Category Archives: Photoshop CC 2015

Image Sharpening

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Image Sharpening and Raw Conversion.

A lot of people imagine that there is some sort of ‘magic bullet’ method for sharpening images.

Well, here’s the bad news – there isn’t !

Even if you shoot the same camera and lens combo at the same settings all the time, your images will exhibit an array of various properties.

And those properties, and the ratio/mix thereof, can, and will, effect the efficacy of various sharpening methods and techniques.

And, those properties will rarely be the same from shoot to shoot.

Add interchangeable lenses, varied lighting conditions, and assorted scene brightness and contrast ranges to the mix – now the range of image properties has increased exponentially.

What are the properties of an image that can determine your approach to sharpening?

I’m not even going to attempt to list them all here, because that would be truly frightening for you.

But sharpening is all about pixels, edges and contrast.  And our first ‘port of call’ with regard to all three of those items is ‘demosaicing’ and raw file conversion.

“But Andy, surely the first item should be the lens” I here you say.

No, it isn’t.

And if that were the case, then we would go one step further than that, and say that it’s the operators ability to focus the lens!

So we will take it as a given, that the lens is sharp, and the operator isn’t quite so daft as they look!

Now we have a raw file, taken with a sharp lens and focused to perfection.

Let’s hand that file to two raw converters, Lightroom and Raw Therapee:

Image Sharpening

I am Lightroom – Click me!

Image Sharpening

I am Raw Therapee – Click me!

In both raw converters there is ZERO SHARPENING being applied. (and yes, I know the horizon is ‘wonky’!).

Now check out the 800% magnification shots:

Image Sharpening

Lightroom at 800% – Click me!

Image Sharpening

Raw Therapee at 800% – Click me!

What do we see on the Lightroom shot at 800%?

A sharpening halo, but hang on, there is NO sharpening being applied.

But in Raw Therapee there is NO halo.

The halo in Lightroom is not a sharpening halo, but a demosaicing artifact that LOOKS like a sharpening halo.

It is a direct result of the demosaicing algorithm that Lightroom uses.

Raw Therapee on the other hand, has a selection of demosaicing algorithms to choose from.  In this instance, it’s using its default AMaZE (Alias Minimization & Zipper Elimination) algorithm.  All told, there are 10 different demosaic options in RT, though some of them are a bit ‘old hat’ now.

There is no way of altering the base demosaic in Lightroom – it is something of a fixed quantity.  And while it works in an acceptable manner for the majority of shots from an ever burgeoning mass of digital camera sensors, there will ALWAYS be exceptions.

Let’s call a spade a bloody shovel and be honest – Lightrooms demosaicing algorithm is in need of an overhaul.  And why something we have to pay for uses a methodology worse than something we get for free, God only knows.

It’s a common problem in Lightroom, and it’s the single biggest reason why, for example, landscape exposure blends using luminosity masks fail to work quite as smoothly as you see demonstrated on the old Tube of You.

If truth be told – and this is only my opinion – Lightroom is by no means the best raw file processor in existence today.

I say that with a degree of reservation though, because:

  1. It’s very user friendly
  2. It’s an excellent DAM (digital asset management) tool, possibly the best.
  3. On the surface, it only shows its problems with very high contrast edges.

As a side note, my Top 4 raw converters/processors are:

  1. Iridient Developer
  2. Raw Therapee
  3. Capture One Pro
  4. Lightroom

Iridient is expensive and complex – but if you shoot Fuji X-Trans you are crazy if you don’t use it.

Raw Therapee is very complex (and slightly ‘clunky’ on Mac OSX) but it is very good once you know your way around it. And it’s FREEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!

Iridient and RT have zero DAM capability that’s worth talking about.

Capture One Pro is a better raw converter on the whole than Lightroom, but it’s more complex, and its DAM structure looks like it was created by crack-smoking monkeys when you compare it to the effective simplicity of Lightroom.

If we look at Lightroom as a raw processor (as opposed to raw converter) it encourages the user to employ ‘recovery’ in shadow and highlight areas.

Using BOTH can cause halos along high contrast edges, and edges where high frequency detail sits next to very low frequency detail of a contrasting colour – birds in flight against a blue sky spring to mind.

Why do I keep ‘banging on’ about edges?

Because edges are critical – and most of you guys ‘n gals hardly ever look at them close up.

All images contain areas of high and low frequency detail, and these areas require different process treatments, if you want to obtain the very best results AND want to preserve the ability to print.

Cleanly defined edges between these areas allow us to use layer masks to separate these areas in an image, and obtain the selective control.

Clean inter-tonal boundaries also allow us to separate shadows, various mid tone ranges, and highlights for yet more finite control.

Working on 16 bit images (well, 15 bit plus 1 level if truth be told) means we can control our adjustments in Photoshop within a range of 32,768 tones.  And there is no way in hell that localised adjustments in Lightroom can be carried out to that degree of accuracy – fact.

I’ll let you in to a secret here!  You all watch the wrong stuff on YouTube!  You sit and watch a video by God knows what idiot, and then wonder why what you’ve just seen them do does NOT work for you.

