darken the boat and the terrain. Increase Highlights to +28 – the boosted contrast brings out the scene’s shapes.

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Original shot

Ben Brain

158 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

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Mono portraits in depth

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How to…

Prepare your portrait for mono

On the disc Look in the Mono Portrait folder

By adjusting a Raw image’s colours and tones, you can produce an impressive black-and-white portrait with instant impact WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop CS3 or later WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How to adjust tone and contrast, how to emphasise eyes, how to turn colour into mono IT ONLY TAKES 15 minutes The beauty of shooting in Raw format is that you have considerably more choice when it comes to editing your images in Photoshop. If you save a shot as a JPEG, your camera discards some of the information about the shot’s colours and tones – that’s one reason why JPEG files are so much smaller than the Raw or TIFF versions of the same shot. When

1Reduce saturation

adjusting compressed JPEGs in Photoshop, there’s a danger that you’ll add other artefacts, such as unsightly picture noise, to the edited image. With all the extra information packed into an uncompressed Raw file, you can fix colour and exposure problems easily, and all without compromising quality. To convert a Raw shot into an effective monochrome version, you could open the image in Photoshop’s standard editor and access image adjustment tools, such as the Channel Mixer or the Black & White command in Photoshop, but you’d lose access to some of the extra information contained in the Raw file. Thankfully, then, Photoshop’s Raw editor

Open the source file raw_start.dng in Camera Raw. Begin by dragging the Saturation slider to the left to create a mono version. This creates an unflattering, flat-lit mono portrait that lacks contrast. Set the Saturation slider back to 0 and get ready to create a mono conversion with better shadows, highlights and midtones, and much more impact.

enables you to create a striking mono version of the Raw image without leaving the comfort of the Raw editor. In this project, we’ll show you how to tweak a colour shot’s tones and colours to prepare it for a more effective mono conversion. Building on the previous workshop’s, techniques, you’ll learn how to create a mono version of a portrait that boasts a healthy range of shadows, midtones and highlights, without losing the shot’s high-quality Raw status. VIDEO TUTORIAL Follow our step-by-step

guide to creating perfect portraits IMAGE FILE The start image, raw_start.dng,

is in the Mono Portrait folder on the DVD

2 Spot clipped highlights

Before converting the shot to mono, you’ll need to enhance its contrast. You can see from the red section of the histogram that some of the highlights in this image are in danger of being clipped. Enable the Highlight Clipping Warning box at the top right of the histogram and you’ll see the clipped pixels appear in your shot as patches of red.

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Mono

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3 Reduce exposure

4 Improve contrast

5 Enhance the eyes

6 Boost colour for richer mono

Although the Raw shot has been overexposed, it contains enough information for you to alter the exposure and restore detail to the clipped areas. Drag the Exposure slider left to -0.35. The clipping warning will vanish, and the highlights in the histogram will slide left towards the midtone section of the graph, revealing more detail.

To give the mono conversion process a wider range of tones to work with, drag the Recovery slider to the right until it has a value of about +40. This restores even more detail to highlight areas, such as the face, the whites of the eyes and the teeth.

The eyes are a vital part of any portrait, and you’re often drawn to them first. For a high-impact mono conversion, you can enhance the contrast between the eyes and the dark lashes. By dragging the Blacks slider to 15, you can strengthen the intensity of the dark eyelashes without altering the midtones and highlights of the overall image.

The black-and-white conversion process that we’ll look at later in this project can convert different colours into a wide range of greyscale tones. By boosting the intensity of the image’s colours, you can give the mono conversion process more information to work with, resulting in a wider tonal range of blacks, greys and whites.

7 Stronger skin tones

8 Remove imperfections

The Saturation slider increases all the colours in a portrait equally, but this can create unhealthy-looking orange skin. Leave Saturation at the default setting of 0 and slide Vibrance to about +45 instead. This enhances the portrait’s overall colours but works more gently on the skin tones. 160 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

To create a more flattering portrait, zoom in to 100%. If your subject is having a bad skin day, grab the Retouch Tool and set it to Heal. Click-and-drag the mouse pointer to draw a red circle around an unwanted spot. Position the green circle over a clear patch of skin. The clear skin will be cloned over the blemish, removing it seamlessly.

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Mono portraits in depth

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9 Convert to greyscale

10 Add sparkle to the eyes

11 Create a vignette

12 Spoiled for choice

Click on the HSL/Grayscale tab and click the Convert To Grayscale box. The Grayscale Mix sliders will automatically try to create a shot with a healthy range of shadows, midtones and highlights. Hit Default to set them to 0, so you can create a custom conversion.

Click on the Lens Corrections tab. The Vignette slider is designed to lighten or darken the edge of the frame to compensate for defects caused by lenses. You can use it more creatively by dragging the Amount slider to -86 and Midpoint to +18. This gently darkens the edges of the portrait so that the eye is drawn to the main subject. Try creating different versions using the same techniques.

To enhance the contrast within the skin tones, drag Reds to -11 and Oranges to -15. To create contrast between skin and hair, drag Yellows to -27. There’s a hint of blue in the eyes, so drag Blue up to +28 to brighten them up. By adjusting the colour sliders, you can really enhance the contrast between the subject’s hair, skin and eyes.

All the changes you’ve made to your portrait can be undone at any time. Even after you’ve clicked Done to close the file, the original Raw file will remain untouched, and the changes you’ve made are stored alongside the Raw image in a separate file. This means Photoshop knows which image adjustment settings to use next time you open the portrait, but you can remove or modify these at any time.

Next steps Producing even more creative mono effects Try these simple tweaks to perfect your black-and-white portraits Try experimenting with the colour sliders in the HSL/Grayscale and Basic tabs in Camera Raw. Here, you can create a variety of effects that can add another dimension to your portraits. By increasing the contrast (see centre image), we’ve altered the shot by removing the subtle midtones, effectively making the image more black and white. In the high-key version (far right) we’ve altered the same shot but shifted the tones to emphasise the lighter end of the tonal scale. It’s important to remember that these choices are often subjective and not necessarily right or wrong. Some effects work well with one subject but not with another, so experiment and use your creative judgment in each individual case.

‘Normal’ contrast

High contrast

High-key

A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop 161 WorldMags.net

Mono

WorldMags.net On

How to…

the disc

Enhance mono portraits Look in the Portrait Mono folder

We show you how to perfect the tones in your black-and-white image after converting it For the ultimate control over how particular colours convert to greyscale tone, the HSL/Grayscale tab in Adobe Camera Raw for Photoshop should be your tool of choice. Here, you can tweak the tones of virtually every range of colours within the image. You can darken a range of tones by dragging the appropriate colour slider to the left, or lighten them by dragging to the right. You can further tweak the final monochrome via a simple Tone Curve too.

Correct the exposure as usual in Adobe Camera Raw, then click on the HSL/Grayscale tab. Tick the box marked Convert To Grayscale. Although you can start by adjusting the various sliders straight away, it’s often useful to hit the Auto button to get a good starting point for your image.

2 Target specific colours

3 Watch the noise

4 Tone Curve

5 Final tweaks

Each of the sliders controls the greyscale tone of specific colour ranges within the original colour image. Darken the tone of a particular colour range by dragging the appropriate slider to the left, or lighten it by dragging the slider to the right.

At any time, you can click on the Tone Curve button to adjust the contrast. Choose the Point tab. Now, select a preset from the drop-down or manipulate the curve itself. We’ve created a simple contrast curve, brightening the highlights and intensifying the shadows.

162 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

1 Automatic start

In this image, dragging the Oranges slider to the left darkens the midtones and shadows of the face. It’s important not to drag the sliders too far over, or you’ll start to introduce unwanted noise and posterisation into the targeted areas.

You can still return to the HSL/Grayscale tab and tweak the tone of the particular colour ranges further. Keep an eye on the histogram as you make adjustments to avoid any clipping. You can save your mix by clicking the palette menu arrow and choosing Save Settings.

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On the disc Look in the Light Shadow folder

Ali Jennings

Sectionhead

How to…

Enhance light and shadow

Original shot

Understanding how colour relates to mono tones is key to getting good black-and-whites. We reveal how to take control of your conversions WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop CS or Photoshop Elements 6, or later WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How to prepare colour images to enhance detail in mono conversions IT ONLY TAKES 10 minutes Converting colour photos to blackand-white is an art: it’s all too easy to make a quick conversion that looks fine on screen, but once printed loses tone and detail.

When adjusting a colour Raw file, it’s important to remember that each colour directly relates to the lightness or darkness of a greyscale tone. To see this in action, reduce the Saturation slider in Adobe Camera Raw to -100, then adjust the Temperature slider: you’ll instantly see areas lighten and darken. Knowing how colours relate to a mono tone gives you the flexibility to get the conversion you want. To make sure you have the maximum amount of detail in your image, you also need

164 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

to use basic tools in Camera Raw to create an image packed with tones and with minimal clipping in the shadows and highlights. Here, we’ll show you how to adjust your Raw file correctly to eliminate lacklustre conversions. VIDEO TUTORIALS Follow our step-by-step

guide to enhancing light and shadow IMAGE FILES Use the image StillLife_before.

dng in the Light Shadow folder on the DVD

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Editing mono tones

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1 Re-crop the shot

2 Use the Clipping Warnings

3 Remove the colour

4 Recover shadows

5 Boost the tones

6 Adjust mono conversion

Start off by recomposing the shot. Select the Crop Tool and, holding down the [Shift] key, draw a perfect square crop around the vase and thistle. Select the Straighten Tool and click-and-drag to draw a line across the top horizontal edge of the shelf. Use the anchor points to refine the crop.

Reduce the Saturation slider at the bottom of the Basic tab to -100. Next, move Exposure to -0.80. There will still be small dots of burnt-out highlights under the blind, but these shouldn’t be an issue – you can increase the Recovery slider if needed to reduce these areas further.

To boost the tones, increase the Clarity slider to 60. Now you can experiment with the colours’ effect on the tones of the image by adjusting the Temperature and Tint sliders. Once you’re happy with the result within Camera Raw, click Open Image to move into Photoshop or Elements.

Switch on the Shadow and Highlight Clipping Warnings – press the [U] key for shadows and [O] for highlights. A red mask will appear over any areas of clipped highlights, and a blue mask over clipped shadows. Click the White Balance Tool and click onto a neutral area in the background.

Looking at the shadow areas, move Fill Light to 52, Brightness to 50 and Contrast to 60. You’ll notice that the histogram is weighted to the left, but the bulk of the detail is moving towards the centre of the graph. However, neither the shadows or highlights are clipped, which is good.

Select Layers > New Adjustment Layer > Levels. By working on an Adjustment Layer, you have complete flexibility: if you want a high-key conversion, move the Shadow and Highlight sliders inwards to clip the histogram. You can lighten or darken the conversion by moving the Midtone slider right or left.

