http://thephotoonthewall.com/2008/06/hd/ What Makes A Great Photograph? Mon, 23 Jun 2008 14:56:48 -0700 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 http://thephotoonthewall.com/2008/06/hd/comment-page-1/#comment-4 Tom Mon, 23 Jun 2008 14:56:48 +0000 http://thephotoonthewall.com/?p=8#comment-4 As I was playing with this image after I wrote about it, I discovered that using the magic wand tool to select areas to lighten or darken works well. I set the tolerance to make sure the entire area I wanted to adjust is selected. By unchecking contiguous, I was able to select and adjust all the dark or light areas, not just the ones I could paint over. After you have the area you want to change selected, invert the selection (ctrl-I) because you will be using it as a mask, load the inverted selection (select menu, load selection) and make a mask for the bright or dark layer you want to let show through. It will look pretty bad. So use the Gaussian blur filter on the mask to feather the edges until it looks good. Finally, open the blending options for the layer and move the blend if sliders to make the photo look great. You'll probably get better results if you split the sliders to feather blend. As I was playing with this image after I wrote about it, I discovered that using the magic wand tool to select areas to lighten or darken works well. I set the tolerance to make sure the entire area I wanted to adjust is selected. By unchecking contiguous, I was able to select and adjust all the dark or light areas, not just the ones I could paint over. After you have the area you want to change selected, invert the selection (ctrl-I) because you will be using it as a mask, load the inverted selection (select menu, load selection) and make a mask for the bright or dark layer you want to let show through. It will look pretty bad. So use the Gaussian blur filter on the mask to feather the edges until it looks good. Finally, open the blending options for the layer and move the blend if sliders to make the photo look great. You’ll probably get better results if you split the sliders to feather blend.

]]> http://thephotoonthewall.com/2008/06/hd/comment-page-1/#comment-3 Tom Mon, 23 Jun 2008 14:43:33 +0000 http://thephotoonthewall.com/?p=8#comment-3 What if you have an image that has washed out or dark areas, but you only made one exposure? If you set your camera to capture RAW images, you're in luck. Just use your RAW conversion software two times, one with the exposure control set to give detail in the shadows and once to give detail in the highlights. Then combine the two in Photoshop just like you would if you had made bracketed exposures. RAW captures are wonderful because they give you flexibility on exposure and color during processing. If you capture using JPEG format, everything is set when you click the shutter and you can't change it later without losing information in the image. What if you have an image that has washed out or dark areas, but you only made one exposure? If you set your camera to capture RAW images, you’re in luck. Just use your RAW conversion software two times, one with the exposure control set to give detail in the shadows and once to give detail in the highlights. Then combine the two in Photoshop just like you would if you had made bracketed exposures. RAW captures are wonderful because they give you flexibility on exposure and color during processing. If you capture using JPEG format, everything is set when you click the shutter and you can’t change it later without losing information in the image.

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