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Adjusting In Photoshop

Lesson 23 from: Post-Processing for Outdoor and Travel Photographers

Ben Willmore

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Lesson Info

23. Adjusting In Photoshop

Next Lesson: Panoramas

Lesson Info

Adjusting In Photoshop

uh here it's not quite I guess you call that cascade or something not really waterfall and it's rare for me t get a quite like this one but the problem is if you ever use a neutral density filter to capture a waterfall very common to do so in order to be able to get a longer exposure in therefore get this silky look which if you think that stacking technique is cheating that's cheating here I can't make that instead you're cheating putting something in front of your lens but the problem with doing this is that if there's any wind or not even win just the movement of the water causing some air to move around there any leaves and other foil ege that air in the surroundings are going to be blurred gonna have the same kind of motion blur that's in your waterfall but more side decided it doesn't quite look the way you might want it too so what I will often do is take two shots I'll take this shot where I might like the silky look and then I'll take a second shot where I end up either taking...

off the neutral densities or I end up opening up the aperture setting so that instead of being like let's say I was in f twenty two in order to make it really cut the amount of light to try to get a long exposure maybe I brought it down in this case deaf aid or in this case even I brought up the highest so setting to make it capture very brief exposure so we get two of them to make sure you didn't bump your tripod now I'm going to take those two shots and I'm going to say photo edit in and I'm going to choose open as layers and photo shop in that just like before is going to stack these two images so we have a total of two layers and while we're waiting for that to finish I should mention before when I was trying to save a waterfall image that senate couldn't because the disk was full I happen to be trying to save where all my files are stored and it's actually on a drive that's all in light room it actually tells you that gives you an indication in light room if you ever go to your list of hard drives and you find that one year hard drives has an orange light next to it instead of a green one it means that that drive is getting critically full and so you probably shouldn't import more photos onto that drive because there's a very little space left it will tell you over here how many images you have stored on that drive that's one of the pieces of information it could tell you but you can change what you information is displayed there if you just hover over this it'll tell you in this case I have nine hundred and fifty six megabytes open which it says zero percent of about four terabyte drive that drives very full if you press the right mouse button when you're on top of this number you can choose the information that appears in there and I haven't said to photo count you so I can figure out how many photos are on each drive if I set it to none no information would show up I can also choose disk space and you'd see then that out of three point six terabytes of space we have zero available so that would have been a clue as to the fact we don't have the space there's also that the one called status which simply tells you is the drive connected we're missing that kind of thing it's up to you whatever you find to be useful in the disk space choice is not a bad one because then you can see exactly how low am I getting on that space so anyway that's why that one stacked image it said it couldn't save it I'll show you what I would do if I drive is full and I still want to say that I still want to get it in the light room we'll do that this next image so we had already loaded those into photoshopped is sitting right here it's stacked them remember we were just waiting for her to finish and if you look at this image I I didn't look closely at it but I hope it's one that will work for this if you look here we have the brief exposure do you see these leaves are relatively still because it was a fast shutter speed it froze them but then if I turn off that layer and reveal the layer that's underneath you see they're all kind of blurry and because of the longer exposure it just doesn't look so great so what I'm going to do there is is I'm going to take the top layer and make it on ly show up where the leaves are so that it replaces the blurry leaves with the chris blondes now in order to accomplish that I'm going to use a mask just like the mask we used a few minutes ago to limit were in effect happened to a different waterfall and usually do that by clicking on the layer mask icon at the bottom of the layers pal remember it's the one that looks like a circle inside of a rectangle usually when you click on that icon you get a mask this full of white and white leaves that layer alone until you decide to paint with black where yu want that layer to disappear well if I only want this layer to show up in small areas of the photograph you can sometimes be kind of a nuisance tohave to paint over ninety eight percent of the image to get it to disappear except for in the small areas where I wanted to show up so let me choose undo and show you a different way of adding a mask where the mask starts out full of black remember in a mask black hides things so that means starting off with a black mask no part of this layer will be visible whatsoever and then when I grab the paintbrush tools I'll be painting with white to reveal it have it show up so when you click on the layer mask icon usually get a white mask but if you hold down the option key which is alton windows at the time you click the mask then you get a black one so I just held on the option key and while I had it held down I clipped the mask icon option click it all clicking and windows then I need to make sure that my foreground color the color and painting with his set toe white and I can grab my paintbrush tool and now wherever I paint I will have the image with the crisp leaves show up just in the areas where I paint so you get a small brush because I don't want to get much over spray onto the waterfall itself I want to keep the silky look there but I'm just gonna paint right here and as I do you see the crisp version that doesn't have that motion blur come in and so I'm just going to do that wherever those er there's two movement in the surroundings there not going to notice it everywhere because some of these places nothing was moving but wherever I think there might be a chance of something moving I'm gonna come over here and pain to see if it comes in looking crisper panned not having the blur now there are some limitations to this if I try to paint across these right here we're gonna have a problem because with a brief exposure that was used to freeze them he's going to freeze the water that's behind them as well so if I try to paint you'll see that that particular area that looks so good also I can tell that needs some noise reduction in the one because it was shot at a higher so I can see the noise come in a little bit there and so it be something I would want to have adjusted that picture beforehand before I combined them so right there I'm going to be kind of stuck with the blurry ones but it's not that bad of a blur there so I actually don't mind but it is unfortunate we can't just put it in there s o I