I’ve always been attracted to the tones of Lara’s pictures so I tried to talk her into sharing with us her retouching techniques and here goes her first tutorial.

1. Crop to your liking
I started with a well exposed & bright pictured and did a a square crop

2. Changed the color balance
Using Image – Adjustment – Color Balance I used the below values

3. De-saturated the picture
The next thing I did was de-saturating the image using Image – Adjustment – Hue Saturation

4. Apply : Image – Apply (Multiply 10% to 30% depending on image)

5. Variations (toward Red) – Image -> Variations

6. Add new layer and fill it with this color : #133e9f

7. Then Apply the picture again (10% to 30% – Multiply)

8. Add new layer and fill it with this color : # 0b0871

9. Play with curves and saturation to get a nice faded tone:

10. Apply image OR fix contrast to get the final picture:

I hope this was helpful! You can try it and show me your pictures

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This Photoshop tutorial is brought to you by Pascal Khattar and the picture is by Toni Abi el Hessen

Today we are going to use Adobe Photoshop to fix a bad exposed shot and make it look much better in all ways.

First of all open the picture in Photoshop

Tip: double click in the empty area of Photoshop it will brings the open dialogue

Straighten the picture

Now that we have our document opened, first we will start by leveling the photo, as you see the scene is rotated slightly counter-clock wise (CCW) will fix that with the help of the river line as a guide to our horizontal level.

• Select the “Ruler” tool or press “Shift + I” to cycle through available tools
• With the ruler selected draw a line on the edge of the river from side to side
• Now go to Image -> rotate canvas -> arbitrary you will see that in the dialogue box that appear will display the angle at which the photo is rotated just leave CCW (counter clock wise) selected & click OK
• Now we have our image rotated and leveled based on the ruler line we’ve drawn

As you see now a white areas are showing at the corners due to the background color selected and rotated image, this can be cropped quickly.

• Select the “Marquee” tool by pressing “M”
• Press Ctrl+A to select all
• Right click in the middle of the scene and select transform selection, on the top toolbar input W:96% H:96% and ensure that the white areas are outside our selection
• Select Image -> Crop
• Press Ctrl+D to deselect.

Fixing the sky

We notice from the photo that the sky is overexposed and it has no details. Since we cannot treat all the image based on the bad exposed sky, we will isolate it and make it separate layer and will post process it to give much more realistic look sky and maybe add some artificially clouds.

• Press “L” to select the “Lasso” tool
• Draw a selection over the sky don’t worry if it’s not accurate
  
• On the toolbar click select -> color range click on the eye drop tools (it will be selected by default) and click on the scene inside the sky, hold Shift then add another point (click) on the sky or while holding the shift draw an imaginary line across all colors of the sky.
• On the fuzziness input “100” and click OK, now you will see how the selection is more accurate over the edge of the tree
• Now go to layer->new-> layer via copy or simply press “ctrl+J” now we have a new layer based on our selection in the layer palette
  Tip: Press F7 to show the layer palette
• Now select the new layer and double click it’s name and change the name to “SKY”
• Click the “D” to reset the colors
• Ctrl+click the small thumbnail to the left of the name sky to bring the selection of the sky
• Now from the toolbar select render->clouds
• Press “Ctrl+U” to bring the Hue Saturation dialogue box, select colorize input Hue:220 Saturation:85 Lightness:50 and press OK
• Optionally step: you can add an artificial sun with the selection still active choose Filter->Render->lens flare select 35mm prime and brightness around 150% and click inside the dialogue box image to position the sun, I choose top left corner
• Press Ctrl+D to deselect.
• Now select the Erase tool or simply press “E” with the layer “SKY” selected a soft edge large brush (around 70) & erase the borders of rugged edges where the sky meets the trees.

Note how now the sky has more details in it.

Adjusting the main image

• Select the background in layer palette
• Press “Ctr+L” to bring the level dialogue and input the values as shown and press OK, we are increasing the contrast of the picture
  
• Select the “Marquee” tool by pressing “M”
• Press Ctrl+A to select all
• Hold down “Alt” and draw a window around the river to remove it from the selection, now we have all the scene selected without the river
• Select filter->sharpen->smart sharpen input amount : 100% radius 1.0pixel and select OK
• Press “Ctrl+Shift+I” to invert the selection, now we have the river selected
• Press “Ctrl+J” to make a layer from the selection
• Double click the newly created layer and name it “RIVER”

Fixing the River

Now we will work on the RIVER to give it more details and colors

• With the RIVER layer selected Press “Ctr+L” to bring the level dialogue and select the Blue channel and input the values as shown and press OK
  
• Now the river reflect a blue light due to our new created sky
• Press “Ctrl+U” to bring the Hue Saturation dialogue box, select Yellows instead of master color & input Hue:10 Saturation:-20 Lightness:40 and press OK
• Press “Ctr+L” to bring back the level dialogue now for the master colors and input the values as shown and press OK, now we have more realistic look on the river.
  

