10 Photoshop Interface Features you Didn’t Know Existed
Here it is, short and sweet. 10 techniques for working in Photoshop that you may not know existed:
1. Open a File without using the Menus
Simple. Double click the grey background area of the Photoshop window and the File Open dialog appears - magic!?
2. If grey is Dull, Black is Wonderful and any Color is Better!
To change the grey inside an image window from grey to black (or a color of your choice), Control + Right Click (Command + Right Click on the Mac) on the area surrounding the image and select a color.
3. Sample Foreground and Background Colors
Instead of clicking on the foreground or background swatch to change the color to one sampled from the image, click the Eyedropper tool and click to sample a foreground color - hold Alt (Option on the Mac) to sample a new background color.
4. Position a Shape or Selection
When you’re drawing a shape or selection and the shape is fine but the position is wrong, keep hold of the mouse button and hold the spacebar as you move the shape or selection into the desired position. Let go the spacebar and continue to make your shape.
5. Get a Selection Back
If you’ve lost your selection, press Ctrl + Shift + D (Command + Shift + D on the Mac) to get it back. Ctrl + D (Command + D on the Mac) deselects the selection.
6. Hide and Keep
If the selection marquee is getting in your way, Ctrl + H (Command + H on the Mac) will hide the selection but still leave it in place. Don’t forget to turn it back on or you might wonder why things aren’t working the way you expect them to work.
7. See what you’re Working On
This is my all time biggest time saver! When you drag a large layer from one document to another you can view the entire layer and its sizing handles by Ctrl + Click (Command + Click on the Mac) on the layer thumbnail to select it. Then press Ctrl + T (Command + T on the Mac) to view the transform handles and Ctrl + 0 (zero) (or Command + 0 on the Mac) to shrink the image so the sizing handles are all visible.
8. Stack or line up Palettes
To stack palettes side by side in the same dialog, drag one palette over the others until a blue line appears around it and let go. To stack palettes one on top of the other down the screen, drag and drop one palette onto the bar just above another palette’s name.
9. No dialog Reset button? Yes there is!
You can reset most Photoshop dialogs to their original settings or at least some version of the original settings by holding the Alt key (Option on the Mac) when inside the dialog - when you do this, the Cancel button turns into a Reset button.
10. May all your Ellipses turn into Circles
To draw a circle using the Elliptical marquee or a circle shape, hold the Shift key once you’ve started drawing and the ellipse will become a circle. To draw from the center out, hold the Alt key (Option on the Mac) as you start drawing an ellipse, then add the Shift key to make it a circle - keep holding both keys until you let go the right mouse button.
Tags: Photoshop, post-processing
Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.
10 Photoshop Interface Features you Didn’t Know Existed
Photoshop: Smarter sharpening with the High Pass filter
In previous posts I have introduced the basics of sharpening in Photoshop and I also looked at a way to spot sharpen an image in Photoshop Elements using faux layer masks. In this post I want to show you the benefits of using high pass sharpening in Photoshop as an alternative to using the Unsharp mask (click to enlarge some images in this post).
The Unsharp mask has historically been the sharpening tool that most Photoshop users start out using. There are, however, different and better tools to use and one of these is the High Pass filter. One reason for this is that the Unsharp mask operates on the actual image pixels and it makes changes to those pixels. The sharpening process that makes use of the High Pass filter doesn’t operate on the original image so it does not destroy the image pixels – this is particularly useful if you’re using Photoshop CS2 or earlier which doesn’t offer the Smart Objects for Filters option for applying the Unsharp mask filter.
In addition, instead of sharpening the entire image as the Unsharp Mask does, using this High Pass filter process limits sharpening to the edges in the image which is where the most value can be obtained from sharpening the image.
Step 1
To see the process at work, open an image and duplicate the background layer of the image. If your image has multiple layers, add a new layer at the top of the layer stack, click it to select it and press Ctrl + Alt + Shift + E (Command + Option + Shift + E on the Mac) to fill the top layer with a flattened version of the image – without affecting the other layers.
Step 2
In the Layers palette set the blend mode of the new top layer to Overlay. This will let you see the sharpening results in place on the image in the next step.
