Upon reopening the image within Photoshop you’re shocked to discover that the colors don’t look right, washed out or oversaturated and completely unacceptable.

Immediately wondering, why Photoshop is saving colors wrong? I often get asked this question and the solution to this problem is relatively simple, albeit intricate.

Essentially the image hasn’t been correctly color managed, converted to and embedded with the appropriate color profile. As a result, Photoshop does not have the right information in order to accurately display or print your image.

In this article, we’re going to explore what is color management, why it is important and exactly how to control colors within Photoshop, so that your images display and print as intended.

What Is Color Management?

“Color management” refers to the controlled conversion of color values between various devices (e.g. digital cameras, image scanners, monitors, ipads/tablets and photographic printers) through the use of color profiles to achieve accurate and predictable outcomes.

In short, what you see in your camera and on your computer monitor is a close match to that which is displayed in a photographic print under controlled lighting conditions.

Of course, there are a lot of variables and technical aspects of color management that need to be taken into consideration.

But, it’s important not to become overwhelmed and that how you choose to integrate color management into your editing workflow should be proportionate to your skill level and specific requirements as a photographer.

Also, don’t forget that the complexity of colour management increases when moving between color modes i.e. RGB, CMYK and LAB which can make achieving your desired outcome more difficult.

Color Working Space Profiles

The essential color working space profiles that are predominantly used by the photographic community include:

• sRGB (Small)
• AdobeRGB 1998 (Medium)
• ProPhoto (Large)

Each of these working space profiles is structurally different in shape, size and tonal depth which determines the range of potential color values that fall within their boundaries.

When working with raw image files, it’s best to attempt to maintain your digital camera sensors original color values and their relationships through using an appropriately sized working space profile.

Selecting an appropriate color profile will depend on your subject matter, lighting conditions and diversity of color. But, essentially as a rule of thumb it’s best to use a profile that contains all of your digital camera sensors potential color values to avoid losing valuable data throughout post processing.

However, sometimes it is unrealistic to maintain large colour working space profiles like Prophoto which contain color values that cannot be accurately reproduced, due to the restricted color range of output process whether that be display or physical print mediums.

For the most part sRGB or AdobeRGB 1998 provide the most appropriate color gamuts that are easily reproducible and therefore won’t cause too many headaches with respect to achieving accurate color between devices.

When Can Color Profile Mismatches Occur?

If Photoshop’s settings aren’t configured correctly, it can lead to colour management mismatches where images are not displayed using the appropriate color working space profile, resulting in poor color presentation and inaccurate color rendering.

Common situations when this problem can occur include:

• Saving or exporting an image as jpeg (or any other file format) using “Save As” or “Save For Web”
• Converting between different “Image Mode” color spaces (eg. RGB – CMYK)
• Sending image files from Photoshop to an inkjet printer
• When the colour balance of your computer monitor or tablet is incorrectly (eg. you’re running a program like f.lux which adjusts the color temperature according to the time of the day)

What Factors Influence & Can Cause Color Mismatches?

With numerous reasons as to why this problem can occur, an inexperienced Photoshop user can be forgiven for not fully understanding or pinpointing the exact cause of their color management troubles.

Generally speaking, complications arise from not using the correct color profile when editing images within Photoshop. Color profile problems can occur from a variety of incorrect workflow decisions and/or color settings within Photoshop.

Examples of why you may be experiencing difficulties include:

• Not embedding color profile with images upon saving or exporting
• Not selecting the appropriate color profile upon opening an image (“Embedded Profile Mismatch”)
• Selecting “Use the embedded profile” which may not be an appropriate workspace or printing profile for your requirements
• Assigning an inappropriate color profile to a document
• Converting a document’s color profile to an unsuitable working space
• Discarding the embedded profile and ignoring color management practices

A momentary lapse in concentration can inevitably lead to decisions and actions that can negatively affect your color management workflow causing catastrophic outcomes.

Why Is It Important To Prevent Color Management Issues From Occurring?

The consequences of not taking the time to address color management issues that you may have can produce undesirable effects that detract from your overall photographic expression and creative direction as an artist.

Images that aren’t viewed with the intended color profile could appear washed out or oversaturated with disappointing contrast, brightness and tonal values.

Images that aren’t correctly color managed and converted from working space profile (e.g. Adobe RGB) to an output profile (e.g. specified inkjet printer), the eventual photographic prints will not accurately represent that which is viewed on your computer monitor or ipad/tablet.

Additional unwanted expenses (eg. refilling ink cartridges, paper stock or printing services etc) can be accrued due to having to reprint photos that haven’t turned out as expected.

As you can see, color management plays a vital role in maintaining consistent workflow practices that generate predictable results without fail.

How To Solve Color Management Problems & Ensure Colors Save Correctly?

With so many potential things that could go wrong with your Photoshop photo editing workflow, how do you prevent them from occurring and achieve accurate color renditions each and every time?

• First, ensure that you are editing within the appropriate color working space (e.g. sRGB or AdobeRGB) and color mode (e.g. RGB, CMYK or Grayscale).

  – Confirm your digital camera’s default color profile is set to either sRGB, AdobeRGB or ProPhoto to provide relevant metadata and guidance throughout post processing.

  – Set Photoshop’s default color working space and conversion options from within the “Color Settings…” dialog window.

• When choosing “Save As” to export your images, ensure that you have selected the “Embed Color Profile” checkbox in the dialog window before saving your work.

  Upon opening or printing an image with an embed a color profile, Photoshop (if correctly configured…) will immediately ask if you would like to continue using the embed color profile for color management.

• If upon reopening image files, Photoshop doesn’t ask you whether you would like to use the embed color profile, then go to “Edit > Color Settings”.

  Within Color Settings, locate “Color Management Policies” ensuring that all checkboxes listed under “Profile Mismatches” and “Missing Profiles” are selected by default.

How to Preview Your Photographic Print Prior To Printing?

When editing images within Photoshop utilizing working space profiles, any adjustments made can present favourable. However, it’s important not to get carried away making extreme color corrections without fully understanding the impact that it will have on your final output, especially if printing is involved.

To avoid unnecessary heartache and to preview accurate color representations of your photography output, I recommend using Photoshop “Soft Proofing”.

What Is Soft Proofing?

Simply put, soft proofing enables you to remain editing in your color working space (e.g. AdobeRGB) whilst viewing your image through another profile, specifically your printer’s output profile. Thus, enabling you to view your color corrections through the eyes of your printer in real time, without intentionally sacrificing color or tonal values during the editing process.

Of course, it goes without saying that you must have accurate color management profiles for your output processes or otherwise soft proofing will be unreliable and imprecise.

The color profiles supplied by inkjet and paper manufacturers offer potentially great outcomes, however your mileage may vary and you should always test by printing color management charts/scales to compare and contrast.

To configure “Soft Proofing” default settings, proceed to Photoshop’s top navigation menu and select “View > Proof Setup”. Here you’ll find settings that will mimic the potential output of your chosen paper type and printer.

• Presets – Self explanatory, once you have configured your preferred Soft Proof settings click save and set these as your default settings.
• Device to Simulate – Select the appropriate color output profile for your paper type and printer. Then, select whether or not you want to “Preserve CMYK Numbers” which will simulate how colors reproduce without performing a color space conversion and affecting the original color values.
• Rendering Intent – When converting images between color profiles, Photoshop utilizes rendering intents to manage how color values are mapped and organised accordingly within color spaces. There are four rendering intents available and each handles the color conversion process differently.