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On the disc Look in the Boost Contrast folder

Guy Edwardes

Mono

How to…

Original shot

Add impact with high-contrast mono Discover a simple way to transform an ordinary colour landscape, by converting the image to black and white, then giving the contrast a boost WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop Elements 6 or Photoshop CS, or later WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How to adjust your Raw images to retain detail, before using Adjustment Layers to make a high-contrast mono conversion IT ONLY TAKES 20 minutes When shooting on black-and-white film, a coloured filter placed in front of your lens will alter the way the mono tones appear when the image is printed. For example, attaching a

yellow, orange or red filter helps to darken the blues of the sky and pick out the delicate detail in clouds. This effect can easily be replicated in the digital darkroom when converting your shots from colour to black-and-white. Here, we’ll show you how to prepare a Raw file to create an image that’s full of tone and detail. Once clipping in the highlights and shadows is reduced to a minimum, you’ll have the perfect working file for a high-impact mono conversion that retains maximum detail. The main advantage of using this technique is that it will give you instant flexibility to lighten

166 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

and darken tones based on the saturation of colours within the image. This enables you to darken skies and lighten clouds, while minimising loss of detail. With a slight tweak to the Colour Curves and some careful dodging and burning, this tutorial will show how you can create a mono masterpiece to be proud of. VIDEO TUTORIAL Follow our guide to creating

high-contrast mono conversions IMAGE FILES Boostcontrast_before.dng, is

in the Boost Contrast folder on the DVD

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High-contrast mono

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1 Set the White Balance

2 Switch on masks

Open boostcontrast_before.dng, which will open in Adobe Camera Raw. First, we’ll make a few basic corrections to colour, exposure and contrast. Select the White Balance Tool from the top toolbar and click into an area of neutral tone, such as the shadowy area of foam in the foreground.

Ensure you have the Clipping Warnings turned on by hitting the [O] key for the highlights (a red mask) and then the [U] key for the shadows (a blue mask). Next, decrease the Temperature slider to -18 and you’ll see the red mask on the cliffs retreat. Set the Tint slider to -5.

3 Reduce the clipping

4 Preparing for conversion

5Lower Vibrance

6 Reduce sharpening

To further reduce the highlight clipping, and maximise the details that are visible in this area, start by decreasing the Exposure slider to -0.15. Next, move the sliders for Recovery to 15, Fill Light to 6, and Blacks to 2, then alter the sliders for Brightness to 0 and Contrast to -5.

The final three sliders include Clarity (for a more subtle approach to contrast), Vibrance (which increases the less saturated colours over the more saturated ones, and vice versa when decreasing) and Saturation (which boosts the colour). Set Clarity to 10, Vibrance to -20 and Saturation to 5.

These basic adjustments will leave an image that looks oversaturated, but the histogram shows that there are no clipped highlights or shadows, giving loads of tonal information for the mono conversion to come. Before opening the image in Photoshop, finalise the adjustments with the last three sliders.

Click on the Detail tab and set all of the sliders under Sharpening to 0. This image doesn’t suffer from noise, but if yours does, zoom in to 100% on a flat tonal area such as the sky. If you see lots of coloured dots, increase the Colour slider. Otherwise, adjust Luminance to reduce noise.

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Mono

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7 Add a Colour Fill

8 Adjust the tones

9 Check the tones

10 Boost the contrast

11 Increase the midtones

12 Dodge and Burn

Click Open Image to exit Camera Raw. Create a new Solid Colour Adjustment Layer and set H to 0, S to 0, and B to 50. This will give you a midtone grey; click OK to apply the change. Click on the Blending Mode drop-down at the top of the Layers palette and select Hue. The image will now appear in mono.

Starting with Red, move the Saturation slider to 45, then click back on the drop-down menu and select Yellow. This time increase Saturation to 15. Repeat this for Cyan (Saturation: 70) and Blue (Saturation: 85). To see the difference, click the eye icon to the left of the Adjustment Layer to switch it on and off.

Click on the Layers palette options menu and flatten the image. Go to Enhance > Adjust Colour > Adjust Colour Curves. Looking at the three points on the left, reduce Adjust Highlights by half a square, increase Midtone Contrast by one square and then reduce Adjust Shadows by one square. 168 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

Click back onto the Background layer and then create a new Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer. Using the drop-down menu in this window you can select a colour, and then adjust its saturation to directly affect the lightness or darkness of the tones. Click on Master to see the different colours available.

Create a new Levels Adjustment Layer and increase the shadows (left-hand slider) to 10 and the highlights (right-hand slider) to 240. Select a black brush and reduce the Opacity in the options bar to 20%. Click into the Levels layer’s mask and paint over the waves to recover the burnt-out highlights.

Select the Dodge Tool, increase Size to 400px, then set Range to Highlights and Exposure to 5%. Paint over the rocks, pebbles and clouds to lighten them. Go to the Burn Tool, select Shadows and draw out detail in the clouds. Finally, use Enhance > Adjust Sharpness with Amount set to 50% and Radius to 1.

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Effects

8

Go beyond enhancement and correction: use Camera Raw to create special effects, from split tones to day-to-night scenes Recreate a split-tone effect

172

Create a two-tone landscape

174

Emulate the look of slide film

176

Give a landscape a golden glow

179

Create the perfect sunrise

182

Turn day into dusk

184

Make a moonlit scene

188

Boost car light trails with tinting

190

A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop 171 WorldMags.net

Effects

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How to…

On the disc

Recreate a split-tone effect

Look in the Creative Split Tone folder

You can give your shots a creative twist by mimicking a striking split-tone effect in Photoshop’s Raw editor WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop CS3 or later WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How to recreate a split-tone effect using Adobe Camera Raw’s HSL/Greyscale and Split Toning tabs IT ONLY TAKES 5 minutes In the traditional darkroom, split-tone effects are applied to images using a combination of chemicals to tint different tonal areas, such as the shadows or the highlights. This effect

can be recreated in the digital darkroom, and is a great way to add a creative edge to black-andwhite shots. Unlike conventional tints, such as sepia, split-toning targets specific areas of tone, such as the highlights or shadows, and tints them with different colours. This means that you can produce an eye-catching two-tone effect that gives your images an artistic twist. Here, we’ll show you how to use the powerful tools in Photoshop’s Adobe Camera Raw editor

172 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

to apply a split-tone effect. Remember that not all images will work well with this effect: some are much more suited than others. We found that this striking shot of modern architecture came out a treat. VIDEO TUTORIAL Follow our step-by-step

guide to creating a two-tone effect IMAGE FILE Splitone_before.nef is in the

Creative Split Tone folder on the DVD

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Ben Brain

Original shot

Split-tone effect

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1 Go greyscale

2 Split the tones

Open splittone_before.nef in Photoshop’s Adobe Camera Raw editor. Click the HSL/Grayscale tab and tick the Convert to Grayscale box. To tweak the mono tones, use the various colour sliders – for this image, move the Blue slider to -20. This will darken the shot’s blue sky.

Next, click the Split Toning tab. Set the Highlights Hue slider to around +70 and Saturation to +35. Set the Shadows Hue slider to +230 and Saturation to 50. This will create a split-tone effect, with a yellowish tint in the highlights and a blueish tint in the shadow areas. Set Balance to +35.

3 Tweak the effect

4 Add a vignette

5 Add some blur

6 Dodge and Burn

To adjust the effect that you’ve just applied, click on the Basic tab and use the sliders there to tweak the tones and contrast of your shot. Set Blacks to +17, Brightness to +25, Contrast to +50 and Clarity to +40. These settings will boost the shot’s overall tones, contrast and sharpness.

Click on Open Image. In Photoshop, create a duplicate layer, go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and set Radius to 80 pixels. Change the Blending Mode to Soft Light, and reduce the layer Opacity to 30%. This will boost the contrast and give your shot a subtle, diffused look.

With the shot’s colours calibrated, let’s add a vignette, which will darken the four corners of the scene and help to draw the viewer’s eye into the image. To do this, click on the Lens Corrections tab and drag the Lens Vignetting Amount slider back so that its value is around -50.

Finally, create a Curves Adjustment Layer to fine-tune the tones, and a Colour Balance Adjustment Layer to tweak the colours. Click the bottom layer in the layer stack, then select the Dodge and Burn tools from the Tools palette. Use these to darken and lighten areas of the scene selectively.

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Effects

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On the disc Look in the Split Toning folder on the DVD

How to…

Create a two-tone landscape

Find out how to use Camera Raw’s Split Toning tab to emphasise features in a landscape, replacing the original colours with a striking split-tone effect WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop CS or later WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How to increase contrast, how to use the Split Tone tab; how to adjust tonal balance IT ONLY TAKES 10 minutes Well-composed landscape photos should feature a variety of different tones and shapes that draw the eye in. Take our unprocessed Raw source file, for example. The foreground reeds at the left of the frame lead your eye towards the narrow pebble beach, which in turn draws

your attention to the infinite horizon. This type of photograph is perfect for a creative split-tone makeover, because it already has distinctive contrasting tones and features. The warmly lit reeds and pebbles stand out against the cool blue sky and sea, presenting an attractive mix of shapes and colours to enhance with a splittone effect. Here, we’ll show you how to use the tools in Adobe Camera Raw to increase the contrast between the land, sea and sky. You’ll then learn how to create a monochrome version of the image using the HSL/Grayscale tab. Once

174 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

you’ve produced a striking monochrome print, we’ll show you how to use the Split Toning tab’s sliders to add separate washes of colour to the shot’s highlights and shadows. Sepia is a popular hue to use in this type of shot. Adobe Camera Raw helps you produce this effect without compromising your file’s quality. VIDEO TUTORIALS Follow our step-by-step

guide to creating two-tone landscapes IMAGE FILES The start image, raw_start.cr2,

is in the Split Toning folder on the DVD

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Ben Brain

Original shot

Split-tone landscape

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1 Tweak exposure

2 Boost the Blacks

Open raw_start.cr2 from the DVD. Before changing the colours, you’ll need to tweak the shot’s tones and boost the contrast between its shadows and highlights. You can see from the histogram that the highlights could be stronger, so set Exposure to +0.25 to brighten them up.

Move the Recovery slider to 10 to restore any highlights clipped in the last step. Now drag the Blacks slider to 17, making the shadow’s darkest pixels darker without affecting the midtones or highlights. Your shot now has a distinctive contrast, which gives the Split Toning tools more to work with.

3 Make it mono

4 Tint it sepia

5 Target the shadows

6 Get the balance right

Next, go to the HSL/Grayscale tab and tick the Convert to Grayscale box to create a monochrome version of the landscape. Darken the blue sky and sea by dragging the Blues slider to -28. You can make the reds and pebbles stand out by dragging the Yellows slider right to +45.

