Maybe a moon

Crappy composite for @puppymeat (specifically his retweet here).

Lunar Eclipse over Orion

Mentioned in this post, an image of the lunar eclipse in its relation to other celestial bodies. Now that I’ve had some time to look over the images, I think that this is my favorite of the evening.  But it took some work.

One interesting thing: the street lights are all effectively done with tungsten lighting – they give everything a solid color cast.  But the moon & the stars – they’re reflecting what is effectively normal sunlight.  Completely different cast.

If you color balance for daylight (I usually have it at 5600K), then the street lights are orange, but the moon is proper.  Balance for tungsten and the moon is drab.

The solution: smart objects in Photoshop.  One for the main area, one for the sky.  Each one with a different color balance.  The original was created in RAW, so this didn’t damage the image.  Minor masking & everything displays as it should.

Does Orion look too bright?  It should, and it’s deliberate.  Several curve layers spiking the intensity there, just to bring ‘em out.  It’s almost overpowering on a large view, but when you look at a smaller view the stars disappear.  This preserves those stars in thumbnails.

Other post-processing: two-pass sharpening on the trees, and a mild blur/ghosting to the tree/snow areas. That was to bring out the calm/softness of the snow, while retaining sharp edges.

Oh, and this is cropped.  I was shivering so much when setting this up on the tripod that it came out crooked.

Fogscape

In this case, I started with this photo (Flickr).  Look closely & you’ll see that this is a crop from the upper-left.  The rendering?  I opened curves in Photoshop.  Grabbed the curve near the middle and moved it around.  The dark side had this cool effect.

I’m finding that simpler really is better these days…

Trail closed, selective color

Or seconds, as the case may be. You may remember this post from a few days ago. It was also posted to my photostream on Flickr, where one of the comments expressed surprise that the selective coloring took no more than a few minutes relative to the rest of the image (total time was two hours).

The trick to getting the selective color so quickly was twofold:

1. I was fortunate in that the image is almost monochrome already (remember me saying that before?).
2. I was using Photoshop CS5

To explain: if I were to do this quickly, without the editing out of distracting objects and fine-tuned sharpening, the steps to create this would boil down to:

• Duplicate the original layer;
• Convert new (top) layer to B&W;
• Add a layer mask, showing all grey;
• Punch holes in the mask to let some color through;

Looking at it like this, you would think that I hand-painted each bit of color.  This should take a lot of time, no? Well, doing it that way would take a lot of time.

I did it a better way.  Remember that this is essentially a monochrome image.  Mostly green, with some blue and some orange.  That means we can almost safely use the Color Select tool in Photoshop to select the individual elements.  The sign, for example:

• Open Photoshop.
• Click “Select” in the menu, then “Color Range.”
• Click anywhere on the orange areas.
• Move the “Fuzziness” slider until all oranges are selected (you’ll get part of the trail and a few trees, too).
• Use the lasso tool (or marquis, which is what I used) to unselect (alt-click & drag) everything that I don’t want.

Repeat for the blues.

However, it is occasionally appropriate for a given photo.  For example, a photo that is already essentially a monochrome, despite being in color.

A closed jogging trail, essentially a monochrome

The photo to the right is just such a case: despite being in full color, it was an overcast day.  Surroundings were almost entirely green, except for the odd wildflower and the orange sign.  As such, it’s effectively a monochrome, but a green version.

This photo was taken with the intent of showing the incongruity of the construction.  You have a naturally-worn trail with wildflowers and grasses growing as they might, and both the grass and the trail lead to a single conclusion: as sign saying “you shall not pass.”  The composition leads the eye there, but the orange warning colors of the sign are lost among the sea of bright, vivid green.

To draw attention to the sign, there are a variety of techniques that can be done.  We could drop saturation a bit on the greens, making the orange stand out.  We could brighten the oranges, to make them stand out.  We could HDR it, or use luminosity (dodging & burning) to attract attention where it needs to go.

All of these techniques leave something to be desired.  Reduced saturation will still leave colors competing with each other. Enhancing the oranges or using HDR techniques will turn the image radioactive.  Dodging & burning will have a good chance at getting the desired result, but requires subtlety, something that (I believe) would be lost on most.

