Nobody enjoys cloning out dust bunnies from their digital images in Photoshop or Lightroom.  It pretty much just blows.  So if there’s a way to go about it more efficiently, you’d probably like to hear it, right?  This tip, from Scott Martin, will make your digital life a little less aggravating.  Thanks, Scott!       

“When I was a drum scan operator in the early 90’s I had to be systematic about cleaning dust on every single scan. In Photoshop, start by zooming to 100% (option command 0)and hit the home button to go to the upper right corner. Holding down the command key turns the page up and down buttons into page left and right buttons. That trick worked in Photoshop 2 and still works today. 

Lightroom improves upon this functionality nicely. Zoom to 1:1 and hit the home key to fill the screen with the upper left most corner of your image. Hold down the shift key while pressing the page down key. Not only will it act as a ”Page Right” key, it will take you to the next column once you’ve reached the right side, like an old typewriter would.  You can continue hitting Shift-Command-PageDown until you’ve spotted your entire image. It a systematic way of “combing over” your entire image without worrying about missing anything.”

Scott Martin is the founder of onsight, a capture-to-print training and consulting business that helps digital imaging professionals optimize their workflows for quality and efficiency.  I’ve worked with Scott at workshops in Moab and can attest to the fact that he knows his stuff, he’s a heck of a teacher and an all-around cool dude.

Things have been pretty hectic this week and I haven’t had much time to write blog posts.  Today’s is very short, but oh so sweet.

I found this little gem online at Smashing Magazine.  Every keyboard shortcut you can learn and use in Photoshop will save you time.  This free cheat sheet makes it easy to find them.  Thanks, Smashing Magazine!

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/02/10/photoshop-keyboard-shortcuts-cheat-sheet-pdf/

I received a really good and quite timely question about soft proofing earlier this week.  I’m in the process of searching for a new printmaker and soft-proofing is a critical step when you’re working remotely with a lab, especially when your prints will be delivered directly to a client without you ever actually laying eyes on them.  I queried the experts and received not one but three awesome answers from Nat Coalson, Guy Tal and Andy Biggs.  All three of these guys offer killer workshops, some of which include comprehensive digital darkroom and printing components.  Thanks for the great Q & A, dudes!

The Question:

I have a question to submit, one that I haven’t found a straightforward answer to online, despite a lot of looking. It regards soft proofing, in my case using downloaded profiles from print labs before ordering prints online. I’m using CS4.

I understand how to use Proof setup>Custom, I even feel like I understand rendering intents pretty well, but I don’t quite understand how to proceed once I’ve activated the proof setup and my image begins to look dull. What is the workflow from here? I assume the next step is editing the image until it looks more acceptable. Any tricks or advice for this stage? And how should the resulting image be saved once it is ready (taking into account that many mail-order labs specify sRGB files)? How do “Assign Profile” and “Convert to Profile” figure in here?

The Experts Respond:

First, Nat Coalson said - Even with a perfectly calibrated display and great profiles your monitor will ever perfectly match any print. The reason is simple: your display is transmissive (emits light) and a print is reflective (reflects light). On your display, pure black is the absence of any light being emitted. On a print, pure black still reflects some light.

In other words, the black on your monitor will ALWAYS be “blacker” and deeper than what you see on a print. At the other end of the scale, the whites will ALWAYS look brighter on the monitor than on a print.

All that being said, you CAN and SHOULD expect to be able to get accurate, predictable color. Especially if you’re willing to soft proof and make adjustments for each print.  This requires training your eye to correlate what you see on the display to how it will look on the print.

In Photoshop, start with your photo in whatever color space it happens to use (and always make sure to Embed profiles when saving).

Make sure you’re using the following settings for your proofing setup (note this is for photographic printing, not prepress proofing):

Choose View > Proof Setup > Custom

In the proof setup dialog box:

• Proof Conditions: choose the profile for your printer/paper combination
• Preserve numbers: NEVER ENABLED
• Rendering Intent: try both Relative and Perceptual (see next section)
• Black Point Compensation: ALWAYS ENABLED
• Display Options (On-Screen): BOTH should be checked – simulate paper color and simulate black ink.

