I have an improved and better formatted version of this tutorial in my wordpress blog.
This tutorial will cover digital blending in Photoshop CS3 using layer masks and transparency gradients. It is aimed at those who are interested in seeking alternatives to HDR (High Dynamic Range) processing.
I would consider the usage of these techniques as digital graduated neutral density filters and although it can take some time to implement, I find the benefits to be:
- Preservation of intended colour and tone
- Complete control over contrast gradients
- Elimination of halo effects
- Elimination of fringing
I will use one of my photographs, The Heart, to illustrate the method.
1. Download this zipped folder containing the two images to be used for blending and open IMG_1166 in Photoshop.
2. Press Ctrl+Shift+N and click OK to add a new layer. To place IMG_1164 on this layer go to File > Place and find where you saved it. Click the tick to commit the transform.
3. To create a mask, click the New Layer Mask (grey square with white circle inside) button in the Layers palette. To create a transparency gradient on this mask, first hit G to bring up the gradient toolbar and select a linear gradient. Then click and drag as shown in the following picture.
4. The next layer will be a photo filter so click Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Photo Filter and hit OK. Push the density slider to 100% and select a custom colour with properties as shown in the following picture.
5. Now apply another layer mask and gradient, as done previously, to restrict the photo filter to the sky. Change the blend mode to Linear Burn and opacity to 70% for the following picture. The Linear Burn blend mode is similar to Color Burn, but instead of increasing contrast, it decreases brightness to darken the base color and reflect the blend color.
Now add curves layers to the foreground and then the sky.
6. Click Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Curves and hit OK. Then modify each of the RGB channels to reflect something like the following picture.
7. Change the blend mode to soft light and add a layer mask and gradient (this time in reverse) to restrict the curves layer to the foreground. This will produce the following result.
The curves layer that targets the sky looks like this.
8. Change the blend mode again to soft light, opacity to 75% and create a layer mask and gradient to achieve the following result.
9. The final step involves adding a levels layer and changing its blend mode to ‘screen’ to boost the lighter areas. An opacity of 90% will achieve the picture shown below.
10. Straightening the horizon and correcting the barrel distortion yields The Heart.
If you’ve found this useful please let me know. Feedback and discussion is welcome. If you haven’t done so already, please check out one of my other tutorials Photographing the Milky Way with a standard DSLR camera
Cain Doherty
Caroline Gorka
Cain …no spaces between ! and address ..then we can use your links :))
Cain Doherty in reply to Caroline Gorka’s comment
hang in there! i copied it straight from word and it deleted all my formatting!
salsbells69
blimey..i am confussed..but i am gonna save this in case one day..some where over the rain bow I get PS~!! Thanks Cain :D
Cain Doherty in reply to salsbells69’s comment
fixed it up now!
Caroline Gorka
Word’s a bugger.
I’ll come back in a bit :))))
Cain Doherty in reply to Caroline Gorka’s comment
ditto
Caroline Gorka
right..I’ll take a look at this ….only use Lightroom..haven’t a clue about layers etc.
Thank you :)))
Cain Doherty in reply to Caroline Gorka’s comment
no problem, hopefully you can gain something out of how to use them now if these functions are available in Lightroom.
Amanda McLennan
The final result is great, I will have to try this with a couple my shots if I can follow all the instructions – I bet I get it wrong though. I haven’t used layer masks and dodge before as I don’t know what they are.
Cain Doherty in reply to Amanda McLennan’s comment
that’s great you’re willing to have a go – they can be quite useful but a bit tricky to manage
Caroline Gorka
I have PS2 ..I just don’t use it.
I’m in love with LR …but maybe I may be able to do something ‘different’
Cain Doherty in reply to Caroline Gorka’s comment
well you’ve got the tools so you should give it a go. something ‘different’ was what i aiming at for this shot – a bit ‘out of this world.’ it’s not my preferred style but more of an experiment.
Caroline Gorka
Yes…well you can see from mine, I’m a bit of a ‘purist’ ...but no harm in trying something new :)
Tell you what..I’ll take a few shots tomorrow (day off..yay !) and give it a go.
