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LEARN PHOTOSHOP CC & LIGHTROOM TODAY! Issue 124 July 2021

OLD SCHOOL RULES

3T0EXPTLFUURSE! E RES

GET THE RETRO LOOK

BOOST LANDSCAPES | FOCUS STACKING | UV PHOTOGRAPHY

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Editor James Paterson Art Editor Rosie Webber Production Editor Richard Hill Content Director Chris George Senior Art Editor Warren Brown

DOWNLOAD THE PROJECT FILES To download this issue's files, type the following link into your web browser on your PC or Mac:

Welcome to issue 124 of Practical Photoshop!

If you enjoy the issue, why not subscribe and get a whole year forRetrojustphoto$19.effects 99? are all the rage, but if you want a more refined old-school look than phone filters give you, Photoshop offers a host of tools for the job. Elsewhere this issue, selectively boost your landscapes and get creative with flower photos by focus-stacking or shooting with ultraviolet light.

James Paterson, Editor • james.paterson@futurenet.com

www.digitalcameraworld.com GET THE BOOST LANDSCAPE MASTER AUTO RETRO LOOK COLORS BLENDING nTop tips for oldnMake targeted nCreate ultraschool effects and vintage treatments

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color boosts to detailed focus enhance your photos stacks with ease

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CREATE STUNNING LIGHTROOM UV ARTWORK SKILLS nShoot and edit nCorrect white flowers under ultraviolet light

balance and fix color casts

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OLD-SCHOOL RULES Give your photos a wonderful vintage look with these simple editing techniques

Over the next few pages, we’ll explain a host of tips, tricks and techniques for aging your photos, from wonderful vintage toning tricks to light leaks, blur effects and more...

DOWNLOAD THE PROJECT FILES HERE http://bit.ly/pho_124 ON YOUR PC OR MAC

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AGE YOUR PHOTOS WITH TEXTURES

One of the easiest ways to give your photos the look of a weathered old print is to blend in a texture on top of it. There are 26 layer Blending Modes to choose from. Depending on your choice of image and texture, any one of these 26 might do, but the most dependable tend to be Lighten, Screen, Darken, Multiply, Overlay and Soft Light. We’ve used the Screen Blending Mode here to add a scratched texture to our portrait.

We’ve supplied 30 free textures amongst this issue’s project files for you to try out on your photos.

Of course, you can combine more than one texture, using different Blending Modes and layer opacity settings to build up the effect over several layers.

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WATCH THE VIDEO

https://bit.ly/2TVkAam

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WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/3xjOjrX

TAKE TEXTURE EFFECTS FURTHER WITH BLEND IF

As well as using Blending Modes to combine textures with your images, you can also create all kinds of interesting effects by experimenting with the Blend If controls.

These let you blend by luminosity or color.

Double-click a layer to access the Blend If controls, then use the This Layer and

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Underlying Layer sliders to start blending. You can fade out the brighter parts of one layer to reveal the brighter areas on the layer below by dragging the white point This Layer slider inwards.

You can also split the sliders in half by Alt-dragging one side of the triangular control point. This allows you to create a softer transition.

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GET THE MATTE LOOK WITH CURVES

In general, we want our photos to display a complete range of tones from black to white, but when it comes to retro effects, we can give the impression of a faded old photo by cutting out the two ends of the tonal range. This is easy to do with Curves (use either the Tone Curve in Camera Raw or Lightroom, or the Curves command in Photoshop).

Drag the bottom-left point of the diagonal curve line upwards slightly: this lifts our black point, so it effectively sets the darkest tone in our image. Similarly, drag the top-right point down slightly to fade out the white point.

To take it further, try similar edits on the red, green and blue curve lines.

For example, drag the lower red point upwards to introduce red into the shadows, and the upper blue point down to tint the highlights yellow. Subtle color shifts like this give your photos the look of an old print, as the colors in old chemically processed prints tend to shift over time.

