See Beyond The Capture

October 24th, 2008 | Categories: Photoshop, Tutorial

Final Sunburst

Introduction

The image above didn’t look like this when I first downloaded it from the memory card and opened it in Photoshop.

If you have ever looked at pictures produced by experienced digital photographers on the various photography forums and wondered why some of the pictures have a magical quality about them? Have you ever wondered why the pictures that come from your camera don’t have that same look? The answer isn’t that you can’t take a good picture. The answer is that you need to be able to see beyond the capture. You need to develop a sense for seeing the potential that lay hidden in the seeming mediocrity of the photograph. And then you need the tools and knowledge that will let you expose that potential. Photoshop gives us the tools, but only experience and practice will give us the knowledge.

Film photographers have been doing this since film was invented. The advantage we have today with digital photography is that we don’t need darkrooms, messy chemicals, hand made masks, and enlargers. We get to do all the work on a computer with an undo key.

In this article I’m going to walk through the process of taking a not-so-special looking photograph and turning it into a moody and beautiful seascape. There isn’t any real magic going on here. In fact, this transformation is really pretty simple. I’m going to use some curves adjustments, some channel mixing, and a single layer mask. The only somewhat extra ordinary technique I’ll be using is to use ACR to convert my RAW file twice, once for the background, once for the foreground. These two conversions will then be combined using a simple layer mask. This technique can also be very effectively applied to blending two different exposures of the same scene.

If you’re interested in following along you can download the PSD file of the completed image with all the layers. You won’t get to do the RAW conversions, but you will get to try everything else that I talk about below.

I use a PC for all my Photoshop work so all keyboard shortcuts that I mention in this article are based on the PC version of Photoshop. All you Apple folks will need to do the translation.

OK, let’s get started…

This is the original capture as it came out of the camera. The exposure was 1/15 @ f/22 with my 17-40 f /4L lens at 40mm on my Canon 1D MkII. The extremely small aperture is what allows the sunburst rays to be rendered. This lens doesn’t create sunbursts nearly as nice as the 24-70 or 70-200 2.8 lenses when they are closed down. In fact, this sunburst is better than I would have expected from this lens.

The first thing that strikes me is that beautiful contrail going right through my sky. It has got to go. I’ll take care of it in a little bit. In general though, this isn’t a picture that anyone would want to print, frame, and proudly display in one’s home. It’s a bit flat. The colors don’t really pop. The sunburst is nice with the wave crashing on the nearby rock. But, overall, it’s nothing special.

Original Capture

The first thing I decided to do is crop off the dead beach area at the bottom of the image. I just use the crop tool in ACR to do this. Using the crop tool in ACR is very convenient here because I’m going to end up doing the RAW conversion twice and I’d like to get exactly the same crop both times. ACR allows this because it remembers the copping window. After cropping, I get the image below. I like the stretched landscape aspect ratio; and cutting out the beach makes the image more dynamic at the bottom. To me the turbulent sea is a nice contrast to the relative calm of the sky.

Cropped Image

Cropping is not enough. The image has too much compromise between the highlights and the shadows. I would prefer the sky region be less bright and the foreground be more bright. Basically, the scene has too much dynamic range to be well captured in a single RAW conversion. At this point I decided that this needs to be a blended exposure. I will convert the RAW file twice. The first time I will convert for a proper rendering of the sky region. The second conversion will be adjusted to properly render the foreground region. These two conversions will be combined with a simple layer mask in the final image.

Convert For The Sky

The first conversion is for the sky. Before doing this conversion, I make two copies of the RAW file. To the first copy I append the word sky to the filename. To the second, the word sea. Why do I want two copies? Since I’m going to be using two different sets of conversion parameters, I want ACR to store those parameters for me so I don’t have to remember what they are in case I need to come back later and readjust one of the conversions. Having two files will cause ACR to store the parameters separately. I could also do this by just saving the conversion parameters to individual XMP files.

In Adobe Camera RAW I adjust the color temperature, the tint, the exposure, shadows, brightness, and contrast. Here’s a screen shot of the ACR parameters for the sky conversion.

And here is the result image (after being cropped during the conversion). The image below is a rollover image. When the mouse is not over the image you will see the new conversion. If you put the mouse over the image you will see the original conversion.