Selective color in this one instance is the best way to bring attention to the sign. Witness (mouse over to see full color version):

Trail closed, selective color

Following the duotone instructions, it’s certainly possible to achieve a similar result, but it’s not really true-to-form.  Then again, nothing in the digital world is. But the folks at Nik have done a pretty good job of getting close with their Silver Efex pro tool.

So, for creating a cyanotype with their tool:

1: open the image for processing

Original Image, for converting

Notice that I’m using the same image as before.

2: Fire up the NIK Silver Efex tool

Select Silver Efex Pro

3: Scroll down the presets to Cyanotype

Don’t forget to select it.  This gives us a starting point.

Select starting settings

4: Customize settings to your preference

In my case, I wanted a darker, higher contrast end result.  Spike up the contrast, drop the structure, and drop brightness (slightly), and I’m pretty much there.  I did add in a red filter, though:

Final Result, Cyanotype processing

Thoughts

Personally, I like a nice, dark feel to this type of photo.  At this point in my life, at least.  What I *really* like: how quickly Silver Efex Pro does this processing.  Notice that there are far fewer steps to get here – for the same result in duotone, I’d be doing masking, vignetting, selective burning, and a whole host of other details.  30 minutes in PS vs 3 in Silver Efex.

It’s pretty easy to make a duotone in Photoshop – I’ve been using PS since version 5.5 and I don’t remember it *not* being there (although I didn’t really use it until CS2 came out, so my memory may be faulty).  The effect can be quite nice, and it’s a favorite technique that I often use with infra-red photos.

So, how to convert your  image:

1: Open your image in Photoshop

For this article, I’m using an older color photo that came out… poorly.  The light was good, but a combination of environment and lens resulted in an unnaturally low-contrast image.

Original Image, for converting

Note the blues from the shadows, and how (typical Alaska), the slanted sun didn’t really have a lot of the golden hues that you’d like. What was a great view in life rendered… poorly in the camera.  But no worries: it makes a decent black & white image.

2: Convert to B&W

Use your favorite technique here.  You could go old school: desaturate, use curves to enhance contrast, and go on.  Or use Photoshop’s B&W filter – it does a pretty good job.  In my case, I used Nik’s Silver Efex tool to get here:

Original, now converted to B&W

Personally, I use the Nik tool for speed.  Nothing better, and I’ve always loved the end result.  Plus, it feels a bit like the old film days: this conversion was all of 20 seconds.  Red filter (darken out those blues), a slight increase in contrast, decrease in structure, increase in brightness, then local controls to darken the sky.

The photo itself now gives me a bit more feeling, something I like with the perpendicular (but uneven) lines.

3: Convert to full Grayscale

Even though this image image looks like a B&W image, it isn’t.  Depending on your technique, it could just be a layer hiding color info.  Whatever the technique, you need to start by getting back to a single layer.  I’m keyboard oriented, so my technique:

• Click on the highest layer.
• Engage “the claw”: press ctrl-alt-shift-”E” (mac: opt-alt-shift-”E”).  Your hand will look like a claw as you press it, and you’ll get a new top layer with all layers merged.  I.e., a full B&W layer.
• Press ctrl-E (mac: opt-E) until you are back to a single layer.

An alternate technique: just above the “Opacity” option in the layers panel is a button with three lines & a down-arrow.  Click it, and one of the options will be “flatten image.”  Most will find this faster, but for me it’s a distraction (hand off the keyboard to the mouse makes it slower for me).

Now, convert to full grayscale by navigating through the menu to “Image” -> “Mode” and selecting “Grayscale”:

Converting to Grayscale

You may get a warning pop up:

Discard Color Info? Yes!

Click “Discard” if you do.

4: Start the conversion to Duotone

This is pretty much the same as what you just did:

Just as before, it’s under the “Image” menu – select “Mode” and click “Duotone.”

5: Set number of tones and colors

In my mind, the “Duotone” option is really a “multitone” option.  You can use anywhere from one to four inks, so it’s not really “duo.”  That being said, the default is a single ink – we want two, so select that from the drop-down:

Select two inks

The next step is up to you.  You can click on each ink and select a color.  You can also select a preset.  I like using presets to get close to where I want to be:

Select a color scheme

Notice how there’s a dark green overlay to the entire thing?  If you’re familiar with cyanotype, you’ll see that we’re getting close to that kind of effect with this preset.