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WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/3gigrGm

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USE ONE-CLICK RETRO TONING PROFILES AND PRESETS

Photoshop and Lightroom both offer a range of built-in one-click effects that let you add a retro color tint in seconds.

One of the best tools for the job is the Profiles Browser in Camera Raw or Lightroom. This features a Vintage set of Profiles that skew colors in a pleasingly old-fashioned way. You can also find a range of retro toning presets in the Presets Panel in Camera Raw or Lightroom, which gives you old-school effects like ‘Aged Photo’. Elsewhere, you can find a selection of film stock effects within the Color Lookup Adjustment in Photoshop, and a crossprocessed treatment within the Curves presets.

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BLUR THE EDGES

Old lenses would often be very soft around the edges of the frame, which meant that the corners of the photo would be blurred. We can replicate this with simple blur filters in Photoshop.

The two best filters for this effect are both found in Photoshop’s Blur Gallery.

Here you’ll find the Iris Blur and Tilt-Shift filters. Iris Blur lets you create circular fall-off, so the center of the image stays sharp while the corners go soft. TiltShift works in a linear way, blurring the top and bottom of the frame. Of course, you could use both.

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To apply the effect, rightclick your layer and choose Convert To Smart Object (this keeps the blur editable), then go to Filter > Blur

Gallery > Iris Blur. Use the circular control to set the strength, then experiment with the bokeh settings to get a look you like.

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TRY ANALOG EFEX PRO If you want a simple, no-fuss way to add vintage effects to your photos, it’s worth investing in a dedicated plugin.

Analog Efex Pro comes as part of the excellent Nik Collection (which also includes the fabulous Silver Efex Pro for black-and-white treatments). The plugin lets you create a range of vintage and classic camera effects. There are lots of fun presets to choose from,

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and a vast array of options for customizing your retro look by adding different light leaks, film borders and more. Once installed, the plugin can be accessed and opened via the Photoshop Filter menu; and after applying and saving your effect, you can send it back to Photoshop for fine-tuning. It’s a powerful package that lets you create all manner of retro effects with ease.

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ADD A LIGHT LEAK EFFECT WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/3glJmcF

Light leaks are a phenomenon that tended to plague cheap old camera bodies, which often had gaps that let tiny amounts of light in. This light would fog the edges of a rolled-up length of film, resulting in orangey smudges around the frame.

To replicate the look on an image taken with a digital camera, try using Curves…

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01 SKEW THE COLORS

Go to the Layers Panel, click the Create AdjustmentLayericon at the bottom and choose Curves. Selectthe Red curve channel and drag right up on the line to add a strong red cast, then select the Blue curve channel and drag down to add yellow, resulting in a strong orange color shift.

02 PAINT THE LEAK

Press Cmd/Ctrl+I to invert the Curves Layer Mask to black, thereby hiding the effect. Next, grab the Brush Tool, choose a soft-edged brush tip and set the foreground color to white, then paint long the edges of the frame to gradually reveal the color change where you want it to appear.

A SECOND 03 ADDLIGHT LEAK

Duplicate the Curves Adjustment Layer by pressing Cmd/Ctrl+J, then double-click the layer thumbnail to edit the settings. Shift thecolors slightly for variation, then right-click the mask to delete it. Add a new mask, invert it and paint to reveal the second layer.

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OVERLAY A FILM BORDER

Why not give your image the look of an old slide by adding a film border? We’ve supplied a border for you to use in this issue’s project files, but if you have some old film lying around, you could easily create your own. Simply copy and paste the border into your photo, press Cmd/Ctrl+T to transform, and resize it to fit over the frame.

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GET THE SOLARIZED LOOK The solarization effect is an old darkroom technique that leaves one half of the tonal range as normal, and inverts the other half to negative.

It’s easy to recreate in Photoshop with Curves.

First convert your image to black and white, then add a Curves Adjustment Layer.

Plot either a V shape or an inverted V as shown, to invert one half of the tonal range of the photo.

