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Bear_Music

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra

Sony 24-70mm F4 Vario-Tessar T* FE OSS

05/03/2007 11:16:12 AM · #1

The following is 6 separate "episodes" of the Photoshop Basics Mentorship Group as originally posted in a long thread with discussions and examples: to see the entire thread, go Here. This was posted to link into the new Photoshop 101 Workshops, which are referencing it.

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Basic Photoshop Workflow

We'll start at square one. You have an image on your camera; now what? We'll assume you are working with plain-vanilla JPEG images (all cameras produce these; some cameras can produce RAW or TIFF images, but we are going to ignore that option at least for now.)

You should set your camera to produce the best-quality JPEG possible. This usually means "jpg fine" or some similar quality description. You should set the in-camera parameters, assuming you have them, to "auto white balance" and "normal" on everything else, like sharpening, contrast, color saturation and so forth. Later you may want to fiddle with in-camera parameters, but for now don't bother.

I can't help you with setting your camera, because they are all different. Read your manual.

Fundamental Rule

Your original JPEG file is the digital equivalent of a photographic negative; it contains all the information you will use to produce your adjusted image in Photoshop. It is absolutely critical that this file never be worked on directly. Never. Never, ever. There are two reasons for this. The first is universal; by working on a COPY of the original, you always have the original to fall back on if you totally mess up as you experiment on your image. The second is DPC-specific; site rules REQUIRE that you have available an original, unedited version of your image so that in the event your shot needs verification in a challenge you can produce this file on demand. As long as you do not "save" an original file, it remains unaltered and the attached "EXIF Data" will show this. EXIF Data is a "metafile" that's appended to the image file and gives all sorts of information on the file itself, including its date of creation and the most recent date of modification. When you save a file, even if you have done nothing to it, this shows up as a "modification" in the EXIF data, and site council can no longer verify that the stated date-of-exposure is accurate, nor what sort of manipulation may have been done on the file.

Downloading Workflow

There are various ways of getting an image from your camera onto your computer. We will assume that you have this part figured out. If you can't get an image off the camera onto the computer, you're not ready for Photoshop yet, right? For the record, you can either leave the card in the camera and connect the camera to the computer, or you can remove the card and insert it into a "card reader" that is connected to the computer. The card reader is the better approach because it doesn't wear out your batteries and it uses the computer's processing power, which is greater than that of the camera. In other words, card readers are usually faster.

Now, what you want to do is set up a filing system to organize your images. If you're familiar with computers in general, you probably have your own preferences for organizational hierarchies. In many cases you will have installed downloading software that came with your camera, and the software will be creating sequentially-numbered folders on your hard drive each time you download a new batch of images. These numbered folders work fine, if you've got 'em; at least for now. In the long run they can be problematical because you lose track of which series of original images is in which folder.

In my case I have bypassed the auto-download feature and do it manually to a file structure of my own. I have a folder on my drive called "Images", and in this I have a subfolder (many subfolders actually, but this is the one that counts for now) called "originals". Each time I download a card, I first create a new subfolder in "originals" named (for example) "Red River Beach 09-21-05". I leave this folder open on my desktop. I then insert the card in my card reader, open the card by clicking on my "G Drive" icon (the drive letter will vary depending on your system) and open the folder on the card that contains the images. I hit cntrl-A to select all the images, right-click on the images, and drag them over to the open destination folder. When I release the mouse button, it gives me the option to "move" or "copy" the images to the destination folder. I choose "move", and the images migrate one-by-one to the destination folder, leaving me an empty card that's ready to go back in the camera.

Processing Workflow

I've now downloaded my images to my computer, and they live in a subfolder of "Images/Originals" that is named by the date & location of shooting. I next create yet another subfolder, named "edited 09-21-05"; I leave this one empty for now, close the file tree, and open Photoshop.

Using the Photoshop file browser I select the first image I want to edit and double-click on it to open it. As soon as I have opened it, I do a "save as" and save it with a new filename in the "edited" subfolder. If the original is "IMG_0001", the copy will be, say, "backlit gull IMG_0001". I always include the original image number at the end of the more descriptive title so I can more easily refer back to the original as needed; many times I have a lot of similar-looking shots (bracketed exposures, for example) and it's not always obvious which is which, so I include the image number assigned by the camera as part of my titling protocol. This "save as" copy is ALWAYS a .psd file, Photoshop's native image format.

Why? Because JPEG is a compressed format, what we call a "lossy" format. Each time we save a jpeg file, it recompresses itself, and each time we compress it it loses a certain amount of information irretrievably. Photoshop native files are not compressed, so we can save them as often as we like with impunity. Also, I will be working with "layers", and jpeg files do not support layers. In fact, if I am working on a jpeg file and add a layer to it, then try to save it, Photoshop will tell me it must be saved as a copy and it will default to "image_title_copy.psd" anyway. So I short-circuit this process by making my first save-as be a .psd file from the get-go.

OK, I now have an image open in Photoshop that's a COPY of the original and that lives in a subfolder of the original's folder. I am free to do whatever adjustments and manipulations I care to do on this image, secure in the knowledge that my original remains intact and I can return to it at any time to clone off a new copy to work on. It's not uncommon for me to have half a dozen variations of the image in my "edited" folder by the time I'm done. In any case, I now go to work on my image, doing all the things I need to do to it, until I'm satisfied with the result. All of this work is done on a full-size copy of the original.

When I have the image looking the way I want it to, I do a final save of this .psd file, and this final version includes all my layers and so forth, so I can later go back to it and make changes/adjustments as desired. Now, for DPC purposes, I need to convert this file into a smaller jpeg file so I can upload it as a challenge submission or into my portfolio so I can post it to the forums. So at this point I RESIZE the image to its final 640-pixel-maximum size, make any further adjustments needed (often some additional sharpening), and save the smaller file as a jpeg file named, say, "backlit gull 640 IMG_0001".