Drag the Shadows Saturation slider up to 60 and tint the shot’s shadows a rich dark blue by dragging the Shadows Hue slider up to 234. This creates a visually pleasing contrast between the warm pebbles and reeds and the cold sea and sky. The colour and tonal contrast helps to emphasise the shapes in the scene.

Now that you’ve brightened the pebbles and reeds you can colourise the shadows and highlights separately to enhance different parts of the scene. Click on the Split Toning tab, put the Highlights’ Saturation up to 80 and drag the Hue slider to 48, turning the picture’s brightest pixels a warm sepia.

The Balance slider helps you adjust the dominance of the two colours in the shot. The warm sepia landscape looks a little weak compared to the intensity of the brooding blue sky, so drag the Balance slider right to +42, spreading the sepia tones in the shot. And with that you’re done – you should now have an attractive split-tone landscape.

A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop 175 WorldMags.net

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On the disc Look in the Velvia Film folder on the DVD

Original shot 176 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

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Rainer Mirau

Effects

Film effects

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How to…

Emulate the look of slide film

Recreate the distinctive colours and contrast captured by Fujichrome Velvia slide film using Photoshop’s suite of powerful digital darkroom tools

WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop Elements 6 or Photoshop CS, or later WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How to create naturally vivid-looking colours; how to reduce unwanted grain; how to simulate distinctive film brands IT ONLY TAKES 10 minutes Traditional photographers often favour a particular brand of film because of the distinctive look it gives their prints. Slide films such as Fuji Velvia give saturated colours for high-contrast landscapes. Velvia

1 Brighten things up

images also have a fine grain, which revealing a scene’s details with the minimum of noise. You could adjust your in-camera processing settings to make it boost saturation and tweak tones as soon as it captures a shot. However, the colour processing controls are fiddly to set up, so you may not get the results you want and your shots could end up looking oversaturated. If you’re shooting in Raw, Adobe Camera Raw will override the in-camera processing settings anyway. It makes more sense to simulate the colours created by Velvia film in the digital darkroom

Open the file named velvia_start.cr2 in Adobe Camera Raw. The histogram doesn’t stretch to the far right of the graph, indicating that the shot’s highlights aren’t as bright as they could be. Push Exposure up to +0.60 to brighten the highlights and midtones. The graph will slide towards the right.

using the Adobe Camera Raw editor. Here you can tweak colour with precision, sharpen up detail and remove any colour noise or grain to create a look that suits your source file. Even better, you can do this at your leisure and you have total control over the results of the process. Let’s get started... VIDEO TUTORIAL Follow our step-by-step

guide to recreating film styles IMAGE FILE The start image, velvia_start.

cr2, is in the Velvia Film folder on the DVD

2 Tweak the tones

The histogram reveals a broad spread of shadows, midtones and highlights, so the shot’s exposure is relatively healthy. Click the Shadow Clipping Warning icon (the white arrow) at the top-left of the histogram and the darkest parts of the shot will appear as blue patches. To reveal a little more detail in these areas, drag the Blacks slider to about 2.

A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop 177 WorldMags.net

Effects

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3Boost the blues

4Reveal midtone detail

The colours in our landscape (especially the blues) are desaturated compared with the rich colours produced by Velvia film. Push the Vibrance slider up to +50 for more striking colours. The blues will still look quite weak, so enhance them by moving the Temperature slider down to 3750.

The mountain consists mostly of midtones, so it lacks impact. To draw the eye into the shot and simulate Velvia’s look, you can exaggerate the midtone contrast. To do so, drag the Clarity slider to +57. The mountain’s weak shadows darken and the highlights brighten, emphasising its texture and detail.

5Stay sharp

6Go against the grain

Velvia film produces shots with pin-sharp detail. To make the mountain’s textures pop even more, click the Detail tab and push the Amount slider to 70. Enhance the contrast by pushing Radius to 1.3. Don’t go any further, or you risk blowing out highlights and adding halos around contrasting edges.

Velvia film (especially Velvia 50) has a very fine and unobtrusive grain. By default, the Noise Reduction section’s Colour slider is set to 25 to remove colour noise. To finish, drag the Luminance slider up to 65 to reduce the grain in the midtones of the water.

Experiment with different film effects

Use FilmPack to mimic other classic films Fuji Velvia is just one of many different films that has its own look (and fans). In theory, you can also use Photoshop’s colour-correcting tools to simulate the distinctive properties of a host of other film brands, such as the delicate flesh tones of Astia or the soft grain of Tri-X. If you’d rather not tinker around too much in the digital darkroom to replicate these effects, though. there is a faster film-faking solution: download the free trial version of DxO FilmPack from www.dxo.com. This Photoshop plug-in can simulate the colour and grain of over 50 classic film types. FilmPack 2 is also available as a stand-alone application. It looks like, and behaves in a similar way to, Adobe Camera Raw, so you should find it easy to pick up.

Kodachrome 64

178 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

Kodak Elite 100

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Kodak HIE

Glowing landscapes

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Ben Brain

Original shot

On the disc

How to…

Start image and video guide on your CD

Give a landscape a golden glow Take an ordinary landscape and give it a creative makeover as we show you how to use Camera Raw to improve an image’s tones, colour and contrast WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop CS or Photoshop Elements 5, or later WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How to warm up colour; how to darken shadows; how to produce finer details IT ONLY TAKES 15 minutes The quality of light can make or break a landscape shot. Many pro landscape photographers recommend the hours around sunrise as the perfect time to capture the view you want: shadows are long and dramatic to add shape and form to the contours of the ground.

But, even more importantly, the light can be fantastic as this time of day, with vivid yet soft colours transforming familiar objects on the horizon. Even if you have little option but to take your landscape photos at other times of day, however, there is usually something you can do to draw out the colour and light in your shot, adding zest and interest to even the dullest shots. And because the Raw file format retains so much information, taking photos in Raw is the ideal way to start. In this tutorial, you’ll take a Raw landscape shot and enhance the colour

and light to add drama and impact to the scene. By warming up the shot’s colour temperature, you can fake the golden glow of a sunrise, saving you the hassle of getting up early to capture it for real! We’ll also look at techniques for making landscape shots more more attractive, showing you how you can enhance contrast while retaining the detail in delicate and light areas such as cloud formations. You’ll also see how to boost the image’s sharpness to bring out the detail of busy areas like the tree leaves. The result is a far more punchy and evocative image. So let’s get started...

A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop 179 WorldMags.net

Effects

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1 Increase depth

2 Handy histograms

3 Spot clipping

4 Warm it up

5 Quick recovery

6 Adjust exposure

Open Raw2_start.cr2 from your disc. Because it’s a Raw file, it will automatically open in the Camera Raw editor. Navigate to the bottom of the interface and set Depth to 16 Bits/Channel. This gives you the full range of colour information to work with – you won’t see any difference on screen, but you have more choice in altering colour temperature or saturation.

At the far right of the histogram, you’ll see a red line that shoots up to the top of the graph. This indicates that some of the photo’s brightest pixels are clipped (pure white). To highlight the parts of the shot that are overexposed, click the Highlight clipping warning icon above the graph.

You now need to recover the detail lost in the blown-out highlights without changing the exposure of the midtones and shadows. The Recovery slider does just that. Drag it to about 25 to reduce all traces of the red clipping warning. You now have a better range of highlights within the photo, which will produce a detailed print. 180 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

Before you begin editing, check out the image’s histogram. This helps you spot any tonal problems your shot may have. This shot has a healthy spread of pixels throughout the tonal range, showing that there’s a strong range of shadows (to the left of the graph), midtones (in the middle) and highlights (to the right).

Before worrying about reducing clipped pixels, let’s warm up the shot to mimic the golden glow you get when shooting a scene bathed in early morning sunlight. Drag the Temperature slider up to 6,600 degrees Kelvin. This warms the shot, but also increases the amount of clipping in the brightest clouds.

To give the early morning scene a moodier look, drag the Exposure slider to the left (to about –0.35). This will mimic the effect of narrowing the aperture to darken the scene’s shadows, midtones and highlights. The beauty of editing in Raw is that you can essentially change the effect of your camera settings after the event.

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Glowing landscapes

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7 Boost midtone detail

8 Dramatic contrast

In the middle of the histogram, you can see that the midtone pixels don’t have much strength. To reveal detail hidden in the midtones of the lonely tree’s branches (without affecting the darkest shadows or brightest highlights), drag the Fill Light slider up to about 18.

For a more dramatic scene, enhance the contrast between the darkest shadows and the brightest highlights. First turn on Shadows clipping warning in the histogram’s top left, then drag the Blacks slider to about 10. Specks of blue appear in the tree, but so little loss of detail in deep shadows is acceptable.

9 Colour correction

10Sharper shooting

To give the shot even more impact, boost its colour intensity. Drag Vibrance to around +35: it’s designed to boost less-saturated colours more than those that are already quite intense, so it’s a better choice for many landscapes than the cruder Saturation slider.

For a print with more impact, click the Detail tab. Use the Zoom pop-up menu in the bottom left of the interface to view the shot at 100%. This gives you a clearer view of your photo’s actual pixels. Drag the Sharpening Amount slider up to about 70 to increase detail around the finer branches.

How we enhanced this shot...

1 Reduce clipping

2 Fill Light

We gave the shot a glow using the Temperature slider and used the Recovery slider to reveal detail hidden in blown-out highlights without altering midtones or shadows.

To reveal the darker details that were lost in the tree’s underexposed midtones, we bumped the strength of the Fill Light slider right up.

3 Better colour

4 Stay sharp

To produce colours with more impact, we dragged the Vibrance slider up to a higher setting. This created brighter and more vivid blues and greens within the scene.

As a finishing touch, we sharpened the shot. It’s always best to leave sharpening to the end to minimise any artefacts that the process may add.

A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop 181 WorldMags.net

Effects

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Ali Jennings

Original shot

How to…

Create the perfect sunrise

On the disc Look in the Sunrise folder on the DVD

Looking for a way to enhance a lacklustre sunrise? Then find out how to warm and boost a shot’s colours, and add a gradient-based glow WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop Elements 6 or Photoshop CS, or later WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How to warm up colour and boost its intensity, how to use the Gradient Tool to give skies a subtle glow IT ONLY TAKES 15 minutes When shooting the sun rising over a scenic landscape, you should set your camera to use a tight aperture, such as f/16. This will help to ensure that both the foreground and background

details are captured in sharp focus. At such a narrow aperture, the shutter speed will need to be quite slow, or the shot could be underexposed. For this shot, we used a shutter speed of 1/6 sec, which meant we had to use a tripod to avoid blur. The low-angle sun should be bathing the scene in an attractive golden glow, but our Auto White Balance setting has failed to capture the scene’s true colours and added a cold blue colour cast. To make the shot look warm and inviting, you can correct its colour temperature

182 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

using the tools in Camera Raw, and boost the vibrancy of the desaturated colours to create a more attractive scene – we’ll show you how in the following steps. We’ll also reveal how to enhance the sunrise effect in Photoshop’s standard editor by adding a gradient to the sky. VIDEO TUTORIALS Follow our step-by-step

guide to enhancing colour IMAGE FILE The start image, sunrise_before.

dng, is in the Sunrise folder on the DVD

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Sunrise effects

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1 Warm it up

2 Give the colours a boost

3 Switch to Photoshop Elements

4 Pick a colour

Open the file sunrise_before.dng in the Sunrise folder on your DVD: the Raw file will open in Adobe Camera Raw. To warm up the cold-looking colours, drag the Temperature slider to +18. The shot should now have a warmer tint.