These last settings for “simulating” the printed output is one of the most crucial parts to successful soft-proofing. It’s also one of the hardest parts to master. These buttons are what Jeff Schewe has referred to as the “make my image look like sh*t buttons”. But you’ve gotta use them. I’ll explain more about this in a minute.

Once you’ve got the settings just like this, make sure to save your preset. I would save one using relative and one using perceptual.

Here’s how do the actual soft-proofing and adjustments:

First, with your master working image open, choose Image > Duplicate; using Merged Layers is fine. We’re making a copy of your print file to use as a temporary reference. We’re going to keep the reference visible while we soft proof and make adjustments to the master file.

Now, with two windows open showing the same image, place them side by side or top and bottom, depending on the orientation. You can do this with the commands under Window > Arrange, or just drag the windows into place. You just need to be able to see your photo in both windows. Also, keep track of which is your original master image that will be printed, and which is your reference. I’d recommend arranging your windows in the same way every time to avoid confusion.

Click the window to make sure you’re in the original, master document and enable soft proofing for your desired proof condition. You will notice immediately that it looks different (and worse) than your reference.

VERY IMPORTANT: Don’t enable soft proofing on the reference window!!

Now, with soft proofing enabled, make adjustment layers in your master print file to try to get it to look as close as possible to the reference image. During this process, you can try both the relative and perceptual versions to see which one you like better for each image.  But remember, like explained above, your soft proof and your reference will NEVER look exactly alike if you’re doing this correctly.

What you will see is that the reference file looks bright, vivid, and beautiful – just like your master file did before you enabled soft proofing.  Your master file now looks dull, lifeless and flat. And depending on your paper and profile, some may look worse than others. For example, if you are printing to a photo paper, it will look closer to the reference than if you’re proofing for a canvas (which will look totally washed out!)

Here’s the part about training your eye and understanding the situation. What you see in the Photoshop soft proof really IS closer to your print than the reference version, because Photoshop is simulating the black ink and paper white as described by your profile.  Which again, will never be exactly like that of the print.

(Sorry it took a while to get to the simple answer

You will need to add adjustment layers to get the soft proof to match the reference as closely as possible. I usually end up with a curve layer to open up shadow detail and brighten the image overall, plus a Hue & Saturation layer with Saturation set at somewhere between +5 for photo paper and +20 for canvas.

When you’re done, group the adjustment layers together and name them for your proof condition.  You don’t need to save the reference file.

To save files for the print vendor or service bureau: After doing all your adjustments and flattening the file you can use Convert to Profile to change the file to a specified color space, such as sRGB, etc. (If you’ve been embedding profiles when you save files, “Assign color space” doesn’t have any use in the workflow.) Or, if the lab specifies it, you can convert to the same printer/paper profile and rendering intent you used for the soft proof. In any case, when you save the file, make sure to embed the profile.

With some practice, I promise that you can get to where you can tell from your soft proof what the printed image will look like. And you will find that what looks like dull, washed out blacks on your display actually comes out as rich, deep blacks on your print. Over time your eye and brain will begin to tie the two results together and doing soft proofing with adjustments will give you just what you expect.

Nat provided some screen shots to give you a visual on his technique.

Next, Guy Tal said - Nat already covered the workflow so I’ll just add a couple of things on a technique I teach at my workshop:

Rather than trying different rendering intents in case one just happens to fit, I always use Relative Colorimetric. In this mode, all in-gamut colors are preserved and I only have to worry about re-mapping the out-of-gamut colors, which I prefer to do manually (Perceptual, on the other hand, remaps all colors to fit into the target space, which usually requires more work to restore the right look later).

In order to reign in those out-of-gamut colors, I turn on Gamut Warnings which will highlight them in grey. I find the most useful control for bringing colors into a small color space is Saturation, so I add a Hue/Saturation layer, and drag the slider left (de-saturate) until the grey warnings are gone. Of course I reduced overall saturation so the image looks pretty dull at this step.

Now comes the fun part:

Click on the Hue/Saturation layer mask, and fill it with black. This essentially eliminates its effect so color is back to normal and the grey areas are back.  While the mask is still selected, use a soft white brush at 50% opacity to paint over the grey areas and watch them magically disappear.

