Digital Camera World » Photoshop Elements tutorials

Image sharpening: how to bring out more detail in your favourite photos

jmeyer — Fri, 24 May 2013 23:01:03 +0000

In this Photoshop Elements tutorial we show you clever ways of bringing out more detail through image sharpening, while keeping some of the side effects to a minimum.

When you view a photo on your camera’s relatively small rear screen, it may look crisp and sharp.

However, it’s only when you view the image at actual size on your home computer’s larger display that you realise it’s not quite in sharp focus. This means some key details may look slightly blurred and lack real definition.

The image could also look soft due to your camera’s built-in anti-moiré filter, which is designed to minimise unsightly blocky patterns and false colours caused by complex textures.

Fortunately, Photoshop Elements has a range of effective sharpening tools that enable you to reveal detail in soft-focus areas and create a print with more punch.

In this tutorial we’ll show you how to sharpen up JPEGs in the standard Photoshop Elements editor and then move on to teasing out delicate details in a soft-looking raw file using the Adobe Camera Raw editor.

Photoshop Elements enables you to make a soft shot look sharper by increasing the contrast around the edge of objects in the scene. This gives delicate details more definition and impact.

However, by increasing the contrast you can also add unsightly artefacts such as harsh black or white halos around contrasting edges.

This gives the game away that the shot has been artificially sharpened, and you can also end up exaggerating picture noise caused by a high ISO setting when you sharpen your shot.

Here, we’ll show you how to recognise sharpening artefacts and keep them to a minimum.

Photoshop image sharpening step-by-step: 1-2

01 Open the start file
Open Photoshop Elements, click on the Quick editor tab to explore its sharpening options. Choose File>Open and browse to your start file. Click Open. The compressed JPEG image will open in Photoshop Elements’ Quick Editor.

02 Zoom in
To see how soft your shot actually looks, click on the Zoom tool. Click the 1:1 icon in the top options bar to see the shot’s pixels at 100%. Our image is quite soft, so the delicate details lack impact. Click the Sharpen icon on the right to access a range of sharpening preset thumbnails.

PAGE 1: Photoshop image sharpening step-by-step: 1-2
PAGE 2: Photoshop image sharpening step-by-step: 3-4
PAGE 3: Photoshop image sharpening step-by-step: 5-6
PAGE 4: Photoshop image sharpening step-by-step: 7-8
PAGE 5: Photoshop image sharpening step-by-step: 9-10
PAGE 6: Photoshop image sharpening step-by-step: 11-12

Photoshop Effects: using Layers to rescue exposure

jmeyer — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 16:36:35 +0000

Find out how to rescue bad exposures with subtle Photoshop effects by using Layers to process colours and tones in your photos.

Photoshop layers are one of the most fundamental image-editing features in Photoshop Elements’ tool set (which makes it hard to believe that they were unavailable in the earliest versions of the package!).

In this tutorial, we’ll focus on how layers enable you to process a photo’s colours and tones to overcome exposure problems, create more impact and draw the eye to specific subjects in the shot.

You’ll learn how layers and Adjustment Layers give you the freedom to experiment with different looks. Layers are non-destructive, which means you’ll always have access to your unaltered image.

We’ll also show you how to apply selection marquees and brush tools to Layer Masks, so that only certain areas in the image will become altered.

Our before image

Thanks to layers you can take total control over the colour and tonal changes in any part of your shot, and fine-tune these changes with ease.

When shooting this project’s start image we were pleased to capture the pigeon flying on the left as the girl walked on the right, because it gave balance to our composition.

However, there are plenty of problems with colour and exposure.  By metering for the shaded foreground we have over-exposed the sun-lit cathedral and sky.

We’ll show you how to make selective exposure adjustments using layers and masks, and restore missing background detail.

We’ll also selectively warm up the cathedral’s colour temperature while adding a blue-green hue to the sky so that it complements the cooler colours of the bridge.

Using Layers to process colour and tones (Steps 1-6)

01 Arrange your workspace
Open Photoshop Elements. Go to File>Open and browse to your start image. Click Open. In Elements 11, there’s a More icon bottom right. Click on its triangular fly-out icon and choose Custom Workspace. Drag the Layers palette out of the Panel Bin so it floats. Go to Window and untick Panel Bin.