You can boost the shot’s weaker colours to give the shot more impact. To do this, drag Vibrance to around +30. This boosts weaker colours (such as the green grass and orange mist) without oversaturating stronger colours. If you boost blues too much, for example, you’ll create unprintable colours.

By tweaking the shot’s colour temperature and strength in Adobe Camera Raw, you can avoid adding noise artefacts to the scene. However, to enhance the shot with a warm sky gradient, you’ll need to click on Open Image to access the extra tools in Photoshop Elements’ standard editing interface.

Before adding a gradient to the scene, you’ll need to choose a suitable colour. Click on the Select Foreground Colour icon in the Tools palette to open the Colour Picker. Choose an orange colour by setting H (Hue) to 45°, S (Saturation) to 80% and B (Brightness) to 100%. Click OK.

5 Create a gradient

6 Modify the gradient

Click on the Create New Adjustment Layer icon in the Layers palette and choose Gradient from the drop-down menu. Click Reverse to make the gradient start in the sky and trail off towards the ground. Click on the gradient’s preview to edit it. Drag the white Opacity stop to a Location of 42%. Click OK.

Click OK again. The orange gradient now starts at the top of the shot and trails off before hitting the foreground rocks. To reveal some sky colour and texture from the original shot, set the gradient’s Blending Mode to Pin Light and reduce the Gradient Fill layer’s Opacity to 43%.

A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop 183 WorldMags.net

Effects

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On the disc Look in the Day To Dusk folder

Turn day into dusk WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop Elements 6 or Photoshop CS, or above WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How to use the Recovery slider to tone down sky highlights; how to use the Colour Temperature slider to add a blue cast; how to adjust blacks and exposure to simulate night IT ONLY TAKES 20 minutes Trying to capture dusk or night-time shots with a very long exposure will mean you’re likely to end up with a result not too dissimilar to daytime. You could underexpose the same scene to produce a result more like night, but a better-looking solution is to capture the image in the daytime and then adjust the exposure at the Raw conversion stage for a dusk-like effect. We can never hope to reproduce night exactly as we would see it, since the human eye has an incredible contrast range that a camera or monitor can’t match. But by working with the Raw data, we can darken a scene down and still retain important details in the shadow areas to produce an effective simulation of night. The same detailed result

could not be achieved with simple in-camera underexposure techniques. There are a couple of things worth noting when capturing your source image. First, you must avoid having the sun in frame unless it’s behind heavy cloud (as in our source image), for only then is it possible to pass it off as the moon. Second, a bright day gives you a better chance of success because of the increased tonal separation, but including some artificial lighting late in the day is a good Original shot alternative too.

Matt Henry

Learn how to transform an ordinary daylight scene with a combination of Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop adjustments

VIDEO TUTORIAL Follow our step-by-step

guide to creating the impression of dusk IMAGE FILE Daytodusk_start.cr2 is in the

Day To Dusk folder on the DVD

1 Open the Raw image

Open up the start image daytodusk_start.cr2, and the Camera Raw editor will launch. Our start image was shot late in the afternoon, but it’s a little underexposed, so it already looks like it’s approaching dusk with the default Raw settings. Our first task is to push the Recovery slider from 0 to 100, which tones down the highlights in the sky. 184 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

2 Boost image contrast

This enables us to push the Contrast slider up to +100 without burning out the sky too much. The increase in contrast darkens the shadow areas, raises colour saturation and makes the lights on the pier brighter. Now try bringing the Recovery slider back to 0 and see the difference it makes. Make sure you reset it to 100 before the next step.

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Dusk effects

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3 Alter the colour temperature

Now we want to alter the colour temperature of the image, to give it more of a cold blue hue and produce the impression of night. Drag the Temperature slider in the White Balance section left to around 3850. The purple/magenta cast can then be knocked back by dragging Tint left to -30. We can tweak these again later if necessary.

4 Boost Fill Light and Blacks

Things are already looking like dusk now, but we can throw a bit more detail into the darker areas by increasing the Fill Light from 0 to 75. This weakens blacks and reduces contrast too much, so we can compensate a little bit by dragging the Blacks slider to 20. We’ve got decent blacks now, but more shadow detail than we had previously.

A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop 185 WorldMags.net

Effects

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5Decrease exposure

6Lighten it up

The lightened shadows that reveal more detail mean that we can now darken our image a little without clipping too many tones to pure black. Drag the Exposure slider to -0.50 to darken the whole image down. Without our Fill Light work, most of the pier area would have disappeared into ugly blackness.

Click Open Image to load the image in Elements’ Full Edit window. Now we can start our localised exposure work. Duplicate the background layer by pressing [Ctrl]+[J]. Click on Normal at the top of the Layers palette (Window > Layers) and choose Linear Dodge to lighten everything.

7Create a mask

8Prime your brush

Click the Create Adjustment Layer icon at the top of the Layers palette and pick Levels from the drop-down. Click OK and drag the Levels 1 Adjustment Layer below Layer 1. Hold [Alt] and hover between the Layer 1 and Levels 1 layers until two circles appear. Click to attach the Levels 1 layer and mask to Layer 1.

We can use the mask attached to the Levels 1 layer to omit the overly bright sky in the layer above. To do this, select the mask’s thumbnail, set the foreground colour to black and grab the Brush tool from the Tools palette. Select a soft-edged brush and set its Size to 800 and Opacity to 100%.

9Mask out the sky

10Tidy things up

Spray over the sky to mask out the lighter sky above and reveal the darker tones in the layer below. Make sure you include all of the sky, but don’t worry too much about going over the edges at this stage. Use the [ key on your keyboard to reduce the brush size to 200 pixels, drag the Opacity slider to 50% and carefully spray over the sky below the pier. 186 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

To tidy up your mask, press [X] again to set the foreground colour to white. Using the [ and ] keys to adjust the brush size, carefully spray back over the pier to erase the edges of your original mask and reveal the brighter pier below. Do the same to erase any dark areas just below the horizon on the right, this time with a slightly harder-edged brush.

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Effects Original shot

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How to…

On the disc Look in the Day To Night folder

Make a moonlit scene Avoid the headaches of shooting at night by using the tools in Adobe Camera Raw to turn an average day shot into a knock-out nocturnal scene WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop Elements 5 or Photoshop CS, or later WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How to alter colour balance; how to change tones; how to turn day into night IT ONLY TAKES 10 minutes Shooting at night can be a challenge. Low-level light sources often require higher ISO settings to make your camera more sensitive to available light, leading to muddier photographs. You could try using a slower shutter speed to let in more light,

but this increases the chance of camera shake during the lengthier exposure, leading to blurry photos. To avoid camera shake completely, you’ll need to use a tripod, or limit your composition options by resting the camera on a hard surface such as a floor or a wall. An alternative to shooting at night is simply to fake it. For decades, filmmakers have avoided the constraints of shooting at night by using a technique called ‘day for night’. This involves filming the action in the daytime, then post-processing the footage to give it a cold blue nocturnal colour cast.

188 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

The Adobe Camera Raw editor has all the tools you need to mimic this technique. Here, we’ll show you how to use White Balance presets and Tint sliders to create a typical ‘day for night’ shot, without leaving the editor. Discover how to tweak your image’s tones to create a more moody moonlit scene and you’ll then have the freedom to shoot highquality Raw shots during the day. VIDEO TUTORIAL Follow our step-by-step

guide to creating the impression of night IMAGE FILE The start image, raw_start.dng,

is in the Day To Night folder on the DVD

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Nocturnal effects

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1 Get started

2 Adjust White Balance

3 Tweak the tint

4 From sun to moon

5 Scary shadows

6 Striking silhouettes

Open the file raw_start.dng from your DVD. This early morning shot has a golden colour hue created by the warm colour temperature of the rising sun. With a bit of temperature tweaking, you can easily create a more nocturnal colour palette, and turn the sun into the moon.

Sometimes your camera will accidentally tint a shot with a green or magenta hue, so ACR provides you with a slider to counteract the effect. You can use this Tint slider more creatively by dragging it to –10. This adds a subtle but spooky wash of green to the scene.

You can create a more atmospheric scene simply by boosting the strength of the darkest pixels within your image. Drag Blacks up to 11. This will instantly make the shadows in the distant trees become darker, creating a more moody and mysterious night-time scene.

To cool down this warm-looking shot, you could drag the Temperature slider to the left. However, it’s faster to cool things down using the Tungsten preset in the White Balance dropdown menu. This preset is designed to cool down indoor lights, but it also turns the shot a more night-like blue.

Since moonlight is made up of reflected sunlight, it’s far weaker than sunlight itself. To simulate this nocturnal lighting, drag the Recovery slider to 60. This slider will try to claw back detail from the shot’s highlights, causing the clouds around the ‘moon’ to darken a little.

The shot’s backlit trees already appear in silhouette, but you can make them stand out even more to create a starker contrast between the trees and the ‘moon’. To do this, drag the Contrast slider right to a value of +45. Your day-to-night transformation is now complete.

A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop 189 WorldMags.net

Look in the Light Car folder on the DVD

Marcus Hawkins

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On the disc

Original shots

How to…

Boost car light trails with tinting Taking a different approach to Raw adjustments can produce colourful and high-impact images, so why not get creative? WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop Elements 6 or Photoshop CS, or later WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How to adjust Raw files to enhance light trail colour and impact, and use layer blending and masks IT ONLY TAKES 15 minutes Shooting from a moving car at night is a great way to capture light trails, and it’s relatively easy to set up. So, once you’ve reeled

off a series of shots, you need to head back to the digital darkroom and take a fresh and abstract look at Raw conversion. Rather than the usual technique of preserving detail and reproducing natural colour, we want to manipulate the dull street lamp yellows into an explosive mix of vibrant colour and actionpacked light streams. In this tutorial, we’ll take a look at how to adjust the Raw settings to boost the light, without blowing out the highlights. We’ll also

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guide you through the process of tinting and toning the colour, and then layering the images to create a final shot with plenty of impact. VIDEO TUTORIAL Follow our step-by-step guide

to enhancing the colour and impact of night-time light trails in Raw on the DVD IMAGE FILES The start images, raw_light01, 02, 03, 04 and 05.cr2, plus light_after.jpg, are in the Light Car folder on the DVD

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1 Reduce the exposure

Trail effects

2 Colour changes

Open the five car images within ACR. Under the Basic tab, ensure you have the Highlight Clipping Warning on. Reduce the Exposure slider to decrease the amount of red warning showing and use the Recovery slider to reduce the warning further.