This was a basic process on how to manipulate a scene to add more details and give it a realistic look.

Hope you enjoyed the tutorial, have a good day.

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Usually vignettes are not desired however it is not uncommon to add them during post-processing for example to draw the attention of the user to a particular portion of the image or to give it an aged look.

I am going to show you how to add vignetting to your image using Adobe photoshop in just a few simple steps.

1. Open the image you want to add vignettes to in Adobe Photoshop
   
2. Select the Lasso Tool (L) or the Elliptical Marquee tool (M)
   
   
   I usually prefer the Lasso Tool since it is more flexible and allow to draw irregular shapes.
3. Select loosely the portion of the image you want to draw attention to
   
4. Feather generously the selection
   Right click inside the selection you’ve just made and click on Feather
   In the Feather Radius box input a big number and press enter.
   
   N.B.:Basically here you will have to experiment a bit to see which number fits your picture but the general rule is that the higher the resolution the bigger the number.
   For a high-resolution picture start with 100 pixels
5. Inverse selection by right clicking inside the selection and click on “Select Inverse”
   
6. Add a Levels layer (Click on image for higher resolution)
   
7. Darken by pulling the central point to right till you are satisfied with the results (Click on image for higher resolution)
   
   If the transition is not smooth enough to your liking go back to step 4 and pickup a higher number as Feather Radius

Final image

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In the last tutorial we discussed how to shoot star trails pictures and we agreed that, in digital photography, you’d better go for multiple shots of 30 seconds each rather than one long shot to keep the noise under control.

So you’re back home with a handful of pictures, let’s see how to turn this exposures into one star trails pictures using Adobe Photoshop CS3.

First open the pictures you want to stack in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) and tweak the white balance and exposure as you’d do it for any other picture.

When you are satisfied click on “Select All” -> “Synchronize”. Make sure you have “Everything” selected and click “OK”

Now load your pictures in Adobe Photoshop

What you wanna do next is to copy all the pictures on the same one. To do that, for each of the opened pictures select the picture CTRL + A (windows)/Command + A (Mac), copy it to the clipboard CTRL + C (windows)/Command + A (Mac) and paste it on top of the same one CTRL + V (Windows)/Command + V (Mac).

Now, for each layer, apart from the “Background” one, change the blending mode to “Lighten”

And that’s it !

You can also flatten the image to save space and finish retouching at your taste.

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Even with a low noise cam like Canon EOS1DmkIII, “lifting” the shadows in an image will increase noise considerably. I often expose for the highlights to avoid clipping, and raise the shadows i post-processing.

When printing large I use this following method to get noise-free, saturated and detailed shadows.

The downside is; it will only work with static objects because it needs a +2 to +3EV bracketed shot.

I’m not talking about an awful HDR result here, but an natural looking image with shadows as clean as the highlights!!

The two original images that I used, one + 3EV

Part 1:
During raw conversion I adjust the 0EV image to my liking and the +3EV image is compensated to match the shadow appearance of the 0EV image. (reducing exposure) This is important!!

Here are the two images after raw treatment:

Part 2:

1. Open both images in Adobe Photoshop and make a duplicate layer of the +3EV image.
2. Make the duplicate layer grayscale with the “black and white” function.
3. From the Select menu use the “color range” function. Set the Fuzziness slider to zero and pick out the darkest part of the image. Then push the slider to 200.

Part 3:
You will now have a selection of the shadows of the +3EV image. Use the selection on the background layer only (colored) and copy!

Part 4:
Paste the copied selection into the 0EV image. Zoom in and make sure the two layers are properly aligned. Turn the layer off and on at 100% to see the difference in shadow noise and detail.

Images are shot with the Canon EOS 1DmkIII at iso100 with the 70-200 2,8 at f/16. No noise reduction was used on any of the images. (sliders to zero).
The result interpolated to 6144 x 4096 in ACR, 100% crops:

Lifting the shadows even further shows how well the noise is controlled in the finished image:

Hope this was helpful.