Once you’ve made your final selection of colors, click OK and you’re done.

6: Bask in the glory

Or perhaps enjoy your work.  Or post to Flickr, which I will do with this pic sometime soon:

Final Duotone Version

Note that I deliberately selected a different (non-cyan) color scheme.  I personally like the cooler schemes, but hey – why not mix it up?

Other things to do

If you like this effect, some thoughts for play:

• Play with it.  Try different colors, or different numbers of inks.  Two, three, four – each has its own unique effect.
• Use clashing inks: spin the color wheel & go for something obnoxious.  Like mouldy pea-soup green with neon pink.  Who knows, might be cool!
• Play with the curves – you’ll get different gradations in the overall effect.

A View from the Kihei Boat Harbor

This is a crop from the original, but it has the important part (I’ll post the non-cropped version in a day or two).  Take a close look at the palm trees: looks like a great silhouette of a lone palm, right?  Well, the reality wasn’t so: there were two bunches of palms, one just to the left of the ones you see here.  I didn’t like these extra palms – I felt it distracted from the overall feeling of individual oneness: one set of palms, one Molokini, One Kaho’olawe, one ocean… so the extra palms needed to go.

In CS4, this would have been a ten to twenty minute job: mostly delicate work with the clone stamp tool, some patching and smoothing, and eventually a fairly well constructed section.  The background is fairly simple, so it wouldn’t have been difficult.

In CS5?  I merely selected the extra palms – and fairly loosely, might I add.  Then did the “Edit” -> “Fill” option, selected content-aware, and poof: full replacement of the palms.

Don’t think that it was perfect, mind you.  If you look extremely closely, you can see that it’s ever-so-slightly fuzzy at a part there.  Could be atmospheric diffusion, I suppose – but in reality, it was a bit blurrier than that.  A couple of extra strokes with the healing brush (set to content-aware), and it tightened up to what you see here.  A little more contrast work, and it could be even better – for printing, I’d certainly do that.

So, total time: under 60 seconds with CS5.  CS4: over 10 minutes.

That’s something to be happy about!

Underwater HDR, Redux

Following up on the thoughts on this post, witness the  image to right.  Now, I’m not claiming it’s the best image, nor am I trying to even state that I’m done with post-processing.  I am, but only because I’ve decided I’m not happy with the composition.

But I am happy with the results of my tests.  In this case, I now know: when doing handheld bracketed shots, Photoshop CS5′s “Merge to HDR Pro” function is incredibly more useful than Photomatix 3.2.  It’s not just the ghosting, although that sure cleaned up a lot.

No, it’s how easily CS5 finds like components and merges them together.  Seriously, it’s just incredible: this is a three-frame HDR, in JPG.  Compare the sharpness (not the contrast) and the merging to this:

Underwater HDR, Try #1

I’m not really sure why there’s such a huge difference, but look at the background.  You can see ghosting in the coral when processed in Photomatix 3.  None of that in CS5.

For what it’s worth: yes, I’m aware that Photomatix 4 will fix the ghosting problem – or so Trey says. And yes, I did try to get Photomatix to do its fixes.

I’m really looking forward to Photomatix 4 now…

Evening HDR

Just a test shot that I thought I’d post. I may be putting up a couple more over this evening. Testing CS5′s “Merge to HDR Pro” function, comparing it to Photomatix Pro. This one is an excercise in rescuing a screwed up frame: I had the color balance set to tungsten when I took this, so everything was hyper-blue. Arguably still is, but that’s the HDR saturation effect.

OK, so here’s the thing: since I could fix this in Bridge, then tell PS to merge it, this came out fairly well. Because of the screw-up, when I tried this in Photomatix, it came out… poorly. I originally trashed it, but PS made a completely useable image.

PS was significantly slower, though.

The HDR effect: it’s really only evident in the lack of noise in the shadows. The light wasn’t that far ranging as to justify needing the HDR effect itself.