Step 3
With the topmost layer still selected, choose Filter > Other > High Pass. This filter has one slider to adjust the Radius value. Drag the slider until you see a pretty much gray image in the preview window with the only detail being around the edges of objects in the image. If you can see color in the preview image then the radius is set too high. Typically a Radius value of well under 10 pixels should be sufficient – we used 2. Click Ok.
Step 4
The image is now sharpened – check the original against the sharpened version by clicking the Layer Visibility Icon for the top layer on and off to compare the result.
To finish the effect, adjust the Opacity of the top layer to 0 and then move it back up stopping when you have a good sharpening result. The ideal Opacity will depend on your personal preference.
If desired you can use blend modes other than Overlay, for example Soft Light and Hard Light can be equally as effective depending on the result that you are looking for.
Tip
When you are sharpening an image, adjust the image to the way you want it to look if you’re planning to display the image on the web. If you’re printing it you can (and should), sharpen more aggressively.
If you are using Photoshop CS3 or CS4, before you apply the High Pass filter to the top layer of the image, convert it to a Smart Object by selecting the layer and choose Filter > Convert for Smart Filters. Then apply the High Pass filter to the new smart object in the same way as I have outlined above. When you apply a filter to a Smart Object you can return later on to edit it – simply double click the filter name in the layer palette and the filter dialog opens allowing you to change the Radius value.
Tags: Photoshop, Sharpening
Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.
Photoshop: Smarter sharpening with the High Pass filter
You Can Fly!
Here is a relatively easy Photoshop technique which, nonetheless, seems to amaze a lot of people when they see the results: making a subject float or fly.
For maximum effectiveness you really need a tripod. Start by setting the camera up on the tripod and shoot your subject sitting or laying on some kind of support.
After you get the shot, remove your subject and the support without moving the camera. Then, shoot the exact same scene again. (This second shot will capture the uninterrupted background.)
Open both photos in Photoshop at once. Select the entire photo with the subject (Ctrl+A) and copy it to the clipboard (Ctrl+C).
Switch to the photo with the plain background and paste in the photo with the subject (Ctrl+V). The pasted photo should end up on its own layer.
Convert this new layer with the subject to an adjustment layer by opening the layers palette and clicking the small icon at the bottom that looks like a square with a circle inside it. (The layer should be active when you do this.)
Select a brush and set the foreground color to black. Paint over the support and watch it disappear. You may need to zoom in and/or change brush sizes to get finer details. If the camera didn’t move between shots then the rest of the image should be fully registered (everything is aligned) so you really don’t have to worry about painting over anything but the support.
Putting this same technique to more practical use, I had this photo of my family which was taken at my daughter’s seventh birthday party. (Yes, it’s a low quality photo taken with a crappy camera but it has sentimental value and can’t be replaced.)
Its biggest compositional problem is that the person who took the photo got part of the door jamb and a light switch in the background. Sure, I could just clone them out but the background still leaves something to be desired.
Instead I had this shot, which I took of another family at the party and which had a much more satisfying background.
Since both had a similar composition, by following the above technique, I was able to clone the better background onto the shot of my own family.
One key difference with this pair of photos is that they were not perfectly registered. To overcome this problem, I simply reduced the opacity of the layer to 50%. That allowed me to see right through the layer to what would be exposed underneath if I painted over it. Once I was done painting, I bumped the opacity back up to 100% before flattening the image.
Jeffrey Kontur is the author of two how-to books on photography, which he promotes via his web site www.MoreSatisfyingPhotos.com
Tags: float, fly, how-to, Photoshop, post-processing, technique
How to Sharpen Photos: An Introduction
We’ve received quite a bit of feedback from Post production readers asking us to look at the issue of sharpening photos. Sharpening is one of those everyday tasks that most photos can benefit from. In this post I’ll explain what sharpening is, when you should perform it and how to do it. The information here, although it is explained using Photoshop, is relevant to all photo editing programs.
Please click images to enlarge in this tutorial - it will illustrate much better the points being made with images at full size.
Sharpening does as its name suggests and sharpens the image making it look crisper and making the edges in the image more distinct.