Kind Regards
Tage

Again I would like to thank Tage Solberg for sharing with us this great tutorial

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I love your work. I would love for you to write a tutorial on how to do your post editing in photoshop. especially the street pic with the brick, how do you get that depth and contrast? Have you used filters on any of these photos? thanks

Stina was kind enough to comply to Ivan’s request and shares with us her thoughts on HDR

The internet is full of tutorials. Many are both excellent and extensive. This one is not that kind. It is rather a quick guide, or a check list, of what I do to almost all of my pics to give them a little spark.

1. I try to avoid camera shake by shortening exposure time as much as I can. When it’s possible, I shoot with a tripod.
2. I make sure that my focus is on my selected focus point.
3. I use aperture to control background (big for blur or small for depth)
4. My camera is set to shoot RAW. That way, if necessary, I can correct exposure (to a certain degree) and white balance before I start working in Adobe Photoshop.
5. In Adobe Photoshop, I always enhance contrasts by adding adjustment layer “curves”. Most of the times I simply add a nice S-curve. That is, I drag the top right of the line upwards, and the bottom right downwards. The adjustment layer “brightness and contrast” works fine to for enhancing contrast, but I find I have more control with curves. I often exaggerate contrast, and use the opacity-slide to adjust the amount of contrast by lowering the percentage.
6. Some times I use the “levels”-tool for contrast, dragging the arrows on the left and right towards the middle, just a little.
7. If I have shot with high ISO, I use a plug in called Noise ninja from PictureCode (http://www.picturecode.com/) to reduce noise, or grain.
Once I’m happy with my changes, I flatten my photoshop-file, and save a version of it as a post processed original.
8. As I publish most of my pics on the web, I alway make a web version of them: I size down the original to a width of about 1200 pixels, and save as a new file.
9. The last thing I do is to to sharpen. For the web version, I use smart sharpen, amount set to about 150% and radius set to 0,3.
10. Most of the time I add a frame. I do this after sharpen, otherwise the frame to is sharpened, and I do not want that.

HDR
The picture of the rainy street in Stockholm is actually shot with a technique called HDR, High Dynamic Range. To know more about this and for an extensive guide, please have a look here

Again, a quick guide of mine:

1. Since HDR consist of blending exposures, it’s wise to use a tripod when shooting. Note that the photo mentioned above is a free hand HDR. As you can see, it’s quit possible to pull off hand held HDR shots.
2. When shooting for HDR, I go as low as I can on ISO, since the images tends to get very noisy even at low ISO.
3. I use the bracket mode on my camera, and I set it to expose three times -2, 0 and + 2. On my camera that’s the most you can go.
4. I have set the camera to shoot in a series, so I hold down the shutter button until I have three exposures.
5. To merge my exposures, I use HDR software Photomatix from HDR Soft (http://www.hdrsoft.com/). You can use Photoshop, but it does not tone map, and you want that, since that’s the way to really reveal highlight and shadow details in the image.
6. Once I’ve merged my exposures, and tone mapped them, I go through the steps above in Photoshop. I find that the photos come out rather dull directly from Photomatix, and Noise ninja is almost alway required.

Learning more

The book I’ve have had the most use of is Photoshop for The Photoshop CS2 Book for Digital Photographers, also available for Photoshop CS and Photoshop CS3, by Scott Kelby. It’s well written, and pedagogical and simple to follow.

I read a lot of photo magazines with tutorials, most of them in Swedish, or French. When I see a tutorial that I like, I try it out on my own photos.

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N.B.:If you want to follow this tutorial make sure to click on the picture to download a higher resolution version
Ok today I might be a bit long, but I think I have to finish with this series specially that from now on it becomes the same idea repeated over different objects, now launch Adobe Photoshop and let’s get started

The next thing Ray did was to find a good full moon picture and paste it into his frame and he used a dodging technique to create the moonlight

Let us see now in details how did Ray manage the snow in his picture since I think it is very interesting…
First find a picture with some nice snow, and cut a portion of the ground that would fit your image size (or resize it)

Now the trick is to use that same snow picture to create snow in all other parts of the picture, what Ray did was to copy it to a new layer, moving it to its new location then playing around with opacity and finally masking all the unneeded parts, genius if you ask me!
For you to understand what I mean let us see how he added snow to the roof for example (I turned the mask off for now)
You can clearly show that it is the same as the ground snow but with an opacity of 67%

All what Ray did was to carefully draw the layer mask and he used that technique again for the snow around the clock

The same technique discussed yesterday for the Christmas tree was used to add people and the snowman. However Ray also took the time to draw shadows for each of these objects, do you notice it on this crop of the snowman in the second picture ?

And since it is Christmas let’s add some Christmas lights to this house

And finally, like the cherry on top of the cake, Ray Guselly ended his masterpiece with a light on the top of the antenna

So what do you think of this transformation ?

