More About Photoshop

Sunday, February 26, 2012

More About Photoshop

(Getting to be Familiar with Some of the Features)

     I get complimented on my lighting a lot. Since I have been a photographer from the early 1970's, I still maintain the working habits  of a professional photographer from the film era. What I mean by that, is being able to know that "what you see does not equal what you get". Even in the digital era, the same principle holds true. By the way, I'm talking exclusively about lighting for now!

     The human eye can see a wider range of tones from light to dark, whereupon film or the CCD capture of a digital camera cannot. This is where all those features of image-editing software, including Photoshop come in to help out a lot.

    I usually use 2 lights when I take my toy photos. One light is called the "main", and it is the stronger and brighter one. It sets the direction, and mood of the photo. The second less-powerful (lower strength) light is called the "fill light", and it adds light to all of the dark areas that the main light does not illuminate. What you do is reduce the intensity of the light by using your "barn doors" or by using "neutral density" filters over the light. These are simply heat-resistant clear plastic (grey or called "neutral grey" that act like sunglasses. They reduce the intensity of light by anywhere form 1-4 f-stops of light.

   I also use small shiny-silver reflectors, white reflectors, or matte-silver reflectors to add small "highlights" to different parts of the toy and to add detail where the fill light cannot.

  1 More thing. When you place a fill light, it's important for it to be weaker that the main light, and also to be positioned so that it does not produce a second shadow. I mentioned this in previous instalments, but the reason is that since we have 1 sun which produces 1 shadow, it would be totally impossible to have 2 shadows in a scene or tabletop photo- it just wouldn't be "real" lighting.

Part I

Get the Lighting Right

Step 1:

1 light in the front to light the train

1 light for the background

The light in the back is TOO  BRIGHT!

Step 2:

Better now. The light  in the back is lower and there is a smaller area being lit.

However, the train is too 2-D (2 dimensional) or flat!

Step 3:

I turned the train at an angle for more depth (3-D).

I raised the background light to occupy a bigger portion.

I got a bit "fancy" with the light by aiming a small reflector on to the

"CN" logo . Being Canadian, 

you just got to be supportive of a Canadian Company-eh!

Step 4:

I decided to leave the "fancy lighting" out.

Part 2

Photoshop or any other Image-Editing Software

Step 1:

Make the image sharper. It's just a bit "soft-focused"

 Step 2:

The detail in the dark areas (shadows) is lost

Use the Shadows/Highlights command to try and lighten up the shadow areas.

Correspondingly, if the bright area were too bright and you had "hot spots", you could make then them less bright by using the highlights slider.

I The default amount of showing better shadow detail is 35%

That usually in NOT ENOUGH!

Step 3:

Adjust the shadow detail higher.

In this case I made it 92%

 Step 4:

Correct any off-colour problems

My photo lights are usually "warm", meaning that my photos come out a bit reddish.

I should so a "custom colour" on my camera, but I don't.

The Auto-Color Result

Personally, I find it is always too cold (too much blue or cyan), both of which are cold colours".

I therefore like to adjust the off-colour personally.

 A good idea is to make a duplicate copy of the image that you're working on.

In this way, it's easier to compare, rather than go back and forth with the history menu to see the changes.

 Here is a window capture of the default menu with the 3 sets opposite colours

I've removed 17 units of red (warm) or 

conversely (opposite), I've added 10 units of cyan (cold 

 Here is a close-up of the the before and after effects.

The corrected version might be a bit too cold in colour, so I could maybe remove only 12-14 units of red, instead of 27 above.

 The Remaining Railroad Cars

I try to keep the dialogue simple, and I know that I explain things well. It's a great resource for learning, but right now, my old antique toy blog is being read by 5x as many people. I guess Photoshop is too big a topic with too much competition in the blog world to expect more readers at this point. So if you know anyone who might be interested in this blog, please do me a favour and ask them to have a peek.

So thanks for dropping by, 

and have a pleasant remainder of the morning, afternoon, or evening wherever you may be.