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Understanding Adobe Photoshop – Camera Raw

TipSquirrel: A real treat for us today. Our friend, and fellow Photoshop Nut, Richard Harrington has released this edition of his superb podcast series Understanding Adobe Photoshop at TipSquirrel.com a month before it can be seen anywhere else!

You can find more from this series on iTunes and YouTube
If you have an iPod touch or iPhone, you can get Rich’s Training in your Pocket

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A certified instructor for Adobe and Apple, Rich is a practiced expert in motion graphic design and digital video. Rich is a member of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals Instructor Dream Team, and a popular speaker on the digital video circuit.
Rich is an internationally published author. His book, Photoshop for Video, was the first of its kind to focus on Photoshop’s application in the world of video. He is also a contributing author for Apple’s Aperture, iLife ’09 and iWork ’09, Video Made on a Mac, and Producing Video Podcasts. If you want even more Photoshop training, check out his book Understanding Adobe Photoshop CS4.

Skin Smoothing with Photoshop

Its a pleasure and a delight to welcome another new ‘Nut’ to TipSquirrel. One of my favourite courses on line is without doubt Dave Cuerdon’s Portrait and Retouching Kit at Kelby training. So when Dave agreed to contribute to our humble little site you can imagine my delight!

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Here Dave shows us his skin smoothing technique, comparing it to more traditional methods. Stayed tuned for a special offer on his DVD.

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Mask-uerade – Photoshop Clipping Mask

I love using clipping masks. All my storyboards and cards at Andie Smith Designs use them. We even have masks that look like frames,  why? Because it allows the user the make minor changes.

Create a new canvas

Create a new layer and fill it with any color you want

Choose your eraser and erase the sides… I use multiple brushes and opacities to create a sloppy layered look. Save this as a .psd file for future use.

Drag an image to the top layer.

Press option+command+g (control+alt+g on a PC) and your image should take the shape of layer 2.

you can fill layer 1 with the color of your choice and it looks like a frame!

Replacing a Sky with Photoshop

Sometimes it’s necessary to replace elements in a photograph. Sometimes it’s just fun! Whether for fun or necessity, here’s a fairly easy way to go about replacing a piece of a photo, in this case, the sky. I took the example photo on a typical Texas summer day when there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and I’d like to liven the sky up, just a bit.

Begin by duplicating your main layer (Ctrl + J on PC; Cmd + J on Mac). This layer will become your mask layer. The next thing you’ll want to do is to actually create that mask, masking out the area you want to replace. Like everything in photo editing programs, Photoshop in particular, there are multiple ways to do this. I won’t go into masking or the various ways to make a mask in this article, but I find Calculations (Image > Calculations) to be the most effective, for me, most of the time.

Calculations put your mask on an Alpha Channel, which, to simplify things, is a channel, separate from the regular color channel s (in this case Red, Green and Blue, or RGB), which allows you to load and save selections. You can also make a mask using the color channels themselves – no matter how you do it, once you have the area you want to replace masked out; you’ll need to add the mask to your image. When working with Calculations or using Channels to create your mask, you can simply select the Load Channel as a Selection button:

You can also add the mask to the layer with the good old Add Layer Mask option!

Hold down the Alt (Opt on Mac) key and select, via left mouse click, the mask itself. This will bring up the mask itself as your image.

Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and blur the filter, slightly. You want to blend the edges between black & white slightly, here, not obliterate them entirely.

No matter the method, once you have your mask added to your mask layer, you’re ready to add in your new element, here, a new cloudy sky. If you do a lot of retouching or restoration work, it’s a good idea, essential, in fact, to build up a library of images that you can use as replacements. It’s never, ever okay to just go and take someone else’s image from the Internet. It doesn’t matter if you’re going to blow it up so big, or small, invert it, flip it, whatever, that you think it’ll never be recognized. It’s stealing. Build your own image library through your own photography, purchased and public domain images. A great source, of course, are the images provided by Wetzel & Company, Inc.

Select (Alt or Opt +A) and copy (Alt or Opt +C) your replacement image. Now move to the main image and select the mask (mouse click over mask while holding down Ctrl on the keyboard if on PC; Cmd on a Mac). Make sure the area you’re going to insert the image into is selected. You may need to invert the selection (Ctrl or Cmd + I). Go to Edit > Paste Special > Paste Into.

The replacement image you previously selected, in this instance the sky, will appear in the selected area of your main image – which will hopefully be in the sky! If not, just go back a step and invert the selection (again, Ctrl or Cmd +I) and repeat the Paste Into step. Now Transform the replacement image (Ctrl or Cmd + T) and adjust the image to fit the area.

