5 Photoshop saves the
day!
Photoshop
is the digital equivalent of the traditional photographer's darkroom.
It is, however, a dauntingly complex piece of software if you're the
sort of person who bought a point-and-shoot camera (like me).
Since
this book's all about not learning all that technical stuff, I'm
going to try to teach you just a few simple things Photoshop can do
for you that will help you get the most from your bridge camera
without tears.
Again,
your DSLR toting mates will wax rhapsodic about the latest edition of
Lightroom but an older version, such as Photoshop CS2, is quite
sufficient for my purposes.
I
use a few basic tools for most of my photo tweaking and I'm going to
give you a run-down on how and when to use each of them.
First
though, I want to take one photo as a case study and walk you through
what happens to it. This is about what happens, not how its done.
That's later. This is to give you a taste of what's possible with
just the most basic Photoshop skills.
I've
deliberately picked a photo that needs a lot of tweaking. Most photos
won't need all this.
Before
we start editing stuff, here's a top tip: always edit a copy, not
your original photo. Keep the original so you can go back and start
over.
Case study
I
wanted a picture of this window and the greenery through it. However,
the wall around it is uninspiring and the drainpipe with a warning
notice spoils it further.
 |
| Parish Church, St Asaph |
Crop
This
is the most basic thing but most photos benefit from a little bit of
a trim, so it's a good place to start.
When
you take a picture, you're concentrating on the middle of it, on what
you're actually pointing your camera at. The edges are largely
ignored. Consequently, you get stuff at the edges that you don't
need, that doesn't add anything to the aesthetics of your picture and
may even spoil it a little. Cropping can make a good photo much
better.
Cropping
is also handy if, like me, you have a preferred way to view your
work. You'll notice most of my photographs in this book are about
16:9 aspect ratio (wide screen) but my camera takes 4:3 as standard.
I crop to fit the screen of my phone, and my tablet, because those
are the two devices I use to share my pictures with friends. Computer
screens (and post millennium TVs) are all 16:9 too, so my pictures
make good Windows wallpaper.
Photoshop
has the standard selection option of click-and-drag to select a
rectangular area. I'm going to assume you've come across that before
(It's a standard Windows function and I'm not teaching Computer
studies 101 here)
So
I select the area I want and crop. N.B. Different incarnations of
Photoshop may have the tools arranged differently so its up to you to
find the right menu button. (On my version Crop is in the Edit menu).
Cropping
it makes a more striking image but now we can see it's a bit crooked.
That
happens a lot. It's very difficult to hold a camera absolutely level
while pressing downwards on one side (the button). It normally
doesn't matter much but with straight lines like this, it shows.
Rotate
So
I'll rotate it a bit with the 'Rotate Canvas' tool.
Top
tip: undo your cropping first. You lose a bit of the edge when you
rotate the canvas and its better to lose some of the bit you know you
don't want to keep.
So
undo the cropping, rotate the canvas 0.5 degrees clockwise (trial and
error) and crop again.
It
looks much more squared away now. It's only a small adjustment but it
makes a big difference.
Its
too dark inside though.
Shadow/Highlight
One
of the most useful PS tools is Shadow/Highlight, which allows you to
make brightness adjustments that don't affect the whole picture.
If
I just made it brighter, the light patches on the windowsill would be
“blown out”, jargon for solid, bright white with no detail.
Instead,
using the Shadow/Highlight adjustment tool, I brightened the darkest
pixels (the bottom 20%) by 75%. The result is that the sunlit bits
are unchanged but the shadows are less deep and the details of
stonework and ironwork inside are visible.
Hue/Saturation
The
only thing about raising the brightness like that is the lack of
colour that the newly revealed details have. That's why I generally finish
off by increasing the colour saturation just a little. This may not
show up well on a printed page but is really obvious on a screen.
So
with four basic tools, a slightly crooked, dark and asymmetrical
photograph becomes a striking, arty, greeting card picture.
And
yes, that is what I've done with it. It's been on two home-made cards
already.
The
crookedness was my fault and the brightness may have needed less
tweaks if I knew what all the settings on my camera were for. For
this shot, I'd have had time to set things up properly but that would
go against the ethos of this book and my personal doctrine of
shooting in auto mode and tweaking what needs tweaking later. In
Photoshop, all sins are forgiven.
But
wait! See that big chip in the stonework in the middle of the
picture? Wouldn't it be better if the stone wasn't damaged? Well,
personally, I don't mind the chip but, for the sake of example, lets
make it go away.
Clone
Stamp
The
Clone Stamp tool is an amazing and amazingly easy to use digital
airbrush.
You
can make pimples disappear from photos of teenagers and remove
telegraph wires from skies.
It
works by setting two points and copying what's at one over whatever
is at the other.
In
my example, I set the first point a little above the missing bit of
stone (about as far above it as the length of the chipped bit). Then
I carefully lined up the cursor at the top of the chip and copied
good stonework over bad. You really can't see the join.
With
something as straight as that stone, I find it easiest to use the
sharp edge as a guide line for setting the two points, so they're
exactly in line. If you don't, and you get a step of even one pixel
in an otherwise straight edge, it'll show.
Don't
worry, it can always be undone and redone so it's safe to play with
until you get it just right.
Clone
stamping is harder to describe than it is to use, so I strongly urge
you to have a go. You'll be amazed how easy it really is.
Noise
Reduction
I
know I said I'd cover this later, but I just want to touch on it
briefly here.
Parts
of this picture were lightened by 75%. That's an enormous amount of
adjustment and shows just how dark the interior of that church porch
was. When we brighten something that much, we are going to get noise.
It's inevitable and it looks like this.
 |
| Before and after noise reduction |
Photoshop
has noise reduction tools but there is a better way.
I've
found, over the course of tweaking many photos, that I get better
noise reduction from a bit of freeware called Noiseware Community
Edition. It's what I use. It's what I recommend. It's free, stable,
easy to use and very good at what it does.
See
how much graininess it's removed from that stonework?
I
generally use the default settings but add a twist of sharpening (+2)
because any noise reduction softens edges a little and I've found
that adding a little sharpness offsets that effect.
That
added sharpness only really shows on things like cobwebs and
feathers, where there are very narrow details.
The
other major benefit of this free software is it's very efficient jpeg
compression. That means you'll get much smaller files without having
smaller pictures.
Before
Noiseware, this photograph was 4 MB; after, it was 1MB and that's
still a 6.5 million pixel image. Trust me! You'll never notice the
loss of detail at that resolution.
Yes,
yes, its a lot of stuff to go through for one photograph. I agree,
but it's a lot easier to do than to write about (or read about). I've
redone it all, documenting every step to show you the process but,
the first time, I went from original to finished product in about 2
minutes. Is two minutes too long to spend to turn a throw-away
picture into a keeper (IMHO)?
I
don't think it is, and the feedback I've had on this photo indicates
that my pals agree with me.
If
all that didn't make a massive amount of sense, that's OK.
I
just wanted to run through an example that needed a lot of different
tweaks. I'm going to revisit each of them in much better detail
starting now.