I now have a DPC-ready image that I can upload to the site.

To Be Continued

Obviously, I've glossed over a lot at the end; this post is just about the basic workflow, the getting of the image onto your drive and then adjusting it and getting it ready for DPC. It's about file structure basically, how to set things up systematically so you don't get lost in a sea of images.

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Basic Photoshop Workflow â�� Continued, Part II

In Part I we uploaded and image from the camera into an organized file structure on our hard drive. We then saved the image as a .psd file so that we could work on it in a format that allowed us to keep layers and so forth intact in the saved version. We learned that we will NEVER do any work on our original file, but instead will clone off new copies of this file as needed to experiment with. We learned that our basic workflow is Open/save as .psd/adjust image/save final version at full size with layers intact/resize and adjust/publish to web. We looked at the concept of saving more than one version of an image, and why we'd do that. Now we move on:

Basic Examination of Photoshop

Using the above-mentioned "negative-to-final-image" workflow as our framework, so to speak, let's now take a look at Photoshop itself; what is a Photoshop, why do we need it, how can we use it logically to accomplish our goal with a given image?

1. Why do we NEED Photoshop? Why can't we just download an image and be done with it? Aren't our cameras doing their jobs?

In a word, the function/purpose of Photoshop (or any image editor) is control: the more familiar you become with the tool, the more control you can exercise over your finished image. Consider this: your camera is, in a very real sense, a small "computer". You can exercise (depending on the camera) substantial amounts of control over your image in the camera: two of the more obvious (and traditional) controls you can exercise are exposure (light image vs. dark image) and sharpness (visual acuity vs. softness). Less-obvious but usually present in-camera controls include contrast, white balance, and color saturation.

In a nutshell, your digital camera is a computer that you can "program" to exercise certain functions for you. You can tell it what color the light is so it will produce neutral color values. You can tell it how much you want to sharpen your image, how saturated you want the colors to appear, and so forth and so on. The problem is that the camera's not a very sophisticated computer. Furthermore, especially when we work with jpeg images, there's a limited amount of backtracking we can do to undo decisions made by the camera's processor during exposures.

Our basic thesis is this: it's best to have the camera produce a "neutral image", one that's not extreme in any particular. We can then use our larger, more sophisticated computers and our very sophisticated tool (Photoshop) to experiment directly with all these parameters and come up with a combination of adjustments that optimizes our image. With experience, this process becomes virtually automatic on simple, straightforward images and takes very little time at all.

2. Does this mean that since I have Photoshop I don't need to pay any attention to camera settings anymore? Can I just point-and-shoot without a care in the world, knowing that Photoshop healeth all things?

Of course not. That's ridiculous. It's always better to produce a "quality" image in-camera. Photoshop works better and better for you as you feed it better and better images. Photoshop can barely help you at all with out-of-focus images; it can add sharpness to slightly OOF shots and improve them noticeably, but they'd still be better (a lot better) if they were in focus out of the camera. Photoshop can crop your images to improve the framing, the compositional dynamics, but you're always better off shooting the original to some semblance of your finished crop for quality reasons alone: the more you crop, the fewer pixels you have to work with. Photoshop can make your shots lighter or darker, but it can't restore data that are not there; seriously under or overexposed images are very unsatisfactory to work with. Photoshop can color-correct in a big way, but it's MUCH easier to work with an image shot to the correct white balance from the get-go. These are fundamentals of good photography and they really can't be ignored just because we have a fancy tool to rescue our mistakes.

3. Aren't you contradicting yourself? In section 1 you said to let Photoshop do the work instead of the camera's computer, in section 2 you said to get it right in-camera. You're not making sense.

Actually, there's no contradiction. I said we should strive for a "neutral" image in-camera, one that's not extreme in any way. In other words, white balance should be neutral, exposure should be neither over nor under, contrast should be on the low side, color saturation and sharpness likewise, and so forth. This gives us a clean, easy-to-work-with original to import into Photoshop, where we now have considerable latitude to experiment with tonal values, color saturation, whatever.

If any of these basic parameters are too extreme out of the camera, we limit our options in the Photoshop phase. And bear in mind that for ordinary, plain-vanilla, evenly-lit photographs, these neutral-out-of-the-camera images are very often pretty much exactly what we need and little or no post-processing will be needed.

4. Okay, fine. I'll accept what you're saying. Now can you cut to the chase and tell me what Photoshop will DO for me? I prefer some meat on my soup bones, sir.

Gladly:

Basic Functions of Photoshop

Photoshop is an extremely sophisticated tool for visual artists; when it comes to images, there's virtually nothing you CAN'T do with it. You can spend years learning it and still be surprised by unexpected ways it can be of value. But it's also a very simple, efficient tool for ordinary photographers. At a basic level, here's what we do with Photoshop:

1. We sharpen images: Photoshop has a variety of different tools for adding visual acuity (sharpness) to images. Perceived sharpness is basically a function of edge contrast, and the amount of sharpening an image needs will depend on how it is displayed, and what size it is displayed at. As photographers, we usually use the oddly-named "Unsharp Mask" to sharpen our images. This is the sharpening tool we will discuss in this basic workshop.

2. We adjust brightness: Photoshop allows us to make our images lighter or darker, and we can make very subtle adjustments as we fine-tune our images.