The sky has more definition, better color, and a great big ugly contrail. It is getting downright difficult to take picture without one or more contrails in them these days. Fortunately we have Photoshop.

Get Rid Of That Contrail

Now I’m ready to rid the world of contrails. Since that might create a problem for air travelers (including myself) I’ll settle for just getting rid of it on this image for now. This is a simple matter of using the clone stamp to replace the contrail with patches from nearby sky regions.

If you have never used the clone stamp (or any of the "healing" tools in Photoshop) I highly recommend that you learn how to. They are extraordinarily effective at "cleaning" bad stuff in images. The online Photoshop help files contain plenty of information on how to use the tools.

Before I begin cloning out the contrail I create a new empty layer just above my background by clicking on the new layer button, second from the right, at the bottom of the layer palette. I name my new layer Remove Contrail by double-clicking the layer name and typing the new name.

To clone out the contrail with the clone stamp tool, I simply select to tool in the tool palette; make sure that both the Aligned and Sample All Layers check boxes are checked; set my brush hardness to 0% to ensure that I create a very soft edge between the stamp and the surrounding image; select a source for my stamp by holding down the ALT key and tapping in the sky near the contrail; let go of the ALT key and start painting over the contrail. The clone stamp will take image data from the source area and copy it over the contrail. One or two minutes and it’s gone.

Checking the Sample All Layers check box ensures that the clone stamp picks up image data from the underlying background layer. If it is not checked then the clone stamp will only try to pick up data from the current layer, and since it is empty, no cloning will happen.

You can also try using the healing brush, the spot healer, or the patch tool to accomplish the same thing. All of these tools can be used effectively here.

Here is the image without the contrail. Again, this is a rollover image. Place the mouse over the image to see it prior to contrail extermination.

Add Some More Contrast

Now the image is starting to take shape. It’s no longer just plain and boring with a giant ugly contrail. But, I think the sky can still use a little more contrast. To get this contrast I add a curves adjustment layer by going to the Layer|New Adjustment Layer|Curves… menu. I name the new layer Sky Contrast and I play with the curves until they look like this:

This curve is entirely specific to this image. Every image deserves its own custom curve. In this case I wanted to darken the blue sky regions while leaving the middle tones (the orange zone in the image) unchanged and also adding a little more cloud detail. To identify the part of the curve associated with the orange tone I simply move the mouse into the image area and click on the orange zone. This will show a marker on the curve in the dialog telling me exactly where I need to work. If, instead, I control-click on the image, a new control point will be placed on the curve for me. This is what I did here. The middle point corresponds to the orange region’s luminosity. By putting a control point there, I can fix this region so that the other control points do not change it. The other two control points were added and dragged down a bit to increase the contrast in both the shadow and highlight regions. After clicking the OK button on my curves dialog my layer palette now looks like this:

Here is the result. Again, it’s a before and after rollover:

The sky is good for now. The sea and rocks, on the other hand, are way too dark and lacking any detail. It’s time to do the second RAW conversion for the sea.

Reconvert For The Sea

Now I open my second copy of the RAW file (the one with sea appended to the end) and adjust the conversion parameters to get what I envision for the sea and rocks. Here is the screen shot of the parameters I settled on. Note that the color temperature and tint do not change. Changing these (from what was used in the sky exposure) might be possible, but more than likely will introduce a strange color imbalance to the image. Go ahead and try it if you like. For this image, I didn’t. Here are the ACR parameters that I used for the sea exposure:

Here is the result (rollover again) image showing the sea exposure VS. the original conversion:

You’ve surely noticed that the evil contrail is back. I matters not to me. I will not be using any part of the sky from this image so there is no need to clone the contrail out. It’ll be gone in a couple of minutes, I promise.

Combine The Two Exposures

I now have two documents open in Photoshop. The first is my sky exposure, the second is the newly converted sea exposure. I select the sea exposure (it’s actually already selected since I just opened it from ACR), type Ctrl-A to select all, type Ctrl-C to copy the entire image to my clipboard.

Now I select my sky exposure document and type Ctrl-V to paste the sea exposure as a new layer. The sea exposure is now a new layer and it’s completely blocking my sky exposure background layer.