  Watch the video tutorial above, where I explain exactly how rendering intents manage color values and why I recommend utilizing perceptual or relative colorimetric for photography.

• Black Point Compensation – Maintaining true blacks when converting between ICC color profiles can be challenging due the variability of color gamuts and rendering intent used. I recommend selecting black point compensation to ensure your images preserve true blacks throughout the conversion process.
• Display Options (On-Screen) – When printing your photography, you’ll quickly discover that the brilliance of whites and density of blacks displayed on LED computer monitors or ipads aren’t necessarily representative of those found in a photographic print.

  Photoshop’s soft proofing attempts to “Simulate Paper Color” (e.g. offwhite) and/or “Simulate Black Ink” on screen to overcome any perceivable differences. Acting as a visual filter, these settings aren’t applied to your image file and therefore don’t affect tonal values.

To toggle on and off “Soft Proofing” you can go to “View > Proof Colors” or use the keyboard shortcuts “Command + Y” for Mac or “Ctrl + Y” for PC.

By toggling on Photoshop’s soft proofing, it’s easier to evaluate image adjustments in real-time to determine whether or not they will have the desired effect and reproduce as expected.

Troubleshooting

But, What If Your Prints Still Appear Unsatisfactory After Making Changes To Your Photoshop Settings?

Whilst color management is an exact science, when working from home with limited resources it can be easy to forget that you may not have all the required equipment (e.g. color spectrophotometer) or software to manage color with great accuracy.

However, improvements to your workflow can be easily achieved by ensuring that you have correctly configured your Photoshop Color Settings.

Here’s a quick troubleshooting checklist to help identify any potential issues that you may be experiencing:

• If you haven’t correctly configured your photoshop color settings, there’s a possibility you might be using the wrong color profile. View “Document Profile” to ascertain which profile your document is currently assigned.
• If you have opened an image in the wrong working space you can utilise “Assign Profile” to apply your original color profile and revert back to its previous appearance.
• Utilize “Convert to Profile” with perceptual or relative colorimetric rendering intent to change between color profiles accordingly.

In Summary

In this article you’ve learnt what is color management, why color profiles are important, potential causes or reasons why color mismatches occur.

We’ve discussed how to fix color management problems through improved color management workflow practices, enacting fail safes and what to do if you still encounter issues without explanation.

Although we’ve only scratched the surface when it comes to the science of color theory, the fundamental principles that you’ve learnt will help you on your journey to producing perfect photographic prints, time and time again.

Interested In Learning More?

For more photography tutorials, don’t forget to Subscribe To My Email Newsletter and Youtube Channel.

The post Why Is Photoshop Not Saving Colors Correctly? appeared first on Shutter Buggs.

But, what if you don’t have a camera that shoots in raw? Can you still take advantage of Camera Raw’s nondestructive editing?

Well, the answer to that question is yes.

Even if your camera only shoots in JPEG or TIFF, you can still open and edit these files in Adobe Camera Raw and take advantage of most of the associated benefits.

What File Format Types Can Camera Raw Open?

It may not be apparent or obvious, but Adobe’s Camera Raw plugin can open and editing numerous image file formats that include:

• RAW Files (.CRW (Canon), .NEF (Nikon), .ARW (Sony), .RAF (Fuji) & .DNG (Adobe))
• JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group)
• TIFF (Tagged Image File Format)
• PSD

Unfortunately, Camera Raw can’t open and does not support PNG (Portable Network Graphic) or GIF (Graphic Interchange Format) image files.

For a list of all supported camera models, please visit the Adobe Camera Raw Support Page. Select your camera brand for specific information on supported file type extensions and required version of software.

How To Open Camera Raw In Adobe Bridge?

If you don’t want to open up Photoshop, try using Adobe Bridge instead. The Camera Raw plug-in is built directly into Adobe Bridge and therefore you don’t need to load Photoshop.

In order to avoid opening your image in Photoshop, don’t double click on it. Instead right click on your image and select open in Camera Raw. This will open Camera Raw, but it will load within Adobe Bridge instead of Photoshop.

You’ll save a lot more computing power by only opening up Camera Raw and Adobe Bridge at one time, as opposed to having Adobe Bridge and Photoshop opened. Because evidently, Photoshop uses a lot more processing power.

With the way that digital SLR files are these days, they’re a lot larger than what most people are used to working with.

So, by having less applications open on your computer allows your computer to have more processing power dedicated specifically to editing your photos.

How To Set Camera Raw Preferences For Opening Images?

If you go up to the top left-hand corner where the tools are located, you’ll notice that there’s an Open Preference dialogue box.

If you click on that, you’ll see that Camera Raw Preferences will appear displaying general settings.

General

The first one allows you to choose where you’d like to store any changes to images on your computer. You can choose whether you’d like to store those image settings in SideCar XMP files, or if whether you’d like to store them directly in Camera Raw’s database.

I prefer to use Camera Raw’s database, but it’s entirely up to you. Next, you can choose, whether you’d like to apply sharpening to all images, or just preview images.

Default Image Settings

From here, you’ll notice you’ll have some default image settings. This is where you can set whether you’d like to apply auto-tone adjustments, auto-gray scale mixes directly to images as soon as they’re opened up in Camera Raw.

Now, I prefer to leave these off, especially if I’ve made changes to a Raw file that I’m quite happy with, and then I open it up again. Because if you open it up again with these settings set, Camera Raw will make it’s own mind up on how the image should look and actually change all those settings on you, which can be quite annoying.

From here, you’ve got options whether or not you’d like to specify defaults specific to camera serial numbers. So, if you have multiple cameras that you’re shooting with and picked one of those is your preferred camera, you can set the defaults so they’re only applied to that specific serial number.

You also have the option just to apply defaults that set up in Camera Raw to specific ISO settings.

For example, if you mainly shoot in ISO 100, then you can have all the defaults and the sharpening and the lens corrections all set up for ISO 100. But when you open up a file that’s set to ISO 1600, you can choose that those settings aren’t applied to that file. Because for instance, that file may be a lot more noisy, and you don’t want the same sharpening applied to that ISO setting.

Camera Raw Cache

From here, we have Camera Raw cache, and this is where you can decide how much memory you want to allocate to Camera Raw.

For example, if Camera Raw’s running quite slow and you have some quite large raw files that you’re working on, you can choose to allocate a specific amount of hard drive space to Camera Raw.

The more you allocate, the faster and the better Camera Raw will perform for you when you’re working on larger files.

You’ll also notice that this purge cache, just here as well. Sometimes if the cache gets a bit clogged up, you can choose to purge the cache and you can also choose to select a location on where that cache is actually stored.

DNG File Handling

I work a lot on DNG files, so this is where you can choose where those files are handled.

I prefer to ignore SideCar XMP files because, obviously, with DNG files, that information is already included in a single DNG file.

Also, I like to update my embedded JPEG previews, so that they’re actually set to medium size. This is because I prefer to reduce the size of my DNG files. If I have it set to a full size, then obviously the size of the file is going to be quite larger than if it was set to medium size.

Jpeg & Tiff Handling

Now, as I’m sure you’re aware, Camera Raw can open JPEG in two files, so you can choose how those files are handled in Camera Raw preferences.

Now, we’ve got some automatic settings here, but you can also choose whether you’d actually like to disable JPEG and TIFF support if you’d like.

