Friday 26 April 2013

Review Digital Camera World 04-27-2013

Digital Camera World
Blown highlights: how to rescue blown skies using simple Photoshop effects
Apr 26th 2013, 23:01

Are blown highlights spoiling your landscape photography? Find out in this tutorial how you can use simple Photoshop effects like a Gradient Fill adjustment layer to get more balanced exposures.

Blown highlights: how to rescue blown skies using simple Photoshop effects

When shooting landscapes, you can overcome the difference in light levels between a bright sky and darker terrain to produce an evenly exposed shot by using a graduated neutral density filter – also called an ND grad filter. If you don't have one of these, don't worry – you can reproduce the effect in Photoshop Elements.

The key to an effective ND grad in Photoshop Elements is to use selections, layers and gradients. The gradient will be on a separate layer, so you can easily adjust exposure to restore colours and details that are missing from an over-exposed sky.

In this Photoshop tutorial you'll learn how to isolate the sky using selection tools, and how to apply a Gradient Fill adjustment layer to this selection. This will help darken the over-exposed sky at the top of the shot while blending it seamlessly with the shot's correctly exposed clouds lower down.

Our before image

Our before image

You'll also learn how to tint the gradient so that it contains the same colours as the clouds. This combination of subtly blended tones and colours will make the edited sky look natural.

As well as tweaking the sky's colours and tone, we'll show you how to make selective tonal adjustments to other parts of the shot to bring out texture and detail. We'll also use layer masks to prevent the lighthouse from being altered by the gradient layer, and gently tweak its mid-tones with the Burn tool to make it look less flat.

How to rescue blown highlights in your landscape photography – steps 1-3

How to rescue blown highlights in your landscape photography: step 1

01 Adjust the mid-tones
Open your start image with the blown highlights. Click the Create New Fill or Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette and choose Levels. Drag the grey Midtone input slider right to 0.70. This darkens the photo's mid-tones, revealing more colour and texture in the over-exposed sky.

 

How to rescue blown highlights in your landscape photography: step 2

02 Select the sky
The sky adjustment works well, but the land is now too dark. We need to restrict the adjustment to the sky. Select the Magic Wand and set the Tolerance to 41. Keep Contiguous ticked. Hold down Shift and click the sky repeatedly until it's all selected. Don't worry if you include bits of lighthouse at this stage.

 

How to rescue blown highlights in your landscape photography: step 3

03 Fill the selection
To select the land choose Select>Inverse. Now click the white layer mask and choose Edit>Fill Selection. In the Fill Layer window set the Use drop-down menu to Black and click OK. The sky will remain in its adjusted state while the land gets restored to its original exposure.

PAGE 1: How to rescue blown highlights in your landscape photography – steps 1-3
PAGE 2 How to rescue blown highlights in your landscape photography – steps 4-6
PAGE 3 How to rescue blown highlights in your landscape photography – steps 7-9
PAGE 4: How to rescue blown highlights in your landscape photography – steps 10-12
PAGE 5: How to rescue blown highlights in your landscape photography – steps 13-15
PAGE 6: How to rescue blown highlights in your landscape photography – steps 16-18

READ MORE

How to process raw images the right way
34 Photoshop effects every photographer must try once
Crop photos the right way: classic mistakes and how to avoid them
Adobe Lightroom: what every photographer needs to know about the ‘alternative Photoshop’

Movement photography: camera panning techniques to convey a sense of speed
Apr 26th 2013, 13:02

Camera panning techniques look and sound complicated. In reality, though, anyone with a manual mode and the patience to practice can learn how to pan a camera. In this tutorial we’ll show you how you can use slower shutter speeds to add a greater sense of drama to your movement photography.

Movement photography: camera panning techniques to convey a sense of speed

All images by Chris Rutter

Camera panning is a skill that takes practice to get right. Following fast-moving subjects accurately, and choosing the best shutter speed to balance getting the subject sharp and sufficiently blurring the background isn't something that you pick up immediately in your movement photography. But it's incredibly rewarding when everything comes together.

If you're new to movement photography, start your experiments using camera panning with subjects that travel in a straight line, perpendicular to the direction you're shooting in, such as racing cars moving along a straight part of the track.

In this situation you should set the camera to shutter priority mode, select a speed of 1/250 sec and make sure that the drive mode is on continuous shooting.

You should then manually focus the lens on the point where you'll shoot your subjects. This will avoid problems with the autofocus changing the focus point during your pan.

Next, position yourself so that you're facing the point you've focused on, and turn your body so that you can pick up the subject as early as possible as it travels towards you.

Swivel smoothly, keeping the subject in the same position in the frame, for as long as possible as it travels past you.

To get the smoothest pan you should try to swivel from your hips, rather than just your shoulders, and fire the camera in the middle of this movement.

Remember to continue panning well after you've finished shooting, because stopping too early can create a jerky movement, which will spoil your movement photography.

Once you've perfected this camera panning technique, and you can smoothly follow the action, you can start to reduce the shutter speed to give more blur and a greater impression of speed in your movement photography.

Start by dropping it to 1/125 sec and then 1/60 sec or even slower, but make sure that you're keeping the main subject sharp.

With the basic panning action mastered, you can use this technique in more difficult situations such as when subjects are moving diagonally towards you, or on even more unpredictable subjects such as moving animals or footballers.

This random movement makes it trickier to get as much background blur, because you need to use a faster shutter speed than if you're shooting something more predictable.

Unlike with subjects moving perpendicular to you, it's also better to select predictive autofocus mode, because the distance between you and the target will vary..

PAGE 1: What is panning?
PAGE 2: 3 simple steps to panning like a pro
PAGE 3: How to choose the best shutter speed for movement photography
PAGE 4: Final tips for taking successful panning photos

READ MORE

The best lenses for sports photography (and ideal focal lengths to use)
Panning: how the pros capture motion (and the best shutter speeds to use)
Free action photography cheat sheet

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