In the darkroom the process is achieved by taking one negative and a slightly blurred positive image, sandwiching these together and making a very quick exposure of this sandwich. Then the exposure is completed using the negative. The resulting image has sharper and crisper edges than it would have had if the blurry (unsharp) mask image had not been used. The typical sharpening tool used in Photoshop and other graphics programs is named after this traditional darkroom process and is called the Unsharp mask.
In a graphics editor the Unsharp mask works by creating small halos along the edges in the photo. These halos enhance the contrast between the edges and the surrounding pixels making the edges look more obvious and giving the image a crisper and sharper look.
Here’s how to sharpen an image using the Unsharp mask:
Step 1
Sharpening should be done at the end of the editing process so finish doing all your edits to the image before you sharpen it.
Now create a flattened version of the image either by flattening or merging all the layers or press Ctrl + Alt + Shift + E (Command + Option + Shift + E on the Mac) to create a flattened layer at the top of the image. The Unsharp mask works only on the current layer so you need to have the image on a single layer for it to do its work.
Step 2
Choose Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask. Set the Radius to somewhere between .5 and 1. This sets the width of the halos which are applied along the edges in the image – the smaller the radius, the smaller the halo and 0.5 – 1 is ideal – this is not always a situation where the more is better!
Set the Threshold to around 10. The Threshold value determines how edges are found – the higher the value, the more different adjacent pixels must be to be considered an edge so less of the image will be sharpened. A small value means that smaller differences in pixel values are considered an edge so more of the image is sharpened. The risk with a small Threshold value is that it can add noise to the image by enhancing edges in places where you don’t want to see them.
The Amount setting controls how much contrast is added to the edges – a higher value means more contrast and a more obvious sharpening. Start by setting this value to around 150.
Step 3
Take a look at your image and adjust the sliders from this starting point until you see more detail in the edges in the image but not so much that you see unattractive halos around the edges.
Typically, if you have an image with a lot of very fine detail you can use a very small radius value (so the halos are small) and a correspondingly high Amount value (so that the halos can be seen to sharpen the image). On the other hand, if you have an image without a lot of fine detail can use a larger radius say, 1 – 1.5 or more (which gives larger halos), and a smaller Amount setting because the halos will be bigger and more visible anyway.
Adjust the Threshold value so you get sharpening in the areas you are interested in being crisper but not so that it results in unwanted noise in the image.
This image is nicely sharpened – you can see the crisper edges.
This image is over sharpened – notice the unsightly halos around the edges.
Tips
It is generally advisable to view the image at 100% when you are sharpening it so you can see the effect on the image. You can do this by sizing the image to 100% before launching the Unsharp mask tool. Alternately, use the 100% preview in the Unsharp mask dialog –click on the preview to see the unaltered image so you can compare it with the preview..
When you are sharpening for printing you can generally sharpen more heavily than you should do for onscreen viewing.
There are other sharpening tools available in Photoshop CS2 and later which do an even better job of sharpening than the Unsharp mask. I’ll look at these tools in a future post. For now, regardless of which graphics editor you use, you should have an Unsharp mask tool and it should work in a similar way to the Photoshop Unsharp mask shown here.
Tags: Photoshop, Sharpening
Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended Review
Photoshop CS4 Extended
There appears to be no dramatic changes to this widely used app. However a number of aids will make any image work much easier: a tabbed interface should make the work area much simpler to get around. And noticeable is the attention given to purely photographic tasks.
Vibrance
In using the Adjustments panel you don’t have to fight your way through a dialog box and its options: the new Vibrance adjustment allows increased control over colour saturation but still preserves such sensitive tones such as skin colours. There’s now a wide variety of modifiable presets for each type of change, plus more than 20 new preconfigured, customisable starting points.
Masks
With the Masks panel and working with pixel and vector masks it is now much easier to apply effects to precisely defined image areas. Using simple sliders the density and feathering of a mask can be adjusted, so you can control both the sharpness of the mask edge and how degree of adjustment you’d like to expose.
Dodge, Burn and Sponge
There have been many times I have needed to vary the exposure of an image, with a need to fix specific areas, such as unevenly lit flash shots. It has often been a pain to fix. Now you can enjoy natural results with the Dodge, Burn and Sponge tools. Tonal quality can be preserved while exposure and colour saturation can be spot-corrected.