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MAKE LANDSCAPE COLORS SING

James Paterson shows how to get to grips with targeted Curves edits in Photoshop, for an array of landscape-boosting tricks At first glance, a freshly photographed landscape may appear more muted than you expected, but there’s often a whole heap of color information in there, just waiting to be teased out. In this project we’ll look at how to make your landscape colors sing. Rather than simply applying a uniform saturation boost to the scene, we’ll instead make a https://bit.ly/2SqLA1k series of targeted edits that are tailored to specific areas. We can make use of Photoshop’s array of intelligent selection tools.

Once done, we’ll use the Curves command to boost tones and colors. Not only can we use Curves to add punch, we can also target the red, green or blue channels and use them to subtly shift the colors in the scene.

This is where Adjustment Layers come in. When we of Adjustment Layers and add an Adjustment Layer, masks that makes editing the active selection is in Photoshop such a joy, as converted to a Layer Mask, we have complete control which lets us make a local over the changes we make. adjustment. It’s this mixture At any time we can change

WATCH THE VIDEO

BEFORE

AFTER the area that’s affected by altering the Layer Mask, or change the strength of the tonal change by tweaking the Adjustment Layer settings.

DOWNLOAD THE PROJECT FILES HERE http://bit.ly/pho_124 ON YOUR PC OR MAC

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01 TARGET THE SKY

Go to Select > Sky to isolate the sky. Go to the Layers Panel, click the Create AdjustmentLayericon at the bottom and choose Curves from the resulting pop-up menu. Pull the curve up or down to change brightness or color. The Red channel controls the red/cyan shift; Green shifts green/magenta; Blue shifts blue/yellow.

02 ADD A CURVES LAYER Drag the bottomleft point on the curve inwards, as shown in the screenshot,to darken the sky. Go to the RGB channel dropdown. Select Red, then drag down on the red line to add cyan into the sky area. Next, target the Blue channel. Drag the bottomleft point up to intensify all of the blues in the sky.

03 ENHANCE TREELINE THE

Highlight the bottom layer and go to Select > Color Range. Use the Eyedropper to sample the yellow in the trees, and adjust Fuzziness until you have a precise selection of trees. Add another Curves layer. Plot an S-shaped curve to boost contrast and saturation in the trees.

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04 BOOST THE WATER

Highlight the bottom layer, then get the Object Selection Tool. Drag a box over the water to select it.

Add a Curves layer, then plot a bottom-heavyS-shaped curve to boost the contrast and deepen the shadows.

Target the Red channel and drag the top-right point down a bit, to add cyan into the water area.

05 REDUCE THE HAZE

Grab the Quick Selection Tool and paint over the mountains to select them. Use the Select And Mask command to improve the selection edge, if needed, then add a Curves layer. Make another S-curve, as shown, then go to the Blue channel and drag the bottom-left point in, to reduce blue in the shadows.

06 PUNCHY ROCKS

Select the rocks in the foreground with the Object Selection Tool, then add a Curves Adjustment Layer and plot an S-curve.

Next, add a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer. Hold down Alt and drag the mask from the Curves layer below onto the new layer to copy it over. Increase Saturation to boost the rocks.

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AFTER

WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/35hyGVZ

BEFORE

FOCUS-STACK FAST IN PHOTOSHOP The tools you need to create super-detailed close-up shots and other scenes in seconds

Focus-stacking is a great way to increase the depth of field in your close-ups, landscapes or any other type of scene where you want to achieve front-toback sharpness. Sometimes this simply isn’t possible in one exposure – especially when you want to include details that are very close to the lens – but by shooting a set of photos with varying

focus points, we can combine the sharpest parts into a single image later on.

To shoot for a focus stack, simply use a tripod and focus on the closest point. Take a shot, then manually shift the focus slightly and take another, continuing to shoot until you’ve recorded frontto-back sharpness. Of course, plenty of modern cameras have focus-stacking modes

that can shift the focus for you automatically.

To composite our set of images, we can take advantage of two automated Photoshop tools. Auto-Align ensures all the details line up on top of one another, while Auto-Blend seeks out the infocus parts of each shot and blends them into one supersharp image. And it only takes seconds to do!

