Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2017 i Practical Photoshop

This month we tackle two of the biggest topics in Photoshop head-on. First there’s a complete guide to raw processing; then you’ll find an in-depth tutorial on the most fundamental of all Photoshop features – layers. Elsewhere there’s expert advice on retouching, Smart Previews and color tools. James Paterson James Paterson, Editor • james.paterson@futurenet.com www.digitalcameraworld.com PRACTICAL Photoshop SENSATIONAL IMAGES MADE SIMPLE! WATCH THE VIDEO http://tiny.cc/h9bbjy DOWNLOAD THE PROJECT FILES To download this issue's files, type the following link into your web browser on your PC or Mac: http://tiny.cc/vibkmy FIND US HERE… http://bit.ly/practweet http://bit.ly/pracface Also available on: http://tiny.cc/4dw9ky http://tiny.cc/rew9ky http://tiny.cc/8ew9ky HIGHLIGHTS: WHAT’S INSIDE… THE POWER OF RAW ▪ Learn how to shoot and edit raw photos MASTER THE PATCH TOOL ▪ Discover how to retouch photos with ease CREATIVE COLOR CHANGES…

Even some phone cameras are capable of shooting in raw format these days. To an SLR owner, this may seem daft: surely JPEGs are fine for snaps and selfies? But the same could be said for shooting JPEGs with an SLR. We didn’t buy a camera with a sophisticated image sensor to leave it stuck in second gear, did we? The benefits to shooting raw over JPEG are greater dynamic range and flexibility. Shoot JPEG, and the camera will burn in white balance and color space. Shoot raw, and you can change these after the event. But the biggest factor for many photographers is dynamic range. Raw files hold greater detail in shadows and highlights, so either in high-contrast scenes, or on occasions where you accidentally over- or underexpose, a…

JPEGs Straight out of the camera, JPEGs often look much more vibrant than raw files, because the colors have been enhanced and sharpening applied in-camera. The excess raw data is then discarded. So JPEGs look punchier because the camera has taken some of the decisionmaking on how it should look out of your hands. RAW FILES Initially a raw file can often look flat, even disappointing, as the manufacturer expects you to make your own enhancements. The look will also vary depending on the software you chose to process raw files in. Even your camera’s LCD offers a subjective image, as it’s a JPEG copy of the newly captured raw file.…

01 OPEN A RAW FILE Drag a raw into Photoshop and it’ll pop up in the Camera Raw plug-in, where you can make initial enhancements. You can also open up Adobe Camera Raw directly from Bridge, and Lightroom’s own toolset is broadly similar to Camera Raw’s. 02 SET BLACK AND WHITE POINTS Raws often lack contrast initially, so they benefit from setting white and black points. Hold Alt and drag the white point left or right until the point just before white pixels appear, then hold Alt and drag Blacks until black spots begin to show. 03 CAPTURE SHARPENING Raws don’t go through any incamera sharpening, so they’ll usually benefit from ‘capture’ sharpening (as opposed to ‘output’ sharpening for print or web). In the Detail panel, an Amount between 80-150…

01 GRADUATED FILTER You can make a straight blend by dragging a line between two points. To darken a sky, grab the tool and set Exposure to -1.00, then drag down from sky to land while holding Shift. We don’t want to include the cliffs in the adjustment, so we’ll switch to Brush mode in the settings, then paint to add or subtract from the area. 02 RADIAL FILTER Like the Graduated Filter, the Radial Filter creates a blended adjustment, but it’s circular rather than straight. It’s useful for subtly drawing the eye towards your subject by darkening the corners. When using either tool, click the plus or minus icons next to any slider to simultaneously load up the tool you want and reset all the other sliders. 03 ADJUSTMENT…

Layers are the foundation of almost all Photoshop projects. They let you blend images, adjust tones, add design elements like text, try out filters and take your images in many different directions. What’s more, by keeping each element in a composite separate and editable, they’re essential for a nondestructive workflow. Here we’ll explore some of the ways in which layers enable us get creative with our images. We’ll begin with the fundamentals and explore features like Blend Modes and Layer Masks, before explaining how to create stunning layer-based effects like the cover image. DOWNLOAD THE PROJECT FILES HERE http://tiny.cc/vibkmy ON YOUR PC OR MAC…