Use the Tint slider to make the light trails in each image a different colour, then click the Split Toning tab. Adjust the Shadow and Highlight sliders to complement the tint you’ve applied. Once each image is done, click Select All and Open.

3 Expose the background

4 Stack the images

5 Mask the layer

6 Window cleaning

Reopen one of the original Raw images. This time, adjust it to give a dark contrast to the dashboard. Again, use the Split Tone slider to apply a colour to the image. Open this image in Photoshop, then copy and paste the tinted images into this one.

Refine the selection and save it (Select > Save Selection), then create a layer mask for every layer but the Background. Each time you make a new mask, load the saved selection (Select > Load) to create the required mask for the car’s interior.

With the images stacked in one place, move from the top to the penultimate layer, changing the Blending Mode to Lighten. Use the Polygonal Lasso Tool to select the windscreen and then, in its Options, choose Add To Selection. Select the side window.

The last stage is to clean up any smears and make colour tweaks. Start by flattening the image and using the Burn Tool with a low percentage. You can use the Spot Healing Brush for more stubborn spots. Finally, crop into the image to frame it.

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9

From shooting on location to processing in Raw and adding effects: five complete workshops for your SLR and Photoshop Capture classic action photographs

194

Shooting flash-lit action images

200

Great HDR effects without the hassle

206

Creating stunning low-light seascapes

212

Photographing buildings at dusk

218

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Thanks to Castle Combe Circuit and Chippenham Wheelers

Original shot

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Action shots

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Raw Project

On the disc Look in the Cycling Action folder

Capture classic action photographs

Shoot fast-moving subjects without costly lenses, and mimic shallow depth of field in Photoshop to create dynamic action shots WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop Elements 6 or Photoshop CS2, or later WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How to blur backgrounds to mimic shallow depth of field; how to get pin-sharp action shots; how to boost skies IT ONLY TAKES Half a day When the weather gets warmer and the evenings grow longer, there’s no better time to shoot action images. Good weather is important because bright sunshine allows you to shoot at high shutter speeds – essential

if you want to ensure pin-sharp shots of fastmoving subjects. Early summer’s also the best time for cycling, so we ventured to Castle Combe Circuit in Wiltshire (www.castlecombecircuit. co.uk) to capture the Chippenham Wheelers in action. Professional sports photographers tend to lug around multiple camera bodies and lenses, but for this project, we’ll show you how to make the most of any action shoot using just one SLR and one lens, so you can stay mobile and responsive.

We’ll look at the equipment you need and the settings to use, and we’ll also show you how to mimic shallow depth of field in Photoshop to make your subject leap off the page. Plus, we’ll reveal how to give flat, colourless skies a boost and how to remove power lines and other unwanted blemishes. VIDEO TUTORIALS Follow our step-by-step

guide to taking action shots IMAGE FILE Masterclass_start.cr2 is in the

Cycling Action folder on the DVD

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Customise your camera Many SLRs feature a custom function facility that enables you to use the AE Lock button on the rear of the camera (marked with a star) to control autofocus. This is particularly useful in AI Servo mode, because it means you can lock onto your subject and track it independently of the shutter button, so you don’t have to worry about half pressing the shutter button to ensure the lens remains locked on target. The exposure is set at the moment the shot is taken. In your Custom Function menu, look for Shutter/AE Lock Button and select AE/AF or No AE Lock.

Get in on the action Learn how to shoot sport like a pro

Select AI Servo AF In AI Servo (predictive) AF mode, your D-SLR continuously re-focuses on a moving subject. If the subject approaches or retreats at a constant rate, the camera tracks the subject and predicts the focusing distance at the split second the image is taken. To lock the focus on a Canon EOS, for example, half-press the shutter release, then keep it half-pressed, making sure you keep the focus point hovering over the subject as it moves. It takes practice, but once you’ve got the hang of it, you’ll wonder how you ever managed without it.

Shoot in Continuous mode If you’re photographing sport, you should always have your Drive mode set to Continuous so that you don’t miss a decisive moment. You should also get into the habit of shooting in long bursts: the longer the burst, the more likely you are to get the image you’re after. The frame rate (given as frames per second, or fps) and the maximum number of shots you can take in a single burst will depend on your camera and the write speed of your memory card.

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Extend your lens A long lens is essential, partly because it enables you to get close to the action, and partly because it throws the background out of focus at wide apertures, helping to draw attention to your subject. 200mm is fine if you’re close, but 300mm (or longer) will give you more scope. And getting closer needn’t cost the earth: 1.4x and 2x extenders cost a fraction of the price of a brand new lens. A 1.4x extender on a 200mm lens will give an effective focal length of 280mm (1.4x200), or about 450mm on a camera with a crop factor of 1.6 (1.6x200x1.4). Note: extenders only autofocus on lenses with a maximum aperture of f/4 or larger.

Use a monopod

Buy a bar bag This is one of those nifty little bits of kit that’s specific to cycling, but it takes a lot of the hassle out of taking photographs on the move. Having the camera in a bag right in front of you inevitably means you take more shots, and the more shots you take, the more likely you are to get one that’s a winner. To view a wide selection of waterproof bar bags, visit www.wiggle.co.uk.

No self-respecting sports photographer goes anywhere without a monopod. As well as providing added stability for improved sharpness, they also take the weight of heavy cameras and lenses, which helps to minimise camera shake. (Try lugging a long lens around for a day without any support and you’ll see what we mean!) They’re also especially good for panning, since they make the panning action smoother, and help minimise any vertical movement of the camera or lens.

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Give your action shots a pro finish

1 Seeing red

2 Recovery position

Open masterclass_start.cr2 from the DVD. The image will automatically open in the Adobe Camera Raw interface. Click on the Clipping Warning icon (the white triangle) at the top-right of the histogram to reveal any blown-out areas. The red highlights indicate areas that contain little or no detail.

To recover some of the detail in these blown-out areas, drag the Recovery slider to 30. To boost the contrast and colour, set the Blacks slider to 10, the Contrast slider to 50 and the Clarity and Vibrance sliders to 60 and 30 respectively.

3 Boost the contrast

4 Healing power

5 Keep it clean

6 It’s all a blur

Next, click on the Tone Curve tab at the top of the righthand Adjustment panel, select the Point tab and then choose Medium Contrast from the drop-down menu. To boost the contrast a little further, drag the point nearest the top-right corner to about 200.

Carefully paint along both power lines, taking care not to stray into the trees on the horizon. Next, select the Clone Stamp, set the Size to 100 pixels and work your way around the image, pressing [Alt] to select a clear source point, then clicking on the image to clone out the dust spots in the sky or road.

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Click Open Image. Make sure the Layers palette is open (go to Window > Layers) and then go to Layer > Duplicate Layer. Call this new layer ‘Clean’, then click OK. To clone out the power lines in the sky, select the Spot Healing Brush and set its Diameter to 100 pixels, Hardness to 40% and Spacing to 1%.

To make the riders stand out more, you can blur the background and foreground while keeping the subject sharp. To do this, go to Layer > Duplicate Layer and rename the layer Blur. Next, go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and, in the new window that appears, select a Radius of around 20 pixels. Click OK.

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7Draw a gradient

8Reveal the riders

9 Fill it in

10 Blue sky thinking

11 Look sharp

12Make some noise

Click on the Add Layer Mask icon in the Layers palette, then select the Gradient tool from the Tools palette. Choose the default gradient from the top bar, then click on Reflected Gradient. Making sure that the foreground colour is black and the background colour is white, draw a gradient line from the top to the bottom of the lead rider’s front wheel.

To deepen the blue of the sky without adding unwanted noise, go to Layer > New Fill Layer > Gradient. Click OK, then tick the Reverse box in the new window that appears. Click anywhere in the Gradient box to open the Gradient Editor, select the Colour Stop pointer at the bottom left of the slider and then click in the Colour box that appears below.

You can now apply some sharpening. Sharpen the whole image and you will also sharpen the background, resulting in artefacts. To sharpen just the riders, select the Clean layer and go to Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask. Set Amount to 150%, Radius to 1.0 and Threshold to 5% to reduce unwanted noise.

To make all the riders in the image sharp again, you’ll need to mask out the blurred layer. To do this, select the Brush tool and set Radius to 149, Opacity to 100% and Flow to 80%. Ensure the foreground colour is set to black, then zoom in to around 50% and paint over each of the riders, masking out any halos around their edges.

In the Colour window that appears, type 165, 190 and 242 into the R, G and B boxes and click OK. Now, in the Gradient Editor, drag the top-right pointer two thirds of the way to the left. Drag the bottom-left pointer so it lines up with the top pointer. Click OK, then choose Multiply from the Blending Mode dropdown in the Layers palette. Drag the Opacity slider to 40%.

The ‘grain’ around the edges of the riders is quite visible, but the background grain has been smoothed out. To ensure that the background blends with the grain around the riders, select the Blur layer and go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise. Set Amount to 1.5 and pick Gaussian Distribution, then click OK.

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Flash-lit shots

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On the disc

Raw Project

Look in the Flashlit Action folder

Shooting flash-lit action images Firing a burst of flash at the end of a long exposure can freeze even the fastest-moving action. Discover the technique for your own images WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop Elements 6 or Photoshop CS, or later WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How to get tack-sharp, flash-lit action shots; how to set secondcurtain sync on your flash; how to fine-tune exposure and colours IT ONLY TAKES Half a day Capturing motion-blur shots can be a lottery: it requires a combination of ultra-smooth panning and a shutter speed that will freeze your subject, but blur the background

enough to give a sense of speed. Get either wrong, and the resulting shot looks like it’s been taken on a trampoline! But all is not lost – with the help of a flashgun, you can add a burst of flash that will freeze the action, no matter how fast your subject is going. This is because a burst of flash lasts anything from 1/1,000 sec to 1/40,000 sec, and the latter is fast enough to freeze the motion of a speeding bullet. Armed with our D-SLR and a Speedlite, we went to the Manchester Velodrome for the Para-cycling World Championships. We’ll show you how we got this shot and how we boosted the motion blur to make it more dramatic… VIDEO TUTORIAL Follow our step-by-step

guide to capturing flash-lit action IMAGE FILE Masterclass_start.cr2 is in the

Flashlit Action folder on the DVD

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Flash, camera, action! Here’s how to capture sharp, motion-blurred action shots…

Pre-focus your lens Sports snappers often use predictive (AI Servo) focusing in Continuous mode, but at close range, cyclists are so fast that it’s hard to keep your focus point on the subject. The way around this is to pre-focus on a point on the track, set your lens to manual (so it won’t hunt for a focal point later), then pan with your subject in frame until it reaches the right point on the track. It’s important to continue panning after you’ve taken the shot to ensure a smooth motion blur effect.