Voila! You only corrected those colors that don’t exist in the target space.  Everything else is just as vibrant as it was in your master file, and it only took one layer.

Finally, Andy Biggs chimed in - I do exactly what Guy does. It is quick and easy, and usually doesn’t need to be done very often. Keep in mind that soft proofing for me usually shows the deficiencies in the media type than anything else. In other words, matte papers do have a reduced gamut from a luster paper, and I usually do small tweaks to make my image look good for that specific media. For example, I may create a new layer in Photoshop to adjust the overall, not local, contrast of the image.

Update: I received an email from Melanie at West Coast Imaging with a link to another fantastic article about soft-proofing.  Thanks, Melanie!

Update – Feb. 3, 2011: Rich Seiling over at West Coast Imaging wrote an excellent blog post titled “The Myth of the Screen to Print Match“.  While not specifically related to soft-proofing, this post will help you understand why it is unlikely you’ll ever get a perfect match between what you see on your computer monitor and what comes out of your printer.  Nothin’ like setting expectations to eliminate disappointments, right?   

Got something to add?  Don’t be shy.  Leave a comment!

Today’s “Ask An Expert” question is an outstanding one.  I’d never given much thought to the difference in sharpening an image using unsharp mask in Photoshop vs. using the sharpening tool in Lightroom.  Apparently Nat Coalson hasn’t only given it a lot of thought, he’s developed some really solid logic behind why you should use Lightroom to sharpen your images.  Nat is an Adobe Certified Expert and the author of Lightroom 2: Streamlining Your Digital Photography Process.  He’s also co-leading our “Wildflowers and Reflections in the Tetons” workshop June 10 – 13, 2010.  Here’s the question I received and Nat’s thorough response.

The Question:

How does the sharpening in Adobe Lightroom compare to unsharp mask sharpening in PhotoShop. I have heard several people claim it is good to use for capture sharpening for images submitted to agencies that will be licensed by clients who will then resize and do additional output sharpening.

What is the difference in Lightroom sharpening and Unsharp mask??

Nat Coalson Responds:

The sharpening on Lightroom’s detail panel is very different from Photoshop’s Unsharp Mask.

Unsharp Mask was developed many years ago in the early days of digital imaging. Though it has been the de facto standard on which many other methods of sharpening are based, it’s crude in comparison to newer algorithms, and can produce destructive artifacts relatively easily.

On the other hand, Lightroom’s sharpening is designed to be “gentler” in it’s application, and will produce fewer haloes and other artifacts if used properly.

Modern sharpening workflows involve several steps of sharpening, unlike older techniques of the past, when it was believed that the optimal amount of sharpening could (and should) be done in a single pass.  These days, sharpening is broken down into three stages: capture, creative and output.

Capture sharpening overcomes the loss of sharpness resulting from the pixel grid itself. Every digital image capture suffers from some amount of softening as a result of the real, organic world being mapped to a discrete grid of pixels. The sharpening on the Detail panel is intended to be capture sharpening only and to simply overcome this inherent loss of sharpness.

Creative sharpening is used to enhance specific areas of the image.  Lightroom’s local adjustment brush provides the ability to “paint” on sharpening in localized areas.

Finally, output sharpening is applied when the file is Exported or printed. Output sharpening is applied using the appropriate method and strength for the inteded output destination. For example, if you’re printing to a matte fine art paper, you would apply more sharpening than if printing to a glossy coated paper.

My default settings for sharpening on the Detail panel:

Amount 60 > The strength of the sharpening to be applied.

Radius 1.1 > The width of the sharpening along the “edges” of contrast. For images with lots of fine detail, I might go down to .8 pixel radius, and increase the Amount. Images that don’t have lots of fine detail might go up to 2.0 radius, but never more than that.

Detail 50 > Similar to radius, if the photo has lots of fine detail, use higher levels of Detail.

Masking 15 > Masking restricts the application of sharpening from being applied to areas of smooth, solid color and limited contrast. For example, blue sky or the skin in a portrait usually should not be sharpened; masking keeps the sharpening from being applied to these areas.