After Effects’ new Cartoon effect stylises video sequences to impart a CGI look.
Panos
There are plenty of panorama stitching programs, some even bundled with compact digicams. Until now, Photoshop’s Photomerge (is it called that?) feature did work better than most of these, but in my opinion, not quite get there.
The upgraded Photomerge feature now blends with new vignetting and geometric distortion corrections.
Adobe has now built in enhanced blending actions along with new vignetting and geometric distortion corrections; a new option can create 360 degree panoramas. Plus there is a way to find and fix fisheye lens distortion … that is, if you wanted to correct fisheye shots!
Swings, Shifts
Ostensibly in an attempt to remove the need for the need to make shifts and swings, only available in high end cameras or perspective control lenses, Photoshop CS4 can now enhancement a scene where lighting and depth of field are limited. This appears to be a feature which leans heavily on the technology used in the Photomerge function in that it stitches separate shots and bends together their exposure variations. So, if you’ve shot a series of images that have correct focus and exposure — in parts — Auto-Blend Layers can merge these together into one acceptable single image.
Want to fix depth of field and exposure outages? Head for Auto-Blend.
Up, Down
Not all of us like to work on an image with the picture straight up and down, especially when using a graphics tablet. The new fluid canvas rotation action lets you work almost as though you were working at an easel. You can drag the image to turn the canvas to any orientation; a compass guide graphic can even be used to help you orient the image to a specific angle.
Following a similar track you can now zoom in or out smoothly and not by fixed enlargement degrees … 125 per cent, 300 per cent etc.
Integration
It’s obvious that the separate application Lightroom has bolted from the stable and won many friends for its ability to polish and improve photographic images. There is now improved and tighter integration with Photoshop. You can even open images from Lightroom directly into Photoshop CS4 as a layered Photoshop document, high dynamic range (HDR) image, panorama, or Smart Object. This means the nondestructive changes you make in one application will be recognised when you open the image in the other.
Vector Photography
Recently I discovered that much of the high end photography of cars is being displaced by vector art, which allows dramatic angle changes as well as major lighting tweaks, working with original data files.
Edit 3D Layers
Now, with Photoshop CS4 Extended, you can work with 3D models in similar fashion to dealing with 2D images, without no need to navigate through dialog boxes and special layer contents.
Merging pixel and vector art is a new trick for Illustrator — the Blob Brush extends and embellishes a Bezier-drawn object much as you would use a paint program.
Intelligent Scaling
A wow of a feature is Intelligent Image Scaling or Content-Aware Scaling. It may be of more interest to designers or photographers who have to prepare material for press in multiple formats but nevertheless it is an impressive feature.
Let’s say you have a nice picture, horizontal in format and you need to re-purpose it for a vertical page layout. Content-Aware Scaling lets you resize and recompose images simultaneously. What happens is that this feature automatically analyses the image as you adjust it and intelligently recomposes it to preserve the most visually interesting areas. It doesn’t just squeeze the image laterally; it uses an understanding of the image contents, then lets you convert a horizontal layout to a vertical.
Intelligent Image Scaling Illustrated
Using no cropping as such, the feature automatically identifies and protects important image elements, such as people, from unwanted distortion, even though the overall aspect ratio is changed.
If you need even more precise control, you can use a simple alpha channel to preserve selected image areas during scaling.
As indicated earlier, there appears to be no dramatic changes as many of the new features are layout oriented and don’t delve into an image at pixel level, which is the way that Photoshop has worked before. Is this the sign of a trend? Will it be the practice that any new tricks Adobe’s team conceives will appear in Lightroom instead?
Maybe.
Photoshop CS4 Extended Screen Shot
System Requirements
Mac OS: PowerPC G5 or multicore Intel processor. Mac OS X v10.4.11–10.5.4.
Windows: XP with Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise with Service Pack 1 (certified for 32-bit Windows XP and Windows Vista).
Pricing
Photoshop Extended CS4: $999.00 USD (price currently at Amazon) (or $349 for an upgrade pack).