That’s because you’ve not noticed one small detail – 95% of the time they are working on jpegs!  And jpegs only have a tonal range of 256.  It’s really easy to make luminosity selections etc on such a small tonal range work flawlessly.  You try the same settings on a 16 bit image and they don’t work.

So you end up thinking it’s your fault – your image isn’t as ‘perfect’ as theirs – wrong!

It’s a tale I hear hundreds of times every year when I have folk on workshops and 1to1 tuition days.  And without fail, they all wish they’d paid for the training instead of trying to follow the free stuff.

You NEVER see me on a video working with anything but raw files and full resolution 16 bit images.

My only problem is that I don’t ‘fit into’ today’s modern ‘cult of personality’!

Most adjustments in Lightroom have a global effect.  Yes, we have range masks and eraser brushes.  But they are very poor relations of the pixel-precise control you can have in Photoshop.

Lightroom is – in my opinion of course – becoming polluted by the ‘one stop shop, instant gratification ideology’ that seems to pervade photography today.

Someone said to me the other day that I had not done a YouTube video on the new range masking option in Lightroom.  And they are quite correct.

Why?

Because it’s a gimmick – and real crappy one at that, when compared to what you can do in Photoshop.

Photoshop is the KING of image manipulation and processing.  And that is a hard core, irrefutable fact.  It has NO equal.

But Photoshop is a raster image editor, which means it needs to be fed a diet of real pixels.  Raw converters like Lightroom use ‘virtual pixels’ – in a manner of speaking.

And of course, Lightroom and the CameraRaw plug in for Photoshop amount to the same thing.  So folk who use either Lightroom or Photoshop EXCLUSIVELY are both suffering from the same problems – if they can be bothered to look for them.

It Depends on the Shot

sharpening

The landscape image is by virtue, a low ISO, high resolution shot with huge depth of field, and bags of high frequency inter-tonal detail that needs sharpening correctly to its very maximum.  We don’t want to sharpen the sky, as it’s sharp enough through depth of field, as is the water, and we require ZERO sharpening artifacts, and no noise amplification.

If we utilise the same sharpening workflow on the center image, then we’ll all get our heads kicked in!  No woman likes to see their skin texture sharpened – in point of fact we have to make it even more unsharp, smooth and diffuse in order to avoid a trip to our local A&E department.

The cheeky Red Squirrel requires a different approach again.  For starters, it’s been taken on a conventional ‘wildlife camera’ – a Nikon D4.  This camera sensor has a much lower resolution than either of the camera sensors used for the previous two shots.

It is also shot from a greater distance than the foreground subjects in either of the preceding images.  And most importantly, it’s at a far higher ISO value, so it has more noise in it.

All three images require SELECTIVE sharpening.  But most photographers think that global sharpening is a good idea, or at least something they can ‘get away with’.

If you are a photographer who wants to do nothing else but post to Facebook and Flickr then you might as well stop reading this post.  Good luck to you and enjoy your photography,  but everything you read in this post, or anywhere on this blog, is not for you.

But if you want to maximize the potential of your thousands of pounds worth of camera gear, and print or sell your images, then I hate to tell you, but you are going to have to LEARN STUFF.

Photoshop is where the magic happens.

As I said earlier, Photoshop is a raster image processor.  As such, it needs to be fed an original image that is of THE UTMOST QUALITY.  By this I mean a starting raw file that has been demosaiced and normalized to:

  1. Contain ZERO demosaic artifacts of any kind.
  2. Have the correct white and black points – in other words ZERO blown highlights or blocked shadows.  In other words, getting contrast under control.
  3. Maximize the midtones to tease out the highest amount of those inter-tonal details, because this is where your sharpening is going to take place.
  4. Contain no more sharpening than you can get away with, and certainly NOT the amount of sharpening you require in the finished image.

With points 1 thru 3 the benefits should be fairly obvious to you, but if you think about it for a second, the image described is rather ‘flattish – looking’.

But point 4 is somewhat ambiguous.  What Adobe-philes like to call capture or input sharpening is very dependent on three variables:

  1. Sensor megapixels
  2. Demosaic effeciency
  3. Sharpening method – namely Unsharp Mask or Deconvolution

The three are inextricably intertwined – so basically it’s a balancing act.

To learn this requires practice!

And to that end I’m embarking on the production of a set of videos that will help you get to grips with the variety of sharpening techniques that I use, and why I use them.

I’ll give you fair warning now – when finished it will be neither CHEAP nor SHORT, but it will be very instructive!

I want to get it to you as soon as possible, but you wouldn’t believe how long tuition videos take to produce.  So right now I’m going to say it should be ready at the end of February or early March.

UPDATE:  The new course is ready and on sale now, over on my digital download site.

sharpening

The link to the course page is HERE.

Hopefully I’ve given you a few things to think about in this post.

Don’t forget, I provide 1to1 and group tuition days in this and all things photography related.

And just in case you’ve missed it, here’s a demo of how useful Photoshop Smart Sharpen can be:

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The Importance of Finished Image Previsualization

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The Importance of Finished Image Previsualization (Patreon Only).

For those of you who haven’t yet subscribed to my YouTube channel, I uploaded a video describing how I shot and processed the Lone Tree at Llyn Padarn in North Wales the other day.

You can view the video here:

Image previsualization is hugely important in all photography, but especially so in landscape photography.