DOWNLOAD THE PROJECT FILES HERE https://bit.ly/pho_124 ON YOUR PC OR MAC

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LOAD FILES INTO STACK Before we can blend our

focus-stacked images, we need to load them all into a single document. There’s no need to copy and paste all your images manually, though: instead, go to File > Scripts > Load Files Into Stack, then select the set of photos you want to use.

Alternatively, if you use Bridge, select the set of images and go to Tools > Photoshop > Load Files Into Photoshop Layers.

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AUTO-ALIGN When we adjust the

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CROP THE EDGES Auto-Align resizes some

focus point backwards while layers slightly to match them we’re shooting for a focus up with each other. This leads stack, the frame will zoom to messy overlapping edges, slightly out. The effect is so we need to crop in slightly more pronounced in close-up to remove them using the photography. This slightly Crop Tool. It’s worth keeping messes up the alignment of this in mind when you frame our photos, even when we your close-up shots: it may use a tripod, but Auto-Align affect the composition if fixes things without any fuss. you need to crop in later on.

Highlight all the layers in the If you’d rather not crop, try Layers Panel, then go to Edit ticking Content-Aware Fill > Auto-Align. Choose Auto Transparent Areas in the and click OK. Auto-Blend settings.

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AUTO-BLEND This tool recognizes the

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NOTTheFORPanorama PANORAMAS feature

sharp parts from each of our lets you stitch several layers, then hides everything frames together, but it’s else, creating a single, superrather superfluous here. sharp blend from our images. There are better panorama Begin by highlighting all the tools on offer elsewhere, layers in the stack, then go like the Photomerge tool to Edit > Auto-Blend. Tick in Photoshop (go to File > Stack Images and Seamless Automate > Photomerge) or Tones And Colors, then click the similar Merge commands OK. Auto-Blend can also in Camera Raw (select blend colors and tones in images, right-click and Merge two images for a seamless To Panorama) or in Lightroom whole – to make a fun face(select, right-click and swap, for example.

Photomerge > Panorama).

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ADJUST MASKS Once Auto-Blend has

isolated the sharp parts from each image, we’re left with a stack of layers, with masks that hide everything else. If your blend looks slightly wrong or some areas have come out too soft, there may be a sharper area hidden on another layer.

You can go through each layer and try to find sharper details. Alternatively, simply clone sharper pixels from elsewhere to tidy up.

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GLOW-INTHE-DARK FLOWERS

James Paterson crafts psychedelic images of fluorescent flowers and plantsusing ultraviolet light

Ultraviolet light can have a dramatic effect on flowers by revealing glowing colors and details unseen by the naked eye. Outside the visible spectrum of light, UV causes phosphors in certain substances and surfaces to store up energy, which is then released as light.

A phosphor is something that emits visible light when activated by UV radiation – like your white T-shirt and teeth under UV ‘blacklights’ at a disco.

WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/3wntEDo However, those sort of disco lights won’t cut it here. The problem is they produce a lot of visible light (this is the blueypurple light you often see). They work great on things like T-shirts and glowing makeup because these surfaces have strong UV reflectance.

But with flowers, the UV reflectance is weaker.

Instead, we need a more concentrated UV beam in the form of a UV torch.

Thankfully, these won’t break the bank.

We used a Convoy S2+ UV LED flashlight and ZWB2 filter (ordered for about $32/£25 on www.aliexpress.com).

This produces strong fluorescence in flowers.

When we shine the UV torch onto flowers and leaves, the beam may reveal glowing colors that transform the look of plants. Some flowers and leaves shimmer with glowing dust-like displays, while others will reveal unexpected changes in light and detail.

DOWNLOAD THE PROJECT FILES HERE http://bit.ly/pho_124 ON YOUR PC OR MAC

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THE SETUP

Find a dark room and a few flowers, then turn on your UV torch for stunning displays of color and light

1 SAFETY GLASSES

Exposure to UV light can be damaging to the eyes, so we need some eye protection. Safety glasses are usually made of polycarbonate, which blocks ultraviolet light. Failing that, you could use a pair of decent sunglasses or spectacles that have UV protection.