3. We adjust contrast: "Contrast" is the range of tones between lightest and darkest, basically. Photoshop has a variety of tools for adjusting contrast: primary among them are Brightness/Contrast, Levels, and Curves tools. Brightness/contrast is a relatively coarse adjustment and we'll rarely use it, because anything it does can be better done with Levels without much additional effort. Curves is capable of doing anything Levels does (and much more) but it's very tricky to work with. We'll be concentrating on Levels in this workgroup.

4. We adjust color: Photoshop has a variety of color adjustment tools, including Color Balance, Hue/Saturation, and Selective Color. There are others, but these are the ones we will explore. Each takes a slightly different approach to color manipulation, and each has specific uses. Frequently we will use Hue/Saturation and Selective Color in the same image. These tools also can have an effect on the brightness of the image and its contrast. In Photoshop everything's interrelated.

5. We crop, rotate, and resize images and may add borders to them: All these will be discussed as we progress.

6. We save images in different sizes/formats for different purposes: Photoshop can save files in many formats. Our particular interest is in saving for web viewing and saving for printing.

7. We apply image effects: Photoshop has untold ways of "manipulating" images for specific aesthetic/artistic purposes. For example, we can create a soft-focus, glow effect on a portrait, or we can do a Joey Lawrence-like "grunge" manipulation. We won't be getting into that stuff for quite a while, if at all, though. We're doing "straight" photography in this workgroup on basics.

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The above is just a logical extension of Section I, a "bridge" into Photoshop proper. Next installment will discuss the workflow within Photoshop, the order in which we do our tasks.

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Basic Photoshop Workflow â�� Continued, Part III

In Part I we uploaded an image from the camera into an organized file structure on our hard drive. We then saved the image as a .psd file so that we could work on it in a format that allowed us to keep layers and so forth intact in the saved version. We learned that we will NEVER do any work on our original file, but instead will clone off new copies of this file as needed to experiment with. We learned that our basic workflow is Open/save as .psd/adjust image/save final version at full size with layers intact/resize and adjust/publish to web. We looked at the concept of saving more than one version of an image, and why we'd do that.

In Part II we discussed what the Photoshop tool IS from a basic, photographic point of view, and how we would be using it as a part of our basic workflow for presenting images. We touched on what might best be done in-camera and what might best be left "neutral" so we could fine-tune it in Photoshop. We listed 7 basic things that Photoshop is used for by photographers. Finally, we promised the next section of this tutorial would discuss actual Photoshop workflow, the order in which we do things.

I'm going to modify that a little now: for Part III I am going to take a diversion and introduce you to "layers", then post up several examples of the same image and encourage you to work from the original to duplicate the modified versions.

Photoshop Layers: the Basics

The one thing I keep hearing over and over again from those who are new to Photoshop is "I don't understand layers. What are they, how do they work, why should I use them, HOW do I use them?"

Since layers are fundamental to a logical Photoshop workflow, I thought this would be a good time to answer that extended series of questions.

Perhaps the easiest way to get your brain around "layers" is to forget about digital for a minute and consider the world of "analog", pre-digital, art. Imagine that you had a work of art, a sketch say, that you wanted to do more work on. But you don't want to "risk" the original by doing something you can't undo. You want to add some more lines to it, and you want to add some watercolor to it, say. But you're not sure how much you want to change, how subtle you want to be with the colors, or even what colors you want to use.

One possible approach would be to Xerox off a bunch of full-size copies of the original and work directly on them until you get something you like. This seems like a good plan to you, so you do that, and on one of the copies you start adding lines to the sketch. But you go too far. So you toss that copy and start with a fresh copy and get the lines the way you want them.

Now, if you're smart, you'll Xerox off some more copies of this new version before you start messing with color. Otherwise, if you screw up the color you'll have to do another lines-added version from scratch, right? So work with a new copy of the altered sketch, and play with different color combinations on different copies until you make one you like.

When you have it figured out, you go back to the original sketch, add your new lines to it, add your chosen colors to it, and you have an original, finished work of art.

This is analogous to what people do when they do Photoshop work on the base layer of an image file.

Alternatively, you can get some sheets of tracing paper and overlay them on your original sketch. You can add lines, discard the "layer" if you need to and start with a new overlay, add more layers for colors, and so forth, shuffling the order in which you view them etc, until you have an acceptable version. Then you can proceed to alter the original according to what you've determined works best.

This is analogous to working with layers in Photoshop, except that in Photoshop you can merge the final layers into the original without having to rework the base image at the end.

Photoshop layers are transparent overlays on top of the base image that contain information that alters the image in any of countless ways. A layer can be opened and worked on at any time during the workflow, as many (or as few) times as you wish. If you decide it's a "mistake", or you don't need it, you can throw it away without affecting any of the other layers/adjustments you have made to the image.

This last is very important: if you work without layers directly on the base image, the only way to undo your work is to go back into your "history" palette to a state prior to having made the change you now wish to jettison. Sometimes this isn't a problem, but sometimes it is. Suppose the FIRST thing I did to my image was to adjust the levels for more contrast. Suppose further that later, after adjusting hue/saturation and cropping the image, I decide my levels adjustment was not-so-good after all. Now I only have too choices; I can do a NEW levels adjustment to take contrast back out, but this isn't always a good idea as it tends to rob quality from the tonal range. Alternatively I can revert in history to before I made the levels adjustment, but when I do that I lose both my hue/saturation adjustment and my cropping, neither of which I wish to change but both of which will need to be redone.