Most of us do it in some way or other.  Looking at images of a location by other photographers is the commonest form of image previsualization that I come across amongst most hobby photographers – and up to a point, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong in that – as long as you put your own ‘slant’ on the shot.

But relying on this method alone has one massive Achilles Heel – nature does not always ‘play nice’ with the light!

You set off for your chosen location with a certain knowledge that the weather forecast is correct, and you are guaranteed to get the perfect light for the shot you have in mind.

Three hours later, you arrive at your destination, and the first thought that enters your head is “how do I blow up the Met Office” – how could they have lied to me so badly?

If you rely solely on ‘other folks images’ for what your shot should look like, then you now have a severe problem.  Nature is railing against your preconceptions, and unless you make some mental modifications then you are deep into a punch-up with nature that you will never win.

Just such an occasion transpired for me the other day at Llyn Padarn in North Wales.

The forecast was for low level cloud with no wind, just perfect for a moody shot of the famous Lone Tree on the south shore of the lake.

So, arriving at the location to be greeted by this was a surprise to say the least:

image previsualization

This would have been disastrous for some, simply because the light does not comply with their initial expectations.  I’ve seen many people get a ‘fit of the sulks’ when this happens, and they abandon the location without even getting out of the car.

Alternatively, there are folk who will get their gear set up and make an attempt, but their initial disappointment becomes a festering ‘mental block’, and they cannot see a way to turn this bad situation into something good.

But, here’s the thing – there is no such thing as a bad situation!

There are however, multiple BAD REACTIONS to a situation.

And every adverse reaction has its roots buried in either:

  • Rigid, inflexible preconceptions.
  • Poor understanding of photographic equipment and post-processing.

Or both!

On this occasion, I was expecting a rather heavy, flat-ish light scenario; but was greeted by the exact opposite.

But instead of getting ‘stroppy about it’, experience and knowledge allow me to change my expectation, and come up with a new ‘finished image previsualization’ on the fly so to speak.

image previsualization

Instead of the futility of trying to produce my original idea – which would never work out – I simply change my image previsualization, based on what’s in front of me.

It’s then up to me to identify what I need to do in order to bring this new idea to fruition.

The capture workflow for both ‘anticipated’ and ‘reality’ would involve bracketing due to excessive subject brightness range, but there the similarity ends.

The ‘anticipated’ capture workflow would only require perhaps 3 or 4 shots – one for the highlights, and the rest for the mid tones and shadow detail.

But the ‘reality’ capture workflow is very different.  The scene has massive contrast and the image looks like crap BECAUSE of that excessive contrast. Exposing for the brightest highlights gives us a very dark image:

image previsualization

But I know that the contrast can be reduced in post to give me this:

image previsualization

So, while I’m shooting I can previz in my head what the image I’ve shot will look like in post.

This then allows me to capture the basic bracket of shots to capture all my shadow and mid tone detail.

If you watch the video, you’ll see that I only use TWO shots from the bracket sequence to produce the basic exposure blend – and they are basically 5 stops apart. The other shots I use are just for patching blown highlights.

Because the clouds are moving, the sun is in and out like a yo-yo.  Obviously, when it’s fully uncovered, it will flare across the lens.  But when it is partially to fully covered, I’m doing shot after shot to try and get the best exposures of the reflected highlights in the water.

By shooting through a polarizer AND a 6 stop ND, I’m getting relatively smooth water in all these shots – with the added bonus of blurring out the damn canoeists!

And it’s the ‘washed out colour, low contrast previsualization’ of the finished image that is driving me to take all the shots – I’m gathering enough pixel data to enable me to create the finished image without too much effort in Lightroom or Photoshop.

Anyway, go and watch the video as it will give you a much better idea of what I’m talking about!

But remember, always take your time and try reappraise what’s in front of you when the lighting conditions differ from what you were expecting.  You will often be amazed at the awesome images you can ‘pull’ from what ostensibly appears to be a right-off situation.

 

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Lightroom CC2015.5.1 Update

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Lightroom CC2015.5.1

Lightroom CC2015.5.1 and Lightroom 6.5.1 UPDATE

Adobe have just released a new update for Lightroom CC2015 & Lightroom 6.

This update is of particular relevance to Nikon users who were suffering with the missing lens data information I posted about previously.

The new update is touted as fixing the problem, and it certainly does so for new imports from what I can see.  But for images that are already in your catalogue and are showing the “unknown lens” tag in your metadata and filter bar, you are going to need to do a bit of extra work!

Adding the update does NOT fix the existing issue!  WTF……….??

So here is how to FIX the problem.

  1. Open your catalogue Library Module in Lightroom CC2015.5.1 or 6.5.1
  2. Click on All Photographs in your Catalogue Panel (top left below Navigator)
  3. Hit the backslash ( \ ) key to bring up your filter bar
  4. Select All Dates together with All Cameras & All Lenses, and select the Unknown Lens category

Lightroom CC2015.5.1

  • Head up to the contextual menu and go Select All – all cells should now be highlighted

Lightroom CC2015.5.1

  • Go to Metadata in the contextual menu and select Save Metadata to Files

Lightroom CC2015.5.1

  • Go back to Metadata in the contextual menu and select Read Metadata from Files

Once you click READ you will see your images sequentially vanish from the selected UNKNOWN LENS view as Lightroom updates its metadata records.