Contrasting Processes For Opening Image Files

Now, let me walk you through a couple of different ways of opening your JPEG and TIFF files in Camera Raw.

As you can see, I have a folder open here, and it only contains JPEGs. Let’s now go and double click on one of these JPEGs. As you can see, it’s opened up in Adobe Photoshop which is not what we want.

Let’s go and close that. That’s generally what happens.

Instead, Open In Photoshop…

What you can do instead of opening it directly from your folder there, if we were to open it in Photoshop you can select open and view the same folder.

You’ll see they’re all JPEGs there.

I’m going to open this file here. But, instead of leaving the format set to JPEG, change that and set it to Camera Raw. We’re sort of tricking Photoshop into automatically opening up your JPEG file in Camera Raw as opposed to ordinarily opening it up in Photoshop.

We set that to Camera Raw, and then we go click open. As you can see, it’s now opened up in Camera Raw. That’s how you get around opening up JPEGs or TIFFs in Camera Raw using Photoshop.

Once you start making changes to your JPEG files you’ll notice that it starts to write those corrections to your JPEG’s metadata. So, it’s nondestructive.

It’s not physically changing the file, unless you want it to. In that case you’d need to go and save it as a new file or open it as a copy of your original JPEG in order to physically change the original file information.

But, in this particular example any correction that I make to this file, it’s only getting stored in the metadata which is really neat, especially if you ever want to jump back or come back directly into Camera Raw itself and make further corrections to your JPEG or TIFF files.

With that said, I mean you can do the majority of all the different adjustments that are available to you in Camera Raw to your JPEGs. I mean within reason. Because, obviously, your JPEG files aren’t Raw files. So, they don’t contain as much information as a Raw file does.

But, you do have available to you all of the actual panel options and all of the tools. So, you can primarily make the majority of adjustments that are available to you to your JPEG and TIFF files. So, you’re really not limited.

To make simple corrections you can go through and just work your way through the panel making slight corrections here and there. It doesn’t take you that long until you’ve got a result that you’re reasonably happy with.

In Comparison

In comparison to Photoshop you have to set up different layers, use different filters and different adjustments like levels, curves, color balance, selective color, a whole range of things like that in order to try and reproduce similar color corrections that you can do in Camera Raw within a couple of seconds to a couple of minutes.

There’s a big difference in the ease of use using Camera Raw as opposed to trying to recreate the same results in Photoshop. That’s one of the main advantages of wanting to use Camera Raw to edit your JPEG and TIFF files.

How To Open Multiple Jpegs In Camera Raw?

Simply select the images you would like to open and either hold down Command (Mac) or Control (Windows) or shift. Then proceed to right click and select ‘Open in Camera Raw’.

The other main advantage of Camera Raw is the ability to batch correct by opening multiple JPEG files and adjust them all at once.

You can apply and synchronize settings across a range of photographs saving time, instead of trying to make those adjustments in Photoshop.

It’s very similar to using Adobe’s Lightroom, for example.

The post How To Open Jpeg & Tiff In Camera Raw appeared first on Shutter Buggs.

It was long before I discovered an image with reasonable composition and positioning of the elements. Unfortunately, I had missed out on capturing the perfect light at dusk because of the flight time restrictions.

Unhappy with the color of the sky in my photograph, I decided to fix it.

Photoshop makes it incredibly easier to manipulate the color of the sky through the use of adjustment layers. However, to create a realistic sunset that is graduated in colors you’ll need to utilize gradient layers.

Gradient layers can mimic that effect that is created when using graduated filters in front of your camera’s lens.

What I had originally visualised in my mind was going to require a little bit of photoshop editing in order to achieve my desired outcome.

Letʼs get started…

1. ) Open RAW File In Adobe Camera Raw

In this particular example, Iʼve used Adobe Photoshopʼs – Camera Raw to make my initial raw file adjustments, but you could use whatever program you feel comfortable with such as Adobe Lightroom.

My aim here was to accurately reproduce the diffused September afternoon lighting I had experienced on the day. This resulted in a sound foundation from which to work on in Photoshop.

The final step after making all my adjustments in camera raw is to open the adjusted image in Adobe Photoshop.

2. ) Duplicate Background Layer

Select Layer: Layer ➞ Duplicate Layer

Once the image was opened in Photoshop, I dragged and dropped my background layer on top of the “Create a New Layer” icon which in effect duplicated my background layer.

3. ) Apply “Local Contrast” Sharpening

Local contrast sharpening attempts to increase the appearance of larger areas of light and dark transitions, very similar to how sharpening with an “unsharp mask” increases the appearance of fine edges.

But, before I can apply this technique… I need to mask off the highlights within the photograph so not to blow them out past level 255 in the histogram.

A. Select Color Range

Select → Color Range → Highlights

I used color range to isolate the highlights and make a selection. Color range is great for all kinds of purposes, but in this particular instance all I need to do is select hightlights from the drop down menu, make sure the checkbox below is set on “selection” and not image and then click OK.

B. Inverse Color Range Selection

Select → Inverse

The next involves inverting the selection from highlight to mid-tone/shadow as these are the areas I want my sharpening to be applied to. To do this we navigate to select in the menu and click on “inverse”.

C. Add Layer Mask

Layer → Layer Mask → Reveal Selection

The final step involves adding a layer mask to our new background layer using the color range selection weʼve created by clicking the “Add Layer Mask” icon.

D. Apply Local Contrast – Part One

Filter → Sharpen → Unsharp Mask

The concept behind local contrast sharpening involves applying the unsharp mask at a very high pixel radius with a small percentage amount. I personally like to start with the amount value at 25%, radius at 100 pixels and the threshold at 0. This really starts to add depth to a photograph.

Now just be careful though to pay attention to the highlight values in the selection using your histogram. Because in some cases 25% as an amount may be to much and you may need to knock it back to between 10 – 20% in order to avoid blowing out the high mid-tone values in the masked selection.

E. Apply Medium Unsharp Mask

Filter → Sharpen → Unsharp Mask

At this stage, I want to reduce the radius of pixels to about 10 and set the amount percentage to somewhere between 25 – 50% and apply the unsharp mask again.

This is a form of cumulative sharpening where we start off large with the local contrast and begin to reduce the pixel radius.

F. Apply Small Unsharp Mask – Optional

Filter → Sharpen → Unsharp Mask

This stage is optional and depends on whether any sharpening has been applied during camera raw processing.

I personally print my photographs up to 40 inches wide. Therefore I prefer to sharpen after I have interpolated my photograph to its final print size. This enables me to better control digital artifacts.

Please Note: The percentage amount should be visually adjusted according to the type of photograph you may be working with and personal taste.

4. ) Create Colored Gradient

Layer → New Fill Layer → Gradient

Because I was unable to capture this photograph after dusk when the earthʼs shadow cast creates an amazing array of colors, I needed to improvise.

With an understanding of the color spectrum it is relatively easy to recreate in photoshop with a little bit of ingenuity.

First I created a custom color gradient layer using the color values listed below. I then adjusted them accordingly to reproduce the effect of the earthʼs shadow.

5. ) Reduce Opacity

With such strong color values, I reduced the opacity of the color gradient layer until the color in the sky became visually pleasing.

This method allows you the greatest control to within 1 percent. After some consideration I finally choose 18% as the final opacity value.

6. ) Masking Off the Sky

Select → Color Range → Highlights

The final step in the process of creating this color gradient was to mask off the areas within the image where I didnʼt want this gradient effect to be applied to.