See my point? Layers make sense. They allow us to fiddle with impunity, secure in the knowledge that we can just toss the offending layer altogether and it will be as if it had not happened. This is called "non-destructive editing" and it is by far the single most important thing for you to learn about Photoshop workflow. And it gets even better, believe it or not: you can adjust the opacity/transparency of layers to fade the effect. You can adjust the "blending mode" of any layer to change how it relates to the layer/s beneath. You can move layers around so they "stack" in a different sequence. You can link layers so they move as a group. If you have two copies of the same image open (or even two different images), you can DRAG a layer from one to the other and a copy of the layer will drop onto the second image. So if you have, for example, 3 shots taken in quick succession of your child blowing out the candles on her birthday cake, after editing the first one for color and contrast with layers you can drag the layers to the other two images and they will be instantly edited exactly the same wayâ�¦

Everything you do in Photoshop ideally will be done on a layer of its own

Now, this is a "basic" Photoshop workshop, so we are not going to go overboard on this stuff. One reason for that is that we want everything we learn in this tutorial to be legal for basic editing rules in DPC challenges. Basic Editing rules allow "adjustment" layers but NOT layers that "contain pixels", so let's discuss what that means:

When you open an image in Photoshop it consists of a single layer, the "base" or "background" layer. Obviously, this base layer contains all the pixels that comprise your image. Now, you can go to the menu at the top of your screen and choose "Layers/New" and opt to create a "layer from background"; this layer will totally duplicate the base layer; it is a pixel-containing layer that has a complete copy of the entire image. If I wanted to do some cloning out of dust spots or telephone poles, say, that's exactly how I'd go about it; I'd create a duplicate layer from BG and do my "destructive" editing on that layer. If I screwed it up, I could toss the layer and start over. Ditto for dodging and burning, all sorts of things. But none of these destructive edits are legal in DPC basic editing rules and we won't be discussing them at this point. So we won't be using copied layers containing pixel information at this point.

The other basic layer type in Photoshop is an "adjustment layer", and these are legal in basic editing. Adjustment layers do not contain any pixels at all; rather, they contain instructions that are applied to the layers beneath them in the stack. We create adjustment layers by going to "layers/new adjustment layer" and selecting one from the list that drops down. In this tutorial we will use hue/saturation, selective color, color balance and levels adjustment layers, at least for now. Other adjustment layers include curves, brightness/contrast, and channel mixer, to name three. All "adjustment layers" are legal in basic editing as long as they are used in the normal, default blending mode. We will not be discussing blending modes at this time, and the default blending mode is legal in basic editing (it's called "normal") so you don't need to worry about it.

Okay, there you have it. If you want to mess with the colors of your image, go to "layers/new adjustment layer/hue-saturation" and create an adjustment layer. You'll get a dialogue box that allows you to adjust the saturation/hue/brightness of the entire spectrum at once ("master" in the drop-down list) or of any individual color channel (blue, cyan, yellow, magenta, green, red) separately and individually. You can make the yellows more saturated and more reddish, the blues less saturated and more purplish and darker, whatever you like basically. You can also mess with colors by using a selective color adjustment layer, which lets you fine-tune the color components of any individual color channel (add more red and take out some yellow in the cyan channel, for example) and also do the same for the whites, neutrals, and blacks in the image. A color balance adjustment layer allows you to throw color shifts across the bright areas separately from the dark areas and the mid-tones, and so forth and so on.If you want to make the image lighter/darker or more/less contrasty, make a levels adjustment layer and play with that by adjusting the three sliders under the histogram.

We'll discuss all this in more detail later; for now the goal is to get you actually creating layers and using them. Once the concept is clear to you, we can work on how to use these different tools effectively and efficiently.

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Basic Photoshop Workflow â�� Continued, Part IV

In Part I we uploaded and image from the camera into an organized file structure on our hard drive. We then saved the image as a .psd file so that we could work on it in a format that allowed us to keep layers and so forth intact in the saved version. We learned that we will NEVER do any work on our original file, but instead will clone off new copies of this file as needed to experiment with. We learned that our basic workflow is Open/save as .psd/adjust image/save final version at full size with layers intact/resize and adjust/publish to web. We looked at the concept of saving more than one version of an image, and why we'd do that.

In Part II we discussed what the Photoshop tool IS from a basic, photographic point of view, and how we would be using it as a part of our basic workflow for presenting images. We touched on what might best be done in-camera and what might best be left "neutral" so we could fine-tune it in Photoshop. We listed 7 basic things that Photoshop is used for by photographers. Finally, we promised the next section of this tutorial would discuss actual Photoshop workflow, the order in which we do things.

In Part III we took a diversion and discussed the basic use of "layers" in Photoshop. We showed how layers are not as complicated a concept as they seem at first glance, and why they are vital to an organized workflow in image editing.

Now we are going to look at a simple Photoshop "workflow"; among the many things we can/should do in Photoshop, in what order should we do them?

Photoshop Workflow: Where Do We Start and How Do We Proceed?

NB: this discussion will presume that our goal is to edit an image for DPC Basic Editing rules. Accordingly we will actually be doing a certain amount of editing on our base layer. In a more general workflow, we'd clone the base layer each time we wanted to apply "destructive" editing (editing that changes the pixels of the image directly), so that we could more easily revert to the original pixel state, and so that we could have several variations up and toggle between them for comparison.

In the basic-editing workflow, it's a good idea to clone off a whole new copy of the image (karma_IMG_0001 becomes karma_sharpened_IMG_001) before proceeding with destructive editing. You can also make "snapshots" of image states in Photoshop, which works well as long as the image is left open, but the snapshots are lost when the image is closed, so you can't revert in a second editing session the way you can with layers. This is why I prefer keeping several cloned copies of a basic-editing image until I'm done with my work, at which time I toss all but the final version.

We will also assume, because this is a "basic" tutorial, that you are working from jpeg originals. The workflow is different when working from RAW, because many adjustments are made in the RAW converter before the image even sees Photoshop.