For all the controls, holding the option or alt key while moving the slider will show you a grayscale preview of the effect being applied.

To see the sharpening previews on the image itself, you need to be zoomed in to 1:1 or greater.

I usually fine tune these settings on an image by image basis, but these settings will give me close to the ideal amount of sharpening to begin my processing, on the majority of images.

I often apply standard or high levels of output sharpening, too.  Though there’s not a lot of direct control over this in Lightroom, the levels of output sharpening they’ve included work pretty well, and are very simple to apply.

All of this is based on raw capture; if you shoot JPG then some sharpening is already applied in the camera, and the settings would be different. (But in the Lightroom workflow, there is no reason to ever shoot JPG!)

If you do as much of your work as possible in Lightroom, you may find that you never need to go into Photoshop, especially for sharpening.  Though there will be special cases and images that need the pixel-level editing that Photoshop provides, using Lightroom’s sharpening options properly may be all you need.

Share your techniques for sharpening in Lightroom and/or Photoshop in the comments below.  Someone just might learn something and that’ll send good karma your way.  We can all use a little extra good karma!

All text and images are provided courtesy of Younes Bounhar and are protected under copyright laws.  I invite you to link to this article but please do not re-post the content without prior approval from Younes.  A huge “thanks” goes out to Younes for writing this article and allowing me to publish it on my blog.

In this article, I would like to discuss an alternative method that can not only replace GNDs in some circumstances, but offers significant advantages over both GNDs and the automated HDR options. This technique involves blending multiple exposures using masks and layers in Photoshop. Now, I don’t mean to re-open the debate of “getting right in-camera vs. take it and fix it later approach”. Neither do I pretend that this option is the end all be all, mother all of all options. If you dislike spending time on your computer, this is probably not for you. If on the other hand you believe that you should use every tool you have at your disposal to make the best image you can, then buckle up and jump on board!

Enter Exposure Blending

Let me first start with a disclaimer: as I indicated above, this is not a panacea, or some miracle recipe. Exposure blending is very useful but does have some limitations: it simply does not work with scenes containing moving objects. Also, when dealing with trees or grasses blowing in the wind, it can get tricky and sometimes even unworkable. That said, I find that exposure blending beats HDR programs by a long shot because the results are more realistic looking (personal choice here) and it avoids the muddy toned images that HDR programs often result in.

The Setup

So, what is exposure blending exactly? As its name suggests, it involves taking several exposures of the same subject and “mixing” them in Photoshop using layers and masks.  It is imperative that the framing be identical for each exposure, so it is important you use of a tripod, and ideally a remote release to minimize vibration and motion. The exact bracketing required varies from scene to scene and depends in great part on the dynamic range of your camera. Using my Nikon D700, I simply set it on “matrix metering” and take 3 exposures: 0, -1 and -2 stops. If you are just trying your hand at this, I would definitely recommend trying at least +2 to -2 brackets (5 images total), then adjust accordingly once you get more comfortable. Ultimately, however, only two exposures are usually necessary (0 and -2). I will sometimes blend in parts of a third one if I need more details in the shadows, but that is rarely required.

Blending Exposures

Now on to the blending.

1)  Once the images are uploaded on the computer, process each exposure separately in RAW then open both exposures in Photoshop (here 0 and -2 stops).

2)  Go to the darker exposure, select all (command+A), copy (command+C) and paste it on top of the lighter image (command+V).

3)  Select the top layer (dark) and while pressing the alt button, click on the “add layer mask” button.  This will create a “see-through” mask that will come in handy later to “paint-in” details from the dark exposure onto the lighter one.

4)  In the layers panel, select the channels tab.  Photoshop allows you to create a selection based on the luminosity values in the image. In essence, at the click of a button you can select all the “light” pixels. You can do so by pressing the command button and simultaneously clicking on the RGB channel icon.

5)  You should now see a set of “marching ants”, indicating a selection appear on your image. While this can be used as your mask, I find that going one step further will provide an even better selection. To do so, press shift+option+command and click on the RGB channel icon one more time. This will intersect the previous selection with itself and select a narrower set of light values. You can repeat this as many times as you want, but I find that two selections (step 4+5 combined) are sufficient.

