Mark S. Johnson Photography » Photoshop Workbench

Photoshop Workbench 238: Blending a Soft Edge with a Background

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 06:00:50 +0000

Dennis Heckman was a participant in my recent Botanical Dreaming workshop in Boulder, CO. During a live Photoshop evaluation, Dennis inquired about the best way to replace the hazy upper left corner of this calla lily image with a more attractive blue to black gradient. Since this is a shallow focus f/2.8 portrait, we needed to devise a plan that would allow us to blend the new background with the flower’s soft edge. Here’s what we came up with.

Photoshop Workbench 237: Fusing the Old and New

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 06:00:53 +0000

I recently came across a wonderful Dave Cross tutorial that illustrated how to fuse an old photo with a new one. Dave’s tutorial idea was inspired by a visit to a site called Abduzeedo.com. On the site, there are images of people holding old photos in front of the locations where they were originally captured many years before. The result is a fascinating “then-and-now” view. If you don’t have access to old photos, or you don’t have time to reproduce this process, here is a way to simulate this “old and new” look using Photoshop. Many thanks to Christian Meermann for his submission to today’s Workbench.

Photoshop Workbench 236: Canon Multiple-Exposure Script

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 06:00:06 +0000

The ability to capture multiple exposures broadens the universe of creative possibilities. Most Nikon cameras possess a multiple-exposure feature. With this feature, it’s possible in-camera to create soft-glow montages, multi-image montages, multiple-exposure Monets, multiple-exposure tilts, and multiple-exposure rotate and zoom montages. Unfortunately, Canon cameras don’t possess a multiple-exposure feature, but don’t despair, I have good news. Uwe Steinmueller, editor of the Outback Photo website, authored a marvelous free Photoshop script that makes it extremely easy for Canon users to combine exposures in Photoshop. Although it’s not possible to preview these images on the camera’s LCD in the field, this script is the next best thing.

To begin the process, Canon users must capture a series of individual exposures with the intention of blending them into one using Uwe’s script. For example, if your goal is to create a multiple-exposure Monet appearance, capture between 2 and 10 individual frames where you move the camera in minuscule amounts between each frame. Here’s an example of the individual frames.

Then, when you return to your computer, go to http://handbook.outbackphoto.com/section_photo_tuning_filters/index.html and scroll to the bottom of the page. Locate the Free Scripts header and download the “DOP_LayerOpacityBlending” script.

Close Photoshop.

The downloaded script appears as a folder. Open the folder and copy the “DOP_LayerStackOpacityBlending.jsx” and “DOP_LayerStackOpacityBlending_Integrated.jsx” files into the Photoshop/Presets/Scripts folder. The Mac path is Applications/Adobe Photoshop/Presets/Scripts. On a PC, the path is C::/Program Files/Adobe/Photoshop/Presets/Scripts.  Open Photoshop.

Choose File>Scripts>DOP_LayerStackOpacityBlending_Integrated.

In the Load Layers dialog, click the Browse button. Locate the individually exposed frames and Shift-click to select the entire range. Press Open. Click OK to launch the script.

When it is done, you will see an image that looks just as though you created an in-camera multiple exposure.

In most cases, you can significantly improve the appearance by adding a Curves adjustment layer to increase contrast.

If you’re interested in learning more about multiple-exposure techniques, I teach these techniques in many of my workshops, including those that I co-teach with Charles Needle and Bobbie Turner, and my weeklong RMSP Boulder workshop. Visit my workshops page to find out more.

Photoshop Workbench 235: Taking Advantage of Symmetry When Retouching

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 06:00:56 +0000

In a live Photoshop session during a recent RMSP workshop, Nancy Ortowski submitted this lovely image of the Boulder Theater. Nancy wanted to know if it’s possible to remove the lamp post from the right side of the scene. Normally, this would present a significant retouching challenge, but due to the theater’s symmetry, we were able to graft almost painlessly from one side of the theater to the other. Here’s what we leaned…

Photoshop Workbench 234: Game Changing Edits in Adobe Camera Raw 6.1

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 06:00:31 +0000

In today’s Workbench, we’ll use Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) 6.1’s powerful inventory of features to breath life into an already stunning image submitted by Bev Robertson. If you don’t have ACR 6.1, you’ll first need to upgrade to Photoshop CS5, then you can download 6.1 for free by opening Bridge and choosing Help>Updates.

Since Bev’s image is a TIFF, our first step is to enable ACR to open TIFF files. To accomplish this, we’ll choose Adobe Bridge CS5>Camera Raw Preferences (PC: Edit>Camera Raw Preferences). At the base of the dialog in the JPEG and TIFF Handling section, change the TIFF pull-down to Automatically open TIFFs with settings and press OK. Now, in Bridge’s Content panel, Control-click (PC: Right-click) on the Tiff thumbnail and choose Open in Camera Raw from the pop-up menu.

Due to several big improvements, such as significantly improved noise reduction, better post-crop vignetting, and enhanced image quality, ACR is now officially part of my HDR workflow. When I release my HDR eBook later this summer, I’ll explain why. Since our goal in this Workbench is to improve Bev’s image, we’ll only visit panels and tools that will help us achieve our goal. Some of the fun things we’ll encounter include noise reduction, targeted saturation adjustments, post-crop vignetting, and local corrections using the Adjustment Brush.