Oh, one more thing: In most windows programs, including Photoshop, hitting cntrl-z reverses the previous action. You can do something extreme just to see hwo it looks, then hit cntrl-z to go back to the prior state. Remember this.

Fundamental Issue: In Photoshop, everything is interrelated to some degree; increasing contrast makes things look sharper, adjusting levels affects colors, changes in hue/saturation often require changes in selective color, resizing images affects the appearance of sharpness, and so forth. So the goal is to create a workflow that minimizes the amount of backtracking you have to do. For this basic tutorial, we will concentrate on the following areas: sharpening, contrast/brightness, color control, cropping, resizing the image, and adding a border to the image.

OK, you have your image open, and you have done a save-as to a distinct filename so you are no longer working from the original, which you are making sure remains pristine because it is your digital "negative" and because DPC requires an unedited file for verification/validation of challenge entries. Now it's time to start work. Here's what I like to do:

NB: I'm well aware there are more sophisticated ways to deal with all the issues we will be discussing. But this is a "basic" class and the following workflow will work for the majority of decently-exposed images.

Absolute first step: Square your image up! If you have a horizon, make it level. If you have verticals, make them vertical. If you have converging verticals, make the implied vertical halfway between them a true vertical. To do this, go to your tool palette and mouse the eyedropper tool; a little box will drop down with a ruler on it. Activate this ruler tool and use it to draw a line paralleling your horizon or your desired vertical, as the case may be. Next go to "Image/Rotate Image" and select "arbitrary"; the dialogue box will show a value that's equal to how much rotation is needed to square up the indicated line. Click OK and your image will level itself. The use the crop tool to crop out the blank wedges you are left with on all 4 sides of the image and you're good to go.

1. Go to "Image/Adjustments" and hit "auto level"; take a close look at what this does. In a surprising number of cases, this gives you a much better base image from which to work. If that's the case here, leave the autolevel in place and move on. If it's not right (and it often isn't) then hit cntrl-z to revert.

2. Go to "Image/adjustments" and hit "auto color"; same thing as before. If it's a step in the right direction, keep it. If it isn't, revert with cntrl-z.

3. Your next step is to adjust the brightness and tonal range of your image on a new adjustment layer for levels. Go to "Layers/New Adjustment Layer" and select "levels". Our basic approach is to look at the histogram (the graph) and slide the right pointer to the left until it is level with the rightmost tone, then slide the left pointer right until it's level with the leftmost tone. This ensures that the brightest values in the image are white and the darkest values are black, basically. Now slide the middle pointer right to darken the mid-tones or left to lighten them. Play with these pointers until the tonal range/contrast of your image is where you want it to be. Don't worry about colors while you're doing this. Click OK when you're done.

Notice how you now have a new layer in your layers palette called "levels". Click the eyeball to the left of that layer to toggle it on and off and see the effect of your work. You may also click the opacity slider (upper right) and fade the layer for a more subtle effect. I'll typically overcook the effect a little then fade down to what seems nominal to me. This gives me a little wiggle-room later on for subtle adjustments to the finished image. You may also click the little "picture" (icon) in the adjustment layer and the whole levels dialogue box will open back up so you can make further adjustments there.

4. Now, take a look at the colors on this leveled image. If you see an overall color cast to the image, it's usually best to do selective color next. If the overall color balance is close to what you want, your next stop will be hue/saturation.

5. Let's assume that this particular image looks a little yellowish overall; perhaps your white balance was a little off in the camera. We'll fix that by going to "Layers/New Adjustment Layer" and selecting "Selective Color". When the dialogue box opens up, note that there's a field that shows a red square and the word "red"; next to that is a down-arrow. Click the arrow and see options for many colors plus "neutral", "white", and "black".

I usually do my selective color work with the "absolute" variable checked; "relative" is more subtle. For now let's use "absolute". These options are at the bottom of the dialogue box.

Click on "neutral" to work on the mid-range tones. Take the yellow slider and move it all the way right, then all the way left. See the changes? What you want to do is move the yellow slider left a bit, then fiddle with the cyan and magenta sliders in very small increments until the color looks natural to you. You may also add or subtract a little black here as needed. When the neutrals look right, check the "white" and "black" channels the same way. Typically the white channel may need a little less yellow and the black channel may need no adjusting. Click OK when you're done and the dialogue box collapses.

Your layers palette now has a second adjustment layer visible, "selective color", and you may work with it as described for the levels layer.

6. Now that your basic color balancing is done (or if you saw no need for any), go to "Layers/New Adjustment Layer" and select "Hue/Saturation". When the dialogue box pops up, notice that it is set by default to "master"; any adjustments you make will affect ALL the colors in the image. Beneath that are sliders for hue, saturation, and brightness. Slide them back and forth to their extremes and watch what happens. Hue changes the actual color, saturation changes the intensity of the color, and brightness changes the overall brightness of the color. In this case, of course, that's "of all the colors".

Return all sliders to zero and click on the arrow to get the drop-down list. Let's assume we have some dull-looking greens in our image we want to goose up a little. Select the yellow channel and slide the saturation slider to the right; see the greens get warmer? Pump them up quite a bit and then move the brightness slider to darken the yellows, then to lighten them. See the interrelationship? You can also use the hue slider to make the yellows warmer or cooler. Fiddle with all this until it looks good, then select the green channel. Pump the saturation on that, then adjust the brightness. Note how you can make the green component of the grass darker than the yellow component, adding a sense of relief and texture to the grass. This is just one option, of course, but you get the idea.