2 FLOWERS AND LEAVES

3 PLAIN BACKDROP

Different plants will fluoresce in different ways, and you may find some don’t work at all, while others will give you a magnificent show.You might see specks of light or dusty glowing patterns.

Experiment with a variety of plants and flowers and see what results you can achieve.

A dark plain backdrop will contrast with the glowing colors. We used the black side of a 5-in-1 pop-up reflector here. You could try different colors and surfaces for your backdrop if you like, as they may react to the UV light in unexpected ways.

We need to paint our flowers Ultraviolet light is just with the UV light over a few outside the range of visible seconds to build up the detail light that goes from red at of the plants’ patterns. This one end through orange, means using a tripod to keep yellow, green, blue and violet. the camera still, and the While we can’t see it, we can composition the same. Set a see how it excites certain two-second self-timer delay surfaces and substances to to prevent camera shake make them glow in all manner while firing the shutter. of interesting ways.

We need to shoot in a darkened room so that the only light that’s recorded is from our UV torch. Of course, you could also shoot outdoors at night – you can experiment by shining the UV torch on all kinds of outdoor surfaces, plants and even insects.

4 TRIPOD AND SELF-TIMER

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5 UV LIGHT

6 DARK ROOM

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TOP TIPS CAPTURE FLUORESCING FLOWERS

01 GET A UV FLASHLIGHT

The Convoy S2+ UV LED flashlight used here has a concentrated UV beam, so keep it away from anyone’s eyes, even they have safety glasses on. This 365nm torch is mostly used by minerallovers seeking out rocks and gems or testing minerals at shows. But it’salso idealfor capturing fluorescence in flower photography.

A 02 ATTACH ZWB2 FILTER

This little circle of glass behaves as a longwave bandpass filter, cutting out some of the light spectrum outside the UV range. By doing so,we prevent visible light from overpowering the weak UV reflectance in flowers. You can tape it to the front of the torch, or unscrew the head and fit it inside.

03 SET AN EXPOSURE

The correctexposure will depend on the strength of the torch and the amount of UV reflectance, so it may take some tweaking to get right. As a starting point, set the camera to Manual mode with a shutter speed of 15 seconds, an aperture of f/8 and an ISO of 100 (or some variation of this, like 30 seconds at f/11, ISO 100).

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04 FOCUS THEN LOCK

When you shoot in low light like this, the camera’s autofocus has a tendency to hunt around for the point of focus, so it’s best to turn on a light (or,if you’re outside, shine the light of a normal torch on your subject), then pre-focus on the plant. Once the camera has locked on, switch to manual focus to keep it in place.

05 START PAINTINGLIGHT

After starting your long exposure, shine the torch over the flowers. We can concentrate the beam in different areas to build up the lighting on both the subject and surrounding plants. Take note of which areas fluoresce the strongest, and arrange the flowers to include these parts in the frame.

06 SCULPT THE LIGHTWITH

Experiment with the angles of the torch. A side-on light will help to reveal the texture and detail in the flowers, while plunging other parts into shadow. By shining the light at the front, back and sides of the subject for varying lengths of time, you can mimic a two-, three- or four-light setup.

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STEP BY STEPCORRECT AND ENHANCE COLORS

01 SET WHITE BALANCE

Your flower photos are likely to have a strong blue color cast. It’s best to shoot in raw for greater headroom while correcting colors.

Grab the White Balance Eyedropper Tool in the Camera Raw or Lightroom Basic Panel, and click on a point that should be neutral (like the black backdrop here) to correct color casts.

02 USE COLOR MIXER

Even after adjusting the white balance, your images may have a strong blue tint. You can tone this down with Camera Raw or Lightroom’s Color Mixer Panel.

Go to the Saturation tab, then grab the Target Tool. Click on the overly strong colors and drag to the left to reduce them, or drag to the right over weaker colors.