RAW Contains all the information recorded at the time of shooting as it comes off the camera sensor 12-bit-per-channel raws contain over 68 billion colors, compared with 16 million in 8-bit-per-channel JPEGs. More colors means smoother gradations between different shades – and less chance of any heavy editing you do leading to ‘banding’ of colors. Raws are the digital equivalent of a negative in that, unlike a JPEG, there’s no chance of copying over your original or accidently resizing it. (Indeed, Adobe’s own raw file format is called DNG, standing for Digital Negative.) JPEG Stands for the Joint Photographic Experts Group, the committee that wrote the standard Straight out of the camera, JPEGs are ready for emailing, printing or viewing on almost any device, without any need for post-processing or…

RECOVERING OVEREXPOSURE How much of a safety net does raw provide? Our initial frame (taken with a Nikon D800 set to Raw+JPEG) was overexposed by two stops, which has left the sky looking washed out. Both JPEG and raw images were fixed in Camera Raw by dragging down on the Exposure slider. While by no means perfect, the raw image retains detail in the brightest clouds. RECOVERING UNDEREXPOSURE Teasing detail out of underexposed shadows isn’t too tricky. Here our initial exposure was four stops underexposed, leading to a nearblack image in all but the brightest areas. Both raw and JPEG images were fixed in Camera Raw using the Exposure slider. Although lifting underexposure has led to increased noise in both images, the raw image holds much finer shadow detail. WHITE…

Batch-process in camera Raw... Drag a group of raw files into Photoshop, or right-click them in Bridge and choose Open In Camera Raw. Either make edits to a single image then click Sync settings, or press Ctrl/Cmd+A to select all the images in the Filmstrip to edit them all at once. ..in Bridge... First, you need to edit a single raw file. Once you have done this, right-click it in Adobe Bridge and choose Develop > Copy Settings; then highlight the other images, right-click them and choose Develop Settings > Paste Settings. ...or in Lightroom Lightroom offers lots of tools for syncing your edits. You can edit a single file then select others and click Sync in the Develop Module; select several files and click Auto-Sync; or save effects as…

01 GO MONO Camera Raw offers excellent control for stripping images of color. The HSL/Grayscale panel has a Convert To Greyscale checkbox; you can then use the color sliders to change the tones of eight different color ranges within the image. In practice, this means you can create a variety of mono looks, such as dropping the blues to add definition to clouds and drama to skies. Beware of adjusting sliders too heavily: it can break up tones in the image. Images will usually benefit from a boost in contrast too: this is best done by plotting an S-curve in the Tone Curve panel. 02 RETOUCH IN CAMERA RAW Although Photoshop offers more fine control, you can still give your portraits a quick, effective makeover in Camera Raw. The first…

WATCH THE VIDEO http://tiny.cc/50rjmy Content-Aware Fill is similar to the Patch tool: both create fresh pixels based on an analysis of the image content. Unlike the Patch tool, though, Fill analyses the entire image to determine how to fill the selected area. Sometimes it works better if you remove everything except the parts you want to analyze. Here, temporarily hiding the owl lets you get rid of the tree stump. Press Ctrl/Cmd +J to copy the background layer [1].then hide the lower layer. Click the Create Mask icon [2].in the Layers panel. Set the Brush to black [3].and paint over the details you don’t want to be analyzed [4].Select the area to be filled (the tree stump in this image) [5].then go to Edit > Fill and choose Use: Content-Aware…

The image-editing process begins as soon as you’ve transferred your photos from your memory card to your computer. 1. The first stage is to begin sifting through your pictures to discover which are the keepers. The image organizer that comes with Photoshop is ideal for this task. Adobe Bridge has controls for keywording, rating and filtering your images, and there are handy tools for batch renaming files, creating panoramic stitches, making contact sheets and more. Launch Adobe Bridge and navigate to a folder containing new images. Use the cursor keys to quickly flick through the images and click below a thumbnail to add a star rating, or use the keyboard shortcut Cmd/Ctrl+1-5. You can then filter your images by the star rating to group the ones you want to work…

