Dynax Digital Forums

Adding that 'shine' to a photo!  [useful for car pictures etc]

Very similar to the 'high pass sharpening technique', but instead of selecting just a couple of pixels (usually 2 pixels) for the high pass filter, make widen it up a little (say 8-10 pixels)

i.e. 

- Add duplicate layer
- Filter > High pass filter (select 8-20 pixels, but experiment)
- Select Soft light blend
- Adjust opacity to get the right effect!

e.g.

Before:


After:


This was done with "15 pixel" High pass filter & 60% Opacity

Larger versions on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/peppernet/

Quote from: wildieswife on November 18, 2008, 03:15:26 PM

Well - this thread 'wasted' a couple of hours!!
Many thanks to you all but especially Stef who has indeed written a book! I've nearly run out of paper

wildieswife, if you go to this link you will find an index to all stefs great tips and from others also. Makes it easier to find them, rather than printing them all out.

Please guys do me a favour and don't pass these print outs on to other people! They are meant (at least my part of the tips) as good will to the members here on the forum but not to the wider world. I am in the progress of writing a PS CS4 book...
Thanks Stef.

Guys yes I will let you all know. BTW just a polite suggestion: can we discuss all these things outside the darkroom tips- or people will have to scroll through a lot of our conversations to get to what they are looking for?
Perhaps somewhere here:
http://www.dynaxdigital.com/index.php/board,6.0.html
Thanks
Stef.

Printer Settings

I thought I put this up here as well as these settings are very similar for all the different photographic printers. The main players in this field are Epson/ Canon and some HP printers.

Printing with Epson 2880 and Photoshop CS+: But this works pretty much the same for all other printers at least until step 2

file > print > use the following settings in this first dialogue box:

1. at the top right hand side it needs to say "colour management"; below that tick "document" under colour handling and this is very important choose: "Photoshop Manages Colors"; under printer profile choose the profile for your particular paper (if you have not the right one for your particular paper you can download them from the website); Rendering Intent choose "Relative Colorimetric"; tick "Black Point Compensation";

now to the left: starting again at the top:
Printer: choose your printer; directly under that the layout: landscape or portrait; you can choose to tick further down "scale to fit media" if you like;
now go back up on the left hand side where it says "page setup > click and a second dialogue will open that shows and interface which depends on your particular printer

2. go to the "main tab"
under "media type" check that it is the right setting for your paper; color: decide on whether this is black and white as the next steps depend on that!

for colour prints:
> choose colour; print quality: choose "quality options" put 4 in it and leave high speed on (there have been tests that showed it is not worth turning it off- for other printers please do turn it off) The numbers you put in under quality options change the dpis. 4 is a good choice IMHO.
> make sure that under mode it says "custom and off no color adjustment"; finally check the paper size and you can click print- you are done.

For black and white it is slightly different and I only put here what you need to change from color:
under color obviously put "advanced b+w"; under "mode" it will now highlight "color controls" > click the Advanced next to it: here you can set your toning and so on. I usually use the following settings here:
toning: neutral
tone: darker (works better for most)

The rest is playing around and I am more than willing to go into the more special settings should there be need for it?

The most important part of all the above is to set the printer to "photoshop manages colors and to make sure color management for color prints is set to off in the second dialogue box!!!

Tethered Shooting and Import

This is not strictly a darkroom technique but I think it is worthwhile keeping it in this thread for future use.

You can shoot in tethered mode with Adobe Bridge and in Lightroom as Fother has very rightly pointed out to me in a pm. You can do this with the help of a combination of the software that came bundled with your camera and with setting Adobe Bridge in a way that it monitors the folder in which the images are stored by your camera's software. This is basically a way around buying a dedicated software program that is designed to operate in tethered mode. The only requirement is that the camera is connected to your computer via an usb cable and that obviously the camera is capable of shooting tethered.

This is what you have to do:

(1)
Connect your camera via USB to your computer > set in the camera menu under the settings no 2: usb connection to: "remote PC" > open the program "Sony Image Data Suite" on your computer > open remote camera control > under "save in" -> choose a folder and remember the name of it! (This is where the images a stored and this will be the folder Adobe Bridge needs to watch)

In the next step you need to point Bridge to the same watch folder as you have just set up under "remote camera control":  please do the following- and I assume that you want to see the newest image at the top of the content area in the Bridge window:

(2)
Open Bridge > click "view" > sort > choose "ascending order" (sorts the files in reverse order so that the newest is on top) > in the folder menu on the left hand side make sure you select the folder that you have assigned under camera control

Now all should be fine and once you start shooting with the remote control Bridge should update your files with the latest one appearing on top of your screen. You might have to re-arrange the Bridge layout a bit so it suits you- just play around with the layout of Bridge!

Hope this is helpful?

In this case not happy photoshopping but happy tethered shooting!
Stef.

Ascot's index is a huge help in finding what you might need!

http://www.dynaxdigital.com/index.php/topic,5034.0.html
Stef.

Sharpening

This is a very neat way to sharpen images without accentuating noise. It is particularly good for stuff such as architecture but just give it a try and you'll see how useful it can be:
1. Duplicate your background layer
2. Filter > Stylize > Emboss > use somewhere around 2-4 pixels; play around with the amount but 100% is not bad; use the angle only if you have shadows in your image => try to match the angle with the direction of the shadows > click O.K
3. Image > Adjustment > Desaturate (if you don't do that you will introduce colour fringes!)
4. Set the blending option of this layer either to soft light or hard light and play around with the opacity of this layer

The following is important!

(a) Check very carefully your image at 100% to see that you have not introduced any obvious bevelling in particularly the highlight areas!!!
(b) The best use of this method is: to apply a layer mask (Layer > Layer Mask > Hide All) and then use a brush -> set the foreground colour to white by clicking D and then X on your keyboard -> now just paint over the parts that you want to sharpen. By playing around with the opacity of the brush beacuse you can strengthen or weaken the sharpening effect by doing this.

It works wonders on eyes in portraits! Best of luck with it and as usual:

Happy photoshopping!
Stef.