MetaCatholic

Here’s the third and last of my Christmas photo-editing tips. Remember my disclaimer: none of these are original. But they’re all non-destructive, which means you can go back and change your mind at any time. This particular technique works extremely well both for noisy photos, and ones where you want to sharpen different areas selectively. Again, I’m going to describe how to do it in Photoshop, but many other programs offer similar facilities.

Duplicate the background layer. The easiest way to do this is to drag it over the new layer icon (1).

Select the copy, and from the menus choose Filter > Other > High Pass. Unless you want very dramatic effects, set the radius to about 10px. Click OK. The left-hand thumbnail (2) represents what you will see, a largely gray layer muddying up the photo.

Change the blend mode (3). Overlay and Hard Light give a fairly dramatic sharpening effect. Soft Light gives a more gentle one.

Change the opacity of the layer (4). This reduces the overall effect of the sharpening.

For selective sharpening (either before or after the previous step) create a layer mask (5) and using a black brush set at around 10% opacity, start painting on it to remove the sharpening from selected areas in small increments. (The mask is represented by the right-hand thumbnail). Adding the layer mask can really help if you want to sharpen the foreground, but leave the background blurry.

So there you have it, some ways to get extra enjoyment out of your Christmas photos.

Today’s Christmas photo tip (see yesterday’s here) is non-destructive dodging (lightening) and burning (darkening) a photo selectively. This can be useful for awkward shadows and highlights. Dodging can be particularly useful for bringing up the whites of the eyes, or improving the look of teeth.

Just about every photo editor has dedicated tools for doing this, but they work on the original image, and it’s easy to go too far. The way I’m going to show you leaves the original photo unaffected, and can be altered, redone, or thrown away at any time. Remember, boys and girls, if you can do something non-destructively, it’s almost always the better way to go.

These instructions are for Photoshop, but many programs mimic this way of doing it.

First create a new layer (1), which will sit above the main photo ready for you to paint on (2). This layer needs filling with a neutral 50% gray. That means exactly half-way between black and white.¹

Then set the layer to overlay mode in the blend mode drop-down.

N.B. In Photoshop there’s a quick shortcut way to do this. As you click the new layer icon (1), hold down the ALT key. This pops up this dialogue box.

Set the Mode (3) to Overlay, and tick the box (4) that says “Fill with Overlay-neutral color”. (The box is grayed out until you set the mode to Overlay.) Click OK and your layer is all ready to use.

Now all you need to do is paint on this new layer, whichever way you’ve created it. Select a brush size that’s about right for the area you want to change, and paint in either black or white.

I find it’s worth setting the brush opacity to around 5% only, which makes very small changes to the image. For larger changes simply paint over the area several times.

Painting in black darkens the image below your dodge / burn layer, and painting in white lightens it.

If you’ve overdone the dodging with your white paint, change the brush colour to black and paint over your strokes. If at any time you want to start again, simply re-fill the layer with 50% gray.

Happy photo-editing.

1. If you’re wondering what those values are: you can type it into the boxes in your colour picker: the RGB values are 128 for each, the HSB values are H 0, S 0, and B 50%, and the hex code is #808080 [↩]

Lots of people seem to see Christmas as a time to get the camera out. So for those who want them, I’m going to post my three favourite tips for editing photos. I’ve used these so often, I now can’t remember where I found them, but none of them appear to be as well known as they should be. These are tips for:

• Converting an image to “Black and White” / Grayscale (this tip)
• Dodging and Burning (lightening and darkening selectively)
• Sharpening an image
  

The most important thing they share in common is that every application comes with commands for doing them, and so most people use the commands. Doing them the “obvious” way has a big disadvantage: it’s destructive, and alters your original image. The methods I’m recommending here are all non-destructive, and use layers to leave your original image intact.

I’m going to illustrate these methods using Photoshop, but they will work in just about any image editor which has both layers and adjustment layers (which is most of them nowadays).

Convert an image to black and white

Create two Hue/Saturation adjustment layers. (Either use the pop-up at the bottom of the layers palette, or Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Hue/Saturation.)

Select the uppermost adjustment layer (1) — double click the icon to open it — and drag the Saturation slider down to zero. This creates the same effect as the destructive de-saturate command.

Select the middle adjustment layer (2) and set the blend mode to Color (3). Then open the adjustment layer (again double-click the icon) and start moving the Hue slider backwards and forwards. You may need to position the sliders on your monitor so that you can see the image. As you do this you will see the shades of gray in the image shift.

When the contrast and balance of shades in the image looks good to you, click OK. You’re done, and best of all, you can come back at any time and readjust. The original colour image is still there at the bottom of the stack.