03 EXPOSURE CONTROL

It’s tricky to get light painting perfect in-camera, so you may find some parts of the frame have received too much light and others too little. Use the Adjustment Brush in Camera Raw or Lightroom to selectively paint in more or less exposure over areas that need it. Grab the brush, dial in exposure and start painting.

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typicalimage-editing workflow in Photoshop; an overview of raw file editing; a guide to the six most useful layers; and a glossary of the most useful shortcuts. This guide condenses most of the tools and techniques you’ll use every time you import a new roll of pictures.

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app. It also enables you to connect with like-minded creatives, so you can follow artists and see their work updating. Once you’re done sketching the image on your iPad, you can upload to the Sketch community, or continue working on the image in Photoshop CC. You can also bring in brushes made with Adobe Brush, and for those who can’t paint, there’s an option to overlay images so you can trace over a photo. Sketch is compatible with Adobe’s pen and ruler hardware, Ink and Slide, but you can get great results with your finger.

PHOTOSHOP FIX FREE IPAD

Fix is a retouching app for altering portraits and fixing marksor blemishes in your photos. Intelligent facial recognition locks onto eyes, lips noses and chins, making it easy to tweak a smile, tuck in a jawline or enlarge eyes, should you wish.

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BEHANCE CREATIVE PORTFOLIO FREEIPAD, IPHONE Behance is the online social space for creatives to share and showcase their portfolios, connect with one another, and find work. With work from the best photographers, digital artists and designers out there, it’s also a great place to find inspiration for a new project. If you’re a Creative Cloud subscriber you can set up a Behance page in minutes. The Behance app for iOS devices enables you to manage your page, while the Creative Portfolio app provides a polished portfolio.

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Manage your photos from capture to output in three stages The image-editing process begins as soon as you’ve transferred your photos from your memory card to your computer.

1 The first stage is to begin sifting through your pictures to discover which are the keepers. The image organizer that comes with Photoshop is ideal for this task. Adobe Bridge has controls for keywording, rating and filtering your images, and there are handy tools for batch renaming files, creating panoramic stitches, making contact sheets and more.

Launch Adobe Bridge and navigate to a folder containing new images. Use the cursor keys to quickly flick through the images and click below a thumbnail to add a star rating, or use the keyboard shortcut Cmd/Ctrl+1-5.You can then filter your photos by the star rating to group the ones you want to work on.

2 The next step is to open the shots from Bridge into Adobe Camera Raw. ACR is the best place to make initial changes to your images to boost tones and correct any problems with exposure and so on. It doesn’t enable you to combine images– you’ll use Photoshop for that – but it does enable you to make the kind of edits photographers need.

3 In Photoshop,you can furtherrefine the image with layersand adjustment layers, which offer a much more flexible way of working than ACR. Once you’ve finished, it’s time to share it with an audience. Go to File>Save, and your image will be saved as a Photoshop document (PSD). This keeps all the layers intact, which means you can go back and retweak the image at a later date. However, PSD files are large and can take up lots of hard drive space. If you want to share your images online or via email or social media, save them as JPEGs.

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Discover how to process your raw files to perfection The latest version of the raw file processor included with Photoshop is so powerful that most photos can be processed entirely in the raw processor, with no need for further editing in Photoshop. And by making your adjustments in Adobe Camera Raw,

THE BASIC PANEL IN ACR

rather than inPhotoshop, you’ll ensure the best possible image quality, because raw files contain more picture information than bitmap images such as un-layered PSDs and JPEGs. Here’s our reference to the features you’ll use the most in the Basic panel.

