Oreilly Photoshop CS5 The Missing Manual_4

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Quick Fixer-Uppers 9. Turn on the “Save as defaults” checkbox and then click OK. Since the settings listed here are good for almost every color correction, you can tell Photoshop to use them as its defaults. That way you don’t have to reset all this stuff every time you use one of the auto correctors or a Levels or Curves adjustment (both discussed later in this chapter). 10. Close the Adjustments panel and throw away the Adjustment layer. To close the Adjustments panel, click the dark gray bar at the top of the panel. Since you created the Adjustment layer just to get at the target color settings, you can throw it away by selecting it in your Layers panel and then pressing Delete (Backspace on a PC). Once you’ve set your target colors, you’re ready to start using the correction methods discussed in the next few sections. Tip: A handy way to get rid of distractions so you can focus on fixing your image is to go up to the Ap- plication bar at the top of your screen (see page 14), click the Screen Mode icon, and choose Full Screen Mode With Menu Bar. You can also press the F key repeatedly to cycle through the screen modes. Fixing Color If your image looks flat (like it has no contrast) or has a noticeable color cast, give the following methods a spin. And if your image is in pretty good shape to begin with, the following tools can fix its color in no time flat: • Auto Color. If your image has a noticeable color cast (everything looks a little green, say), this command can help. When you run it, Photoshop hunts down the shadows, highlights, and midtones in your image and changes their color values to the target colors you set earlier. You can also use this command to tone down oversaturated images, where all the colors look too intense. To run it, choose Image➝Auto Color or press Shift-�-B (Shift+Ctrl+B on a PC). This command works only on images that are in RGB mode, so if the menu item is grayed out, choose Image➝Mode➝RGB Color first. Tip: You can run Auto Color nondestructively as an Adjustment layer by following steps 1–2 in the previ- ous section. If you’d kept the Adjustment layer hanging around when you finished setting your target colors, you would have applied the Auto Color adjustment to your image. • Variations. Besides using a Variations adjustment to add color to black-and- white images (page 355), you can also use it to fix color (see Figure 9-2). Choose Image➝Adjustments➝Variations and then click one of the six previews—More Green, More Yellow, and so on—that represent various changes in color bal- ance, contrast, and saturation (your current pick appears in the middle). Your chapter 9: correcting color and lighting 371
Quick Fixer-Uppers clicks have a cumulative effect: Each time you click the More Red preview, for example, Photoshop adds more red to your image. As you click the previews, Photoshop updates all the images. To adjust the brightness, click either the lighter or darker preview on the right side of the dialog box as many times as you need to get the lighting you want. Tip: In Photoshop CS5, the Variations adjustment doesn’t work in 64-bit mode, so don’t panic if you can’t find it. The fix is to switch to 32-bit mode (see the box on page 6) and then it’ll reappear in the Image➝Adjustments menu. Since you can’t use Variations as an Adjustment layer (meaning it’ll affect your original image), it’s a darn good idea to duplicate your original layer by press- ing �-J (Ctrl+J on a PC) before you apply this adjustment. Better yet, select the image layer and then choose Filter➝“Convert for Smart Filters” so the adjust- ment runs on its own layer instead (this method also creates an automatic layer mask!). See page 634 for more on using Smart Filters. Figure 9-2: A Variations adjustment is a very visual way to fix your image, though it works only on 8-bit images (see the box on page 45). Click one of the six color previews on the left side of the dialog box as a starting point and then use the Fine to Coarse slider to change the intensity of the adjustment (Fine lowers the intensity and Coarse in- creases it, which makes you wonder why the slider isn’t named Intensity instead). Moving the slider one tick mark doubles the strength of the adjustment. If you choose Shadows or Highlights and then turn on the Show Clipping checkbox, Photoshop indicates the clipped areas of your image (page 385) with funky neon colors (they won’t show up in the printed version of the image). Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual 372