I used color range to isolate the highlights and create a selection from which I could create a layer mask.

I then clicked on the layer mask thumbnail, holding down the alt/option key which in return displays the mask, enabling me to work on it.

Filter → Blur → Gaussian Blur

Now instead of feathering the original color range selection, which would only effect the outer edges of the sky, I decided to soften the layer mask by applying a Gaussian Blur Filter with a radius of about 50 pixels.

Apply Gaussian Blur to layer masks is a simple way to take the edge of selections.

7. ) Add Levels Adjustment Layer

Layer → New Adjustment Layer → Levels

With the addition of the color gradient layer for the sky, I could see that the lower two- thirds of image required a slight density and color balance adjustment in the mid-tones and shadows to closer match the hues of the evening sky.

I therefore, created a new adjustment layer for levels and added a layer mask to exclude primarily the highlights and the sky.

8. ) Add Curves Adjustment Layer

Layer → New Adjustment Layer → Curves

After my levels correction, Iʼd noticed that specific tonal areas in the image had lost there vibrance with the addition of a magenta color balance shift.

Using a curves layer, I was able to target these areas using specific points on the curve, without effecting any other areas.

This allowed me to add additional units of green back into these areas. Itʼs a minute change, but it makes a huge difference visually.

9. ) Add Another Curves Adjustment Layer

Layer → New Adjustment Layer → Curves

The highlight values located on the open cliff face of Mt Lindsey were sitting slightly to high. On closer inspection those values appeared unnatural to the eye as a result.

Therefore I decide to add a curves layer to target the highlights at the peak of the RGB curve and adjust the color balance by reducing the contrast of the blue curve.

Whilst all the original values were within range, lowering them resulted in a natural sand stone finish.

However, I still needed to create a layer mask for the new curves layer to prevent the changes from effecting the highlights in the sky.

10. ) Add Selective Color Layer

Layer → New Adjustment Layer → Selective Color

Selective color is an amazing tool for any type of color balance adjustment, large or small. If you find that you need to make substantial color shifts, try changing the radio button in selective color from relative to absolute for more dramatic results.

Here I made a couple of tweaks primarily to the red value, dialing in more magenta to remove the green cast and added black to increase the density. This created the hue and subtle glow of an early summer sunset.

11. ) The Preparation of the Moon

Unfortunately, the moon was not in the original photograph and in actual fact would never have been present at this angle, as this photograph is facing south, south-east.

But personally, I think the addition of the moon is a nice touch that adds interest to the shot. I had photograph the moon a couple of months early for such an occasion.

In order to prepare the moon to be inserted into the main photograph, I have to first extract it.

A. Duplicate Background Layer

Layer → Duplicate Layer

To begin, I duplicated the background layer by dragging and dropping it onto the “create a new layer” icon.

B. Select Moon Using Magic Wand

Magic Wand Tool ( Keyboard Shortcut – W )

I then choose the magic wand tool and clicked on the black night sky to create a marquee selection and isolate the sky from the moon.

C. Feather Selection

Select → Modify → Feather

Because the moon was photographed against the dark night sky, it leaves a dark outline around the edges of the moon, which would stand out clearly on a lighter background.

To solve this problem without getting to fiddly, I applied a feathering of a 5 pixel radius to the selection, which will in return softened the edges and gradually decrease the effect of the black outline.

D. Remove the Night Sky

Edit → Clear

Next I need to remove the excess night sky from the background, so that all I was left with was the moon.

To do this I navigated to the menu and clicked on “Edit > Clear”, which in return deleted the selected area from the background layer.

To see exactly what Iʼd cut out, I needed to turn off the original background layer. What you should see next is something similar to the screenshot on the right.

The end result is that I now have a moon ready to be inserted into the finally photograph.

12. ) Copy & Paste Moon

Edit → Copy – Edit → Paste

At this stage we want to copy the selected moon layer and paste it into the main photograph file.

Another alternative way to do this is to have both photograph files open, so that we can drag and drop the moon layer from the first file on top of the second file. Either way, they achieve the same result.

13. ) Free Transform to Adjust Size

Edit → Free Transform

Now depending of the resolution of the two files, you should see a difference in size. In this case the moon was obviously to large. Using the free transform tool I resize the moon layer to something more realistic.

Quick Tip: To keep the proportions the same when using the free transform tool, just hold down shift and that way you wont distort your image proportions.

14. ) Select Layer Blending Mode

Layer → Layer Style → Blending Options

What are layer blending modes? A simple explanation would be that layer blending modes enable layers to interact with other layers in different ways.

In this example Iʼm choosing to use the “overlay” blending option, which multiplies or screens the colors, depending on the blend color of the involved layers.

15. ) Adjust Opacity of Moon Layer

Layer → Layer Style → Blending Options

The moon was still visually quite bright in comparison to the rest of the landscape in the photo. To address this problem, I adjusted the opacity of the moon layer from 100% down to 80%.

16. ) Add Blank Layer Mask

Layer → Layer Mask → Reveal All

The moon still looked slightly out of place in the graduated sky. I came to the conclusion that I needed to graduate the density of the moon.

To do this I had to create a blank layer mask to which I could a add a gradient.

17. ) Using the Gradient Tool to Add a Gradient to the Blank Layer Mask

Gradient Tool ( Keyboard Shortcut – G )

I then proceed to first select the gradient tool from the tool bar and made sure that the gradient I was going to be using was pure white to black, left to right.

With the correct gradient set, I want to make sure that the gradient starts with white and finishes with black.

The color palettes in the tool bar, decide which color comes first, hence white is on top of black as highlighted in the screenshot to the right.

After establishing this fact, I zoom in on the moon making sure that the moon layer mask was selected.

Because I only wanted the gradient to be applied to the height of the moon, I needed to guide the gradient tool from the top outer edge of the moon to the bottom.

As you can see the gradient has been added to the layer mask and the moon has become graduated.

Conclusion

When I first started out in photography, I found it extremely easy to become overwhelmed with the amount of information I had to learn on everything from the science of photography right through to color theory and management.

As technology changed, the transition from film to digital seemed relatively quick in retrospect, although I still remember working of digital film scanners that would take an entire day to scan and render a digital file.

I began learning Adobe Photoshop when it was in version 4, with very limited functionality. Although most of the fundamental tools that were there then, still reside in the software today numerous versions later.

Technology has evolved to a point where nothing is impossible, but the fundamental principles of photography still remain the same. Itʼs these fundamental principles that are the keys to your success and will not only help you become a better photographer, but will enable you to see the world in a new light where photographic opportunities become endless.

Challenges Of Aerial Photography

The corrections I made in photoshop to this photograph were dramatic, but deemed necessary because of the difficulties I had encountered to capture this marvel which included:

1. Vibrations of the aircraft during flight.
2. Speed & angle of flight (45 degrees)
3. G forces of the aircraft.
4. Daylight hour flighting restrictions.

Because of the nature of where this photograph was taken, multiple reshoots would be almost impossible, time consuming and costly, but this is where photoshop can come in very handy.

The post How To Change Sky Color In Photoshop Using Gradient Layers appeared first on Shutter Buggs.

Now, if you’ve never played around with Photoshop color settings before they may look quite daunting at first, however there are only a few things that you need to know in order to get started.

Working Spaces

On the right-hand side of your interface window, click on the more options button to reveal all of the available options with regards to the color settings.