Tags: Photoshop, Photoshop CS4, review, Software
Photoshop Inspiration: Police CD Label
Need an excuse to go music shopping? I love to browse the CD covers at my local secondhand music store – the cover images are a great resource when I’m looking for new ways to showcase my photos. As an added bonus, when you copy an effect you’ll find yourself developing new Photoshop skills along the way.
My most recent inspiration came from the album Synchronicity by The Police. The album shows three black and white collages stacked down the cover each covered with a splash of paint. Check it out to the right so you know what we’re aiming for.
While my solution does away with the collages – they really deserve a post of their own - it does mimic the basic design philosophy of the CD cover. Here’s how to create this effect – the key to getting the project done fast is some smart cropping, some layer alignment tricks and the Multiply blend mode.
Step 1
Start by creating a square image the size of the final project. Mine is 1800 pixels x 1800 pixels at 300 pixels per inch in resolution and it has a transparent background.
Step 2
Open the three images to use. You want photos that you can crop to a wide rectangle and which have good detail in the cropped area. Convert your images to grayscale using your favorite tool – I used the Black & White adjustment in Photoshop CS3 – in earlier versions use the Channel Mixer – enable the Monochrome checkbox and adjust the sliders to get a good grayscale.
Step 3
Instead of simply cropping the images to size, we’ll adjust the cropped image resolution to match the final image at the same time. To do this, click the Crop tool and set the width to 5 inches, the height to 1.5 inches and the resolution to 300 pixels per inch. Drag a crop rectangle over the area of image to use and double click to crop it. Repeat for the other two images.
Step 4
Flatten each image if it is not already flattened. Then drag and drop the three image layers into your main image. Position the layers in roughly in position. Add a new layer, fill it with white and drag it below the image layers.
Step 5
Control + Click (Command + Click on the Mac) on the layer thumbnail for the white filled layer so its contents are selected. Control + Click on the other three layers (not the thumbnails, just the layers) so the layers are selected and not their contents. Choose Layer > Align Layers to Selection > Horizontal Selection – this aligns the layers with the images on them so they are centered in the image.
Step 6
To distribute the layers vertically, select all three layers that have the images on them and choose Layer > Distribute > Vertical Centers so the spacing between the images is evened out.
Step 7
Add a new layer (or drag the empty one from the bottom of the layer stack to the top). Select a bright yellow as the foreground color. Select the Brush too, add the Wet Media brushes and select the Oil Heavy Flow Small Tip brush. Adjust the brush size to around 400 pixels, set the Flow and Opacity to 100 each. In the Brushes palette, adjust the angle of the brush using the Brush tip shape options so it is aligned vertically and not at an angle.
Paint unevenly over the middle image. Repeat and paint cyan on the top image and red on the bottom one.
Step 8
Set the blend mode for the paint layer to Multiply so you can see the image under the paint. Add some text using the same blue and red colors and you’re done.
Here’s the finished result:
Tags: Album Cover, Photoshop, Police
How to Convert an Image to a Duotone in Photoshop
A duotone is an image made up of just two colors. It’s often used in the printing world where a photograph is included in a publication and where the publisher wants to use some color on the page but not pay for full color printing. As a duotone, the image is created as a mix of two colors - hence its name duotone. Typically the colors are black and a spot color but they can be any two colors.
You can convert a photo to a duotone in Photoshop using its Duotone feature and you can customize the duotone and determine just how much of each color is applied to the image.
Here’s how to convert your photo into a duotone in Photoshop:
Step 1
Open your photo in Photoshop and apply any desired adjustments to it – concentrate more on developing pleasing contrast in the image than on the colors because in the next step you will be removing the color.
Step 2
Create a black and white version of the image. Typically this is done by selecting Image > Mode > Grayscale. The problem with this conversion method is that you don’t get the chance to determine how the image is converted and it is often a lackluster result. You can do better by converting the image yourself.
I recommend using a specialist black and white conversion tool – in Photoshop CS2 you can use the Channel Mixer and in Photoshop CS3, choose the Black & White tool. To do this, choose Image > Adjustments > Black & White and drag the sliders to create your custom black and white image. Then choose Image > Mode > Grayscale and click Discard to discard the color.