Quick Fixer-Uppers • Color Balance. This adjustment changes the overall mixture of colors in your image or selection by shifting the highlights, midtones, and shadows to opposite sides of the color wheel (see page 486 for a quick lesson on color theory). It’s also handy for adding color to a black-and-white image (page 357) or for fixing a problem area (like a dull sky) fast. The only drawback to Color Balance is that you have to know which color you want to shift your image toward (which is why color theory comes in handy). That said, Photoshop gives you sliders to adjust, making Color Balance fairly easy to play with (see Figure 9-3). Because it’s available as an Adjustment layer, it’s nondestructive and you can use the layer mask that tags along with it to limit the adjustment to certain parts of your image (see page 113 for more on masks). Photoshop gives you lots of ways to summon the Color Balance controls: Figure 9-3: A Color Balance Adjustment layer can zap a color cast instantly. Dragging the top and bottom sliders toward Cyan and Blue and the middle slider toward Magenta to introduce a little red gets rid of the nasty yellow cast shown at left. Incidentally, PDFPen is a really handy program that lets you fill in and sign PDF forms; if you use a Mac, visit www. smileonmymac. com to learn more about it. chapter 9: correcting color and lighting 373
Quick Fixer-Uppers Note: To preserve your image’s brightness values, be sure to leave the Adjustments panel’s Preserve Luminosity checkbox turned on. — Choose Color Balance from the Adjustments panel (click the button that looks like a scale). — Click the half-black/half-white circle at the bottom of your Layers panel and then choose Color Balance from the pop-up menu. — Choose Image➝Adjustments➝Color Balance or press �-B (Ctrl+B on a PC) to make Photoshop apply Color Balance to the currently active layer (your original image) without creating an Adjustment layer. • Photo Filter. To add a tint to your image, you can add a Photo Filter Adjust- ment layer to warm it up with a golden tint or cool it off with a bluish tint. If your image has a color cast, you can neutralize it by adding the opposite color (again, a little color theory comes in handy here). Though it’s much safer to run Photo Filter as an Adjustment layer, you can also run it (gasp) directly on your image by choosing Image➝Adjustments➝Photo Filter. See page 352 for more about Photo Filter. Tip: You don’t have to apply these adjustments to your whole image. If you make a selection ahead of time, the adjustment affects only the selected area. And if the adjustment is available as an Adjustment layer, you can use the included layer mask to keep the layer from affecting areas that don’t need adjusting. For adjustments that aren’t available as Adjustment layers, you can duplicate your original layer, run the adjustment on it, and then add a layer mask (page 114). poWeR USeRS’ CLINIC Fixing Colored Edge Fringe If you see a slight blue or purple fringe loitering around may see a purplish or bluish tinge around the edges of the the edges of near-black objects in your image, you’ve got numbers and hands. Fortunately, you can use the Gaussian a dreaded edge halo (page 172). They’re especially no- Blur filter to get rid of the tinge, though there’s a trick to it. ticeable when the object is on a white background. For Flip to page 445 for the step-by-step scoop. example, if you take a picture of a white clock face, you Fixing Lighting Unless you’re carting around your own light kit with your camera, you’re totally dependent on ambient light, which is less than perfect on a good day. Nevertheless, Photoshop has several tools that can help fix almost any lighting problem: Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual 374
Quick Fixer-Uppers • Auto Tone. This adjustment (called Auto Levels in CS3 and earlier) brightens your image, adding a bit more contrast. Auto Tone resets both the black and the white pixels to the target values you set earlier in this chapter—see page 368. (It’s essentially the same as clicking the Auto button in either a Levels or Curves ad- justment—or at least it was until you changed the algorithm back on page 369!) If your image needs a little lighting boost, this adjustment can get it done. You can apply it to the current layer by pressing Shift-�-L (Shift+Ctrl+L on a PC). Better yet, you can run Auto Tone as an Adjustment layer. Click the Levels or Curves button in the Adjustments panel—or click the half-black/half-white circle button at the bottom of your Layers