Cain Doherty in reply to Caroline Gorka’s comment
definitely no harm Caroline – for me, to be stale and predictable is a dreadful thought!
Dayonda
This is going to be great. I’ll have to give it a shot after I wake up later—THANKS!
Cain Doherty in reply to Dayonda’s comment
no problem, i thought you’d be into this
ManaPhoto
nicely done, I need to get CS3.
Cain Doherty in reply to ManaPhoto’s comment
thanks Jeff – you should be able to get a illegit copy from torrent sites on the net. what are you currently using to edit with?
AllshotsImaging
Nice tutorial. Thanks for posting it Cain!
I must admit I haven’t played with curves of single colour channels before, just the image as a whole. Might give that a go in future though.
Caroline – I’m a PS CS3 user and recently learned Lightroom. If you use them both together (ie; organise/do basic edits such as white balance in LR then export single/batches of files to PS for edits) they work really well. The latest version of LR2 has even better capabilities than version 1.4.1 that I’m using. Haven’t got round to upgrading yet though!
Cain Doherty in reply to AllshotsImaging’s comment
no worries Marek. the curves can be a bit annoying to fiddle with. CS3 has some neat preset curves like Cross Process which can produce some interesting results.
out of interest what is LR used for? i’ve seen quite a few people use it but have never bothered. i convert my raws with Adobe Camera Raw which seems fairly robust so can’t see a need to introduce another step.
AllshotsImaging
I felt the same way about LR before. I’d heard good things but never really bothered with it. The thing with LR is that it is designed specifically for Photographers, as opposed to Photoshop which is aimed at a broader range of users.
LR has many of the basic features of Photoshop but in a much easier-to-use layout, which is probably why many prefer this over PS as it is a lot easier to learn. The other thing that it is great for is workflow. You import a whole batch of images and as part of the import process you can add keywords, extra metadata (such as copyright info, your URL etc) as well as back up the files to an external location at the same time. Once this has all been done you can then sort your images and work out which ones you want to keep etc (very easy to do this too. You can just turn caps lock on and press ‘P’ for pick, ‘X’ for delete and ‘U’ for unflagged. Each time you press one of these keys it moves you to the next image!). You can also apply batch edits (so it’s great for adjusting WB on multiple files at the same time etc). It uses Adobe Camera RAW as a base so is very similar, but it is just a great workflow tool IMHO. I still use PS when I need to do more drastic edits and use layers etc. I’d highly recommend it. You can also find tutorials for it on the net. Do a Lynda.com tutorial search and see what you find. Much easier to learn with tutorials rather than trying to fiddle with stuff yourself. Chris Orwig is the guy who hosts them. He’s a little full on, but does go through the program in great detail.
Cain Doherty in reply to AllshotsImaging’s comment
sounds like a great tool for batch editing like you say. if i was employed to pump out a large volume of images sounds like it would be the way to go because PS is not something i work quickly with! and using ACR is also beneficial.
as for ACR, the biggest problem i have with it is the way it decodes my raw files in response to colour information. over time now i’ve developed a calibration setting which matches what i see on the screen of my 40D to what ACR decodes. have you noticed this at all or even overcome it?
Cain Doherty in reply to AllshotsImaging’s comment
haha, and you’re right – tutorials are a great step to advancing proficiency (unless you’re a genius!)
AllshotsImaging
Hmm, can’t say I have noticed that, and I shoot with a 40D. Are you using the latest version of ACR? I don’t 100% trust my 40D screen anyway (as far as reviewing images) because it tends to show them a bit brighter than they are. I mainly use the screen with all 4 histograms on it to check my metering and that’s about it.
LR gives you the option to ‘convert’ the RAWs to DNG (it doesn’t actually convert anything, but it adds a small amount of extra data so that they can be known and read as DNG files – trying to create a standard basically). It also uses the ProPhoto RGB colour space, although to be honest, I’m not that knowledgeable when it comes to colour spaces. I have a pantone huey monitor colour calibrator and stick with SRGB most of the time and that’s about as far as I’ve gone with it!
The ProPhoto colour space apparently has the widest gamut of colours to work with.