Ensure adequate depth of field Indoor arenas can be quite dark, so getting exposure right is about striking a balance. Because your subject is moving so quickly, it may be just behind or just in front of your focal point when you release the shutter, so you need to set a reasonable aperture to ensure adequate depth of field. You also need a shutter speed that will give you the desired amount of motion blur, and as low an ISO as possible to minimise grain. For our shot, we set an aperture of f/7.1, a shutter speed of 1/30 sec and an ISO of 400.

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If your flash doesn’t feature second-curtain sync, you can set it in-camera using the relevant custom function (see your manual for details). If your flash does feature second-curtain sync, whatever you set on your flash will override your camera settings.

Add an extension With many sports, it can be difficult to get close to the action, but you don’t need to spend a small fortune on a long lens to fill the frame. Canon’s 1.4x and 2x extenders, which cost around £200 and £250 respectively, will turn a 200mm lens into a 280mm or 400mm lens. Once you take into account the crop factor on many cameras, a 1.4x extender on a 200mm lens will give you an effective focal length of around 450mm (1.6x200x1.4). They do reduce your lens’s maximum aperture (an f/4 lens will become an f/5.6 lens in the case of the 1.4x extender), but they produce really sharp shots and take up very little space in your camera bag.

Set second-curtain sync With shutter speeds as slow as 1/30 sec, it’s important to decide when your flash fires. With first-curtain sync it fires the instant the shutter opens; with second-curtain sync it fires right at the end. To give the impression that your subject is moving forward, you need to ensure that any motion blur is behind it. To do this, set second-curtain sync, which will freeze the action at the end of your exposure, after your subject has passed across the frame.

Set the right IS mode

Stay hydrated! Large, air-conditioned venues tend to be quite hot and dry, particularly when they’re packed with spectators. To make sure you stay hydrated, carry a bottle of water in your camera bag or, better still, invest in a bottle carrier that you can strap to your belt. When you’re snapping away for hours, having a drink to hand will remind you to take frequent sips.

If you own an L-Series lens with an Image Stabilisation feature, it’s important to set it to the correct mode (assuming there’s an appropriate option). For panning, you need to set IS mode to 2, which will eliminate vertical camera shake without trying to correct horizontal movement.

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Exaggerate the blur

1 Evaluate the image

2 Adjust the exposure

Open masterclass_start.cr2 from the DVD in the Adobe Camera Raw editor. The histogram looks healthy, with a full tonal range, but the biker is slightly underexposed and the colours are a bit muted.

Click on the triangle at the top-right of the histogram to turn on the Highlight Clipping Warning. Drag the Exposure slider up to +0.25. This will brighten the biker and the background without adding unduly to the clipped highlights, which show up as red patches in the image.

3 Tweak the tones

4 Increase the contrast

5 Brighten the colours

6 Blur the biker

The histogram doesn’t reach all the way to the left, indicating that there are no pure blacks in the image. To give the image a wider tonal range, drag the Blacks slider to +10. This will pull the histogram to the left slightly so that the darkest pixels in the image will now print out as pure black.

Finally, to brighten the blues, drag the Vibrance slider to +20 and make the reds richer by moving the Saturation slider to +10. (Again, any further will start to introduce clipped highlights.) Once you’re done, click Open Image to open up your edited version in Photoshop’s main editing window.

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This so-called remapping has the effect of boosting the contrast slightly. To boost contrast still further, drag the Contrast slider to +50 (any further will introduce clipping in the biker’s shirt). To help the biker stand out from the background, increase edge contrast by dragging the Clarity slider to +50.

To add motion blur, we need to blur a duplicate layer and then mask out parts of this layer to reveal selected areas of the sharp layer below. To do this, go to Layer > Duplicate Layer. Call this layer Blur, click OK, then go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur. To add motion blur, set the Distance to 600 pixels.

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7Set the direction

8Add a mask

9 Reveal the rider

10 Boost colour and contrast

To make the blur look more realistic, we need to line it up with the direction the bike is travelling. Drag the line in the little circle until it’s roughly lined up, and then use the cursor keys on your keyboard to fine tune it so that the lines on the track look as sharp as possible. We chose an angle value of -28.

To mask out the blurred layer and reveal the rider below, gently click on the leading edge of the rider and his bike, taking care to remove the halo in front. Also spray over the logo on the track using strokes parallel to the track’s lines. As you spray, you’ll see a grey mask start to appear in the mask thumbnail.

Click OK and then click the Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers palette. Press [D] then [X] to change the foreground colour to black and then select the Brush tool from the Tools palette. From the preset picker, select a soft-edged brush of around 300 pixels and set Opacity and Flow to 50%.

Tweak colour and contrast by clicking on the Create a New Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette and selecting Curves. In the dialog that appears, click on the diagonal curves line to create a subtle S-shape, as above. To save your image, go to File > Save As and select PSD or TIFF.

Timing is everything...

...As these first- and second-curtain sync images demonstrate FIRST-CURTAIN SYNC

With the camera held still and the flash firing right at the start of a long exposure, the action is frozen at the moment the flash is fired, and the cyclist passes through the frame, registering as a blur.

SECOND-CURTAIN SYNC

The camera is held still again, but this time the action is frozen by a splitsecond burst of flash right at the end of the exposure, after the cyclist has passed across the frame.

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On the disc Look in the HDR folder on the DVD

Great HDR effects without the hassle

Want to get stunning High Dynamic Range images, but don’t have the software or patience? Here’s a clever way to get HDR effects by merging Raw files

WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop CS3 or later WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How to process Raw files; how to combine multiple images into one; how to use layers and layer masks IT ONLY TAKES Half a day Capturing a full range of tones from dark to light can be a real challenge, even for the most accomplished photographer. Digital cameras simply aren’t able to capture details in both the highlight and shadow areas of very high contrast scenes in a single exposure. Achieving a full tonal range has become

something of an obsession for enthusiasts, and several high-tech solutions have been developed. HDR (High Dynamic Range) software can be used to combine images taken at different exposures, and has created quite a buzz in photographic circles. It isn’t always the answer, though, and there can be an temptation to ‘overcook’ images, producing artificial results. Here, we’ll show you how to use Adobe Camera Raw to achieve effects that are similar to those created by HDR software. We’re going to take one Raw file and process it three times at different

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exposures to create three differing shots. Then we’ll combine these shots using a cunning combination of layers and layer masks in Photoshop to exploit the best elements of each shot. To capture our source image, we ventured to the famous Neolithic stone circle at Avebury in Wiltshire. We then returned to the comfort of the digital darkroom to work on our efforts. VIDEO TUTORIAL Follow our step-by-step

guide to creating HDR images IMAGE FILE Masterclass_start.cr2 is in

the HDR folder on the DVD

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WorldMags.net Shoot a scene for Raw merging How to ensure a superb end result, whatever the weather…

Speed things up Sometimes, you don’t have time to set up a tripod, or you may not even have one with you. However, you can get away with hand-holding your camera as long as you use a relatively fast shutter speed. As a general rule of thumb, use a shutter speed that matches the longest focal length of the lens you’re using. We were using a 17-85mm lens, so we tried to keep our shutter speed at 1/80 sec or faster.

Shoot in Raw For this technique, shooting in Raw is essential. In addition to the enhanced image quality of Raw files, you’ll also need to process the image three times to make three different exposures. A large JPEG won’t cope with being over- or under-exposed to such an extent.

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WorldMags.net Check your histogram The histogram is a handy tool that’s essential to ensure you have a good exposure to work with. While you’ll be processing your photo in several ways at different exposures, it’s also important to have a good starting point. Although your camera’s LCD screen gives a rough idea of exposure, it can be deceptive, especially when you’re working outside. The histogram’s graphic representation of the tones is a relatively fail-safe way to ensure you’ve got all the tonal data you need.

Experiment with composition The great thing about not using a tripod is that it frees you up to be more experimental with your composition. You can duck and dive, get down low or give the camera a slight twist. For this shot, we wanted to create a dramatic composition to enhance the powerful presence of the stones. Getting down low and shooting slightly upwards has helped achieve this.

Head out in all weathers It might not gel with the popular perception of fine photography weather, but a good cloudy day can be great for taking stunning shots. A poor weather forecast – especially a combination of sun and cloud – could actually be a good reason to head for the hills with your gear. Despite needing to avoid the odd downpour in a conveniently located public house, we found the dramatic clouds added to the impact of this scene, and our photographic experience.

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Merge three images into one

1 Open the Raw file and warm it

2 Sharpen and add punch

In Photoshop, go to File > Open and select the source file named masterclass_start.cr2 from your DVD. The image will be opened automatically in Adobe Camera Raw. In the Basic tab, change White Balance to 6150 to warm the image up a little.

Enter an amount of about 35 in Clarity to sharpen details. Moving to the Lens Correction tab, set the Lens Vignetting slider to -50. This will slightly darken the edges of the shot, drawing viewers’ eyes into the scene.

3 Save three files

4 Merge into one

5 Organise your layers

6 Create a mask

You’ll need to make three separate exposures from one file, so go to the Basic tab and use the Exposure slider to overexpose the photo by +1.5. This will make the photo lighter. Click Save Image and name this ‘file stones_1’. Repeat a similar process to make a normal and an underexposed image. Save each image and name them appropriately.

To unlock the Background layer, right-click on it and select Make Layer From Background, or just double-click its thumbnail. Now you can reorganise your layers into order by dragging them up or down the layer stack. We put the darkest at the top and the lightest at the bottom. 210 A photographer’s guide to… Raw in Photoshop

In Photoshop, go to File > Open and select the three images you’ve just created. You’ll need to drag them all into one image, so select the Move Tool and, while holding the [Shift] key, simply drag them into one file. They’ll appear exactly aligned as new layers on top of one another.

Add a mask to the top layer by clicking the Add Layer Mask button in the Layers palette. Now select a soft black brush and paint over areas, such as the grass, that are too dark in this version of the shot. Where you paint, you’ll reveal the betterexposed layer below.