HOWEVER – this does NOT work with ANY Virtual Copies, Proof Copies or video files that you have within said catalogue.

To correct these, you have to make new virtual copies, then select the old ones and copy all Develop Settings from the old ones to the new ones! And don’t ask me what you do with video files because I can’t work that one out.

What a bloody carve-up!

If you want the official instructions from Adobe they are HERE

Creative Cloud subscribers should also take the new Photoshop CC 2015 update – this adds camera support and fixes to CameraRAW.

On a lighter note the new update has also added new camera support for the Pentax K1 and Sony DSCRX10M3

Colour in Photoshop

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Colour in Photoshop.

Understanding colour inside Photoshop is riddled with confusion for the majority of users.  This is due to the perpetual misuse of certain words and terms.  Adobe themselves use incorrect terminology – which doesn’t help!

The aim of this post is to understand the attributes or properties of colour inside the Photoshop environment – “…is that right Andy?”  “Yeh, it is!”

So, the first colour attribute we’re going to look at is HUE:

Understanding Colour in Photoshop. A colour wheel showing point-sampled HUES (colours) at 30 degree increments.

A colour wheel showing point-sampled HUES (colours) at 30 degree increments.

HUE can be construed as meaning ‘colour’ – or color for the benefit of our American friends “come on guys, learn to spell – you’ve had long enough!”

The colour wheel begins at 0 degrees with pure Red (255,0,0 in 8bit RGB terms), and moves clockwise through all the HUES/colours to end up back at pure Red – simple!

Understanding Colour in Photoshop.

Above, we can see samples of primary red and secondary yellow together with their respective HUE degree values which are Red 0 degrees and Yellow 60 degrees.  You can also see that the colour channel values for Red are 255,0,0 and Yellow 255,255,0.  This shows that Yellow is a mix of Red light and Green light in equal proportions.

I told you it was easy!

Inside Photoshop the colour wheel starts and ends at 180 degrees CYAN, and is flattened out into a horizontal bar as in the Hue/Saturation adjustment:

Understanding Colour in Photoshop.

Overall, there is no ambiguity over the meaning or terminology HUE; it is what it is, and it is usually taken as meaning ‘what colour’ something is.

The same can be said for the next attribute of colour – SATURATION.

Or can it?

How do we define saturation?

Understanding Colour in Photoshop. Two different SATURATION values (100% & 50%) of the same HUE.

Two different SATURATION values (100% & 50%) of the same HUE.

Above we can see two different saturation values for the same HUE (0 degrees Hue, 100% and 50% Saturation). I suppose the burning question is, do we have two different ‘colours’?

As photographers we mainly work with additive colour; that is we add Red, Green and Blue coloured light to black in order to attain white.  But in the world of painting for instance, subtractive colour is used; pigments are overlaid on white (thus subtracting white) to make black.  Printing uses the same model – CMY+K inks overlaid on ‘white’ paper …..mmm see here

If we take a particular ‘colour’ of paint and we mix it with BLACK we have a different SHADE of the same colour.  If we instead add WHITE we end up with what’s called a TINT of the same colour; and if add grey to the original paint we arrive at a different TONE of the same colour.

Let’s look at that 50% saturated Red again:

Understanding Colour in Photoshop. Hue Red 0 degrees with 50% saturation.

Hue Red 0 degrees with 50% saturation.

We’ve basically added 128 Green and 128 Blue to 255 Red. Have we kept the same HUE – yes we have.

Is it the same colour? Be honest – you don’t know do you!

The answer is NO – they are two different ‘colours’, and the hexadecimal codes prove it – those are the hash-tag values ff0000 and ff8080.  But in our world of additive colour we should only think of the word ‘colour’ as a generalisation because it is somewhat ambiguous and imprecise.

But we can quantify the SATURATION of a HUE – so we’re all good up to this point!

So we beaver away in Photoshop in the additive RGB colour mode, but what you might not realise is that we are working in a colour model within that mode, and quite frankly this is where the whole chebang turns to pooh for a lot of folk.

There are basically two colour models for dare I use the word ‘normal’, photography work; HSB (also known as HSV) and HSL, and both are cylindrical co-ordinate colour models:

Understanding Colour in Photoshop. HSB (HSV) and HSL colour models for additive RGB.

HSB (HSV) and HSL colour models for additive RGB.

Without knowing one single thing about either, you can tell they are different just by looking at them.

All Photoshop default colour picker referencing is HSB – that is Hue, Saturation & Brightness; with equivalent RGB, Lab, CMYK  hexadecimal values:

Understanding Colour in Photoshop.

But in the Hue/Sat adjustment for example, we see the adjustments are HSL:

Understanding Colour in Photoshop.

The HSL model references colour in terms of Hue, Saturation & Lightness – not flaming LUMINOSITY as so many people wrongly think!

And it’s that word luminosity that’s the single largest purveyor of confusion and misunderstanding – luminosity masking, luminosity blending mode are both terms that I and oh so many others use – and we’re all wrong.