6)  Now move back to the “layers” tab and make sure to select the dark mask we created earlier in step 3, by clicking on it.

7)  Select the eraser (press E), select a large brush (400 px) with 0% hardness and ensure the opacity and flow are set at 100% (top panel). Make sure that black is your foreground colour (you can toggle between foreground and background colours by pressing X, if black is not already one of your colours, press D to revert to default colours, then press X to select black).

8)  Here is where the magic happens: simply start erasing over the overexposed portion of the image (sky and/or reflections for example). You will now see that the darker layer is literally being painted over the lighter one. Because the selection is completely self-feathering, you need not worry too much about being very precise with your painting. I usually find that a few passes with the eraser are necessary to bring all the colours out. Notice that while the sky is being uncovered, the areas in the shadows (e.g. buildings or foreground) are hardly touched.

9)  That is it. Once the result satisfies you, you can merge your two layers and continue on with your usual post processing routine.

10)  If you feel that you are still lacking a bit of detail in some of the shadow areas, you could use an overexposed frame (+1 or +2) to paint in the necessary detail. To do so, simply copy the overexposed frame on top of your other layers. Then, create a “see-through” mask as done in step 3. Select the Eraser, set the opacity between 25 and 40% and flow at about 50%, make sure your foreground colour is black. Then select the mask and start painting over your image in the areas where you would like to reveal more detail. Since the opacity of your eraser is low, multiple passes may be required to achieve the desired result.

The process may sound a bit daunting at first if you are not familiar with masks and layers but once you give it a go you will see that it is fairly straightforward and the results will surely speak for themselves!

About Younes:

Younes Bounhar is a ridiculously talented photographer and super nice guy from Canada.  He offers group workshops and fine art prints, and is a frequent contributor to Photolife magazine.  I encourage you to visit his website for inspiration and check out his blog for a steady stream of helpful information.

I’m starting a cool new interactive feature on my blog called “Ask An Expert”.  The concept is pretty simple: you send me a question related to photography and I round up an expert to answer it for you.  I’ll post your question on the blog along with the expert’s answer.  I’ll accept questions on just about any photography topic including technique, business & marketing, digital darkroom, equipment, etc.  Just try to keep it relevant to nature, landscape and/or adventure photography.

Questions we can’t answer:

• Which is better, Canon or Nikon? (Everybody knows Canon is best.)
• Is Photoshop cheating? (No.  I mean yes.  No, I mean no.)
• Should I get up for sunrise if it’s cloudy outside? (No.  Stay in bed so those of us who do wake up for it don’t have to fight with so many photographers.)
• Is it acceptable to yell at the Griswolds for standing under Delicate Arch for a family portrait just as the sky turns pink and the arch begins to glow? (Absolutely not!  While annoying, they have just as much right to be there as you do.)
• And finally my favorite…If I had a nice camera and lens like yours I could take really good pictures, too. (Okay, so that’s not a question but seriously, do people really believe it’s all about the gear?  Ugh!)

Now that we’ve got all that out of the way, let’s hear some great questions!  Please email your questions to me at bret (at) bretedge (dot) com.  If you’re wondering why I typed my email like that it’s because if I don’t, the spambots will launch a massive attack on my inbox.  I’d hate to miss any of your awesome questions.

If you haven’t yet begun to use Adobe Lightroom to convert your RAW images and manage your image database now might be a really good time to start.  Adobe is offering 15% off the purchase price of Lightroom 2 through December 25, 2009. 

Here’s the hitch: You have to receive a referral email that includes the discount code.  How do you get the referral email, you might wonder?  It is sent through Adobe by someone currently using Lightroom, like myself.  So, if you’d like to purchase Lightroom at a 15% discount send me an email at bret@bretedge.com with your email address.  I won’t use your email address for any other purpose nor will I share it with anyone else.

If you’re wondering why I would do this the answer is simple.  For every two people I refer I receive a $50 gift card.  So, it’s a win-win situation.

If you are interested in participating in the program you can find information about it here: http://www.referadobelightroom.com/.