Is the sky sort of greenish/cyan looking? Pull up the blue channel and adjust hue a little to the right; too far and it goes purple on you, but a little nudge will clean up the blues. Dose it with some saturation and brightness work as needed, and when it looks "clean" go to the cyan channel and do the same thing. When working on blue skies it's almost always necessary to work cyan and blue in tandem; if you don't, you'll get noise.

You get the idea now; you can use hue/saturation to subtly (or not so subtly) enhance or tone down any and all colors that are present in the original image, independently or collectively. Skilled use of hue/saturation is perhaps the single, most effective means of adding visual impact to your color images.

When you're done, click OK and notice you now yet another layer in the layer palette, the "hue/saturation" layer. It can be manipulated exactly as the others.

7. At this point we have a "corrected image" that's ready to be fine-tuned. It's now time to sharpen, resize, border, and save for web. Issues of sharpening are a subject unto themselves, and they interrelate with sizing, so we will come to that with the next section of the tutorial. For now, be aware that the sharpener-of-choice is "Unsharp Mask" and take care to examine your image very closely as you sharpen it so you avoid introducing "artifacts" (usually halos between bright & dark areas) during the sharpening process.

Whoot! This subject is so big, and I'm trying so hard to keep it simple. Once more, my disclaimer: to you experienced 'shoppers who are reading this, I'm well aware there are other approaches, many of them more sophisticated, but I'm trying to detail a plain-vanilla "starter" workflow for Photoshop neophytes. Thanks for understanding!

**********

Basic Photoshop Workflow â�� Continued, Part V

In Part I we uploaded and image from the camera into an organized file structure on our hard drive. We then saved the image as a .psd file so that we could work on it in a format that allowed us to keep layers and so forth intact in the saved version. We learned that we will NEVER do any work on our original file, but instead will clone off new copies of this file as needed to experiment with. We learned that our basic workflow is Open/save as .psd/adjust image/save final version at full size with layers intact/resize and adjust/publish to web. We looked at the concept of saving more than one version of an image, and why we'd do that.

In Part II we discussed what the Photoshop tool IS from a basic, photographic point of view, and how we would be using it as a part of our basic workflow for presenting images. We touched on what might best be done in-camera and what might best be left "neutral" so we could fine-tune it in Photoshop. We listed 7 basic things that Photoshop is used for by photographers. Finally, we promised the next section of this tutorial would discuss actual Photoshop workflow, the order in which we do things.

In Part III we took a diversion and discussed the basic use of "layers" in Photoshop. We showed how layers are not as complicated a concept as they seem at first glance, and why they are vital to an organized workflow in image editing.

In Part IV we discussed a simple Photoshop "workflow"; some of the many things we can/should do in Photoshop, and in what order we should do them?

Now it's time to examine sharpening in Photoshop. There are several tools for sharpening images, but in digital photography on of them, Unsharp Mask (USM) is the sharpener-of-choice, and we'll concentrate on that in this tutorial.

Photoshop's Unsharp Mask: the Basics of this Basic Tool.

Here's where we left off on the last lesson:

At this point we have a "corrected image" that's ready to be fine-tuned. It's now time to sharpen, resize, border, and save for web. Issues of sharpening are a subject unto themselves, and they interrelate with sizing, so we will come to that with the next section of the tutorial. For now, be aware that the sharpener-of-choice is "Unsharp Mask" and take care to examine your image very closely as you sharpen it so you avoid introducing "artifacts" (usually halos between bright & dark areas) during the sharpening process.

We should first discuss what sharpness actually is in photography. That may seem silly (we all "know" what sharp is, right?) but it bears examination. For one thing, an image can be in focus and still not appear to be "sharp". "Sharpness", in fact, is perhaps too general a term for what we are discussing here. We are not discussing whether an image is in focus, and this is what some people refer to as "sharpness". What we're working with here might better be termed "acutance", but we are going to stick with "sharpness" for this basic tutorial.

Remember our work with Levels? Here's what I want you to do; open up any ordinary (no extreme contrast) image in Photoshop and add a levels adjustment layer to it. Now, in the levels dialogue box, see the bottommost bar? The one with 3 sliders, white on the right and black on the left? Notice how if you slide the right pointer left (towards the middle) your whites get gray. Likewise, when you bring the left slider to the right, your blacks get gray. This bar sets the maximum dark and maximum light for your image.

Slide both pointers towards the middle and watch your image lose contrast. Notice how the less contrasty it is the less sharp it looks.

Now return the pointers to their origins at far left and far right and go up to the histogram, the tool we worked with before. On this one, the pointers set the white point and the black point; everything to the right of the rightmost pointer will be white, and everything to the left of the leftmost pointer will be black. So when you slide both of these towards the middle of the histogram, the image becomes more contrasty. Notice how, up to a point, the more contrasty the image is the "sharper" it looks.

Sharpness and contrast are very closely interrelated, especially in the digital world. Sharpness, basically, is about the perception of edges; when we bleed off contrast, we make edges less noticeable, and vice versa.

Now, perceived contrast in an image is directly related to the size at which the image is presented and the distance at which it is viewed. Prove it to yourself by looking at any full-tone image you have hanging on your wall up close and from a great distance. The closer you get to it (the "bigger" it is visually) the more "resolution" you can see and the more details you can see. Step back far enough and you see no detail at all, so that the image becomes less and less differentiated.

It's a fact of photography that the larger an image is printed, the less contrast/sharpness needs to be added to make it appear "sharp" to our eyes. Open up a straight-out-of-the-camera, properly exposed image and use the magnifying glass to blow a section of it way up. See all the nice little details, sharp and clear? Now shrink the same image so it's about the size of an image viewed on DPC and watch the details (and the apparent "sharpness") disappear. As we lose details, sharpness goes south on us.