Yes the tutorials are definitely worthwhile. I think I’m going to learn all new software that way now, much easier than years and years of stuffing around (basically how I learned photoshop! LOL)
Cain Doherty in reply to AllshotsImaging’s comment
yeah, i’m using the latest ACR because the earlier isn’t compatible with the 40D. if you shoot raw+jpeg you can notice the difference when comparing the two against ACR’s default settings on the raw. i prefer the look of the jpegs (and the 40D’s preset colour modes) so i’ve bridged the gap with calibration tab settings.
i’ve tried the results from this thread but didn’t like them. up until a few months ago i’d been processing everything in AdobeRGB colour space and couldn’t work out why everything i uploaded to the net looked terrible. finally i figured out browsers like IE and firefox don’t support it. working now solely in sRGB eliminates that difference.
i can understand why people are anal about this stuff. complete control between what’s seen on the screen to what comes out of the printer seems hard to achieve. i haven’t much to do with printing so have nothing to compare against. is that how you use the pantone huey monitor colour calibrator?
Caroline Gorka
I meant non-manipulative when I said ‘purist’ ....unless you think my work is ‘stale and predicatable’ :((
LOL !
Cain Doherty in reply to Caroline Gorka’s comment
i gathered that’s what you meant and if you’re not adverse to new ideas and change then you’re not a purist. if i went round saying that stuff about people’s work i probably wouldn’t last long here either! you’ve a nicely edited gallery of shots Caroline, that are well focussed on evoking an emotional response and i can see that they’ve been well thought through. take any shots on your day off?
Caroline Gorka
I was kidding..hopefully..!
Yes…you commented on one. :))
I was going to take a load of street shots to try the layers, but ended up with a heap of candids – too many interesting people about..:))
Keegan Wong
Excellent Cain, this is very generous of you to devote your time for others – great work.
Cain Doherty in reply to Keegan Wong’s comment
no problem Keegan, reckon it will come in handy for you?
Keegan Wong
i actually use similar techniques to you (i.e. photo filter, linear burn, opacity, curves) but its great to know that I’m on the right track haha. Good to know other photographers workflow, ya know what i mean? =)
Cain Doherty in reply to Keegan Wong’s comment
yeha, i know what you mean
AllshotsImaging
Sorry about delayed reply Cain.
I haven’t tried the RAW + JPG mode yet (tend to shoot RAW only, or JPG only if I have to) so haven’t been able to compare the identical shots side by side.
Yup you’re right about sRGB. If you use that solely for web display purposes it works wonders. I think most times I’ve had stuff printed I left it in sRGB colour space too, but Adobe RGB is apparently the choice for printing. To be honest though there’s a LOT more I could learn about colour spaces.
Someone I know who is a very experienced and excellent photographer recently gave me a book called ‘Fine Art Printing for Photographers’ which goes through everything you need to know to be able to print fine art prints at home. I’ll have to get reading on that at some stage, but I just haven’t had a chance to start yet!
The Pantone Huey calibrates your monitor so that it displays the colours very close to what they would look like after being printed. I’ve had a look at some printed shots next to the monitor and it’s very very close. It also monitors room light and adjusts the screen accordingly at predetermined intervals. Not bad for $84! (once again from eBay).
Cain Doherty in reply to AllshotsImaging’s comment
woah, feedback on the calibrator! i didn’t realise it was that involved. cheers again, i’ll have to see where this hobby takes me before setting up a home print station.
AllshotsImaging
No probs Cain.
Yes there’s a lot of stuff to learn every day, and I am finding out new things all the time!
My calibrator is really bottom-of-the-range stuff. A higher-end one can cost up to (and over) $1000!!!
I don’t do my own printing at home. Really can’t afford it at the moment! The guy I know who gave me the book does his own printing though and i’ve seen some outstanding results. Just goes to show that where there’s a will, there’s a way.
godscapes
Awesome stuff Cain, definitely will find this useful!!! :-)
Cain Doherty in reply to godscapes’s comment
well you pack a fine punch with your processing Simone so i hope it can be of use, thanks
prbimages
This looks excellent, Cain, thank you for taking the time to prepare this. I’ll be back to read it in detail later …
Cain Doherty in reply to prbimages’s comment
great, thanks for the feedback, I look forward to your future feedback