I have an excuse – I know everything, but I have to use the wrong terminology otherwise no one else knows what I’m talking about!!!!!!!!!  Plausible story and I’m sticking to it your honour………

Anyway, within Photoshop, HSB is used to select colours, and HSL is used to change them.

The reason for this is somewhat obvious when you take a close look at the two models again:

HSB (HSV) and HSL colour models for additive RGB.

HSB (HSV) and HSL colour models for additive RGB. (V stands for Value = B in HSB).

In the HSB model look where the “whiteness” information is; it’s radial, and bound up in the ‘S’ saturation co-ordinate.  But the “blackness” information is vertical, on the ‘B’ brightness co-ordinate.  This great when we want to pick/select/reference a colour.

But surely it would be more beneficial for the “whiteness” and “blackness” information to be attached to the axis or dimension, especially when we need to increase or decrease that “white” or “black” co-ordinate value in processing.

So within the two models the ‘H’ hue co-ordinates are pretty much the same, but the ‘S’ saturation co-ordinates are different.

So this leaves us with that most perennial of questions – what is the difference between Brightness and Lightness?

Firstly, there is a massive visual difference between the Brightness and Lightness  information contained within an image as you will see now:

Understanding Colour in Photoshop. The 'Brightness' channel of HSB.

The ‘Brightness’ channel of HSB.

Understanding Colour in Photoshop. The 'L' channel of HSL

The ‘L’ channel of HSL

Straight off the bat you can see that there is far more “whites detail” information contained in the ‘L’ lightness map of the image than in the brightness map.  Couple that with the fact that Lightness controls both black and white values for every pixel in your image – and you should now be able to comprehend the difference between Lightness and Brightness, and so be better at understanding colour inside Photoshop.

We’ll always use the highly bastardised terms like luminosity, luminance etc – but please be aware that you may be using them to describe something to which they DO NOT APPLY.

Luminosity is a measure of the magnitude of a light source – typically stars; but could loosely be applied to the lumens output power of any light source.  Luminance is a measure of the reflected light from a subject being illuminated by a light source; and varies with distance from said light source – a la the inverse square law etc.

Either way, neither of them have got anything to do with the pixel values of an image inside Photoshop!

But LIGHTNESS certainly does.

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Meta Data,Exif & IPTC Data & Photoshop

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Meta data,Exif Data, IPTC Data & Photoshop

Now you’ve read “meta data” in the title of this post, be honest; you’ve ‘switched off’ and are tempted to close the browser window aren’t you?  Feel free if you’re so inclined – but you know I’ve always got a reason for doing a post; and I don’t do ’em for my own bloody health and well-being!

Meta Data is the blanket term for EXIF plus IPTC data; and don’t forget, your COPYRIGHT data is indeed IPTC data, and therefore META DATA.

Exif Data (Exchange Image File Format) and IPTC Data (International Press Telecommunications Council) data are CRUCIAL to your images; especially the IPTC side of the equation.  Without it your images, if uploaded anywhere on the internet, are bobbing around like corks in the ocean – lost in a vast sea of other images, and with nothing anchoring them to ANY search term, image or data category.

Titles, keywords and captions are critical to an images ability to be found on the old interweb thingy.

“But Andy, I don’t want my images to be found, in case they get stolen by some unscrupulous neerdowell…”  Well sell your camera and take up golf…..

And if you want to make money from your images then Titles, Captions and Keywords are “de rigour” and no agency or PoD site will list your image in its database without said data.

“But I don’t want to make money out of my images Andy…..”  Bullshit! If I hear that one more time I’ll end up beating someone to death!  If someone is daft enough to offer you £500 or more for one of your images then OF COURSE you’ll sell it – “thank you for your kind offer but I won’t take money for my images – have it for free….” yeah, right!

Lightroom has for years given you access to a searchable image database, and keyword searches are brilliant for allowing you to find a handful of images from within a catalogue of thousands.

So, there you are then, multiple reasons why you should use the IPTC data fields attached to your images; and make that data stick to your images like glue in all their iterations.

You may be glad to know that this isn’t a “how to” post about key wording!  But it IS a post about Meta data integrity, and how Photoshop can destroy that integrity by stripping it from your images if you export JPGs.

Meta Data Stripping

Meta data stripping is something PARANOID people do!  The main object of their paranoia is the “geo-tag”. Take a shot with your phone or certain point-and-shoot cameras and the GPS position of the camera is embedded in the image meta data. The shot you just took of the wife relaxing in the new hot-tub you’ve had installed ends up on Facebook – replete with the GPS co-ordinates for your house!  Not good if your FB page contains evidence of the £35K worth of Canon or Nikon gear you have.

Now you can get an app for your phone that will remove this tag for you.  And Lightroom will allow you to find and delete any geo-tags, which are classed as EXIF data.

So we do not need to strip ALL meta data from an image in order to NOT give away an “X marks the spot” treasure map!

I had a guy come here for a 1to1 training day a couple of years ago who lived in the middle of Toxteth – he was a firm believer in stripping all meta data from his Flickr images; and yet he had “I am Nikon” stickers in his car window, and an “I am Nikon” tee-shirt and fleece on – go figure!

And don’t forget, most dSLR cameras are NOT GPS-capable without the purchase of a GPS “gizmo” the costs a fortune and plugs in to the side of the camera.