What this means to us on DPC, where we display 640-pixel images, is that as we shrink the image size (and lose a LOT of detail doing it) we need to "increase sharpness" (which basically means increasing contrast at a very fine level) in order for the image to display as a "sharp" image.

This is why the most important sharpening, for us, is done AFTER resizing the image. If you're working with low sharpening or no sharpening in-camera, one of your first steps in the workflow would be to apply the appropriate sharpening to the entire image at full size, but for the sake of this basic tutorial I'm assuming most people have their in-camera parameters set to produce a clean-looking image straight from the camera. So, for us, sharpening is done after resizing.

Unsharp Mask: How to Use It

Paradoxically enough, USM works by using blur to define edges. Sharpening happens when we increase the contrast of an "edge", a juncture between light and dark, and Photoshop USM works behind the scenes applying a certain amount of blur to the image and then digitally comparing the blurred image to the original image to "define" the edges within the image to which sharpening will be applied. The decision Photoshop is making, on a pixel-by-pixel basis, is to compare each pixel with its neighbors and decide whether it should be lightened, darkened, or left the same. If Photoshop decides the pixel is located on an "edge", it will adjust its value; otherwise it will leave it alone.

Now, open a DPC-sized image and set your parameters so you are viewing your 640-pixel image at "actual pixels"; the size it will be displayed at on DPC. You can do this in the "view" menu. Now, for this exercise, go to "layers/duplicate layer" and make a copy of the background to work on. We are doing this so we can easily discard our mistakes and start over again from the base layer. In Basic Editing challenges, do your sharpening directly on the base layer. Now go to "filters/sharpen/Unsharp Mask" and open the dialogue box.

You'll see 3 fields that can be adjusted, either by moving a slider or by typing a value into the box at the right of each slider bar. They are Amount, Radius, and Threshold. Each of these fields does something different, and they all work together interactively.

1. Amount: This adjustment tells Photoshop where to draw the line between a "light" pixel and a "dark" pixel. As you move the slider to the right, dark areas get darker and light areas get lighter. Move it too far, and you produce pronounced haloes around dark/light intersections.
2. Radius: This adjustment is basically doing exactly the same thing as "radius" in Gaussian Blur; it's telling Photoshop how much blur to use in the edge-finding stage.
3. Threshold: This adjustment tells Photoshop how much difference should be present between the light pixels and the dark pixels before sharpening is applied.

(This has taken me a long time to write because I am trying to reduce a very complex topic into a form that can be understood without too much technical mind-bending. Once again, I caution that this is a very simplistic representation of the topic and I request that others not step in to "correct" me with more precise details.)

Okay, back to actually USING the USM tool; you have an image open, so start dragging sliders around willy-nilly, way to the extremes, and watch how much things change. Amazing, huh? Your task is to find a happy medium for the specific image. You'll adjust Radius to define your edges. The larger the radius, the larger the area (the "border") that will be lightened or darkened. Contrasty images need less radius, flat images need more.

You'll work with Amount to effectively increase or decrease the amount of sharpening that's applied at the specified radius. The larger the radius, the larger the amount you'll use, as a rule.

Finally, you'll use Threshold to fine-tune. As a rule, we use Threshold at very low values in continuous-tone images (photographs). A threshold between zero 1.0 is all you're likely to need.

Typical reasonably-sharp-from-camera images might use an Amount of 50%, a Radius of 1 pixel, and a threshold of zero. Less-sharp images might use an Amount of 100-200%, a Radius of 2-3 pixels, and a Threshold of 1.

As always, once you've made your USM adjustment you can go immediately to "edit/fade USM" and play with fading it in and out. You can overcook USM a bit then zoom in on the image and fade it until there is no visible haloing at magnification.

There are MUCH more sophisticated ways to use USM, including layering varying degrees of USM in different layer modes, doing the sharpening in the luminance channel on an image converted to lab color, and doing 2- or 3-pass sharpening runs. I'm aware of these, and indeed my standard USM flow (which I've saved as an action) uses 4 passes on 3 different blending modes, but that one's not legal for basic editing. So we'll leave it at this for now, at least.

The best thing for you to do now is to start playing with USM on a selected image. Work the variations. Get a feel for what the sliders do. Find a setting that works for you and your camera; every camera's different. Just remember: The goal is an image that looks sharp but not harsh, natural, and that has no visible haloing along the light/dark interfaces. When people say an image is "oversharpened" they are referring to one (or both) of these things.

******************

Basic Photoshop Workflow â�� Continued, Part VI

In Part I we uploaded and image from the camera into an organized file structure on our hard drive. We then saved the image as a .psd file so that we could work on it in a format that allowed us to keep layers and so forth intact in the saved version. We learned that we will NEVER do any work on our original file, but instead will clone off new copies of this file as needed to experiment with. We learned that our basic workflow is Open/save as .psd/adjust image/save final version at full size with layers intact/resize and adjust/publish to web. We looked at the concept of saving more than one version of an image, and why we'd do that.

In Part II we discussed what the Photoshop tool IS from a basic, photographic point of view, and how we would be using it as a part of our basic workflow for presenting images. We touched on what might best be done in-camera and what might best be left "neutral" so we could fine-tune it in Photoshop. We listed 7 basic things that Photoshop is used for by photographers. Finally, we promised the next section of this tutorial would discuss actual Photoshop workflow, the order in which we do things.

In Part III we took a diversion and discussed the basic use of "layers" in Photoshop. We showed how layers are not as complicated a concept as they seem at first glance, and why they are vital to an organized workflow in image editing.

In Part IV we discussed a simple Photoshop "workflow"; some of the many things we can/should do in Photoshop, and in what order we should do them?

In Part V we learned about Unsharp Mask, how and when in the workflow to use it.