Photography requires dedication. Whether it’s learning techniques, waking up early for sunrise or buying new gear, we put so much time and effort into this artform that it makes sense to demand the most we can get out of our cameras. No matter what we choose to shoot – landscapes, portraits, action, documentary – we’d be shooting ourselves in the foot if we didn’t squeeze the maximum quality out of our digital cameras. There’s no doubt that a raw file gives you a better-quality image than a JPEG – but it also requires slightly more work to realize that benefit. That’s where this guide comes in, as we cover the basics of raw processing. We’ll explain exactly why raw is a superior format to JPEG, then take your knowledge further…

Editing raws requires a slight shift in mindset if you’re used to a linear digital workflow like: Open file, Edit file, Save file. This isn’t possible with raw, as you can’t save over a raw file. The benefit of this impenetrable shell is that there’s no danger of you ever copying over your original image. Rather than Open-Edit-Save, the workflow is more like Open-Process-Save As. The first step is to open the file in a raw editor like Lightroom or Photoshop’s Camera Raw. These employ parametric editing, which means you’re not actually making changes to the original pixels: instead, you’re adjusting a set of parameters that affect how the image looks while it’s within the software. At some stage you may want to save the image as a different format…

1 BASICS PANEL The Basics panel is usually the first stop for enhancing tones. Start at the top by setting White Balance, then work your way down through the sliders. Highlights and Shadows are useful for teasing out details, while Clarity can add extra crispness to the midtones. Vibrance enables you to boost the weaker colors without affecting the dominant ones. 2 PANELS The panels to the right let you access different options. The most useful include the Detail panel for sharpening or noise reduction; the Lens Correction panel (pictured), which lets you correct chromatic aberration, barrel distortion and converging verticals; and the HSL/Grayscale panel, which gives you control over eight separate color ranges in the image. 3 SPOT REMOVAL This tidies up marks or blemishes, so it’s useful for…

01 SELECT THE PROBLEM Grab the Patch tool from the Tools panel. (It’s alongside the healing tools.) Whenever you use the Patch tool, your first job is always to make a selection over the area you’d like to fix. In this case, simply drag around one of the footprints to make a selection. You don’t need to be too precise about the selection at this point. 02 DRAG TO A SOURCE In the options at the top, set Patch: Content-Aware and Structure 1. Tick Sample All Layers, then go to Layer > New Layer. Drag the selected patch to a similar clean area nearby to remove the messy bit. If there are any rough results, try patching again or use the Clone tool to tidy it up.…

01 BLEND THE ELEPHANTS Open lion.jpg and elephant.jpg. With the Move tool, drag the elephant image onto the tab of the lion image, then down to copy it over. In the Layers panel (Window>Layers), click the Blend Mode dropdown and change the elephant layer from Normal to Screen. 02 ADD A SKY Use the Move tool to adjust the elephant layer until it fits neatly with the lion. Next open sky.jpg and drag it in with the Move tool, as before. Go to the Layers panel and drag the sky layer below the elephants layer. (Double-click layer names to rename each.) Change the Blend Mode to Overlay. 03 POSITION YOUR LAYERS Open hyenas.jpg and drag it in with the Move tool. Place this layer below the elephants layer. Press Ctrl/Cmd+T…

Photoshop has many types of layers and adjustment layers available, but there are six that you’ll find you need to use again and again. Learning how they should be used may seem a little daunting for beginners, but once you’ve got to grips with them, you’ll find they play a part in the creative process of almost every image you make. 01 LEVELS This should be the first layer you add to an image, because it fundamentally alters the tonal range of the entire image. Create a Levels Adjustment Layer, drag the Black Point slider inwards until it touches the lefthand edge of the histogram, and drag the White Point slider inwards to the right-hand edge. This remaps the tones of the image to make more of the available tonal…