Exposure Blending with Smart Objects

Last week, we looked at creating copies of Smart Objects in Photoshop, and we saw that regular copies are linked together in a special way such that when you update one Smart Object, you update ALL the copies of Smart Objects. We put this principle to work in creating a Picture Package template that was completely reusable.

This week, we’ll ask the question once again: When is a copy not a copy? When it is a copy of a Smart Object! We are going to create Smart Object copies in a such a way that they are completely unlinked, independent and separate, and each of these copies will be able to be changed without impacting the other.

Let’s start with this image of a Royal Tern fishing. In this case, we want to have our subject be as sharp and well-defined as possible, while we try to completely avoid sharpening the sky – as that will emphasize the noise inherent in the blue channel:

Please note that these images are resized to fit within this page’s width – but you can and should click to enlarge to see the details we are discussing.

We’ll go ahead and open this from Bridge CS5 by highlighting the file and pressing Ctrl-R/Cmd-R to open the image in Adobe Camera Raw. In the ACR dialog box, I’m faced with a dilemma: I want the bird to be sharp, but sharpening creates very visible noise in the sky:

The new luminance noise reduction features in CS5 work wonders on the sky, but even with detail protection active, the bird’s body is turned into a blotchy mess when we crank up the noise reduction:

Within ACR is a great feature, the Adjustment Brush, that provides great control over many parameters and lets you paint in the effect where you please. However, the Adjustment Brush (at least in the latest version) can’t control the noise reduction setting. We need a way to develop this RAW image twice – once for the sky, and once for the detail – and Smart Objects will provide the means.

Let’s leave the noise reduction up, and open this as a Smart Object in Photoshop by holding the Shift Key, and clicking “Open Object” in the ACR dialog window. The Smart Object is prepared and appears in the Layers panel, identified with the Smart Object “package” icon. I’ve renamed this layer “Smooth Sky:”

Now, we need to make a copy of this Smart Object and change the develop settings to sharpen for the subject, the bird. However, as we saw last week, copying a Smart Object creates a “live link” between the two layers, so any changes made to one are seen in the other. Unless…

The answer is to copy using a different command. Select the following command:

 Layer > Smart Objects > New Smart Object via Copy

This will create a brand new, unlinked, completely independent Smart Object. I changed the name of this one to “Sharp Bird:”

Now, we choose the Sharp Bird layer, double click the icon to re-open the image in ACR, and change the settings to sharpen the detail of the subject, ignoring the sky:

Now, add a black layer mask to hide this entire layer, by holding Alt and clicking the “Add Layer Mask” icon, or by choosing Layer > Layer Mask > Hide All. Then, using a white brush, paint back in the sharp areas of the bird, focusing especially on the eyes, beak and feather detail:

You can, of course, get as ambitious as you want in creating the mask for the sharpened layer, even going as far as to create an edge mask to reveal sharpening only in the areas where there are well-defined edges (but that’s a topic for another Tip). Be careful to avoid letting any of the sharpened area of the sly show, you may need to go back in and touch up any areas that spill over. Here are the final results:

Smooth sky, blurry subject:

Sharp subject, noisy sky:

Combination using two Smart Objects and a layer mask:

Now you’ve seen two ways to create Smart Object copies – one, maintaining the link between the copies, and today, this technique, which severs the link and allows complete independence. Give it a try and see what you can do!

Rough Selection Adjustments

I like it when I get told something and I slap my forehead and say “of course” and changes the way I use Photoshop. Here’s one such thing;

 I was making adjustments, say hue and saturation, then applying a mask. But then someone suggested I do this; 

 So here is a photo from my local pole dancing club. I nice photo but I’d like to draw the eye in more to the lovely Sadie.

 So I’m going to make a rough selection around her with the lasso tool;

 

 Now at the top we should have the refine edge button, I click it and feather the selection. In earlier Photoshops you can do this from the menu, Select – Modify – Feather, but will be more trial and error than with later versions where we get the selection box.

 

Each image and selection will be different, so don’t worry about what numbers I have used here. Click through the different previews to see your selection in quick mask, black, white etc, so you you can be happy with your selection and feather. Use the contract/expand slider if needed.

 Press OK and the selection might seem more ’rounded’. In this case, I selected the lovely Sadie but I actually want to de-saturate everything but Sadie. So I need to invert the selection. Keyboard shortcut: Shift+Ctr/Cmd+I

 Now we need a Hue/Saturation layer, so we click the Black & White icon at the bottom of the layers palette and choose, believe it or not, Hue/Saturation.

 

 

Now when we lower the saturation slider we get the desired effect.

Before

After

 

Ok, so there you are. Now, I should point out a few of things;

 I’ve purposely made a large selection and dramatically reduced the hue/saturation for the purposes of this blog, I would recommend that if you use it you try to be a bit more subtle. This technique works great with all the adjustment layers.