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7 Refine your mask

8 Create an Adjustment Layer

Now click the middle layer’s thumbnail, so that it’s activated, and repeat Step 6 – adding a mask and painting on it – which will start to reveal aspects of the bottom and lightest layer. To refine your masking, use the Opacity and Flow sliders to adjust the intensity of your brush strokes. If you make a mistake, step back in the History or switch the foreground colour to white and paint the mask back.

Once you’re happy that you’ve revealed the best parts of each layer, you can add Adjustment Layers at the top of the stack: these will affect all layers beneath them simultaneously. The easiest method is to click the top layer’s thumbnail, then the ‘half-moon’ button at the foot of the Layers palette and select an adjustment from the pop-up list. We made further adjustments to Curves and Saturation.

9 Merge the layers

10Soften the image

Merge all layers into one new layer and place this on top of your layer stack. To do this without flattening the image and losing your layers irrevocably, press [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[Shift]+[E] – a fiddly but very useful keyboard shortcut. You can then refine your image with tools such as Dodge and Burn on this compressed layer.

Finally, you can add a slight softness to the image, which will emphasise the ethereal nature of the subject. To do this, duplicate the merged layer (Layer > Duplicate Layer), then add a Gaussian Blur by going to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Set the amount to about 50 pixels. Now change the Blending Mode of the blurred layer to Soft Light and use the Opacity slider to reduce the intensity of the effect.

How we created our dramatic landscape

1 Rain or shine

3 Raw processing

Undeterred by the gloomy weather, we used the day’s drabness to our advantage when shooting the photogenic stone circle at Avebury in Wiltshire.

Using Adobe Camera Raw (ACR), we processed our image three times at different exposures, ending up with one underexposed, one correctly exposed and one overexposed shot.

perfect set-up 2 The

4 Layer Masks

We set our handheld Canon EOS 40D to 1/125 sec, which was fast enough to minimise camera shake. We also shot in Raw to get the best from our scene.

We then combined our three exposures into one document on three layers. Using layer masks, we revealed the best parts of each layer to create a really dramatic shot.

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Paul Grogan

Raw Projects

Original shots

Raw Project

On the disc

Creating stunning low-light seascapes

Look in the Low Light folder on the DVD

Shooting coastal scenes using slow shutter speeds can result in really dramatic images. Here’s how it’s done... WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop Elements 6 or Photoshop CS, or later WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How to master long exposures in low light; how to merge two shots; how to fix lens distortion IT ONLY TAKES Half a day Sunset seascapes are the stock-in-trade of many professional landscape photographers. By combining the rich reds of a setting sun

with the moody blues of glistening boulders, they can create images as striking as they are serene. Another favourite trick of seascape specialists is to use slow shutter speeds to blur out movement in the water, resulting in smooth, quicksilver seas. We headed to Pembrokeshire for a sunset shoot of our own. Over the next few pages, we’ll show you how to make the most of any coastal shoot, and how to give your

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seascapes that milky, ethereal look. We’ll also take a look at the settings and equipment to use, and show you how to fine-tune your exposures using layers and Layer Masks. VIDEO TUTORIAL Follow our step-by-step

guide to shooting stunning seascapes IMAGE FILE Foreground_start.cr2, is in

the Low Light folder on the DVD

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Low--light seascapes

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WorldMags.net Carry a lens cloth The coast can be quite windy – and when the wind’s blowing in off the sea, it can also get pretty wet. Even if you’re a long way from the water’s edge, spray will invariably find its way onto the surface of your lens or filter. This is a particular problem at small apertures, as the large depth of field will make it look as if you’re shooting through a rain-spattered window. Remember to carry a soft, lint-free lens cloth in your camera bag and give your lens or filter a good clean before every shot.

Time your shoot When photographing coastal scenes at dawn or dusk, it’s essential that you know where and when the sun will rise and set, so you can ensure you’re in the right place at the right time. For sunrise and sunset times, check out the excellent www.sunrisesunsetmap.com; and to work out where the sun will come up and go down anywhere in the UK, check out this clever little sun compass (left), available from www.flightlogistics.tv.

Use Av mode Wait for the tide Knowing the times of low and high tide can make all the difference when it comes to shooting seascapes, since this will determine the sort of shot you’ll end up with. The key is to time your shoot so that the tide you want coincides with sunrise or sunset. You can always get tide times online before you go, but if you do a lot of coastal photography, it’s worth investing in a tide table for your part of the country: visit www. quicktide.co.uk for more info.

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If you want both the foreground and background of your scene to be in focus, it’s important to use as small an aperture as possible. To ensure good depth of field, switch to Av mode and choose an aperture of f/16 or f/22. This will also allow you to shoot at a very slow shutter speed, which is essential for blurring any crashing waves and giving the sea a silky-smooth finish.

Low-light seascapes

WorldMags.net Invest in some graduated filters A set of graduated ND (Neutral Density) filters is essential if you want to accurately expose both sky and foreground. This is particularly true at sunrise and sunset, when the sky has a tendency to ‘blow out’ if you expose for the foreground. Equally useful is a straight ND filter, which limits the amount of light entering the lens, enabling you to use even slower shutter speeds. Filters have the added benefit of protecting your lens from spray.

Capturing the scene Six top tips for shooting classic seascapes at slow shutter speeds

Use a cable release It is possible to reduce camera shake at slow shutter speeds by using the self-timer function on your camera, so that you don’t have to touch the camera – and risk blurred images – when the shot is being taken. However, this function doesn’t allow you to time the moment of your exposure very accurately. When shooting seascapes, you need to release the shutter at the precise moment that the waves are surging over the rocks – and the only way to do this precisely is to use a cable release.

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Raw Projects

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How to get exposure spot-on

1 Lighten up!

2 Cool it down

Open the start file, foreground_start.cr2, in Photoshop. The Raw file will automatically open in the Adobe Camera Raw interface. To lighten the foreground, drag the Exposure slider to +1.0 and the Fill Light slider to +10.

To boost contrast and colour, drag Blacks to +20, Contrast to +50, Clarity to 50 and Vibrance to +25. To cool down the foreground slightly without darkening it, move Tint to +10. To see the effect your edits have had on your original image, tick and untick Preview at the top of the window. Click on Open Image.

3 Red sky at night

4 Merge the exposures

5 Line ’em up

6 Add a layer mask

Next, open sky_start.cr2 from the DVD. To give the warm colours in the sky a boost, drag the Temperature slider to about 5500 and the Saturation slider to +30. To increase the overall brightness and contrast of the sky, drag Exposure to +0.25, Fill Light to +10 and Clarity to +50, then click on Open Image.

To check that the two layers are aligned, click on the Foreground layer and select Difference from the Blending Mode menu. Zoom in on the edge of the rocks at the water’s edge, select the Move Tool and then use the arrow keys to nudge the Foreground layer around until it lines up with the Sky layer. Now return the Blending Mode to Normal and zoom back out.

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Press F until both images are visible. Click on foreground_ start.cr2, then click its thumbnail in the Layers palette and drag it onto the sky_start image. Close foreground_start.cr2, then double-click the Background layer to rename it ‘Sky’, and change Layer 1 to ‘Foreground’. Press [F] until the image fills the screen.

Next, select the Foreground layer and click on the Add Layer Mask icon in the Layers palette. Press the [X] key to set the foreground colour to black, then click on the Gradient Tool and select Foreground to Background from the drop-down menu in the top toolbar.

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Low-light seascapes

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7Draw a gradient

8Reveal the sea

9 Straighten the horizon

10 Look clean, look sharp

Click on the Linear Gradient icon in the top toolbar, then set the Blending Mode to Normal and Opacity to 100%. Now draw a vertical line from the top-centre of the image to about three quarters of the way down. Don’t worry if it looks a bit gradual at this stage, because we’ll show you how to fine-tune the effect in the next step.

Merge the visible layers into a new layer by pressing [Shift]+ [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[E]. Rename the layer ‘Corrected’. To straighten the curved horizon and lighten the corners, go to Filter > Distort > Lens Correction. Drag Remove Distortion to +7 and Vignette to +30, then drag Scale to 107% to lose the transparent edges created by the correction. Click OK.

Click on the gradient bar in the top toolbar to open up the Gradient Editor. Drag the slider at the bottom left of the gradient bar to the right, until its Location field reads 50%. This will make the edge of the mask less gradual. Click OK and draw a new line from the top of the image to about two thirds of the way down to reveal more detail in the sea from the layer below.

To clean up the image, grab the Clone Stamp Tool from the Tools palette, set a brush Size of around 100 pixels, and zoom in on the sky and the milky sea to clone out any dust spots. Finally, to sharpen up the rocks slightly, go to Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask and set Amount to 150%, Radius to 1.5 and Threshold to 0.

Following the sun

When shooting sunsets, west is best! One advantage of shooting seascapes after the sun has gone down is that the weather doesn’t have to be perfect; not only do dark skies allow you to use slower shutter speeds for smoothing out moving water, they can also add drama to your final image. However, if you are lucky enough to find yourself shooting a dramatic sunset, head for a beach that faces west and shoot towards the sun. Use a graduated Neutral Density filter on your lens to stop the sky from burning out and look out for reflections in rock pools. Boulders and seaweed can also add interest. Try to shoot in both landscape and portrait format for variety.

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Original shots

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Dusk architecture

WorldMags.net Raw Project On the disc

Photographing buildings at dusk

Look in the Dusk Masterclass folder

Dusk is a great time to shoot buildings, but exposure can be tricky. Try combining three images in Photoshop to maximise detail

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WorldMags.net Attach a lens hood Using a lens hood is advisable, particularly for dusk and night shoots: it will minimise the amount of stray light from artificial light sources entering the lens and producing unwanted flare. It also has the added benefit of protecting the front element of your lens from unexpected knocks and scrapes.

Use a cable Equally important for sharp shots is a cable release, which allows you to fire the shutter without even touching the camera, helping to reduce camera shake. To guarantee sharp shots, you can even lock up the mirror incamera, so that the vibrations caused by the movement of the mirror don’t produce unwanted wobbles. (See your D-SLR’s instruction manual for details.)

Invest in a battery pack It’s easy to get carried away at amazing locations like this, and shoots can last long into the night. To cope with the high number of exposures and the long shutter speeds needed for this type of photography, a battery pack is invaluable - effectively doubling the length of time you can keep on shooting. It also adds weight to the camera, which helps to steady the tripod.

Take a good tripod head It goes without saying that you need a sturdy tripod to ensure details are tack-sharp in low light, but no less important is a tripod head that locks tightly. If it doesn’t, heavy SLRs have a tendency to droop during long exposures, resulting in blurred shots. It’s also essential that you can tilt your tripod head far enough over to shoot vertically, as with many buildings you’ll need to shoot in vertical format to squeeze everything into the frame.