02 Add an Adjustment Layer
We won’t edit the Background image layer directly; we’ll alter its colours and tones using Adjustment Layers. In the main menu bar, go to Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Levels. Click OK. A Levels 1 thumbnail will appear above our Background image layer. A floating Levels panel will also appear.

03 Adjust the contrast
In the Levels panel, drag the black shadow slider to 35. This darkens the shadows on the image layer below. Drag the grey slider right to 0.60 to darken the midtones. This gives the over-exposed cathedral more contrast, and boosts its colours. However, it also plunges the foreground into darkness.

04 Paint on the mask
To protect the bridge from being darkened, grab the Brush tool. Click on the Brush preset picker and choose a soft round brush, size 300. Set the Tools palette’s foreground colour to black. Click on Levels 1’s white mask. Spray on the glass to restore correctly exposed tones. Leave the girl’s face as a silhouette.

05 Try cross-processing
In the Levels Adjustment Layer, set the Channel drop-down menu to Red. Drag the black shadow slider right to 50. This darkens the reds in the shot, adding a cross-processed style blue-green hue to the sky. Click the Levels 1 layer’s eye icon to see a before-and-after version of the adjusted image.

06 Darken the sky
Click on the Create New Adjustment layer icon in the Layers palette and choose Gradient. A Gradient Fill Adjustment Layer will appear. In the Gradient Fill window, click Reverse so the gradient starts at the top of the frame. Click and drag the mouse upwards to push the gradient higher in the frame.

PAGE 1: Using Layers to process colour and tones (Steps 1-6)
PAGE 2: Using Layers to process colour and tones (Steps 7-12)
PAGE 3: Extra layer tools in Photoshop CS6

Split toning in Photoshop: get creative with your black and white conversions

jmeyer — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 02:00:42 +0000

In this tutorial we show you a simple split toning effect for Photoshop Elements. Learn how to apply attractive washes of colour to the shadows and highlights of your black and white conversions.

One way of creating an eye-catching landscape is to remove the image’s original colour information. This helps the eye focus on tonally contrasting shapes and textures in the scene.

You can further enhance your mono conversions by gently re-introducing a delicate wash of colour to the shot’s shadows and highlights.

A hint of colour can make a monochrome shot look more interesting and influence the mood that it evokes.

In our split toning end result, for example, the shadows have a cool dark blue tint, while the lighter tones have a warmer wash of yellow. These colours also help to tease out the different textures and shapes.

Photoshop CS users have a Split Tone command in the Camera Raw editor, which enables them to independently colourise a monochrome conversion’s shadows and highlights.

As the cheaper Photoshop Elements lacks a dedicated split-toning command, here we’ll show you an alternative technique that involves using layers, Blending Modes and gradient maps.

We’ll also demonstrate how to use Elements’ Convert to Black and White command to create an effective mono conversion in which key features in the scene (like the tree) stand out due to a range of shadows, midtones and highlights. You can then add washes of colour to the contrasting tones.

Split toning step-by-step in Photoshop Elements

01 Duplicate layer
Go to File>Open and browse to your start image. Click Open. Click on the locked Background layer’s thumbnail. Press Cmd/Ctrl+J to duplicate it. You could just remove the shot’s colour information, but that risks giving a low-contrast wash of greyscale tones.

02 Convert to mono
To make key features stand out more in your monochrome conversion, go to Enhance>Convert to Black and White. By choosing the Infrared Effect preset you can darken the tones of the blue sky so the clouds stand out. Click OK to apply the changes.

03 Burn in contrast
The foreground grass lacks contrast. To reveal more texture, choose the Burn tool from the Tools palette. Choose a soft round tip from the Brush Preset picker and set Size to 1,000 pixels. Set Range to Shadows and Exposure to 15%. Spray over the grass.

04 Add Gradient Map
Choose Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Gradient Map. In the New Layer window click OK. In the Adjustments Gradient Map panel, click on the greyscale preview bar to change the colours that make up the gradient. The Gradient Editor will now appear.

05 Sample shadow colour
By default you’ll have a black-to-white foreground-to-background gradient. To change this to another colour, click on the black colour stop at the bottom left of the gradient preview window. Click on the colour swatch to open the Select Stop Colour window. Sample a bluey-purple. Click OK to apply the change.