CONTRAST

Makes light pixels brighter and dark pixels darker

HIGHLIGHTS

TEMPERATURE Use this slider to warm

Controls the brightness of the lightest pixels

or cool an image if the White Balance tool fails to correct a color cast

SHADOWS

Controls the brightness of the darkest pixels

TINT

WHITES

This slider enables you to correcta green or magenta cast, again, if the White Balance tool fails

Sets a point on the tonal range at which pixels should be pure white

EXPOSURE

CLARITY

Controls the overall brightness of the image

BLACKS

Sets a point on the tonal range at which pixels should be pure black

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Controls the amount of midtone contrast

SATURATION

Controls the overall color intensity of the image

VIBRANCE

Adjusts the intensity of the less-saturated colors

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The six most frequently used Photoshop layers for image editing, and how to use them to improve almost any photo Photoshop has many types of layers and adjustment layers available, but there are six that you’ll find you need to use again and again. Learning how they should be

02 CURVES

Curves is one of the most powerful adjustmentlayers. An S-shaped curve brightens the highlightsand darkens the shadows, resulting in extra contrast. Create a Curves Adjustment Layer and click the middle of the diagonal line to add a central control point. Drag down on the lower part of the line and drag up on the upper part of the line to improve image contrast.

used may seem a little daunting for beginners, but once you’ve got to grips with them, you’ll find they play a part in the creative process of almost every image you make.

01 LEVELS

This should be the first layer you add to an image, because it fundamentally alters the tonal range of the entire image. Create a Levels Adjustment Layer, drag the Black point slider inwards until it touches the lefthand edge of the histogram, and drag the White point slider inwards to the right-hand edge. This remaps the tones of the image to make more of the available tonal range.

03 HUE/SATURATION

This adjustment layer is best used for altering the intensityand brightness of individual color channels in an image – greens and bluesin landscapes, for instance.

Create a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer, click the Master menu and choose the color channel you’d like to adjust. Small changes are usually the most effective.

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04 HEALING LAYER

Most photos contain unwanted marks or blemishes. The Spot Healing Brush tool is effective at removing these. The best way to apply the healing is on a new blank layer, so that you can easily tone down or remove selected healing work later without having to start from scratch because you healed directly on the background layer.

To do this, create a new blank layer, choose the Spot Healing Brush tool from the Tools panel and tick Sample All Layers on the Options bar, then continue as normal.

06 SELECTIVE SHARPENING

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AFTER

BEFORE

DODGE AND BURN One of the best ways to enhance a

photo is by lightening or darkening selected areas of the image. This can be done with the Dodge and Burn tools, but rather than use them directly on the image, a separate grey layer gives you greater control. To create a Dodge and Burn layer, hold down Alt and click the Create a new layer icon in the Layers panel. Give the layer a name, then choose Mode: Overlay. Check Fill with Overlay-neutral color and click OK. Now use the Dodge and Burn tools (with Range set to Midtones) to work on the new layer.

Once all other adjustments have been made, you need to sharpen the image for output. The traditional way is to create a merged layer at the top of the stack, apply Unsharp Mask, then paint on the mask to remove the sharpening from those parts of the image you want to remain soft.

However, the Sharpentool enables more control over the process by enabling you to build up the effect by brushing repeatedly with a low opacity brush. Create a new blank layer, select the Sharpen tool, tick Sample All Layers and set a Strength of 50% or lower.

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Future Publishing Limited, Quay House, The Ambury, Bath BA1 1UA Editorial+44 (0)1225 442244• www.digitalcameraworld.com Editorial Editor James Paterson james.paterson@futurenet.com Art Editor Rosie Webber Production Editor Richard Hill richard.hill@futurenet.com Content Director Chris George Senior Art Editor Warren Brown Cover image James Paterson

Disclaimer All contents © 2021 Future Publishing Limited or published under licence. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be used, stored, transmitted or reproduced in any way without the prior written permission of the publisher. Future Publishing Limited (company number 2008885) is registered in England and Wales. Registered office: Quay House, The Ambury, Bath BA1 1UA. All information contained in this publication is for information only and is, as far as we are aware, correct at the time of going to press. Future cannot accept any responsibility for errors or inaccuracies in such information. You are advised to contact manufacturers and retailers directly with regard to the price of products/services referred to in this publication. Apps and websites mentioned in this publication are not under our control. We are not responsible for their contents or any other changes or updates to them. This magazine is fully independent and not affiliated in any way with the companies mentioned herein.

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