BALANCING
YOUR IMAGE - Adjusting light levels
in a composition
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All images
by Jon Davison unless otherwise stated.
Here is one way of
pulling out your shadow detail to balance your highlights. Of course there
are many was to do this such as
using a mask, or with an adjustment layer. Being a photographer, I tend
to think in terms of layers for everything, I find that it
is easier to simply lift off the area you need to change, then flatten
the image when finished. The beauty of Photoshop is that
there are 4 or 5 ways of doing any task, ways to suit any approach. It
is up to you to find the method that suits you best.
In Photoshop CS and CS2, we now have the 'Shadow/Highlight' command, which
is another excellent way of optimising an
image, though we will cover this in a future tutorial.
Above left: Original raw frame as taken. Above right: Final composite.
1. Download and open the image 'station_raw.jpg' (160k)
2. Select just the sky and the train with your Rectangular
Marquee Tool (M). (below).
3. Copy (Command/Control - C) and paste (Command/Control
- V) this selection.
It will create a new layer by default (below).
4. Click on the background layer (above), then go to 'Image -
Adjustments - Curves' and adjust the density as per the curve
(below), or something similar. What we are doing here is balancing
the denisty by opening up the shadow areas.
Note how much Magenta there is overall. You may like it the
way it is, no problem, this is just to show you what can be
done if needed.
.
5.
Finally, (still on the background layer) go to 'Image -
Adjustments - Colour Balance' and remove some of
the heavy Magenta colour, by adding Green etc.
You will see that the train is still dense and it would be nice
to bring some of the detail out here.
6. Click the top layer now (below),
as we want to erase some of the train away.
7. Press your 'E' key for the Eraser tool, simply rub out
the train but not too much of the sky (below).
The
final treatment with colours optimized and casts removed.