A sensible person completes all relevant IPTC data fields for the RAW file in Lightroom BEFORE they start spawning TIFFS and JPGs from it; that way you only have to do the tedious job once.  That data contains KEYWORDS, TITLE, CAPTION and your COPYRIGHT details.

If we export images directly from our Lightroom catalogue we can produce JPGs of any size that have all the necessary IPTC data (meta data) embedded in them:

Lightroom Export Dialogue showing meta data export options.

Lightroom Export Dialogue showing meta data export options.

Even if we take the processed RAW file into Photoshop to enhance it further, once we save it in Photoshop the new image will appear back in our Lightroom catalogue, and we can follow the same export procedure.

HOWEVER: if we send the image from Lightroom to Photoshop AND make Photoshop create a new jpg – as per the EXPORT command:

Photoshop "Export As" option

Photoshop “Export As” option

Photoshop CC 2015 "Export As" dialogue - note default meta data removal.

Photoshop CC 2015 “Export As” dialogue – note default meta data removal.

The latest incarnation of Photoshop CC 2015 allows you to make multiple export iterations in various file formats and sizes ALL AT THE SAME TIME – which is brilliant – if only it wouldn’t strip the meta data!  Left set to the defaults you end up with images devoid of anything, even copyright details; or you can elect to keep “copyright & contact” data.  Either way, any and all keywords, titles and captions are removed on export together with all camera EXIF.

Just remember this folks – data needs to be clear, concise and consistent between various iterations of the same image – otherwise your image library will turn to rat shit in a heart beat.

The process is often referred to as Digital Asset Management or DAM for short – and your Lightroom catalogue is the embodiment of simple,clean and effective DAM.  And Photoshop is CRAP at DAM.  Using the ‘SAVE’ or ‘SAVE AS’ commands in Photoshop WILL preserve all your meta data; indeed the SAVE command is the standard workflow to put the image back into your Lightroom catalogue next to the RAW file it was spawned from.

Use your IPTC data options wisely, and irrespective of where you finish your image processing – Lightroom or Photoshop – always use Lightroom to export your images to the outside world.

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Photoshop Colour Range Selection Tool

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Photoshop Basics: Colour Range Tool

The Photoshop Colour Range Selection Tool used to isolate part of an image based on colour.

The Photoshop Colour Range Selection Tool used to isolate part of an image based on colour.

I’ve just uploaded a new video to my YouTube channel:

Click this link if you are viewing this post in your email

OK, so I’ve made a tentative start on my new Photoshop video tutorials and I thought I’d upload this Colour Range Selection Tool Basics one to my Tube of Me channel – just so that everyone can see what the Fuzziness, Localised Colour Clusters and Range “do-hickies” actually do for your workflow process!

The colour range selection tool can be used for many different purposes within Photoshop where you want to make a selection based on Colour/Hue as opposed to a selection based on luminosity.

In this video I use it to effect a colour change to a specific object within an image; but in the previous video post I used it to ‘remove’ a black background.

But both cases amount to the same thing if you think about it logically – it’s just a way of ISOLATING pixels in an image based on their colour range.

Overall, this is a bit of a “quick ‘n dirty” way of doing the job, and I could do a little extra brush work inside the mask to tidy things up that little bit more!

But now you know how the tool itself works.

A purer way of changing localised colour involves a very different method – see these other videos on my channel:

 

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Simple Masking in Photoshop

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Simple Masking in Photoshop – The Liquid Chocolate Shots

Masking in Photoshop is what the software was built for, and yet so many Photoshop users are unfamiliar or just downright confused by the concept that they never use the technique.

Mask mastery will transform the way you work with Photoshop!

Take these shots for instance:

Milk and Liquid Chocolate Splash

Liquid Milk and White Chocolate splash together in an abstract isolated on white background

Wanting a shot to look like liquid chocolate and cream on a black or white background is all well and good, but producing it can be either as simple or hard as you care to make it.

Trying to get a pure white background ‘in camera’ is problematic to say the least, and chucking hot melted chocolate around if fraught with its own set of problems!

Shooting on a dark or black background is easier because it demands LESS lighting.

Masking in Photoshop will allow us to isolate the subject and switch out the background.

Now for the ‘chocolate bit’ – we could substitute it with brown emulsion paint – but have you seen the bloody price of it?!

Cheap trade white emulsion comes by the gallon at less than the price of a litre of the right coloured paint; and masking in Photoshop + a flat colour layer with a clipping mask put in the right blend mode will turn white paint into liquid chocolate every time!

A tweak with the Greg Benz Lumenzia plugin will finish the shot in Photoshop:

SSChocA final tweak in Lightroom and the whole process takes from the RAW shot on the left to the finished image on the right.

The key to a good mask in Photoshop is ALWAYS good, accurate pixel selection, and you’d be surprised just how simple it is.

Watch the video on my YouTube channel; I use the Colour Range tool to make a simple selection of the background, and a quick adjustment of the mask edge Smart Radius and Edge Contrast in order to obtain the perfect Photoshop mask for the job:

Like everything else in digital photography, when you know what you can do in post processing, it changes the way you shoot – hence I know I can make the shot with white paint on a black background!