Step 3
Choose Image > Mode > Duotone to display the Duotone Options dialog. From the Type list select Duotone. The first Ink color defaults to Black and you can now add a second ink color by clicking in the swatch box.
Because duotones are typically used in commercial printing, you are offered a choice of colors from a Pantone color swatch. If you aren’t printing commercially and if you prefer to use the color picker, click the Picker button and select a color this way – type a name for it in the text area.
Step 4
Click the curve icon to the left of each of the color in turn to adjust how the color is applied to the image. The highlights are on the right of the chart and the shadows on the left. Drag upwards on the curve to apply more color in that area of the image, or drag down to apply less color. This feature lets you add more of your second ink color, for example, to the highlights.
Step 5
You can save the Duotone settings by clicking the Save button and type a name for it. Later you can load those colors and the curve into the dialog to use for another image. When you are done, choose Image > Mode > RGB Color to convert back to color mode so you can continue to work on the image or to save it.
The Duotone on the right was created from an image converted to a monochrome image using Image > Mode > Grayscale. The one on the left uses a custom Black and White conversion first – notice how the differences in how the duotone colors are applied.
Introduction to Spot Fixing with the Adjustment Brush in Lightroom
One of the exciting new features in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 is the adjustment brush which lets you to make spot fixes to your image in Lightroom. These fixes apply to only the area you select rather than the entire image. This means you can make local adjustments for contrast, saturation, exposure, brightness, clarity and sharpness without having to take the image to Photoshop to do this.
In this post I’ll show you how to get started using the adjustment brush in Lightroom. 2
Step 1
Open Lightroom and click the Develop module. Locate the Adjustment Brush and click it to select it. Hold the brush over the image to check its size. The inner circle is the hard part of the brush and the outer circle shows the edge of the feathering. To adjust the brush size use the [ and ] keys or adjust the Size and Feather using the sliders.
Step 2
Select the adjustment to make, such as Brightness or Saturation by clicking its + symbol to increase its value or the – symbol to decrease it. Then start painting on the image to adjust that part of the image. When you start painting the effect onto the image, Lightroom places an identifying marker on the screen. Here I have Brightness selected and the marker is visible.
Step 3
If you don’t know where you have painted – and it’s often very hard to know exactly - press the O key to view or hide a mask which shows the area you have painted on. If you prefer to, you can display the mask as you work. The mask also appears if you hold your mouse over the marker.
To erase the brush strokes, click the Erase option in the brush area and erase over the area to remove the strokes. To return to painting click brush A which is the default brush and continue to paint over the area. You can also use the brush with the Alt (Option on the Mac) to remove the painted areas rather than switching between the brush and eraser.
Step 4
If the effect is too much or too little you can adjust the intensity of the effect using the slider.
Step 5
If another area of the image requires fixing, click the New option and then repeat the steps to select a fix and then paint it onto that part of the image. Later on you can adjust either of the fixes by first clicking the Adjustment Brush tool to select it and then click on the marker for the area to change – you will see that the word Edit is now highlighted - and you can now adjust the painted area or adjust the amount of the fix.
In a future post I will look at some more advanced functions of the Adjustment Brush.
Tags: Adjustment Brush, Photogshop Brushes, Photoshop
How to Make High Contrast Black & Whites in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2
In this post DPS reader Mike Littlehale shares some tips on creating high contrast black and white images in Photoshop.
For those of you who still appreciate a high contrast black & white photo, taking advantage of Lightroom 2’s developing features can give you results much better than any auto converter can. If you have let Lightroom convert your photos to black & white, you know that most of the time it doesn’t do it justice. Using this method, you can create a black & white that will bring you back to the old days in the darkroom.
If you want to see the difference once you are done, try making a virtual copy of the photo you intend to convert to B&W and use one of Lightroom’s auto-converters to really see the difference. Just take it to the Develop module and click Greyscale on the HSL/Color/Greyscale panel. Now switch back to your original photo and lets get started.
The first thing you are going to want to do in the Develop module is click Greyscale at the top of the Basic panel, near Treatment (I know I’ve been bashing Lightroom’s auto-converters, but this is just a base). Sticking with the Basic panel, move the Blacks slider over to the right, in the 70s-90s range. Obviously it’s going to be really dark, but we have a few more adjustments to make. This slider will probably end up in the 70s range, but it all depends on your photo.