panel and choose Levels or Curves—and then Option-click (Alt-click) the Auto button. Choose the Enhance Per Chan- nel Contrast algorithm and then click OK. • Auto Contrast. This adjustment is an automatic version of the Brightness/ Contrast adjustment discussed on page 376. It increases the contrast in your image by lightening and darkening pixels. It doesn’t adjust channels individu- ally, so if your image has a color cast, it’ll still have one after you make this adjustment. And if your image is flat to begin with, it’ll still be flat afterwards. But if you have a decent amount of contrast, this adjustment can boost it a lit- tle. To run Auto Contrast on the currently active layer, press Option-Shift-�-L (Alt+Shift+Ctrl+L on a PC). To run it as an Adjustment layer, click the Adjustments panel’s Levels button or click the half-black/half-white circle at the bottom of the Layers panel and choose Levels. In the dialog box that opens, Option-click (Alt-click) the Auto button. Choose the Enhance Monochromatic Contrast algorithm and then click OK. • Shadows/Highlights. If you need to quickly lighten the shadows or darken the highlights in your image, this tool can do an amazing job in no time flat. It’s discussed in detail on page 377. • Equalize. This adjustment evens out your pixels’ brightness by turning the light- est ones white (or the color you’ve set as your target white—see page 368) and the darkest ones black (or your target black). It’s handy when some areas of your photo are decently lit. It’s not available as an Adjustment layer, so you’ll definite- ly want to duplicate your original layer by pressing �-J (Ctrl+J on a PC) before you run this adjustment. To apply it, choose Image➝Adjustments➝Equalize. Be careful when you run Equalize, as it can make your image look washed out by lightening it too much. But if you keep your wits and immediately choose Edit➝Fade, you can lessen its effect by choosing Luminosity from the Blending pop-up menu (so it affects only the lightness values, not the color values) and lowering the opacity to about 50 percent, as shown in Figure 9-4 (bottom). chapter 9: correcting color and lighting 375
Quick Fixer-Uppers Figure 9-4: Top: Here’s the origi- nal image (left) and the equalized version (right). As you can see, the lighting in the image on the right has been evened out, but it’s also com- pletely washed out. Bottom: After reduc- ing the adjustment with the Edit➝Fade command, the results are more visually pleasing. • Dodge and Burn tools. These tools are useful when you need to lighten or darken detailed areas of your image by hand, and back in CS4 they were both redesigned so they’re not as harmful to your image as they used to be (especially on skin tones). For example, you can use the Burn tool to selectively darken your subject’s eyes and the Dodge tool to lighten deep wrinkles. But unless you duplicate your original layer first, there’s no way to use these tools nondestruc- tively. Luckily, there’s a trick that lets you use the Brush tool so it behaves like the Dodge and Burn tools. Flip over to Chapter 10 (page 447) for step-by-step instructions. Brightness/Contrast Adjustment layers These Adjustment layers do exactly what you’d think: They brighten your image or increase the contrast in it—or both. In days of old, these adjustments didn’t work worth a darn because they adjusted your whole image by the same amount, which usually resulted in nice-looking shadows but blown-out highlights. Thankfully, Brightness/Contrast got a much-needed overhaul back in CS3 so now it’s a use- ful tool, especially on black-and-white images. (Just be sure to leave its Use Legacy checkbox turned off, or it’ll behave like it used to!) Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual 376
Quick Fixer-Uppers You can choose Brightness/Contrast from your Adjustments panel (its button looks like a sun) or by clicking the half-black/half-white circle at the bottom of your Layers panel and choosing Brightness/Contrast from the pop-up menu. In your Adjust- ments panel, drag the Brightness slider to the left to darken your image or to the right to brighten it as shown in Figure 9-5. If you want to increase your image’s con- trast, drag the Contrast slider to the right. To decrease it, drag the slider to the left and watch as your image becomes flatter than a pancake (tonally speaking!). Figure 9-5: The revamped Brightness/Contrast Adjustment layers do a much better job of adjusting the lighting in your image than they used to. But since the brightening focuses mainly on the highlights (it leaves the