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Dusk architecture

WorldMags.net Travel light

Use aperture priority

It pays to be mobile when you’re shooting architecture – not least because it’s hard to keep an eye on your gear when you’re gazing through the viewfinder. A small shoulder bag that’s big enough to carry an SLR body and a couple of lenses and filters should be more than adequate.

To ensure adequate depth of field, you’ll need to set an aperture of at least f/16 in Av mode, then ‘bracket’ your shots so that you can combine exposures in Photoshop later. Shoot five different exposures to cover every eventuality: correctly exposed, underexposed by one and two stops, and overexposed by one and two stops. Set your ISO as low as possible (100 or slower) and set a shutter speed of around 1/4 sec to subtly blur passing pedestrians. Look out for brightly dressed figures that might add interest to your final image.

Capturing the scene Six top tips that’ll guarantee professional-looking results WHAT YOU’LL NEED Photoshop CS3 or later WHAT YOU’LL LEARN How to shoot for low light; how to combine three exposures IT ONLY TAKES Half a day When the evenings are starting to draw out, there’s no better time to shoot architectural photographs. And when the sun is setting late, you don’t even have to wait until the weekend to get out and about with your digital camera. Well-lit buildings often look their best at dusk, when there’s just enough

ambient light to provide colour and contrast, and just enough artificial light to add interest and sparkle. Better still, shooting at dusk isn’t weather-dependent: on the day we travelled to Birmingham to shoot this project, it was completely overcast, but if anything the tungsten-tinged clouds that loomed overhead were more of a help than a hindrance, adding drama and detail to the sky. For this project, we’ll show you how to get the best shots of buildings at dusk: how to approach the shot and what equipment you

should take with you. In our step-by-step guide we’ll go over the technique to combine three different exposures to retain detail in the shadows, midtones and highlights. We’ll also show you how to remove unwanted colour fringing on highlights, how to adjust Photoshop layers so that the different shots are perfectly aligned and how to use Layer Masks to bring out detail. Finally, we’ll show you a way to straighten verticals like a pro. Grab the sample images off the DVD or take your own shots, then let’s get stuck in...

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Merge shots to create the perfect dusk scene

1 Brighten the building

2 Remove colour fringing

3 Lighten the foreground

4 Tweak the sky

Copy the images in the Dusk Masterclass folder onto your computer. The folder contains three files, each exposed for different parts of the scene. Open the file building_start.cr2 in Adobe Camera Raw. Move the Exposure slider to +1 to brighten the shot up by a stop, and the Recovery slider to +66 to bring out detail in the highlights.

To remove the fringe around the highlights, click the Lens Corrections tab and select Highlight Edges from the Defringe menu. In the Basic tab, boost Blacks to 5, Clarity to 70 and Vibrance to 30. Click Open Image.

Open foreground_start.cr2. Focusing on the area below the balcony, move the Exposure slider to +0.50 and the Fill Light slider to 20, which will brighten it further without blowing out the highlights. Boost Contrast to +50, Clarity to 50 and hit Open Image.

Open sky_start.cr2. Increase Fill Light to +10 to give the sky a boost, then move Blacks to 10 to deepen the shadows around the light at the far right. Click Open Image. You should now have three files open in the main Photoshop interface. Press [F] until you can see all three images stacked up.

5 Stack ‘em high

6 Line ’em up

Select foreground_start.cr2, click on its layer thumbnail, then drag it onto building_start.cr2. Do the same with sky_start.cr2. Building_ start.cr2 should now have three layers. Double-click on the Background layer and rename it ‘Building’; do the same to rename Layer 1 ‘Foreground’ and Layer 2 ‘Sky’. Close the Foreground and Sky images, press [F] and fit the image to the screen.

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To check the layers are aligned, click the eye icon of the Sky layer to hide it. Select the Foreground layer, then choose Difference from the Blending Mode menu. Zoom in on the tower, select the Move Tool and use the arrow keys to nudge the Foreground layer around until it lines up with the Building layer. Return the Blending Mode to Normal.

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Dusk architecture

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7Add a Layer Mask

8Paint in detail

9 Sharpen and clean

10 Straighten the verticals

Repeat step 6 with the Sky layer, hiding the Foreground layer and making the Sky layer visible again. All layers should now be aligned. Ensure all the eye icons are visible. Now select the Foreground layer, click on Add Layer Mask and press [Ctrl]+[Delete] to turn the mask black. Do the same with the Sky layer.

Repeat with the Sky layer by clicking on its mask and painting over the sky to reveal the bright sky below. Merge the layers into a new layer by pressing [Shift]+[Ctrl]+[Alt]+[E]. With the new layer selected, go to Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask and choose 100% at a Radius of 1. Use the Healing Brush to remove the dust spots in the sky.

Click on the Foreground layer’s mask, select the Brush Tool and choose a large brush. (We used a Diameter of 600 and a Hardness of 0%.) Ensure the foreground colour is white, then set Opacity and Flow to 50%. Paint over the area below the balcony and dab over the other bright lights within the scene.

To straighten the verticals, use the Marquee Tool to select the image (by clicking and dragging), then go to Edit > Transform > Skew. Drag out the top-left corner until all the verticals of the balcony are vertical. Do the same with the top-right corner and tweak until the tower is vertical. Click the tick and deselect with [Ctrl]+[D].

Try some alternative angles

Shoot your subject from every possible viewpoint... When shooting architecture, it’s worth spending half an hour exploring the subject from as many different vantage points and angles as possible before you even set up your tripod. Take some hand-held shots to see what works in your viewfinder: that way, once you’ve got the traditional wide-angle shot of the main façade in the bag, you can be a bit more creative. Try to think like an architect: ask yourself what views or details the architect would be most proud of, look for details and abstracts, and don’t forget to shoot in both horizontal and vertical format.

Zoom in on interesting details to create effective abstract images.

Shoot vertically, and look for leading lines that draw the eye in.

Try juxtaposing old and new for shots with added visual interest.

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On your DVD-ROM

Here’s how to get the most from your packed disc and learn from experts one-to-one at your own pace

Important

About copyright Please note that all the images on your DVD are copyright. They are not ‘royalty-free’ or ‘library’ images. They are supplied solely for your own private use, so you can work along with our tutorials. They must not be sold on, redistributed in any form (whether as-supplied or edited), made available on any server or website, or used for any commercial purpose.

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On the disc Start image and video guide on your DVD

On your disc

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How to… Use your disc

1 Welcome to the disc

After the disc interface launches and you’ve accepted the terms of use, you’ll see this Welcome screen. To access the content on the disc, simply click the appropriate chapter link in the bar below the title. The link at the foot of the screen will take you to information about Future’s entire portfolio of superlative photography magazines and details of how you can subscribe. (Naturally, you’ll need an active internet connection.)

Your free DVD-ROM includes over nine and three-quarter hours of video tutorials, plus all the ‘start’ images you’ll need to complete the step-by-step projects in this magazine. You’ll find our little ‘On the disc’ sticker on the page to remind you. Note that not all the features in Chapters 1 and 2 are accompanied by disc content, and a few others don’t have specific video tutorials. To access the files on this disc, first insert the DVD into your drive. Whether you’re using a Mac or a Windows PC, the disc should work equally well. If the disc interface doesn’t run automatically, look at the ‘Starting the interface manually’ box on this page for help.

Before you go on The first item that should appear on your screen is the disclaimer window; here you’ll need to click on ‘I Accept’. Please remember that this disc has been scanned and tested at all stages of production, but – as with all new software – we still recommend that you run a virus checker before use. We also recommend that you have an up-to-date backup of your hard disk before using this disc. Future Publishing does not accept responsibility for any disruption, damage and/ or loss to your data or computer system that may occur while using this disc, or the data and programs on it. Please consult your network administrator before attempting to install software on a networked PC.

2 Accessing the disc contents 3 Videos and images Go to any chapter and you’ll see a list of the tutorials in the same order in which they appear in the printed magazine. Click on any of these to go to it. Click on ‘Open Folder’ in the next screen (see step 3) and the folder containing the video tutorial and start image for that project will open on your desktop. (Note that this might be behind the disc interface window.) Click on ‘Home’ at any time to return to the initial screen shown in step 1.

Drag any image files to your own hard disk to open in Photoshop or Elements. You can simply double-click the video files to view them in Apple’s QuickTime Player (download the latest version free of charge from www.quicktime.com) or compatible player software. You might experience better performance if you copy the video files to your own hard disk and view them from there rather than from the disc.

Installation Once the DVD is running you’ll see a ‘Home’ screen with links to Chapters 1 to 9. Click on a link to access the section you want, then on the specific tutorial you’re interested in (see above for a brief guide to finding your way around the disc). You’ll find the video tutorial and Raw file for each project in their own sub-folders. Our video tutorials are in QuickTime or MPEG-4 format, and we recommend that you install the latest version of Apple’s QuickTime Player, available free at www.quicktime.com.

Questions and queries If you have a query about using your disc’s interface or its content, please visit our reader support Website at www.futurenet. co.uk/support, where you can find solutions to many common problems. In the unlikely event of your disc being defective, please e-mail our support team at discsupport@ futurenet.com for assistance. If you would prefer to talk to a member of our reader support team, you are invited to call 01225 822743, quoting disc reference ‘CBZ56 Photographer’s Guide to Raw’ when you get in touch. (You’ll pay normal UK national call rates.) Please note that we can only provide basic advice on using the interface and disc content. We cannot give in-depth help on any applications or on your particular hardware or operating system.

Expert tip Starting the disc interface manually

If the disc interface doesn’t load automatically when you insert the disc, here’s what to do. PC users: click on the Windows Start button and click Run. Then click Browse and go to the CD/DVD directory in My Computer. Look for a file called ‘CBZ.exe’ and double-click it. Then click OK in the Run dialog, and the interface should then open. Mac users: Double-click the disc icon to view its contents, then double-click ‘CBZ.osx’ to launch the interface.

9001

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Your companion DVD-ROM

Here’s your jam-packed disc, with almost ten hours of video tutorials and all the images you’ll need for our projects

On the disc Start image and video guide on your DVD

Wherever you see this symbol, you’ll find relevant content on your disc For instructions and details of the disc contents, turn to page 224. To remove your disc sleeve without tearing this page, slide your finger under the disc sleeve from the top and gently ‘roll’ the glue loose. Repeat from underneath to release the second dab of glue if necessary. If your DVD is missing, ask your newsagent. If they can’t help, or if your disc is physically damaged, please email [email protected] and we’ll be delighted to send you a replacement.

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All the advice you need to master photo-editing in Raw and achieve your best-ever pictures! Whatever level you’re at, this Photographer’s Guide shows you how to improve the results of your digital SLR photography. Accompanied by easy-to-follow video lessons, our in-depth workshops offer expert tips and techniques to help you create perfect photos in Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. Bring dramatic tones, crisp detail and vivid colour to your Raw photos today!

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