Now if we work our way down from the top, the first option you’ll see is the settings drop-down menu, which has several presets from which you can choose.

Essentially, we’re going to set up custom configuration, so you don’t need to touch any of these settings at this moment.

Underneath is working spaces where you can specify a default color profile for each color mode. We have RGB, CMYK, Grayscale, and Spot. Now a working scale as such, is usually considered as a color profile that you use when editing and adjusting your images.

It’s not device specific, but it has a large enough color gamut that it can contain all of the colors that are present in your digital image.

The most common working spaces that you’ve probably already heard of: are sRGB, Adobe RGB, and Pro photo RGB. I’m going to leave this set to Adobe RGB.

Color Management Policies

Once you’ve chosen your preferred working spaces we can then proceed to configure Photoshop’s color management policies which determine how Photoshop handles color profiles when opening and working with images.

Once again you have the color modes you’ll have RGB, CMYK, and Grayscale. Essentially for these three drop downs you’ll select whether you want to turn them off, whether you want to preserve existing profiles which are embedded profiles that are existed and embedded in a digital file, or whether you want to convert your working RGB space.

Essentially, whatever you put up here in the RGB space will be what your image is converted if you choose to convert to working RGB space, if your image is actually in a different color profile to begin with.

Underneath these particular color modes we have a couple of check boxes, and they’re primarily for profile mismatches, so when you open up your documents it’ll ask you whether you want to use the embedded profile, or convert to your existing default working space, and you also have missing profiles.

If you open and a mage and it doesn’t already have an embedded color profile, it will ask you what you want to do, whether you want to leave it without a profile, or if you would like to convert to once again a default working space.

Conversion Options

Underneath policies we have conversion options, which as the name suggests is how Photoshop color settings is going to manage the conversion process between the color profiles.

You want to leave the actual engine set to Adobe ACE, but you’ll most likely need to adjust the rendering intent.

Four options which you can choose from include:

• Perceptual
• Saturation
• Relative Colorimetric
• Absolute Colorimetric

I recommend that you use the perceptual, or relative color metric for photographs, and if you’d like to learn more about how rendering intents work then after this tutorial go ahead and watch the next video, on assign and convert to profile.

In this video, I give an in-depth explanation of how rendering intents work, and why you should only use perceptual and relative colorimetric when it comes to photography.

I also recommend that you utilize the use black point compensation, which controls whether to adjust for differences in the black points when converting colors between different color spaces, so I’ll usually leave this set and checked.

Now underneath the Black point compensation, we have use differ. I also recommend that you leave this one checked as it will help with reducing banding artifacts when converting 8-bit images between different color spaces.

Advanced Controls

As for compensate for scene referred profiles don’t worry about this at all, because primarily this option is only available in Photoshop extended and is used for videos.

One of my favorite options inside of color settings that will assist you with calibrating your monitor in desaturate monitor colors which is under the advanced controls.

If your photographic or inkjet prints are coming out less saturated than that which you are viewing on your monitor, what you can do is turn on desaturate monitor, and add a specific percentage value that will desaturate your monitor.

You’ll be able to balance the two in order to match them more closely, which will help overall with your color management.

You essentially want to start with about 20% which is your default value here, but if I just turn on and off you’ll notice that it’s desaturated the colors of this particular Granger rainbow image that I have open at the moment.

At this stage I recommend that you also leave blend RGB colors using gamma turned off, as that’s something that we can discuss in the future we get a bit more advanced.

Trouble Shooting

Now if you get stuck and you would like more information on any of the available options within color settings all you need to do is essentially hover over a particular item that you have questions about.

Notice down at the bottom here that you have this description panel, and essentially that’s going to give your technical description of whatever items you hover over, so it’ll give you a little bit more information regarding those if you do have any questions.

Finally, once you’re happy with your Photoshop color settings you can choose to save them by going up to the save button at the top here.

Once you save them as a new preset, they’ll appear in the settings drop-down menu as whatever name you save them under.

The post How To Configure Photoshop Color Settings appeared first on Shutter Buggs.

This is a question I’ve asked myself many times and consequently have spent countless hours experimenting with post processing techniques in Photoshop unable to make up my mind…

Here’s what I learnt, no editing technique is perfect. The approach you decide upon will depend on your style of photography and what you would like to achieve as an artistic outcome?

Black & White Conversion Techniques

Within this article, we’re going to explore five different approaches you could use for transforming color photos into dramatic black and white images.

Some techniques are simple, but others require explanation before you can truly appreciate their potential and why you would want to use them as part of your digital photo editing workflow.

1. ) Convert Raw Files To B&W Using Camera Raw

It’s not secret that when working with digital images you’ll achieve your best results by starting with the original, unedited raw file. Whilst these days most photographers edit their raw files within Adobe Lightroom there are those of us that only have available Photoshop.

Luckily, Photoshop comes with a plugin called Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) which offers similar functionality and features to Adobe Lightroom and has been built upon the same powerful raw processing technology.

If you’re in a hurry you might choose to simply desaturate your images by reducing the saturation slider found within the “Basic Panel” of Camera Raw. But, I wouldn’t recommend this method when you could use “HSL / Grayscale Panel” which offers far greater control.

By checking the “Convert To Grayscale” option you will be able to adjust the tonal range of any color by modifying the corresponding sliders value.

The only caveat is making sure that you don’t over work and emphasize the limitations of your digital camera’s sensor.

Bayer sensors for example don’t capture 100% Red, Green and Blue. Instead often only capturing 25% Red, 50% Green and 25% Blue which can make extreme edits difficult to execute without introducing chromatic aberrations and destroying the quality of your image.

2. ) Convert Color Images To B&W Without Camera Raw

So, now that we’ve looked at the raw processing options, how do you convert color images to black and white without using Adobe Camera Raw (ACR)?

I’m glad you asked, there are two options to consider… The first and perhaps simplest involves opening “Image / Adjustments / Black & White”, which I’m not going to recommend because I’m obsessed about quality.

I’ve always advocate for using “New Adjustment Layers” where applicable to preserve the most amount image information during the editing process, even though they increase file sizes.

So, with that said I’m recommending opening “Layer / New Adjustment Layer / Black & White” which will added to your layers panel in Photoshop. If you don’t see your layers or properties tab you can go to “Window / Layers” or “Window / Properties” in the navigation to enable them.

In the properties tab you’ll find controls similar to the “HSL / Grayscale panel” within Adobe Camera Raw where each slider targets a particular colors tonal range.

In additional to custom controls you’ll also find set of preset filters that mimic the effects you would get from camera filters whilst shooting traditional black and white film.

There is also a click and drag modify icon which will allow you to edit your images by clicking on them, I personally don’t use this feature but that’s not to say you want find it useful.

If you wish to replicate those old fashioned sepia tone photographs from the 19th and early 20th century, tick the tint checkbox, then select the hue and saturation you would like to recreate for your images.

It’s that simple… The black and white adjustment layer in Photoshop can be quite useful for transforming those neglected color jpegs into dramatic shades of gray.

3. ) How To Desaturate Color Images In Photoshop

It’s worth quickly mentioning that Photoshop has an adjustment called Desaturate which does exactly that… It removes all color information from an image, leaving behind only its monochromatic tonal relationships.

So, What Is Monochrome?

Monochrome means only containing or using one color… So, whilst your image may appear to be black and white it still remains in RGB mode vulnerable to color casts which may or may not be intentional.