shadows alone for the most part), you need to be careful that they don’t get too light. For a quick lighting fix, though, this adjustment does a fantastic job. Shadows/Highlights adjustments The most useful of all the quick-fix adjustments is Shadows/Highlights. If your camera’s flash didn’t fire and your subject is way too dark, this command can bring your photo back to life by analyzing each pixel and then adjusting it according to the lightness values of neighboring pixels. This is a big deal because even the much lauded Levels and Curves adjust lightness values equally among all pixels, whether they need it or not. You can apply this adjustment by choosing Image➝Adjustments➝Shadows/ Highlights, but because it’s destructive, you may want to duplicate your image layer first (or better yet, convert it for Smart Filters as described in the steps below). At first you see just two sliders in the dialog box that appears: Shadows and Highlights. Because Photoshop assumes you want to lighten the shadows—and you usually do—it automatically sets the Shadows slider to 35 percent (it leaves the Highlights slider set to 0 percent). To get the most out of this adjustment, you need to turn on the Show More Options checkbox at the bottom of the dialog box (the following numbered list explains all your options). chapter 9: correcting color and lighting 377
Quick Fixer-Uppers Note: In previous versions of Photoshop, the Shadows slider was automatically set to 50 percent, which is way too much. Thankfully, Adobe decided to lower the factory setting to 35 percent in CS5. (See? They really do listen to customer feedback!) Here’s how to lighten overly dark shadows in your image using a Shadows/Highlights adjustment: 1. Select the image layer and choose Filter➝“Convert for Smart Filters”. Since the Shadows/Highlights adjustment is destructive (it’s not available as an Adjustment layer), it’ll affect your original image. To use it nondestructively, you can either duplicate the layer first by pressing �-J (Ctrl+J on a PC) or con- vert it for Smart Filters. The second method forces Photoshop to make the ad- justment on a separate layer as if you had run a Smart Filter (see page 634). Both methods let you hide parts of your image with a mask, though the Smart Filter method won’t bloat your file’s size as much as duplicating the layer. 2. Choose Image➝Adjustments➝Shadows/Highlights. In the Shadows/Highlights dialog box that appears, turn on the Show More Options checkbox (circled in Figure 9-6) so you can see all the settings. Figure 9-6: Left: Here’s an image before (top) and after (bottom) using the Shadows/High- lights adjustment. Right: Turning on Show More Options (circled) gives you a slew of sliders. When you click OK to close the dialog box, you’ll see the adjustment happen on its own layer (shown here at bottom right). By painting with black within the mask that comes from running Shadows/Highlights Click to as a Smart Filter, you edit mask can protect certain parts of your image Double-click name to reopen Shadow/Highlight dialog box from the effect. Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual 378
Quick Fixer-Uppers 3. Set the Shadows section’s Amount slider to between 20 and 35 percent. That’s really as high as you want to go, or you’ll start to see noise (graininess) in your image. 4. Leave the Shadows section’s Tonal Width slider set to 50 percent. This slider lets you control which shadows Photoshop adjusts. If you lower this number, the program changes only the darkest shadows; if you raise it, Photo- shop changes a wider range of shadows. The factory setting of 50 percent usually works fine, but you may want to lower it if your image looks grainy. 5. Increase the Shadows section’s Radius slider to between 250 and 300 pixels. Since the Shadows/Highlights adjustment works by looking at the brightness values of neighboring pixels, you can use this setting to determine how big that neighborhood is. Pump this baby up to make Photoshop analyze more pixels. Tip: If your shadows are okay but your highlights need darkening, apply these same settings to the Highlight portion of the dialog box instead of the Shadows portion (they work the same way). Just be sure to set the Shadows section’s Amount slider to 0 percent to turn that section off if you don’t need to use it. 6. In the Adjustments section at the southern end of the dialog box, set the Color Correction field to 0. Lowering this setting keeps Photoshop from shifting your colors and introduc- ing funky pinks into skin tones. 