06 Change the Blending Mode
Click on the white colour stop at the bottom right of the gradient preview. Now click the colour swatch icon to change its colour. Choose a yellow colour and click OK. Click OK again to close the Gradient Editor. Finally, set the Gradient Map’s Blending Mode to Overlay and its Opacity to 44%.

How to make a photo planet from an old baking tray

jmeyer — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 17:46:04 +0000

Believe it or not, this photo planet was made entirely from a shot of a grubby old roasting tin and a simple but cunning combination of Photoshop effects!

If you’re into spacescapes, the core skills in this walkthrough will add to your sci-fi repertoire of techniques, and you’ll be able to incorporate planets, moons and other heavenly bodies into your scenes. Let’s see how it’s done…

Draw a selection
Open you starting file (a close up shot of an old greasy baking tin works well). Take the Elliptical Marquee tool, and draw out a circle covering the width of the image; if you hold down Shift while making the selection you’ll be able to draw a perfect circle. Go to Edit > Copy to copy the selection. Next press D, then X to set the background colour to black.

Create the background
Go to File > New > Blank File. Set Width to 10 inches, Height to 8 inches, Resolution to 300 pixels /inch and Background Contents to Background Colour. Go to Edit > Paste to paste the circular selection into this document. Click Show Bounding Box, and drag a corner handle to scale the selection down. Select the black background by clicking in it with the Magic Wand tool, then press Ctrl+Shift+I to invert the selection, so that the circle is selected.

Get some perspective
To give the planet some perspective go to Filter > Distort > Spherize. Enter a value of 100% and click OK, then go to Filter > Spherize to reapply the filter. Create a new layer, and draw another circular selection that’s roughly the size of the planet. Go to Edit > Fill Selection and fill with black. Hide this layer for now by clicking the eye icon to the left of the layer thumbnail.

Add an atmosphere
Click on the planet layer and go to Layer > Layer Style > Style Settings. Check Glow, then check Inner. Set Size to 25px and Opacity to 75%, then click the colour swatch and choose a light blue. Next check Outer, set Size to 80px and Opacity to 75%, and choose a slightly different shade of light blue.

Create the dark side
Show the black circle layer at the top of the layer stack, go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and set Radius to 70 Pixels to create the effect of a shadow. Select the Move tool, click Show Bounding Box, resize the circle if need be by dragging a corner handle, and position the shadow roughly as shown.

Add a sunrise and stars
Go to Layer > New > Layer. In the dialog set Mode to Hard Light and tick ‘Fill with Hard Light-neutral colour’. Go to Filter > Render > Lens Flare, and set Brightness to 100% and Lens Type to 50-300mm zoom. Click OK, then use the Move tool to position the flare on the planet’s horizon. Take the Brush tool, set Size to 5 pixels, hardness to 100% and the foreground colour to white, and click to dot a few stars around.

Photoshop Effects: how to use Refine Edge to add a new background

jmeyer — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 02:00:26 +0000

In this Photoshop Elements tutorial we show you step by step how to perform one of the most widely used Photoshop effects: how to use Refine Edge to isolate a subject and add a different background.

You may fancy treating your family to a professional studio photo shoot, especially if you’re keen to display framed prints of your  nearest and dearest against a clean white backdrop.

But there’s a much cheaper alternative – you could capture them yourself in their natural environment and then use Photoshop Elements 11 to replace the busy background with a fresh, clean white one.

However, selecting a human subject is one of the most challenging image-editing tasks that you can face, especially if fine hairs are flying around, as in our start image. It’s almost impossible to select a hair without including a fringe of background detail too, which will completely give the game away that your portrait has been edited.

Our before image

Fortunately, Photoshop Elements 11’s improved Refine Edge command now boasts some extra edge-detection tools, including the Smart Radius and Refine Radius tools. These great little tools even enable you to include flyaway hairs in your selection.

Indeed, if you’re looking for a reason to update to Photoshop Elements 11 (read our Adobe Photoshop Elements 11 review), then this is it, and you’ll also find this  range of handy edge-detection tools in Photoshop CS5 onwards.