Useful Links:

Greg B’s Lumenzia Plugin for Photoshop – get it HERE – you can’t afford NOT to have it in your arsenal of Photoshop tools.

UPDATE June 2018: Greg Benz (the plugin author) has launched a comprehensive Lumenzia training course – see my post here for more information.

Masking in Photoshop – you mustn’t let the concept frighten or intimidate you!  It’s critical that you understand it if you want to get the very best from your images; and it’s a vast subject simply because there are many types of mask, and even more ways by which to go about producing them.

It’s a topic that no one ever stops learning about – nope, not even yours truly! But in order to explore it to the full you need to understand all the basic concepts AND how to cut through all the bullshit that pervades the internet about it – stick with me on this folks and hang on for the ride!

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Night Sky Imaging

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Night Sky Photography – A Brief Introduction

I really get a massive buzz from photographing the night sky – PROPERLY.

By properly I mean using your equipment to the best of its ability, and using correct techniques in terms of both ‘shooting’ and post processing.

The majority of images within the vast plethora of night sky images on Google etc, and methods described, are to be frank PANTS!

Those 800 pixel long-edge jpegs hide a multitude of shooting and processing sins – such as HUGE amounts of sensor noise and the biggest sin of all – elongated stars.

Top quality full resolution imagery of the night sky demands pin-prick stars, not trails that look like blown out sausages – unless of course, you are wanting them for visual effect.

Pin sharp stars require extremely precise MANUAL FOCUS in conjunction with a shutter speed that is short enough to arrest the perceived movement of the night sky across the cameras field of view.

They also demand that the lens is ‘shot’ pretty much wide open in terms of aperture – this allows the sensor to ‘see and gather’ as many photons of light from each point-source (star) in the night sky.

So we are in the situation where we have to use manual focus and exposure with f2.8 as an approximate working aperture – and high ISO values, because of the demand for a relatively fast shutter speed.

And when it comes to our shutter speed the much-vaunted ‘500 Rule’ needs to be consigned to the waste bin – it’s just not a good enough standard to work to, especially considering modern high megapixel count sensors such as Nikon’s D800E/D810/D810A and Canons 5DS.

Leaving the shutter open for just 10 seconds using a 14mm lens will elongate stars EVER SO SLIGHTLY – so the ‘500 Rule’ speed of 500/14 = 35.71 seconds is just going to make a total hash of things.

In the shot below; a crop from the image top left; I’ve used a 10 second exposure, but in preference I’ll use 5 seconds if I can get away with it:

Nikon D800E,14-24 f2.8@14mm,10 seconds exposure,f2.8,ISO 6400 Full Resolution Crop

Nikon D800E,14-24 f2.8@14mm,10 seconds exposure,f2.8,ISO 6400
RAW, Unprocessed, Full Resolution Crop

WOW….look at all that noise…well, it’s not going to be there for long folks; and NO, I won’t make it vanish with any Noise Reduction functions or plugins either!

6 consecutive frames put through Starry Landscape Stacker

5 consecutive frames put through Starry Landscape Stacker – now we have something we can work with!

Download Starry Landscape Stacker from the App Store:
icon175x175

Huge amounts of ‘noise’ can be eradicated using Median Stacking within Photoshop, but Mac users can circumnavigate the ‘agro’ of layer alignment and layer masking by using this great ‘app’ Starry Landscape Stacker – which does all the ‘heavy lifting’ for you.  Click the link above to download it from the App Store.  Just ignore any daft iTunes pop-ups and click ‘View in Mac App Store’!

I have a demonstration of Median Stacking on my YouTube channel:

This video is best viewed on YouTube in full screen mode.

In a manner of speaking, the ‘shooting aspect’ of Milky Way/Night Sky/Wide-field Astro is pretty straight forward.  You are working in between some very hard constraints with little margin for error.

  • The Earths rotation makes the stars track across our frame – so this dictates our shutter speed for any given focal length of lens – shorter focal length = longer shutter speed.
  • Sensor Megapixel count – more megs = shorter shutter speed.
  • We NEED to shoot with a ‘wide open’ aperture, so our ISO speed takes over as our general exposure control.
  • Focusing – this always seems to be the big ‘sticking point’ for most folk – and despite what you read to the contrary, you can’t reliably use the ‘hyperfocal’ method with wide open apertures – it especially will not work with wide-angle zoom lenses!
  • The Earths ‘seasonal tilt’ dictates what we can and can’t see from a particular latitude; and in conjunction with time of day, dictates the direction and orientation of a particular astral object such as the Milky Way.
  • Light pollution can mask even the cameras ability to record all the stars, and it effects the overall scene luminance level.
  • The position and phase of the moon – a full moon frequently throws far too much light into the entire sky – my advice is to stay at home!
  • A moon in between its last quarter and new moon is frequently diagonally opposite the Milky Way, and can be useful for illuminating your foreground.

And there are quite a few other considerations to take into account, like dew point and relative humidity – and of course, the bloody clouds!

The point I’m trying to make is that these shots take PLANNING.

Using applications and utilities like Stellarium and Photographers Ephemeris in conjunction with Google Earth has always been a great way of planning shots.  But for me, the best planning aid is Photopills – especially because of its augmented reality feature.  This allows you to pre-visualise your shot from your current location, and it will compute the dates and times that the shot is ‘on’.