might also go to the other corner over here and I'm not sure how blurry this stuff is but just to be safe I'm gonna paint in there and the only thing is I should have done this where I did noise reduction on that image first before putting it in here so now if I hide the layer that's underneath but sure enough a tie ball we're going to see on ly the parts of the top layer they're being used that you see a checkerboard everywhere else so that's the only parts where we're using that image that had the really brief exposure and then everywhere else it's using the longer exposure but if I didn't do that and I just turn this off and on I can see but zoom up in here the difference between having the motion blur on the leaves and not having it so now let's say I want to save this but I know that drive is full so I can't fit it on that drive well that's what I'm gonna have to choose save ass just because it won't fit where it would want to save it so I'm gonna choose save as and I'm just going to choose where I'd want to put it and for now I'll just create a um see here I'm waiting for other guests waiting for it to populate the screen I'm just going to create a new folder on my desktop and I'm just going to call it layered uh photoshopped files create and I'm just gonna put it in there and I can change the name of it now because it's not I'm taking it out of light rooms management for right now and so I could just call this panther creek falls and uh I'll just go over here and say uh was still leaves or something I'll just say still are nobler whatever it is we'll let me remember what it is I'm gonna use default settings here and we got that saved now the only problem is since we chose save as instead of save light room is unaware we did it because we did outside of light room we took it out of him what it was expecting to have happen and so it is not in my light room catalog labrum has no idea that I ended up doing that so how can we get it in now to the light room catalogue well all we need to do now is go down to the import button and we need to point light room at the folder we just made now that folder is in my desktop and it was called layered photoshopped files so I click on it there and we have that image and I'm going to go over on the right side I'm going to say let's just add it let's not copy it I want to leave it where it is and I'm not sure what's great out I'm guessing I might not have maximize compatibility turned on back and photo shop but usually this is what I would end up having to do it's just layered photoshopped files that's where it is add means don't move it on my hard drive and then over here make sure we don't need that on on dh usually import would be there I'm not certain why it's not what I'm going to do is just first off make sure that it was done saving it which it was and I'm gonna open the file again and just see what my photo shop settings are to make sure there's nothing odd in photo job just so you know there's some preferences that I would usually change if I'm going to be going back and forth between light room and photo shop one of those changes is to come up here and go to your preferences into file handling in file handling there is a choice at the bottom called maximize psd in psb file compatibility well psd that's photoshopped file format and then there's a alternative foot or shop file format noticed butter shop big and that's for when you run into the limit of how many megabytes gigabytes that this file format can handle you can switch to something called psb but you want this set toe always what that in general means is whenever I save a layered photoshopped file what it should do is it should always save a preview of what the image looks like and that preview is what light room needs to see in order to be able to import those images it doesn't have the preview it does not display the image without having to open the entire image and see the layers that it's made out of in sense light room doesn't work with layers and things it does not open it so make sure that that is set always the default setting I think is said to ask which means every time you say the photoshopped file it asked you to want to maximize compatibility and most people don't know what it means so they don't really think about what they chose because they never know what why they need teo but if that's not turned on then your photo shop format images will not be able to show up in light room what'll happen is if you try to import them it will tell you that there's a list will give you a list of images saying these images we can't import because they didn't have maximize compatibility turned on and you could just go open them in photoshopped changed this setting and then do a save as in safe right over the original I just helped save in the exact same location with the same file name then the bill will be loaded into light room but what we saved was a tiff file in right now I'd rather not spend the time to troubleshoot what's great out in the import dialogue I'll look into it though and tell you tomorrow why didn't load but usually you couldjust import it and it would show up in a catalogue and then you could put it in one whatever collection you want um when the reason I had this up here was to remind me of one other thing I didn't mention earlier remember earlier I mentioned that I'm working on an e book about how I'm organizing my pictures like developing a system so that I want to be able to look at any folder and be able to tell how these image has been processed or not and if so how many of them have been processed and when it's done be able to find any intention of matter two seconds and that's the system that's going to be an e book I mentioned you could email to this there's a second e book related to it that is going to be about the developed module in light room and so that means all the things we did to adjust things when we had that iceberg sitting there and I was painting to get the sky to change in the iceberg and all that there'll be a very detailed e book about that when I see e book it's going to be like a print book and quality of design of editing and of research is just not going to be printed right away it will be available electronically but just so you know there'll be a second one about the develop module and so if you're not interested in the one about organizing your photos but you are interested in the one about the developed module for adjusting your pictures you can also send an email to this email address and just make it so the title of your email if you're on ly interested in the one on the develop module just put the word develop for the title and I'll try to make sure that you only get information about that one in case you don't know digital mastery is my company so if you just go to digital match dot com you'd find out all about me and stuff all right let's see what else we have we'll see more we could do with waterfalls but I think he has might get bored waterfalls one thing that's actually kind of fun for your website on occasion is you can make a continuously looping it's not quite a video it's an animation of waterfalls or anything anything that looks like it's got a a consistency to it like like water going down a waterfall we might get into that maybe tomorrow because it's it's kind of fun it's a promo on your website to actually see your photo move all right let's look at uh well why don't we look at removing some tourists because it can be a very similar technique to some of the stuff we've been doing