The Smart Radius tool can also help you select the motion-blurred areas on your subject, as these are much softer than the static edges.

In this tutorial, we’ll demonstrate how to fine-tune the results of the Refine Edge command with a little tidying up, courtesy of brush tips and Layer Masks.

How to use Refine Edge

01 Crop your start image
Open your start image in Photoshop Elements 11. To add impact to our portrait’s subject, grab the Crop tool. In the options bar, choose Use Photo Ratio, then click and drag to crop the shot as shown above. This also reduces the amount of edge areas that you’ll need to select. Click the tick to apply the crop.

02 Select the background
Next, grab the Quick Selection tool from the  Tools palette. In the options bar set Size to 70 and tick Auto-Enhance. You can now spray over the background to start selecting it. To remove bits of the girl from the selection tick Subtract From Selection. Don’t worry about selecting every hair.

03 Get smart
Once you’ve selected the blurred background, choose Select>Inverse to select the girl. In the options bar click Refine Edge>View and double-click to choose On White. As the edges of the subject are both sharp and blurred, tick Smart Radius. Set Radius to 4.

04 Refine the radius
Choose the Refine Radius tool [E]. In the Tool options bar, set Size to 70 pixels. Click and spray to include missing hairs overlapping the blurred background. Set Feather to 1.0 to soften the strands. Set Output to New Layer with Layer Mask. Click OK.

05 Add a white background
Choose Layer>New>Layer and click OK. Choose Edit>Fill Layer and select White. Click OK. Drag the white layer below the girl’s layer. Click on the Layer Mask. Grab the Brush tool and set Opacity to 20%. Spray a soft black tip over fuzzy edges to hide them.

06 Tidy the mask
Continue spraying a soft black brush around the girl’s outline to hide remaining bits of background. Use a white tip to restore important details. Grab the Blur tool and set Strength to 100%. Click on the mask and spray around any rough edges to soften them.

Recover clipped highlight detail: how to rescue your over-exposed photos

jmeyer — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 15:55:26 +0000

In this Photoshop Elements tutorial, learn how to banish clipping by targeting specific tones to recover highlight detail in over-exposed areas.

The human eye is adept at discerning detail in a wide range of tones, even when faced with a contrasting mixture of sun and shade.

Your camera’s various metering modes are designed to help it compromise in contrasting lighting conditions, but it may still struggle to capture shadow or highlight detail in important areas.

In our start image below the camera has tried to get a balance between revealing detail in the shadows and retaining highlight detail.

Our start image

This compromise has produced a disappointing shot in which you can’t clearly see the interesting textures in the shadows, plus many of the highlight details are still over-exposed. These clipped highlights will print out as detail-free patches of garish colour, especially in the paintwork of the sunlit boats.

Fortunately, Photoshop Elements’ tone-tweaking tools can enable you to create a more balanced exposure with less highlight clipping.

Here, we’ll show you how to use the histogram window and the Levels command to identify clipped highlights and then send in the powerful Shadows/Highlights command to restore highlight detail.

Shadows/Highlights can produce halos around contrasting features in the image though, so we’ll also show you a brush-based trick that  will reduce these ugly image-editing artefacts.

After fixing our photo using Elements’ standard tone-tweaking tools we’ll finish off with an alternative technique by showing you how to give your humble JPEG access to the Camera Raw editor, so that you can make use of its handy clipping warning and tone-tweaking tools.

Step by step how to recover clipped highlight detail in Photoshop Elements: steps 1-9

01 Open the start file
Launch Photoshop Elements. Go to File>Open and browse to your start image. Click Open and the photo will open in Photoshop Elements 11’s Expert editing workspace (or Full workspace if you’re using an older version of Elements). Go to Window>Layers to make the Layers palette visible.

02 Duplicate the layer
Before editing the image it’s worth making a copy of the Background layer, so that you can compare the edited version with the original. In the Layers palette, click on the Background layer’s thumbnail. Press Cmd/Ctrl+J to duplicate it. The duplicated layer will appear as Layer 1.

03 Summon the histogram
To understand the shot’s spread of tones, go to Window>Histogram. You can see from the Colours histogram that our photo contains some strong blues peaking in the highlight section far right. These bright blues will be clipped and print out with no detail. They’ll just be featureless patches of colour.