Now we are going to move to the Fill Light slider and boost it into the 30s. Play around with it and make sure it doesn’t blow out any areas. Your photo will still be dark, so move the exposure up and you’ll start to see your final result come in. Depending on your photo (if you have the sky in your photo, for example) you can boost up the Recovery slider (this darkens the sky a bit). Just counter your adjustments with the exposure to keep the balance that you want. For my photo, I ended up with these settings:
Exposure: +1.17
Recovery: 66
Fill Light: 31
Blacks: 73
Boost the Clarity slider around up to the 50s-60s range (again depending on what you like) to give it more contrast. I ignored the Brightness and Contrast sliders for now, adjusting the Brightness may be needed for some photos that are still too dark. By using this slider, you adjust the midtones. I usually skip the Contrast slider because it gives you less control, we’ll use the Tone Curve panel for our contrast instead.
If the photo that you are editing is RAW, try moving the Point Curve setting to Strong Contrast, because RAW photos are Medium Contrast by default (if your working with a JPEG, contrast was already added, so keep it at Medium Contrast). That should be enough, but if you want to go even further, you can use the Highlights, Lights, Darks, and, Shadows sliders. Here are the settings I used for my photo:
Highlights: +38
Lights: +2
Darks: -2
Shadows: +15
At this point you should have a very good quality, high contrast Black & White. Remember this technique is very photo specific, so the settings I used for this example photograph may not work exactly for your photo. For the most part they will be in the same area, but just tweaking around with the settings will yield the results you want.
Now the fun part. Select your new B&W as well as the first virtual copy you made in the beginning. Compare them side by side and hopefully you’ll have a new way to make your photos black & white!
Give it a go and let us know how your results have been.
Mike Littlehale is a student from Vermont. He is currently studying journalism at Suffolk University in Boston, Massachusetts. See more of his work on Flickr.
Tags: Black and White, Contrast, Photoshop
Extracting Lines from an Image in Photoshop
Step 1
Open a new image and duplicate the background layer by right clicking it and choose Duplicate Layer. Click this new top layer and choose Filter > Noise > Median and set the radius to around 4 – 5 pixels. You want to see a general softening of the image with the beginnings of loss of detail. Click Ok.
Step 2
Duplicate this layer you’ve been working on. Set the blend mode of this new top layer to Color Dodge.
Step 3
Now invert the top layer by selecting it and choose Image > Adjustments > Invert. The image should now be white.
Step 4
With the topmost layer still selected choose Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Adjust the blur radius until the lines begin to appear in the image. What you’re looking for is a balance between the lines that you want and the image detail that you don’t want. Click Ok when you have an acceptable balance.
Step 5
Create a composite of the current image by clicking on the topmost layer and press Ctrl + Alt + Shift + E (Command + Option + Shift + E on the Mac) to create a new layer which is a composite of the layers below. This command is handy because it does this but without destroying them which would happen if you chose to flatten the image.
Step 6
If you want black lines, desaturate this top layer by choosing Image > Adjustments > Desaturate. You can now duplicate this layer a number of times and each time set the Blend Mode of the duplicate layer to Multiply. This will give you increasingly thicker and darker lines in the image. Merge these layers down to a single layer when you’re done.
Step 7
As an alternative to Step 6 you can use the Apply Image command to thicken up the lines by selecting the layer that you created in Step 5 and choose Image > Apply Image, set the blending to Multiply and click Ok. Repeat this step a number of times and you will repeatedly apply the image to itself in multiply mode each time thickening up the lines but without creating a new layer each time.
Step 8
To color the image, duplicate the background layer and drag it to the top of the layer stack. Set its blend mode to Linear Light (or Linear Burn, or something similar), and reduce the opacity to color the line drawing.
Tip: If desired, at the end of Step 5, place a new white filled layer below the new composite layer and you can remove unwanted lines or shading from the composite layer using the Eraser tool. Merge the top two layers before continuing. It’s often easier to remove unwanted lines earlier in the process than later on.
Tags: extracting lines, Photoshop