Desaturate is located under “Image / Adjustments / Desaturate” in the main navigational menu and therefore can only be applied directly to image layers.

Desaturate is quick and doesn’t offer any creative controls. But, if you would like more control over desaturating your images don’t forget to take advantage of the Hue / Saturation adjustment. Simply reducing an images saturation levels and altering its hue can create seductive, monochromatic images.

4. ) Convert Color Images To Grayscale

As you may or may not know image files can be created, converted, edited and saved into different color modes which poses distinct color spectrums designed for specific purposes and outputs.

Color modes you might be familiar with include RGB and CMYK, however you might not of heard of Bitmap, Grayscale, Duotone, Indexed Color, LAB Color and Multichannel. But the color mode we’re interested in exploring is Grayscale.

So, What Is Grayscale?

Grayscale mode converts all colors of your image into shades of gray. For an 8-bit image there can be up to 256 shades of gray ranging from 0 (black) to 255 (white).

Grayscale values can be also measured as percentages which can be very helpful when working with Ansel Adams zone system and/or inkjet printing where the percentage values correspond to the amount of black ink output onto the surface of the paper.

The process of converting an image to Grayscale is relatively straightforward and only involves changing from RGB Color to Grayscale via the navigation menu (Image / Mode / Grayscale) within Photoshop.

The biggest disadvantage to using Grayscale mode is that you will be required to “Discard Color Information” and therefore that information will never be available to you again, unless of course you return to the raw file.

If the thought of never being able to access your original color values throughout the editing process scares you, then you’ll most likely want to avoid converting your images to Grayscale in Photoshop.

5. ) Convert Color Images To LAB

The last method I’d like to discuss involves converting your image to LAB mode. But, what exactly is LAB and why would you choose to use it over the other methods I’ve already discussed?

The CIE LAB color model is based on the human perception of color and it’s numeric values describe all the colors we are capable of perceiving with the human eye.

Image By Holger Everding

Considered to be device-independent, color management systems use LAB as a reference point for predictably transforming color from one color space (such as RGB or CMYK) to another.

The word “LAB” is an abbreviation for its three different dimensions, L axis controls lightness (0-100), A axis controls red (+128) to green (-128) and B axis controls blue (+128) to yellow (-128).

But because we’re merely concerned with converting images to black and white, I’ll only be discussing how to work with the L axis or Lightness channel which contains all of your images detail, minus its color information.

If you go to the channels panel and delete the A and B channel, all that will remain visible is a black and white image ready for post processing.

So, Why Convert To LAB Color Instead Of Grayscale?

Well, Grayscale converts the color values into shades of gray (including all colors), whereas the Lightness channel of LAB only displays the luminance values and therefore delineates tonal relationships with precision and clarity.

But, I’ve found it’s biggest benefit to be the elimination of any potential imperfections that occur from incomplete information captured by digital cameras with bayer sensors (as discussed earlier in this article).

Unfortunately, LAB files aren’t that user friendly when it comes to sharing or printing your photographs. Therefore, you will be required to convert your images back to Grayscale mode, before you’ll be able to save your images in a compatible file format ready for output.

In Conclusion…

We’ve now walked through five different ways to convert color photos into black and white in Photoshop.

Each technique that we’ve discussed have positives and negatives, but hopefully my commentary has helped you decide which technique would best suit your existing digital workflow.

If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to leave them in the comments of this blog post and I’ll do my best to answer your questions as promptly as possible.

The post How To Create Black & White Photos In Photoshop appeared first on Shutter Buggs.

Take for instance how to resize images which is a fairly straight forward task, however it starts to become complicated when you consider how to resize multiple images at once.

Luckily, Photoshop is more than capable of applying complex corrections to more than one image and when implemented correctly will save you a lot of time.

So, How Do You Resize Multiple Images In Photoshop?

You could go to the extravagance of creating a custom resizing action that could then be applied as part of an automated batch process, however there is a slightly quicker method that involves less configuration whilst still providing all advantages associated with using custom actions.

Image Processor

Image Processor is a default Photoshop script that was designed to simplify the process of resizing multiple images with little to no effort… It’s located in Photoshop navigational menu under File / Scripts / Image Processor…

Open Photoshop Script

Upon opening the script you’ll be presented with a dialog box that will walk you through how to configure each step before running the image processor. It’s relatively straightforward, only involves four steps and therefore it shouldn’t take you very long to complete.

STEP 1 ) Select The Images To Process

In most cases you’ll check “Select Folder…” and identify the source folder that contains all of the images you would like resized.

However, there will be occasions when you already have images open in Photoshop and instead of choosing a folder you can simply check “Use Open Images”.

“Include All Sub-folders” is self explanatory, when the script is run it will process all folders within the selected source folder.

Under “Select Folder…” there is a checkbox option that when enabled with will “Open first image to apply settings”. So, what does this setting mean?

If you are processing a group of camera raw files taken under the same lighting conditions, you can adjust the setting in the first image to your satisfaction and then apply the same settings to the remaining images.

STEP 2 ) Select Location To Save Processed Images

As a rule of thumb, I alway create a new destination folder (named accordingly) for saving the processed images. It keeps things nice and organized, plus is easily identifiable.

If you “Included All Sub-folders” from step one you’ll probably want to check the “Keep Folder Structure” option to avoid any potential for confusion in the future.

STEP 3 ) Select File Type & Image Dimensions

You have the option of choosing from three different file types (JPEG, PSD & TIFF) to have your images saved. You’re not limited to only one type and can select all three if required.

Each file type has it’s own custom settings that you would usually expect to find when saving photos in these formats for instance compression quality.

Once you’ve selected the appropriate file type, it’s time to check the “Resize To Fit” option. Go ahead and enter the maximum width and height (pixels) you would like your images to fit.

Please, keeping in mind that each image will retain it’s original proportions and will not be distorted.

STEP 4 ) Preferences

The inclusion of actions within the image processor preferences has almost made automatic batch processing redundant from the perspective of resizing multiple images at once.

Because not only can resize your images, but you can also apply existing or custom created actions to your selection of images with ease such as adding a custom watermark.

Now of course, if you’re only interested in applying custom created actions then batch processing offers the additional benefit of file naming which can come in very handy when working on a client’s photo shoot.

As well as actions you can include “Copyright Information” and “ICC Profiles” with your newly resized images.

Plus, don’t forget that there is an option for saving your settings as a preset which can then be loaded for future photography projects, very handy indeed.

Run Script

Now that you’ve successfully configured the Image Processor, click “Run” and watch Photoshop batch resize multiple images… Once complete, navigate to your destination folder and open your images to ensure all were processed correctly.

The post How To Batch Resize In Photoshop appeared first on Shutter Buggs.

Even though technology is rapidly improving, digital cameras still aren’t able to accurately reproduce how the human eyes interprets light which is why HDR photography is an essential technique that every photographer should learn.

But With That Said…

How do you expose each image correctly? …and how many images do you need to capture? …and how do you post-process and merge all images together?

In this video tutorial, professional photographer Phil Steele will show you how to take HDR photos and how to merge them together using Lightroom.

Lightroom’s Photo Merge For HDR Photos

Adobe Lightroom has amassed an amazing array of features over the years, including “Photo Merge” for high dynamic range photographs.

Simply, select five bracketed exposures that you would like to merge together to create your HDR image. Now, go to the file navigation menu and click on “Photo / Photo Merge / HDR”.