04 Create an Adjustment Layer
Go to Layers>New Adjustment Layer>Levels. Click OK. The black and white Levels histogram shows the spread and strength of tones in the shot, from the shadows at the far left to the highlights at the far right. Just as you saw with the Colours histogram, the brightest highlights are off the scale.

05 Use the clipping warning
To see more clearly which areas in the shot are clipped (over-exposed), you can use the Levels command to summon a clipping warning. Alt-click on the white highlight input level slider at the right of the graph. Clipped areas (such as the sky and most of the sunlit boats) will appear as patches of colour.

06 Levels’ limitations
The highlight input level slider only slides to the left, making the highlights become brighter and causing even more clipping. Leave it at 255. While the Levels command provides a useful highlight clipping warning, it can’t cure the problem. Fortunately there is another command you can use along with Levels.

07 Try Shadows/Highlights
In the Layers palette, click on Layer 1. Go to Enhance>Adjust Lighting>Shadows/Highlights. By default, this assumes the image is backlit and suffers from under-exposed shadows, so it automatically sets the Lighten Shadows slider to 35%. Drop this to  0 so you can focus on fixing the clipped highlights.

08 Horrible halos
Drag the Darken Highlights slider right to 65%. This restores more detail to the over-exposed clipped highlights (adding more colour and texture to areas like the girl’s leg). However, you need to watch out for lighter halos around contrasting areas such as the roof and lamppost.

09 Before and after
To get a compromise between restoring highlight detail and keeping halos to a minimum, set the Darken Highlights slider to a lower value of 35%. Tick and untick the little Preview box to see a before-and-after version of the edited image. Click OK to apply the highlight adjustment.

PAGE 1: How to recover clipped highlight detail in Photoshop Elements: steps 1-9
PAGE 1: How to recover clipped highlight detail in Photoshop Elements: steps 10-18

Christmas Portrait Ideas: a simple flash technique for natural-looking photos

jmeyer — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 15:30:51 +0000

Using flash is the perfect way to capture Christmas portraits in difficult mixed lighting. Follow the steps in our tutorial and find out how to use simple flash techniques to take natural-looking family portrait photography this Christmas.

With the festive season in full swing, now’s a great time to get your camera out and capture some fun group portraits of your friends and family.

Indoor portraits are often tricky to light, but worry not as help is at hand! In this tutorial we’re going to show you how to capture bright, colourful and perfectly exposed group portraits using only a flashgun and a diffuser.

A diffuser helps to soften hard flash light, and spread it evenly over a larger area for a more natural-looking effect, but don’t worry if you don’t have one.

Think about features in your home that you can make use of, such as a fireplace or Christmas tree. You can also give your subjects props to hold, such as a glass of fizz or a present; this helps your subjects feel more relaxed, as it gives them something to do.

We’re going to shoot our images in the JPEG format – as we’ll be carefully lighting our shots we shouldn’t have to recover highlight or shadow detail, so we don’t need to shoot in raw format.

01 Set the scene
Set up your camera on a tripod, and select the Manual shooting mode. Attach a flashgun to the hotshoe, and place a diffuser over the flash. Get everyone into position, making sure you leave enough space to get into the frame yourself!

02 Camera settings
Set the shutter speed to 1/125 sec, and the aperture to f/8 – this will keep everyone in the frame sharp. Set the ISO to 400 to facilitate the fast shutter speed; if you’re shooting in a very dark area you may need to push the ISO up even further. Select the One-shot AF setting, and focus on the face of a subject close to the centre of the frame.

03 Flash settings
Set your flash to E-TTL mode (the default setting) and take a test shot. The brightness of your subjects will be determined by the flash output, which you can adjust using the flash exposure compensation setting on the flashgun or your camera. The brightness of the background is determined by the ambient light, so alter the shutter speed to increase/decrease this.

04 Self-timer
Set the Drive mode to 10-sec Self-timer; this will give you plenty of time to get into the frame. Fire the shutter and get into position – and remember to make sure that everyone is smiling! If your subjects are raising a glass to the camera, make sure that nobody’s face is obscured.