7. Leave the Adjustments section’s Midtone Contrast setting at 0. Photoshop makes dark pixels a little darker and light pixels a little lighter to increase contrast. Since the whole point of a Shadows/Highlights adjustment is usually to lighten shadows, increasing this setting pretty much cancels out what you’re trying to accomplish. To avoid that conflict, leave this slider set to 0. Note: If you need more contrast in your image, you can always add a Curves Adjustment layer (as de- scribed later in this chapter) and change its blend mode to Luminosity—which affects only pixel brightness (page 302)—so you won’t risk a color shift. 8. In the Adjustments section, leave the Black Clip and White Clip fields set to 0.01 percent. Leaving these fields alone keeps your light and dark pixels from getting clipped (forced to pure white or black). Page 385 has the full story on clipping. 9. Click the Save As Defaults button. Photoshop saves your settings so you don’t have to reset everything the next time you use this adjustment. chapter 9: correcting color and lighting 379
Quick Fixer-Uppers 10. Click OK to close the Shadows/Highlights dialog box. In the Layers panel, you’ll see a new layer called Smart Filters above the Shadows/ Highlights adjustment (Figure 9-6), indicating that Photoshop ran the adjust- ment as a Smart Filter instead of applying it to your original image. 11. If necessary, hide the adjustment from a portion of your image by painting within the mask that came with the Smart Filter. When you click the Smart Filter mask’s thumbnail to select it, Photoshop puts a tiny black border around it. Press B to grab the Brush tool, press D to set your color chips to black and white, and then press X until black hops on top. Mouse over to your image and paint the areas you don’t want adjusted. Pretty cool, huh? You can think of this technique as Smart Shadows. 12. For a quick before-and-after comparison, turn the Smart Filters layer’s visibility eye off and on. As Figure 9-6 shows, this adjustment does a bang-up job of lightening shadows without introducing a funky color cast. To get even better results, you can run the Shadows/Highlights adjustment on the Lightness channel in Lab mode. It sounds really difficult, but it’s not. Just follow these steps: 1. Duplicate your original layer by pressing �-J (Ctrl+J on a PC). For reasons known only to the Lords of Adobe, you can’t run the Shadows/ Highlights adjustment on one channel if your original layer has been converted to a Smart Object to run the adjustment as a Smart Filter. So to keep this adjust- ment from running in Super Destructo mode, you’ve got to duplicate the layer first. Bummer! 2. Switch to Lab mode temporarily. Choose Image➝Mode➝Lab Color. (It doesn’t matter whether you were origi- nally in RGB or CMYK mode; as you know from Chapter 2, page 46, you’ll usually be in RGB mode.) When Photoshop asks if you want to flatten layers, click Don’t Flatten. If you’ve got any Smart Objects in your document, it’ll also ask if you want to rasterize them; in that case, click Don’t Rasterize. 3. Select the Lightness channel. Open your Channels panel by choosing Window➝Channels and click once to select the Lightness channel. As you learned back in Chapter 5 (page 198), one of the great things about Lab mode is that it separates your image’s light info from its color info. Since you want to lighten the shadows without shifting col- or, you can run the Shadows/Highlights adjustment on the Lightness channel, which makes the adjustment work noticeably better. Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual 380
Correcting Images in Camera Raw 4. Choose Image➝Adjustments➝Shadows/Highlights. Turn on the Show More Options checkbox and enter the following settings: Shadows Amount 20 percent; Shadows Tonal Width 50 percent; Shadows Radius 275 pixels. Click OK when you’re finished. 5. Switch back to RGB (or CMYK) mode. Choose Image➝Mode➝RGB (or CMYK) to go back to the color mode you started out in. 6. To see before and after versions of your image, turn the duplicate layer’s visibility off and on. Sure, this method takes two extra steps, but the results are well worth it. And re- member, if you need to adjust the highlights instead of the shadows, you can use the same magic numbers in the Highlights section—just be sure to set the Shadows section Amount slider to zero. Note: In Photoshop CS5, you’ll spot a new item lurking in the Image➝Adjustments menu: HDR Toning. It has to do with creating High Dynamic Range imagery, which you’ll learn all about on page 414. poWeR USeRS’ CLINIC Fixing Lighting with Blend Modes Layers