After the sea exposure is pasted on the document the new layer probably has a boring name like "layer 1." Double-click the layer name in the layer palette and give the layer a more descriptive name. I called it "Sea Exposure". My layer palette looks like:

I select the new layer (as if it’s not already selected since I just pasted it) and add a layer mask to the layer by clicking on the layer mask button, third from the left, at the bottom of the layer palette. This adds a layer mask, and makes everything on the layer visible. The layer mask will also be selected (as indicated by the thicker border on the layer mask thumbnail).

I grab my handy paint brush tool, set my foreground color to black by typing ‘D’ to set default colors, and then ‘X’ to swap foreground and background. I make a rather large brush and start painting on sky region of the layer mask. If it all goes according to my plan, then the sky exposure on the background layer should be revealed wherever I lay down any black paint on the layer mask. I take a few minutes to ensure that all the sky is painted black on the layer mask. I don’t worry too much about getting the black paint on the layer mask perfectly aligned with the boundary between the sky and the rocks because I will use the Gaussian blur filter to make this transition zone visually smooth.

With the mask fully painted, select the Gaussian blur filter from the Filter|Blur|Guassian Blur… menu. I play with the radius setting until I get a visually pleasing blend between the foreground and background images. In this case, I settle on somewhere around 50 pixels of blurring. My layer mask looks like:

The image below is what I end up with (it’s a roll-over):

Less Contrast for the Sea

At this point I decided that I’d like just a little less contrast on the sea. To do this I’m going to create a new curves adjustment layer just above the "sea exposure" layer. I select the "sea exposure" layer, then on the main menu choose Layer|New Adjustment Layer|Curves…, and call the new layer "Sea Contrast". Now I adjust the curve by pulling it up just a little bit. This will reduce the contrast. In the image window you will see the contrast reduced for the entire image. Hit the OK button to commit the curve adjustment layer.

Since I only wanted to adjust the contrast of the sea exposure I need to tell Photoshop that the new adjustment layer only applies the layer just below it. To do this I hold down the ALT key and move the mouse over the border between the "Sea Exposure" layer and the "Sea Contrast" layer. The mouse pointer will turn into two intersecting circles icon. Click the mouse here. The layer palette on the left shows the unlinked "Sea Contrast" layer. The layer palette on the right shows the linked "Sea Contrast" layer.

Now the "Sea Contrast" layer is only being applied to the "Sea Exposure" layer. I click the layer visibility button to see that the effect is only being applied to the target layer. Here’s the before and after rollover:

Apply Digital Velvia

Now I want to make the colors pop. I’ll do this by applying a little "Digital Velvia" magic. This can be done by adding a new channel mixer adjustment layer to the top of the layer stack. The channel mixer settings are shown in the dialog boxes below. Each box shows the changes made for each channel in the Output Channel selector box.

The values here are pretty aggressive so after creating the adjustment layer I adjust the layer opacity down to about 70%.

Since this "Digital Velvia" effect is something that I use quite a bit in my landscape images I have created a handy little action that automatically creates the adjustment layer and sets the opacity to 50%. You can download it here. Now I just run the action and manually adjust the layer opacity to suit.

Here’s the before and after rollover of the "Digital Velvia" effect:

A Little More Contrast

The final thing I want to do is add just a tiny bit of contrast to the whole image. Again, I’m just going to create a new curves adjustment layer called "Overall Contrast" and I’m going to drag the curve down just a bit while watching the image window to judge just how much I want.

Here’s the final before and after rollover showing the additional contrast:

The Layer Palette

The final layer palette looks like this:

Conclusion

Many of my favorite images did not materialize until weeks or months after the capture. They just were not that interesting right out of the camera. I only discovered the hidden treasure after going back through my catalog and playing with the images (often after coming across a new technique that I want to try on something).

A camera lens cannot always capture what the eye (and the soul) are seeing. Photoshop allows us to take the captured image and apply some creativity to it to help render what the mind remembers seeing (and in many cases, to create a scene that is beautiful, but not reflective at all of what was seen).

So…go find some old captures that you might have passed over before and see if there really is a hidden treasure in there.

If you have feedback, suggestions, or critiques, or just want to say thanks leave me a comment.