05 Informal portraits
To take informal portraits of one or two people, rather than a group shot, keep the diffuser on, but shoot with the camera handheld. Keep the shutter speed the same as before, at 1/125 sec, but you can open up the aperture to around f/4, as you won’t need to keep several people in focus. Again, you may need to increase the ISO to between 800 or 1600 if your shots are coming out too dark.

06 Have fun!
You want to capture your subjects having a good time, so communicate with them as you shoot to elicit a reaction. Keep their eyes in focus, and tilt the camera slightly to one side for spontaneous-looking shots. For more flattering results – and to avoid double-chins – shoot from slightly above your subject.

07 Tone down hotspots
Open your image in Elements. Glare on subjects’ skin can spoil a portrait, so to remove it create a new layer and select the Clone Stamp tool. Alt-click to sample skin tones from around a shiny patch and clone these over the problem area, then reduce the Opacity of the cloning layer for a natural-looking result.

08 Adjust and crop
Next add a Levels adjustment layer to boost the contrast; for our shot we set the Shadows slider to 23 and the Midtones slider to 1.05. Use a black brush on the adjustment layer’s mask to remove your edits from areas where they’re not needed. To finish off, crop the image to improve the composition.

Cropping photos: how to enlarge small subjects at printable sizes

jmeyer — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 12:10:58 +0000

Photographing small subjects often requires cropping photos later on the computer. Our latest Photoshop tutorial shows you how to expand your smaller subjects and enlarge subjects the safe way – at printable sizes – in any version of Photoshop CS or Elements.

There are a lot of fascinating small animals and insects around – photogenic, but also tiny. Even with a macro lens, you’re unlikely to get a subject such as our spider to fill the frame, so you’ll probably want to crop your photo in the digital darkroom.

Doing this, however, means you’re discarding part of the image, which may well become a problem when you come to print.

Cropping in tight on the spider in our shot has left us with only around 900 x 750 pixels. Conventional wisdom says that for photo-realistic quality you need to print at a resolution of at least 240ppi (pixels per inch), which means our cropped image can’t be printed at bigger than about 4 x 3 inches.

Our original shot

Even if we push it and print at 150ppi, we won’t get bigger than about 5 x 4 inches without risking the image becoming grainy and blurred.

If you want to print a similarly hard-cropped photo at 10 x 8 or A4 size, what you need is some way to enlarge the cropped photo for printing that preserves its crispness and detail. You need to not just enlarge but resample.

Cropping photos correctly in any version of Photoshop CS or Elements

1 Crop to size
The Crop tool gives you the option to specify Height, Width and Resolution for your crop. If you have a size in mind, feel free to enter it; this will constrain the crop frame to the correct proportions, even if you resize it. Draw the crop frame, then drag it to reposition it as desired.

2 Don’t specify Resolution
Leave the Resolution field blank, and don’t select a preset size. Presets are based on resolution (in Photoshop, 300ppi) as well as size. Enter a value in the Resolution field, Photoshop will interpolate (add pixels) to reach that resolution, but for more control do this separately.

3 Test Image Size
After cropping, go to Image>Image Size. Ensure Resample Image is disabled, choose inches as the units from the pop-up, and type in the print Width or Height you want. If the Resolution figure is below about 180ppi, you’re spreading the image pixels too thinly for a crisp print.

4 Configure Resampling
Enable the Resample Image option, and select Bicubic in the pop-up menu. Enable Constrain Proportions, then specify a Width or Height and an adequate Resolution, and Photoshop will generate new pixels to plug the gaps.

5 Sharpen for output
The interpolated pixels are based on existing pixels – in an area of brown, for example, Photoshop will add an average brown. It can’t create new detail, so you can’t enlarge beyond about 1.5x or 2x at most and get a crisp image. You’ll also need to sharpen before printing.

Photoshop Tip: Play the percentages
You might get better results if you stick to relatively even multiples of the image size, so try selecting ‘percent’ in the units pop-up and specifying not a new Width but ‘150 percent’ or the nearest to what you want. Even if you’re using resampling, though, enlarging too much will make the image become indistinct and blurred.

Photoshop Effects: keep selective colour in black and white conversions

jmeyer — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 11:52:48 +0000

Our latest Photoshop Elements tutorial shows step by step how to achieve popular Photoshop effects: keeping selective colour in your photos when making black and white conversions.