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N.B.:If you want to follow this tutorial make sure to click on the picture to download a higher resolution version.
Now launch Adobe Photoshop and let’s get started
So where were we? Last thing we did yesterday was to turn the day into night

The next thing Ray spent time on was to put light on those windows and street lamps, the basics on how to do that are covered in here, all lights layers are at 100% opacity. Please take the time to appreciate the different light colors Ray used !!!

From now on Ray started to have fun, and it is amazing to notice the level of details in his work ! Let’s take a closer look at the Christmas tree shall we ?
Find an adequate Christmas tree picture, resize it if needed and paste it on your project

Now carefully outline the tree and create a layer mask to hide everything else thus blending the tree in your picture

Bur Ray didn’t stop here he took the time to draw some colored lights on the tree and added a shiny light to the top star. For you to be able to understand what I am talking about I will hide the tree for a second so you can take a closer look

Here is how it looks when all layers are enabled

And now let’s put some clouds and starts in this sky. Since I don’t want to clutter this, already complex, tutorial I will dedicate another post on where to find clouds and stars.

Ok sorry guys that’s it for today we’ll continue tomorrow

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N.B.:If you want to follow this tutorial make sure to click on the picture to download a higher resolution version
So let’s get started

Open the image in Adobe Photoshop

Create a new layer and fill it with a dark blue color (Ray used a 21,66,133 RGB) and set it to 68% opacity

Now carefully outline the sky and apply it as a layer mask to the blue layer so it will affect one the sky of the original picture

Now create a simple Levels layer, make sure it is ABOVE all layers we just created and brighten up everything.

The next step Ray did is to use a Curves layer masked this time to affect everything but the sky and used to to brighten the foreground even more

Finally, for today at least, create a pitch black layer and set it to 60% opacity

Congratulations, you just turned a picture into a night scene once more stay tuned much more to be done yet

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Yesterday I have introduced an adobe photoshop tutorial teaching us how to transform a picture taken in broad daylight into a night scene. This technique is going to serve as the basis for this case study.

RayGuselli is much more than a Photoshop guru, he is actually in artist. He recently blow away the DPreview retouching forum with his latest creation turning a picture he took into a magnificent Christmas card.

I contacted Ray by email and he was kind enough to share with me the PSD files of the actual transformation and allowed me to publish on ADIDAP a tutorial explaining the various steps involved in this complex work flow.

So over the next few days I will be unveiling to you, in as much details as possible, the basic steps required so you can, at your turn, accomplish such a wonder.

N.B. Due to the complexity of this process, I cannot cover it all in one single post so the Christmas card case study is going to actually be a series of posts.

Stay tuned

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credits: This tutorial was written by David Thomasson from Radiant Pics, original picture by Steve H.

I will take very short steps so as not to lose people with relatively little experience in PS (this may be a bit tedious for more advanced users). Begin with this portion cropped out of Steve’s pic.

Create a new layer (I’ll name it “black night”), fill with solid black, leave blending mode as “normal,” and reduce opacity to around 78%. Use your eye here. It should look pretty dark, about like this:

On top of that, create a new layer (“window 1″) and change blend mode to hard light.
Here’s what you should have in the layers palette:

Zoom in on the window to the right of the door. Using the polygonal lasso with no feathering, select the window.

Choose a round, soft brush (if you’re not sure about the “soft” part, check your help files under Brushes). Note the settings underlined here. They’re approximate but are a good place to start.

Choose a muted yellow color. Here’s what I picked. Experiment with colors and don’t use the same color for all windows.

Using horizontal strokes and working from the bottom, paint in the window so it is brighter at the bottom than at the top. Three to five strokes should do it. Here I let it fade out at the top so it would look like a lamp set low behind the window. You should get something like this. (Remember, I’m zoomed in close. That’s why the image looks so choppy.)

While you’re still on that hard light layer, one little refinement that is especially good for windows that show a lot of detail in an image. Use the eraser to knock out the muntins (the wooden sticks that separate the individual window panes). Set the eraser to 1 px, hard edge, 100% opacity. If you don’t know this little trick with brushes, here’s how to do it. Click at A and release. Move the eraser-brush to B, hold down SHIFT, and click again. This will erase along the dotted line from A to B. This works for all brushes — painting, erasing, smudging, etc.

After you knock out all three muntins (two horizontal, one vertical), you should end up with something like this:

You can use this basic method to put lights in most windows. The settings I’ve used here are just approximations, what looked right to me on my monitor in my current mood. Experiment, experiment, experiment.