Now we're going to start exploring some assorted topics; we're through with the basic workflow and ready to address subjects of general interest in basic editing. I'm open to suggestions from this point on.

Resizing to 640 pixels and Adding Borders in Photoshop

At the end of the last lesson we had produced a full-sized, essentially finished image working from our original, untouched file. Now it's time to reduce it in size so it can be posted to DPC. We are limited to a maximum of 640 pixels in size in any direction, and to a file size of 150 Kb.

The simplest, most straightforward way to adjust the dimensions is to go to "Image/image size" and set the larger of your two dimensions to 640 pixels (or whatever size you need to allow for borders, more on that shortly); be sure "resample image" is checked and be sure the "proportional" field is checked. The dpi figure is irrelevant for web display (trust me on that). If "proportional" is not checked, you can adjust the two axes of the image independently and make it more or less skinny, so to speak, but we don't want that; so have "proportional" checked at all times.

However, there's a small problem with this approach; we started with, let's say, an image that was 3,500 pixels on its long dimension, and we are reducing that by about two and a half times. When we do this, we are essentially throwing detail out the window. In images of any complexity at all, we have serious problems holding onto detail as we downsize this dramatically. This shows up very noticeably in fine, diagonal lines especially. If we have a telephone wire raking diagonally across the sky, for example, it will most likely render as a zig-zaggy diagonal line instead of a straight one when we downsize in one giant leap.

The traditional way to avoid this is to reduce size in small increments of approximately 10% at a time. This works very well but it time consuming. There are Photoshop actions available for downloading that automate this process. My web is down right now, but I'll link to some later. I've been told that PS CS2 does the downsizing "intelligently" without additional actions, but I don't use CS2 so I can't advise on that. Any readers familiar with this feature of CS2, feel free to weigh in OK?

Anyhow, now that you've downsized to 640 pixels, do a save-as (still working with a .psd file, .jpg comes after we do the borders) to "image_name_640.psd" and work on this new, smaller file from this point on. The main thing to do here is to take a look at the picture in full viewing size ("view/actual pixels") and decide if it needs any further adjustment to show well at the small size. Typically these reduced-size images lose both apparent sharpness and apparent contrast. They usually can be improved by doing another run of USM on them, which will bump both sharpness and contrast a tad. So do that now, and save it when you have a finished image.

Now it's time to add borders. For the moment we will ignore the fact that adding borders will make the image larger than 640 pixels in size. In your final workflow, once you're used to adding borders, you will have a good idea how larger your border is going to be before you resize, and you'll take that into account when doing the resizing described above. I typically use somewhere from 8-12 pixels for boders, so I resize to 628 or 630 pixels, usually.

Anyway, the simplest and most intuitive way to add a border to our image is by increasing the canvas size so it is larger than the image, and by changing the color of the canvas to include the color(s) we have chosen for our border.

In your tool palette, near the bottom, are two overlapping "color picker" squares, for foreground (upper square) and background (lower square). There's a little double-ended arrow connecting the two; click on this arrow and they will exchange places, so that foreground becomes background and vice versa. Double-click on either of the squares and you'll get a dialogue box for interactively changing the color of that square. While this dialogue box is open, if you move your cursor over the image (indeed, anywhere within the PS screen) it will turn into an eyedropper tool; click on a color, that color will be inserted into the square.

So, for example, if you want a border of the same color as your sky, you can use this eyedropper tool and click on this sky, and the color will show up in the active color-picker box.

Now, let's suppose you want to do a double border, a simple one. You have a darkish picture, and you want to border it with a thin, white line and then a wider, dark blue line. Go to the background color square, double click on it, and move the selection marker to the far upper, left portion of the color field that appears; this will always be white. Now that white is your background color, double-click on the foreground color square and choose the blue you want, either by lifting it from the image with the eyedropper tool or by navigating the color selection palette until you find "your" blue.

You now have two colors selected, white and blue, and white is the "background" color, so it's the one that will be applied to the canvas in the next step.

Now, in the main menus, go to "image/canvas size" and click. You will get a dialogue box that shows you two fields where you can specify the increased size you want to add on each axis, and a graphic of 9 squares beneath that. You want to click on the center square of those 9; this will ensure that the border you apply will be apportioned evenly on all sides of the image. You are making a thin, white line first, so in the dialogue boxes type "2" in both fields and select "pixels" for both fields. When you click OK, this will draw a 1-pixel wide, white line around the perimeter of your image.

Why ONE pixel when you specified TWO? Because you are adding 2 pixels to the canvas along each axis, and by clicking the center square of the 9 you told Photoshop to divide the added pixels between left and right, top and bottom. If you wanted a 2-pixel line, you'd have typed "4" in the boxes.

Now go back to the tools palette and click the double-headed arrow to move white to foreground and blue to background. Head back to "image/canvas size" and specify 8 pixels in each of the fields, then click OK.

You have now increased your canvas size by a total of 10 pixels on each axis, and have a 1-pixel white border surrounded by a 5-pixel blue border. That's all there is to it. If you know in advance you're going to use a 5-pixel border all around, do your resize from full size down to 630 pixels; when you're done with the borders, you will be back up to 640 pixels.

It's better to do borders last, rather than on the full-size original, because if the border is already present on the resized image, you may get some sharpening artifacts when you apply USM to the resized image. It goes without saying, I hope, that not all images NEED borders. This is a very personal issue. IMO most images benefit from a simple, small, tasteful border, but not everyone agrees with me. Sometimes much larger borders can be very effective. As a rule, loud and colorful borders don't do well in DPC, so be careful with that.

******************

That's as far as we took it in this iteration.

Robt.

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