When taking photographs in certain lighting conditions, such as on a dull, overcast day, your photo location’s colours may be less than striking in your final image.

In our start image, for example, a burst of flash has brought out the colours of our model’s clothing, make-up and skin tones, but the rest of the shot’s colours are rather drab and desaturated.

Our start image

The location’s flat-lit colours – like the boring brown brickwork in the background – may be weaker, but they still distract the eye from our main subject. There is a solution.

In this tutorial we’ll show you how to use Photoshop Elements to desaturate the shot’s weaker (and largely irrelevant) background colours to create a more moody monochrome urban scene.

You’ll then discover how to apply brush strokes to a Layer Mask to restore the model’s vibrant colours so that she stands out more effectively against the monochrome environment.

By making selective colour adjustments in this way you can emphasise the shot’s strengths – such as the attractive colours of the flash-lit model – while desaturating the location’s weaker colours.

We’ll also show you how to make selective tonal adjustments so that the brighter model stands out even more against the darker background. By using the Burn tool to darken specific tones you can also hide some of the room’s busy and distracting details and add a sense of mood and mystery to the simplified scene.

To add a gritty texture to our urban location we’ll also demonstrate how to use filters, layers and Blending Modes to give our clean, digitally-sourced start image a film-style grain. This analogue look helps make the shot look more ‘street’!

On the next page we show you step by step how to achieve the effect of keeping selective colour in your images when making black and white converstions.

Overview of using selective colour
How to keep selective colour in black and white conversions: Steps 1-9
How to keep selective colour in black and white conversions: Steps 10-18

Fake HDR effects in Photoshop Elements

jmeyer — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 11:30:18 +0000

Some photographers employ the processing powers of packages like Photoshop CS5 or Photomatix to bracketing exposures to combine into a single composite high dyanmic range image that reveals fine detail in the shadows, midtones and highlights. HDR photography editing techniques add rich (and sometimes false) colours that enhance the artistic look of a shot,  and many even like the way the HDR process can add artefacts such as halos around object edges.

If you’re an Elements user then you’ll lack access to more sophisticated commands like Photoshop CS5’s Merge to HDR Pro, but you can still endow your compositions with typical HDR properties from within Elements.

The trick to getting the HDR look is to shoot a series of bracketed exposures. Here, we’ll show you how to process multiple raw format files to reveal specific tonal details and then use the standard Elements Photomerge command to combine them into a single image packed with detail.

We’ll then show you how to add typical HDR artefacts using the Unsharp Mask command. This will also claw back missing midtones, so that delicate details such as the engravings on our shot can be read more easily.

Step by step how to fake HDR effects in Elements

01 Reveal the wood texture
Open your bracketed exposures in the Camera Raw editor. Click on the hdr_before_02 thumbnail and drag Exposure to -0.45. Boost the Blacks to 21. Increase Contrast to +91 and Clarity to +83 to make the wood grain stand out.

02 Enhance tonal detail
Click on your first image and increase Exposure to +2.45 to reveal midtone and highlight detail. Increase Contrast to +37 and push Clarity up to +41. On your third image, set Exposure to -2.55 to reveal more shadow detail. Click Select All, then Open Images.

03 Use Photomerge
Go to File>New>Photomerge Exposure to merge the shots. Click Open All, then tick Smart Blending. Drag the Highlight Details slider to 73 to darken the brightest areas. Drag Shadows to 70 to lighten the shadows. Increase Saturation to 17 and click Done.

04 Try Unsharp Mask
Photomerge blends the shots together and displays the composite image as a new layer.  Go to Enhance>Unsharp Mask. Set Amount to 87% to reveal the engraved text. Set Radius to 40 to spread the contrast change and create a hint of a halo. Click OK.

05 Tweak the Levels
Choose Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Levels. Set the grey slider to 1.29 to lighten the midtones. Grab the Brush tool. Set Opacity to 100% and the foreground colour to black. Click on the white mask. Spray over the engraving to stop it being lightened.

06 Burn the wood
Choose Layer>Flatten Image. Grab the Burn tool and set Range to Shadows. Set Exposure to 20%. Spray over the grain and knots in the wood to darken them and reveal their texture. Add a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer and up Cyans Saturation to +14.