 It has come to the rescue for selective alterations like a brides bouquet, windscreens of cars, sky colour……

 Here I have used the same selection but used a curves adjustment layer:

 

 

So, in summary. It isn’t always necessary to do a detailed mask, feathers are your friends. (Unless they’re on crows.)

Right, I’m off to see Sadie and her friends…

Photoshop CS5: Clone Source Tips

TipSquirrel.com is delighted to welcome a new ‘Nut’ to the collection.  Dan
Moughamian has authored four Adobe training videos, including Digital
Photography Workflows with Photoshop CS4 and Core Lightroom 2

This segment provides a sneak-peak at his newest video tutorial title
for CS5: Image Retouching & Adjustment with Photoshop CS5.

Dan on the web

And on Twitter

Restoration Using Photoshop's Color Channels

The Restorationist Janine Smith continues her foray into the world of video tutorials with this brilliantly effective, yet simple to achieve, restoration using the color channels.

This easy to follow tutorial shows Janine removing a large patch of damage to an older photograph as she starts her restoration.

 

Picture Package with Smart Objects

When is a copy not a copy? When it is a copy of a Smart Object! In Photoshop, there are two very different ways to create copies of Smart Objects, and each of these has unique and special qualities and behaviors, which we’ll review right here.

In Photoshop CS4, Adobe “retired” the Picture Package script from the released Photoshop product, although they have, and still do make it available as a download. Many people have worried, fretted and fumed over this omission. But, with Smart Objects, we can create our own Picture Package in Photoshop – better, stronger and faster. Let me show you how.

Before we get started, however, a note for anyone using Photoshop CS5. Adobe has added a new option in preferences that controls how raster images are placed into images. If you’re following along with Photoshop CS5, you’ll want to select Edit > Preferences and make sure you have checked the option for “Place or Drag Raster Images as Smart Objects.”

Users of Photoshop CS4 or CS3 won’t need to do this.

Now, let’s create our Picture Package template. Open a new document, 11 inches wide by 8.5 inches tall (US standard paper size, you can adjust to your local taste). Then, show rulers (Control-R/Command-R) and drag out guides to define the locations where you want your pictures to go. In this case, I’ve created a document that will hold one 5×7 image, and four 2.5×3.5 images. For best results, you should keep the aspect ration the same for all images in the document:

Now, with CS5 I’ll open the Mini Bridge, and drag an image file onto my document. This will have the same effect as File > Place…, and you can use that command in older versions of Photoshop to get the same results:

When the document appears on the workspace, it will have the large “X” through it, indicating that you are placing the file. At this point you can move and resize it. I’ll move it into position on the left side and resize it to fill the 5×7 frame. It helps to have “snap” enabled (View > Snap To > Guides). Then, in order to commit the placement, I’ll click the checkmark icon:

Notice that the image has been placed as a Smart Object, as evidenced by the package icon in the Layers panel. I’ve changed the name of the layer to “Photo:”

Now, to make the copies. Make sure that the Photo layer is selected, and press Control-J (Command-J), or choose Layer > New > Layer via Copy. This creates a second smart object which is linked to the first smart object. This is a key concept when copying Smart Objects in this way.

Now, I’ll use Edit > Free Transform (Control-T/Command-T) to move and resize the copy of the image into position in one of the smaller cells:

Now, I’ll repeat that three more times to fill the remaining cells. Control-J, Control-T, Drag, Checkmark:

There you have it! Your finished Picture Package… for a 5×7 and four 2.5×3.5 images, ready to be printed.

Not so easy, you say? Lots of work? Here’s the kicker: You never have to do this, ever again! You can reuse this over and over. This is due to the way we copied the Smart Objects, using “New Layer via Copy,” and the fact that in doing so we created four copies that are linked to the first object. Here’s how we put this principle to use in a reusable template:

Start with the image we just created, with the five Smart Objects placed into the Picture Package template. Now, right-click (command click) on any of the Smart Object Layers, and choose “Replace Contents.”

Then navigate to another image (for best results, it should be the same size and aspect ratio). Select it and choose “Place.”

That’s all there is to it. Your Picture Package is updated with the new image, thanks to the capabilities of Smart Objects. Since all the copies are linked together, replacing the contents of one, replaces the contents of all of them, simultaneously!

As long as your new images have the same dimension, you can swap them out endlessly, making this a useful part of a photographer’s workflow. You can create as many of these Picture Package templates as you like, with different combinations of sizes to suit your needs, but remember: you only have to create them once – then you can use them over, and over, and over…

I hope this gives you some ideas for using the power of Smart Objects. Join me next week, as we look at another way to copy and use Smart Objects, with completely different results.