Lightroom’s HDR Merge Preview dialog window will appear, revealing your photograph and the “HDR Options” menu on the right. Below you’ll find brief descriptions of ….

• Auto Align: If the images selected were shot using a handheld camera and no tripod, enabled “Auto Align” will attempt to correct any movement that may have occurred frame to frame.
• Auto Tone: Automatically adjusts the contrast and brightness of each image to provide an evenly-toned merged image.

After the bracketed images are merged together, sometimes areas of the HDR image may appear unnaturally semi-transparent and can be corrected using the “Deghost” options.

Once you’ve finished selecting all of the “HDR Options” that are available to you, click “Merge”. Lightroom will then begin creating your HDR image, saving it to your catalog.

If you enjoyed this video tutorial and are interested in learning more about how to improve your digital photography skills, check out Phil’s website where you’ll find a variety of valuable courses specifically on photography.

• Lightroom Made Easy
• Speedlite Portraits
• Event Photography

Don’t forget to also share my blog with your friends and/or family by clicking on your favourite social media property below.

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The image I’m going to be working with today was photographed in a small town called Akaroa (75 kilometers east of Christchurch) on the South Island of New Zealand.

Settled by the French in 1840, Akaroa is a charming and perfectly suited to capture the imagination of any aspiring photographer. Directly across the road from my accommodation is the sheltered harbour in all of its splendour and glory.

Whilst on holidays, I had my Canon 5D, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L lens, Manfrotto tripod and Lowepro backpack.

To create my panorama, I started by capturing eight individual exposures (portrait format) that generously overlapped each other. Because I didn’t have any panoramic equipment with me, I wasn’t able to rotate the camera around the nodal point of the lens.

Therefore, I decided to shoot using a longer focal length (82mm) to reduce potential stitching problems that occur at wide angles when not rotating the lens around its nodal point.

I had visited Akaroa in the middle of June which meant the afternoon sun was quite low in the sky due to the approaching winter solstice. I only had a short period of time to capture all nine exposures and avoid any potential change in light quality or shadows length.

Not to mention, I had to avoid motion blur and freeze the sailboats that were floating in the harbour by shooting at an appropriate shutter speed.

The majority of images were shot at F/11, 1/60 sec at ISO 200.

Once captured, I proceed to open all images within Adobe Photoshop’s Camera Raw plugin which uses the same raw conversion engine as Lightroom.

It’s entirely up to you as to whether or not you use Camera Raw Plugin or Lightroom to edit your photos, as they’re similar in many respects.

When post-processing I like to perform the majority (if not all…) of my editing within the Camera Raw Plugin to take full advantage of the information that is contained within the 12-bit raw image.

Before I can seamlessly stitch together all of the photos within Photoshop, first I need to edit each image and make sure that the densities all match.

Even though they were all shot using the same exposure there are still slight variants of around a third of a stop due to the wide angle of coverage and fading afternoon light.

So, how do I ensure each frame has the correct density? I used the “Eyedropper Tool” to sample values found in the blue sky of each image and then used those statistical values as a guide for making density adjustments.

Camera Raw Adjustments

I made several adjustments within the camera raw plugin and have listed them for you below:

• Exposure Slider – I made slight density corrections based on the digital camera’s original exposure and the RGB values obtained from the clear blue sky of my control image.
• Recovery Slider – The highlights found on lighthouse and sailboats were pure white and initially blown out. Therefore, I decided to increase the recovery slider to 100 which may come across as extreme, but was required to pull the highlights back into an acceptable range.
• Hue, Saturation & Luminance – I wasn’t overly happy with the aquas within the images and therefore decided to increase their saturation levels using the HSL panel.
• Lens Profile Corrections – To reduce imperfections created by the 24-105mm lens and improve the overall quality of the stitching process, I felt it was important to enable lens profile corrections.
• Sharpen Panel – It was essential to apply a small amount of sharpening (40 units) to strengthen and guarantee definition within the final image.
• Noise Reduction – I wasn’t expecting to have any issues with noise when considering all images were photographed at ISO 200. However, I wasn’t entirely happy with the amount of color noise I found within the shadows and therefore I added 25 units to the color slider within the noise reduction panel.
• Custom Crop – Within Camera Raw (Version 6.5) there are limitations when it comes to sizing an image. At the time, I was only able to size my images according to a handful of preset resolutions found within workflow options. My intentions were to size all images to the final print height of 24 inches, but unfortunately the available sizes were just too small. To overcome this problem I used custom crop, not for the purpose of cropping but instead for resizing my images to 16 x 24 inches.

How To Stitch Photos Together Into A Panorama

Photoshop has a feature called “Photomerge” which is what we are going to be using today to stitch my photos together.

Photomerge was introduced in Photoshop CS, so if you have an older version of Photoshop I’m sorry but you’ll need to upgrade in order to take advantage of this feature.

To open Photomerge you’ll need to go to Photoshop’s top navigational and click on “File / Automate / Photomerge”.

Within Photomerge there are two sections of concern “Layout” and “Source”.

Source as the name suggests is where you will select the image files that you would like merged together into one photograph. You can either add files that you already have open within Photoshop or select files that are located on your computer’s hard drive.

Once your file names appear in the dialog window… It’s time to customise our settings. There are three checkboxes below that you will either need to check or uncheck.

The first is “Blend Images Together” which finds the optimal borders between the images and creates seams based on those borders, and color matches the images.

With Blend Images Together turned off, a simple rectangular blend is performed. This may be preferable if you intend to retouch the blending masks by hand.

The second is “Vignette Removal” which removes and performs exposure compensation in images that have darkened edges caused by lens flaws or improper lens shading.

The third is “Geometric Distortion Correction” which compensates for barrel, pincushion, or fisheye distortion within images.

Photomerge Layout Options

Now beside “Source” is the “Layout” option which is how Photoshop will interpret your images. So, depending on how you photographed your panorama these settings can be very useful.

For example, if you used a wide angle lens instead of a telephoto lens your layout option would be different.

There are six layout options: Auto, Perspective, Cylindrical, Spherical, Collage and Reposition. I’ve chosen “Reposition” for my panorama, primarily because it aligns and matches overlapping content, but does not transform (stretch or skew) any of the source layers.

After clicking “OK” photomerge will begin the process of blending all my images together and below you’ll find my results.

It’s almost impossible to identify where photomerge has stitched the images together, but if you wish to examine where each image has been joined, simply open the “Layers Panel”.

As you can see there are areas of the panorama that remain empty because that information didn’t exist within the images that I imported into photomerge and therefore I have two options.

The easiest option would be simply to crop the image, but personally I want to retain as much detail as possible, so I’ve decided to reproduce those areas of the image that are missing from the panorama.

I’m quite lucky because the areas that require work aren’t overly complex and therefore should be that difficult to correct.

How To Reproduce Missing Areas Of The Panorama?

In the olden days, I would have had to use the “Clone Stamp” tool for the majority of this work, but Photoshop has become so clever that this is almost not necessary any more.

1. ) Flatten image layers.

2. ) Select white areas using Magic Wand Tool.

3. ) Press “delete” on keyboard.

4. ) Fill dialog box configuration:

NOTE: If you’re working with Photoshop CC, Content-Aware Fill (for transparent areas) is now included within Photomerge and therefore you can skip this step entirely.

Refining Content-Aware Using The Clone-Stamp Tool

Final step in the process of creating my panorama is to correct any mistakes or inconsistencies that have been made by Content-Aware Fill.