The final image

One again I’d like to thanks David for allowing me to post this great tutorial and I wish he’ll share with us more of his knowledge

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Let me first start by saying that it is much more easy than it looks like.

Prepare the Setup

First of all start by preparing the setup of your picture, decide where you want to place your laptop and what is the background and the angle you want to shoot from etc…
Tip: I have found that the easiest way to achieve good results is by taking the picture at a straight angle with the laptop screen at 90 degrees.

Take 2 shots

Now it is time to take some pictures.
1. Secure your camera on a tripod
Put your camera on tripod and set up the desired composition. From this point on make sure not to move it at all.
2. Switch your camera to M (manual) Mode
This is important because you want to take all the shots with the EXACT same settings, so the best mode to use is the manual mode. Setup your camera on the desired f-stop and shutter speed and white balance.
Taking the pictures
It is now time to take 2 different pictures of the scene you’ve been setting up. Start by taking a picture without the screen/laptop than add your screen/laptop at the desired angle and take the other shot.
Tip:Ideally speaking you should not be moving your screen/laptop for this point on. Now if, like me, you do not have another computer to do the post processing on you can very delicately denote with a pencil the exact position of the laptop before moving it.

In the digital dark room

1. Load your images
Now load the two images in your digital dark room and paste the one with laptop/screen on top of then empty one.

2. Select your screen
Now zoom in and select as accurately as possible only your computer screen
N.B.: Do not include the screen borders

3. Making the crop
Make sure to select the layer without a screen and disable the visibility of the layer with screen by clicking on the small eye icon shown in the picture below.

Finally crop the picture with the current selection. In Adobe Photoshop in the Image menu choose crop

4. Set it as desktop background
Now resize the picture you have just cropped to your screen resolution size, save it and set it as your desktop background

The final shot

Should have now, your camera still in place on the tripod, your laptop/screen still in place with a new desktop background. All you have to do now is to take the final shot.

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0. Open your Picture
I will call that step zero, load the picture you want to turn into a sketch in Adobe Photoshop

1. Duplicate the background layer and set it blending option to “Color Dodge”
Start by copying your background layer, you can do that by dragging the background layer and dropping it at the “create a new layer” button as shown below

Now change the blending mode of the just created layer to “Color Dodge” as shown

2. Invert the newly created layer
Make sure that the “Background Layer copy” layer is selected and press CTRL+I to invert it. You should now have a completely (or almost) white picture. Don’t worry about that for now.

3. Apply the minimum filter
With “Background copy” layer still selected go to filter -> Other -> Minimum
The radius to select will depend on both your image resolution or content.
A smaller radius will make it look like more “sketch” a bigger one more “realistic” tweak that to your liking.

I usually use a radius between 2 and 6

4. Add a Levels layer and set blending to multiply
Create a new levels adjustment layer, if you want experiment by moving the 3 arrows and till you find what you like best. If you like the picture as it is just click ok but DO create the layer in all cases.

Now change the blending mode of the levels layer to multiply and you’re done

5.Tone your sketch
I did say 4 steps but this one is optional, if you don’t want your sketch to be colored but rather toned or black and white, add a hue and saturation adjustment layer, make sure to click on “colorize” and tweak the hue and saturation to your liking

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This tutorial is dedicated for Adobe Photoshop beginners and newbies

Assume we have two different layers one filled with RED and the other with GREEN.

1. It is first important to understand that the order of the layers is important.

As you can see in the pictures below the top layer is above the other layer and thus “hiding” it.

2. A layer mask can be added to a layer by clicking on the “Add layer mask” button in the “layers” palette as shown.

3. You should now see a layer mask as highlighted below

4. I strongly advice you to spend some time understanding that now clicking on the layer mask ” ((“on the white square here”))” means we are working on the layer mask, and notice that when you do that the colors in the color palette directly changes to Black and White. And clicking on the layer itself ” ((“Red square here”))” means we are working again on the actual layer and no more on the mask.

5. Now to better understand how a layer mask works lets select the layer mask and with a Black brush paint anything on it.

Did you notice what is happening? everything you are painting in black on the mask is actually being hidden on the this layer revealing what is “underneath” it

6. Now finally let’s do a final test. Make sure that the layer mask is still selected and now choose a shade of gray between the black and the white and again paint on the mask. You should notice now that what is happening is effectively a blend between the two layers. The top layer is neither completely opaque (white) nor completely transparent (black) the result will depend on the shade of gray chosen

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Software used: Capture One Pro, Photomatix and Adobe Photoshop

Original without processing

Illustrated workflow

Final Version processed

If you’d like to share an article or tutorial with ADIDAP community please check ADIDAP Readers’ Section

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