However an interesting photo, there are some minus points with this photo. First the street in the bottom is overexposed, and that is taking away attention from the couple. Secondly the faces are a bit dark.
On this page we will use this photo to explain adjusting the photo locally. The photo will be transformed to black and white, the overexposing of the street will be fixed, and more attention will be given to just the couple, especially their faces. This can all be done in Photoshop with the concept of ‘Layers’ with ‘Masks’.
To give you a first quick grasp of the concepts: ‘Layers’ are based on the editing filters you probably know, for example the filter for adjusting the brightness of a photo. But Layers have some advantages above that, we will discuss that later. ‘Masks’ are like selections that determine for which parts of the image the filters are applied.
We are going to make a correction to this photo that will provide a step by step explanation of how to adjust pictures locally with Photoshop.
Let’s go to practice
For the best conception of this lesson, save the photo above (www.dptutorial.com.jpg) to your harddisk, and open it in Photoshop.
Then, for working with layers in Photoshop, the best way is to have the ‘Layers’ window visible. If it is not visible, in the Photoshop-menu ‘Window’ check ‘Layers’ (or press F7 instead).
You will have something like:
Now we will start with the editing.
Turn the photo into black and white (by adding a layer)
First we will make the picture Black and white with a Hue/Saturation layer.
- In bottom of the layers window, press the little round with a black and white half (1)
- choose Hue/Saturation (2)
- pull the Saturation slider completely to the left, to -100
- the picture will be black and white now
- press OK
You maybe have made a picture black and white before, so nothing special here.
But now you have done it by adding a ‘Layer’ to the image. But what is the use of Layers? Please wait for some next steps…
Deal with overexposing (by adding an adjustment layer…)
The street at the bottom is overexposed. So what would help is to decrease the brightness.
- Like above: again press the little round with a black and white half
- select Brightness/Contrast
- pull the Brightness slider to the left to about -50
- the picture will be darker now
- press OK
We have added a new layer: a Brightness/Contrast layer.
… and adding a mask
We treated the overexposing of the street now by making it darker. But now have a new problem: the complete photo is dark, and the people are even more invisible.
So what we want is to restrain the darkening to the street only. Here’s how it works.
The mask (the box in the upper right marked with the red box) of the Brightness is white.
- press ctrl-I (this means ‘Inverse the mask’). The mask will turn black, and the picture will turn light again
- If you press ctrl-I again, the masks turns white again
- ctrl-I once again and the mask turns black, you will see the effect
In the end it should look like:
Now we will apply the darkening only to the street. This is by painting the bottom of the mask white. First we choose the paintbrush tool with a white color:
- press ‘d’ (that means ‘default’: white and black)
- press ‘x’. This will have set the painting color to white (1)
- choose the paint brush tool (2)
- in the brush settings (3), choose a diameter of about 30pixels and a hardness of 0%. If you don’t see the brush settings of (3), in the Photoshop menu ‘Window’ select ‘Options’, and then make the settings.
Now we have the right paint-brush, so now we can use it:
- paint the street with the paintbrush
- as you paint you will see that the bottom of the mask will be white
- and the street on the picture will turn darker on the same place
This is because the mask tells where to apply the decrease of Brightness .
- Where the mask is white, the Brightness function is applied and the picture is darkened
- Where the mask is black, the Brightness function is not applied
Congratulations. What we have done is making a local adjustment!
The over exposing is replaced by a bit more dark.
Give the faces more contrast (another adjustment layer with a mask)
The picture has improved a lot. Still it can be enhanced more. To let the faces of the couple and the legs of the woman more attention, we make a subtle change. We will apply another layer that do this.
- Again press the little round with a black and white half
- select Brightness/Contrast
- pull the Brightness slider to the right to about +20
- pull the Contrast slider to the right to about +30
- press OK
This has increased the contrast of the whole picture:
Now we going to apply it locally only to the faces and the legs
- press ctrl-I. This will make the mask black
- again choose the paint brush tool
- choose a diameter of about 10pixels and a hardness of 50%
- paint over the faces and hands of the couple, and the legs of the woman
- if you made a mistake and painted too much white: press x (to switch the painting to the color black) and paint the mistakes black again (or all together make it black again). Then press x again (to switch the painting color white). Continue to paint in white.
We have made a subtle change.
Try color again (switching of a layer and opacity)
One question could into mind: what would the picture look like in color?
- click on the ‘eye’ symbol next to the Hue/ Saturation layer (that is (1) in the image below). The eye disappears, meaning that the desaturation-layer is not visible, and the picture will be in color again.
This is the great thing about layers. Layer offers non destructive editing:
- you can switch on and of filters you applied earlier
- by editing masks, you can always alter the areas where the filters are effective
The colors are a bit harsh, so we decide to desaturate only a little
One way is by letting the (de)saturation layer only partly do its job:
- click next to the Hue/ Saturation layer so the layer will be visible again (1)
- on top of the layers window, change the Opacity to 38% (2)
The layer has only 38% of its ‘power’, so the picture is not black and white completely, but desaturated only a little.
Add sharpness locally (with a duplicate layer)
Finally we end this session with some sharpening only parts of the image. For this there are no adjustment layers. We apply the sharpening on a copy of the original layer with the picture. Then we use parts of this copy.
First make a copy of the original layer with the picture:
- select the layer with the name ‘Background’ (make the bar blue)
- in the Photoshop-menu ‘Layer’select ‘Duplicate layer’
- A ‘Duplicate layer’ window appears
- You don’t have to change the settings, just click on ‘OK’
Now the new layer ‘Background copy’ is created. To see that it is on top of the ‘Background’ layer you maybe you have to scroll the Layer window down a bit.
We will apply some sharpening to the layer ‘Background copy’.
- In the photoshop menu ‘Filter’ choose ’sharpen’ and then ‘unsharp mask’.
- For Amount choose 300%
- For Radius choose 0,8
- For threshold choose 0
- Click on ‘OK’
The ‘Background’ layer is hidden, and has stayed as it was, with no sharpening. The ‘Background copy’ layer is sharpened making the complete picture is sharp, including the environment like the bench the couple is sitting on.
To direct more attention to the couple, we will remove the sharpness of the environment. Again we will use a mask, and because the ‘Background copy’ doesn’t have a mask at all, we will add one:
- Press on the little grey box, with the white round, below (1)
- A white mask is added to the layer ‘Background copy’ (2)
- press ctrl-I to make the mask black
- press ‘d’ and ‘x’ to set the painting color to white
- choose the paint brush tool
- As before, in the brush settings, choose a diameter of about 30pixels and a hardness of 0%
- Paint the couple. This will make the couple sharp, but leaving the bench.
The attention will flow to the people, just as we wanted. But the sharpness is a little too harsh. With layers, we can fine tune it afterwards:
- Set the opacity of the ‘Background copy’ layer to 70%
We are done!