First, I need to visually identify which areas require improvement. Then using the Clone-Stamp Tool, I select details within the image that would make an appropriate replacement.

I hope you’ve found this insight into how to create panoramas using multiple exposures helpful and inspiring.

The post How To Make A Panorama In Photoshop From Multiple Photos appeared first on Shutter Buggs.

So, What Is Soft Proofing & Why Is It Useful?

Well, soft proofing is simply a technique that allows you to view on your computer monitor what your image will look like when it is printed onto photographic paper or any other medium, assuming that you have a calibrated computer monitor.

The process of soft proofing happens whilst you are still able to adjust and edit your image within photoshop and your image still remains in it’s original color working space, which could be Adobe RGB (1998), sRGB or ProPhoto RGB for example.

The benefits of utilising soft proofing is that you can correct any change in color, saturation, density and contrast that may occur when converting your image to a printer/paper output profile prior to printing.

In return, your print will better match what you see on screen when viewing your image in it’s original color working space.

The only downside of this process is that you will need to save a copy of your unedited image prior to making any corrections for your printer and paper type. Then you want to go ahead and specifically name this file according to the printer, paper or output profile you’re using to soft proof.

This is best practice, that way you’ll have two files the original and the print file. The original file can be archived and then soft proofed to any other output you may decide upon in the future without compromising its color or quality.

So, Let’s Now Demonstrate How This Process Works?

To get started, we need an image that has been processed and converted to a working space color profile which in most instances will happen during the raw conversion.

If you’re not sure, you can check your image profile by going to the bottom of photoshop’s workspace where you’ll find a drop down menu which you can choose to set to “Document Profile” which will tell you what color profile you are currently working in.

Once you know this information, you can proceed to “View > Proof Setup > Custom”.

Inside you’ll find options for defining custom proof conditions which can then be saved as presets for the future.

Device To Simulate

The “Device To Simulate” drop down menu specifies the color profile of the device for which you want to create the proof. The usefulness of the chosen profile depends on how accurately it describes the device’s behavior. Often, custom profiles for specific paper and printer combinations create the most accurate soft proof. Additional color profiles may be added to Photoshop that will then show up within this menu if you cannot find your output device.

Underneath the “Device To Simulate” you’ll find a checkbox called “Preserve RGB Numbers” which simulates how the colors will appear without being converted to the color space of the output device. This option is most useful when you are following a safe CMYK workflow.

Color Rendering Intent

The next important option you need to select is “Rendering Intent” which is made available to you when “Preserve RGB Numbers” is not checked. Photoshop has four color rendering intents to chose from each of which uses a different method to convert the color values within an image to your chosen output profile and result in alternative outcomes. It’s crucial to remember that when you finally convert your image to it’s final output that you not only maintain the exact output profile you used for soft proofing, but also the exact rendering intent.

Once a rendering intent is selected you may choose whether or not to use “Black Point Compensation”. If checked this option will ensure that the shadow detail in the image is preserved by simulating the full dynamic range of the output device. Select this option if you plan to use black point compensation when printing (which is recommended in most situations).

Display Options (On-Screen)

Finally below all other settings you’ll find “Display Options (On-Screen)” which has two checkboxes, “Simulate Paper Color” and “Simulate Black Ink”.

If you know for a fact that the output paper type has an off white appearance that’s quite flat you may decide to select “Simulate Paper Color”. In most cases you’ll only ever find off whites in canvases or fine art papers when printing using inkjet printers for example. Not all profiles support this option.

The final checkbox is “Simulate Black Ink” which simulates the dark gray you get instead of a solid black on many inkjet printers, according to the proof profile. Not all profiles support this option.

Both “Simulate Paper Color” and “Simulate Black Ink” should be used with caution.

Toggle

Once you’ve made all of your customizations and you’ve saved or clicked OK… Soft proofing is active, now in order to visually gage how you image will print, I like to quickly toggle between my working space profile and my chosen output profile, turning “soft proofing” on and off to identify the differences in color values and densities that may change.

To toggle soft proofing on and off the keyboard shortcut for a PC is “control + Y” and for a MAC it is “command + Y”.

Quick Tip: When “Soft Proofing” or “Proof Colors” is active you’ll notice an hastrise beside the file name of the image you are working on which makes it quick and easy to identify when this setting is on or off.

Often it can be hard to visually identify colors that may be clipped or losted during the conversion process from one profile to another and it’s for this reason that I recommend you experience with Photoshop’s “Gamut Warning” which is located under “View > Gamut Warning”. All colors that are outside the color gamut of the output profile you are converting to will automatically be shown in grey and therefore can be corrected to conform to your output profile.

Conclusion

By now I hope that you can see the benefits that are associated with soft proofing your images prior to printing. But with that said soft proofing is very dependant on the accuracy of the selected output profile. Needless to say that a quality output profile will deliver far better results than that of a flawed profile.

And whilst the process of soft proofing is extremely powerful you still need to make sure that your images are converted to the same output profile you choose for soft proofing prior to printing.

The post What Is Soft Proofing In Photoshop? appeared first on Shutter Buggs.

When I referred to the refinement of your selection, I’m really talking in terms of definition and how sharp the outer edge of your selection will be.

In most cases when editing images you want your adjustments to be seamless, blending into the photograph which is why you’ll need to soften the edges of your selections on occasions.

There are a variety of ways you could achieve this desired effect, but in this tutorial I’m going to demonstrate the simplicity of photoshop’s feather adjustment.

Setting The Scene…

Before I begin, I think it’s key to quickly highlight that in order to use the feather adjustment you need to first have an active selection.

The feather adjustment is located under “Select > Modify > Feather…” or your can use Photoshop’s keyboard shortcut and press “Shift + F6” to bring up the adjustment window.

Feather Selection Options

As you can see there aren’t a lot of options when it comes to feathering, so the decision making process is quite straight forward and perhaps the only question you need to ask yourself is how many pixels will be required to soften my selection?

What Feather Radius Should I Use?

The answer to this question will vary depending on the resolution of the digital image you are editing, the selection you are making and the type of adjustment you are going to perform. Whilst this answer isn’t very helpful, it’s true none the less.

However, here are several starting points which are based loosely on certain situations that you may come across in your editing.

The key to remember is that you want to try avoid edge halos at any cost. An edge halo is the effect you’ll see around the outer edges of your selection or layer mask where it becomes considerably noticeable that you’ve adjusted the image and edge halo’s look very similar to graduated highlights or the effect you get when you over sharpen edges for example.

Resolution Based Feathering

LOW RESOLUTION IMAGES (1,000 pixels or less) will require a small feathering radius (under 10px), particularly images sized and saved for the web would fall into this category, along with selections that contain a high degree of fine detail.

MEDIUM RESOLUTION IMAGES (1,000-3,000 pixels) can accept a slightly larger radiuses of 10 pixels maybe more, before your adjustments become noticeable and is best suited to small to medium size prints.

HIGH RESOLUTION IMAGES (3,000+ pixels) will need feathering radiuses that are far greater and will vary depending on your desired adjustment, this can be anywhere from 10 pixels to 100 pixels and in some extreme cases I’ve used up to 250 pixels for specialized techniques, but that’s for a whole other discussion.

Although feathering is quite straight forward, applying it practically in relation to a specific situations may require a little experimentation at first, but it won’t take very long before you get the hang of it.

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