there are many different techniques you can use one of my favorite things is actually include the tourists they're good for scale and just do long enough exposures where you don't uh you can't recognize them and they become more graphic elements than thes blatant people on your scene then I don't mind them as much because they look interesting it's when they're just standing there and they're like got an iphone in their hand doing a sum thing that they're just not uh not great now there are a bunch of different techniques we can use for getting rid of tourists from pictures and let me see what I can find us far as oh and I can show you remember that wonderful thing I mentioned you could also reduce mist and things let's just do a quick thing where I try to reduce some smoke in this case this could just as easily be at yellowstone national park and you have all the steam coming up from things and for some reason you choose that you don't want that I'm gonna come in here and just enhance this picture a little bit and I'm going to hope that these pictures kind of go together arrow through them make sure the tripod didn't move but you see the how much steam there is in here well I'm gonna just take these images and say photo added in open his layers the exact same thing we've used over and over and over again and in order to get rid of steam or missed all we're going to do is instead of using light mode we're gonna use darkened mode because the gaps in between the steam where you can see the ground that's there is darker than the steam so if I tell it to compare these and on ly used the areas of one layer that is darker than what's underneath that means on lee used the areas of that layer where there is no steam compared to what's underneath and it should be able to reduce the amount of steam that's here by quite a bit and the only limitation really is how many pictures did that take if I only took three it's probably not going to get rid of all the steam if I took thirty I might feel to get completely go away but it's important that the tripod didn't move and that the exposure is consistent I was not careful when choosing these images to absolutely make sure that exposure was right so it's a chance we'll run into an issue but I think they were the same just by glancing if you have an old version of photoshopped multiple versions old you should know that in the layers panel I've been being able to select more than one layered time where the top most layers selected here I could scroll down and click on the bottom most later to get the mall and then change this menu where changes them all at once I don't remember what version of photo shop it is but in old versions of photo shop you could only do one layer at a time which means you have to click on the top layer change the menu click on the next layer down change the menu and keep doing that until you got him all changed but in newer versions of federal shop it's no problem to come in here and do it so here goes dark and mod let's see what happens hey let's compare one layer to all of those here's one you see all the steam look at how much we got rid of is there any steam left there might be a teeny bit right in there but you see how much we can now cut it down next time you're in yellowstone national park you see the big a pool of water there was a very colorful out of the challenge or whatever it is growing in there makes it different colors how the steams getting in the way well why not cut through the steam the only thing is if there's a huge amount of steam where it's not just this little bit you can't take a lot of pictures and there's probably going to have to be a little bit of wind shifting where that seam is going in order to be able to get enough shots where eventually in all the pictures and little opening here is in one of the shots of little openings here and one of the shots and they all add up so sometimes you need a lot and you just happen to not capture enough but you see how that's going so then imagine that this was instead of waterfall and that that's the mist cruising off the side of the waterfall and the problem is it would do this to the waterfall too looks like somebody turned the water off the top so all you have to do after that is just mass comm same thing we did before select these put them in a folder that's command g throw a mask on it and let's say the water falls on the right I would paint with black wherever the waterfall wass and say leave it in right here was kind of fun now we have a steam brush I can say there's a little steam over here there's a little over there and there's a little there but nowhere else you can brush it in because we're just hiding the effect and that actually could be pretty cool because if there was some object here like an animal or something hey come in there and say just take a little bit away on lee where the animal is and you don't have to get rid of all of it you could just say thirty percent opacity or something and painted in who I didn't mind mean to do what I just did use a teaching photoshopped seminars and when I do photo shop seminars in the room you don't know if the people on light room or not you can't like use it for everything so I have to use this thing called bridge I hate bridge but if you're teaching a purely feder shop seven arts what you've got to use because you know everyone that owns a photo shop bones bridge so I accidentally typed the keyboard shortcut that would uh I would do that all right then let's see if we have some tourists that we might be able to get rid of I think I might have some on a boardwalk in yellowstone now here was some experiments to get rid of uh the steam in different areas so those were alternative pictures we could've used um been smiling feared is wondering what's smiley beard eyes wondering whether this is how you would remove a lot of moving tourists like a lot of people do get those shots where love is moving around in them not usually lightning darkened mode because some tourists would be wearing clothing that is brighter than what's behind them on others would be wearing clothing darker than what's behind them and so lightner darkened mode it's not enough there is something you can do which if I can find a good image for it I can show you on that's just what I'm searching for it the moment and it is a matter of that there is a a command that will average the scene so that let's see if these lineup of these lineup I can use it on the now moving my camera shooting hand held I was going to say if those all lined up where the camera wasn't moving I could probably get rid of all the people walking on the bridge if I used a was called a stack mode in federal shop but that needs to be on a tripod and you can see that I was shooting hand held there but I'm not seeing the images that I wanted to use here so we'll do that another time a ce faras removing pedestrians I'm going to write it down there to make sure I don't forget it tomorrow and this is why I love the ability to be in the chat room there is you can actually influence what is being taught directly so thanks for being so accommodating if there's anything anybody wants to know when it comes to landscapes travel you know all that kind of stuff just let us know if it's something that sounds like other people will be in to be more than happy to do it I'm only here to help you guys I got no agenda as faras you know doing too much so just let me know during a break and see if we cover things tomorrow but write it down so you don't forget