Download Photopills from the App Store:

Photopills400x400bb

But it won’t stop the clouds from rolling in!

Even with the very best planning the weather conditions can ruin the whole thing!

I’m hoping that before the end of the year I’ll have a full training video finished about shooting perfect ‘wide field astro’ images – it’ll cover planning as well as BOTH shooting AND processing.

I will show you how to:

  • Effectively use Google Earth in conjunction with Stellarium and Photopills for forward planning.
  • The easiest way to ensure perfect focus on those stars – every time.
  • How to shoot for improved foreground.
  • When, and when NOT to deploy LONG EXPOSURE noise reduction in camera – black frame shooting.
  • How to process RAW files in Lightroom for correct colour balance.
  • How to properly use both Median Stacking in Photoshop and Starry Landscape Stacker to reduce ISO noise.
  • And much more!

One really useful FREE facility on the net is the Light Pollution Map website – I suggest using the latest 2015 VIIRIS overlay and the Bing Map Hybrid mode in order to get a rough idea of your foreground and the background light pollution effecting your chosen location.

Don’t forget – if you shoot vertical (portrait?) with a 14mm lens, the top part of the frame can be slightly behind you!

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Photoshop Save for Web

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Save for Web in Photoshop CC – where the Chuff has it gone?

“Who’s moved my freakin’ cheese?”

Adobe have moved it……..

For years Photoshop has always offered the same ‘Save for Web’ or ‘Save for Web & Devices’ option and dialogue box:

save for web,Photoshop CC 2015,colour management,save for web and devices,export,quick export as JPG,export as,export prferences,Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe,

The traditional route to the ‘Save for Web’ dialogue in all versions of Photoshop prior to CC 2015.

But Adobe have embarked on a cheese-moving exercise with CC 2015 and moved ‘save for web’ out of the traditional navigation pathway:

save for web,Photoshop CC 2015,colour management,save for web and devices,export,quick export as JPG,export as,export prferences,Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe

Adobe have ‘moved your cheese’ to here, though the dialogue and options are the same.

If we take a closer look at that new pathway:

save for web,Photoshop CC 2015,colour management,save for web and devices,export,quick export as JPG,export as,export prferences,Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe

…we see that wonderful Adobe term ‘Legacy’ – which secretly means crap, shite, old fashioned, out dated, sub standard and scheduled for abandonment and/or termination.

‘THEY’ don’t want you to use it!

I have no idea why they have done this, though there are plenty of excuses being posted by Adobe on the net.  But what is interesting is this page HERE and more to the point this small ‘after thought’:

save for web,Photoshop CC 2015,colour management,save for web and devices,export,quick export as JPG,export as,export prferences,Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe

That sounds really clever – especially the bit about ‘may be’……. let’s chuck colour management out the freakin’ window and be done!

So if we don’t use the ‘legacy’ option of save for web, let’s see what happens.  Here’s our image, in the ProPhotoRGB colour space open in Photoshop CC 2015:

save for web,Photoshop CC 2015,colour management,save for web and devices,export,quick export as JPG,export as,export prferences,Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe

So let’s try the Export>Quick Export as JPG option and bring the result back into Photoshop:

save for web,Photoshop CC 2015,colour management,save for web and devices,export,quick export as JPG,export as,export prferences,Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe

Straight away we can see that the jpg is NOT tagged with a colour space, but it looks fine inside the Photoshop CC 2105 work space:

save for web,Photoshop CC 2015,colour management,save for web and devices,export,quick export as JPG,export as,export prferences,Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe

“Perfect” – yay!…………NOT!

Let’s open in with an internet browser……

save for web,Photoshop CC 2015,colour management,save for web and devices,export,quick export as JPG,export as,export prferences,Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe

Whoopsy – doopsy…!  Looks like a severe colour management problem is happening somewhere……..but Adobe did tell us:

SFW4

Might the Export Preferences help us:

save for web,Photoshop CC 2015,colour management,save for web and devices,export,quick export as JPG,export as,export prferences,Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe

In a word……..NO

Let’s try Export>Export As:

save for web,Photoshop CC 2015,colour management,save for web and devices,export,quick export as JPG,export as,export prferences,Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe

Oh Hell No!

If we open the original image in Photoshop CC 2015 in the ProPhotoRGB colour space and then go Edit>Convert to Profile and select sRGB; then select Export>Quick Export as JPG, the resulting image will look fine in a browser.  But it will still be ‘untagged’ with any colour space – which is never a good idea.

And if you’ve captioned and key worded the image then all that hard work is lost too.

So if you must make your web jpeg images via Photoshop you will only achieve a quick and accurate work flow by using the Save for Web (Legacy) option.  That way you’ll have a correctly ‘tagged’ and converted image complete with all your IPTC key words, caption and title.

Of course you could adopt the same work flow as me, and always export as jpeg out of Lightroom; thus avoiding this mess entirely.

I seriously don’t know what the devil Adobe are thinking of here, and doubtless there is or will be a work around for the problem, but whatever it is it’ll be more work for the photographer.

Adobe – if it ain’t broke then don’t fix it !!

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