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Handbook
Bonus Packet
Post Processing Practice Files

Ratings and Reviews

Photoracer
 

After catching parts of each of the three days, I knew that I would need to have access to this wealth of information. What is great about the program is the ability to stop and go back over something that is not fully understood...and be able to do that until confident enough to move on. I saw no "fluff" in the course, just great information imparted with a style that is makes it easy to understand. CreativeLive scored a big hit with this course! The bonus material is SO valuable, especially the presets. That saves an enormous amount of time for me. My appreciation of the power behind the software is becoming ever clearer. Thanks, Ben, for another outstanding presentation!

Shannon Beelman Photography
 

Ben has been amazing! He is a wealth of information on organizing images as well as great tips to make your travel images pop just a little more. I came into this class feeling like I had a good handle on lightroom and have come out with a better understanding of the power of the software to make artistic life easier. He covers tips, tricks and little known options that help make workflow smother. I have sat here watching as much of the free broadcast as I can and in this last week I have gotten control over years of images in my lightroom. This is one I know I will be buying soon.

johninblackhawk
 

Great class! Somehow, it was enjoyable not having Ben default to "curves for everything"! I don't think the title for this course did it justice, tho. This class was 90% Light Room and 10% Photoshop. I was very happy to discover that dynamic and equally as happy to purchase this course! If you are new to Light Room, this class is a MUST. Creative Live offers several LR classes but this is the one to own. Ben is working on his new book about Light Room Mastery - can't wait! In the meanwhile, I'll be watching Ben's thorough approach to LR in this video. So, don't let the title throw you a curve ball, if you are new to Light Room or a seasoned user, there's plenty of great information - delivered as only Ben can! Thanks CL for this great class!

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