panel. Finally, using the layer mask that automati- If your image is still too dark or too light after you run a cally tags along with every Adjustment layer, paint with a Shadows/Highlights adjustment, you can fix it with blend black brush to hide the darkened bits from areas that don’t modes. The technique is described in step-by-step glory need darkening. back on page 118, but it’s so important that it deserves a mention here, too. To lighten your image, add another empty Adjustment lay- er and change its blend mode to Screen. Use the provided To darken your image, create an empty Adjustment layer layer mask to hide the light bits if you need to. by clicking the half black/half white circle at the bottom of the Layers panel and choosing Levels (it’s the first one in If your image needs to be darker or lighter still, you can the list that doesn’t actually do anything to your image). duplicate the empty Adjustment layer. To reduce the effect Then change the new Levels Adjustment layer’s blend of the darkening or lightening layer, lower its opacity using mode to Multiply using the pop-up menu at the top of the the field at the top of the Layers panel. Correcting Images in Camera Raw As you learned in Chapter 2, Camera Raw is a powerful plug-in that lets you correct the color and lighting of images shot in Raw format, as well as JPEGs and TIFFs. Since most of the settings in Camera Raw are slider-based, it’s hands down the easi- est place to fix your images (that’s why this section comes before the ones covering Levels and Curves, which are, truth be told, 100 times more confusing). chapter 9: correcting color and lighting 381
Correcting Images in Camera Raw The adjustments you make in Camera Raw are also nondestructive; instead of ap- plying them to your image, Camera Raw keeps track of them in a list it stores within the image or in a file called Sidecar XMP (could that name be more cryptic?). Simply put, you can undo anything you’ve done in Camera Raw whenever you want. Tip: You can zoom in/out of the Camera Raw preview window just like you can in Photoshop (press �-+/– or Ctrl-+/– on a PC). To move around within your image, press and hold the space bar as you drag with your mouse. You can see a preview of your image by turning on the Preview option at the top right of the window or by pressing the P key. The Camera Raw plug-in is covered in several places throughout this book; here’s a handy cheat sheet: • Learning more about the Raw format (page 57) • Opening files in Camera Raw (page 234) • Cropping and straightening in Camera Raw (page 233) • Going grayscale in Camera Raw (page 329) • Editing multiple files in Camera Raw (see the box on page 422) • Removing dust spots in Camera Raw (page 428) • Fixing red eye with Camera Raw (page 455) • Sharpening in Camera Raw (page 480) In this section, you’ll learn how to use various sliders in Camera Raw to fix both color and lighting, plus you’ll pick up some tricks to make your images leap off the page with color. And when you’re finished adjusting your image in Camera Raw, you can use the buttons at the bottom of the Camera Raw window to do the following: • Click Save Images to convert, rename, or relocate your file(s)—or any combina- tion of those options—so you don’t overwrite the original(s). • Click Open Images to apply the changes you’ve made and open the image in Photoshop, or Shift-click this button to open it as a Smart Object (page 54) in Photoshop. • Click Cancel to bail out of Camera Raw without saving or applying changes. • Click Done to apply the changes (which you can edit the next time you open the image in Camera Raw) and exit the Camera Raw window. If you use Camera Raw’s adjustments in the order they’re presented in this section (which is also the order they appear in the Camera Raw window—how handy!), you’ll be amazed at the results. Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual 382
Correcting Images in Camera Raw Changing White Balance When you set the white balance, you’re telling Camera Raw which color the light in your image should be. As you might suspect, changing the light’s color changes all the colors in your image, as shown in Figure 9-7. Because each light source gives off its own special color cast—whether it’s a light bulb (Tungsten), fluorescent light, a cloudy sky, and so on—most digital cameras let you adjust the white balance based on the current source (though you may have to dig out your owner’s manual to find where that setting lives). Figure 9-7: As shot Auto Daylight Here’s an image with each of Camera Raw’s White Balance presets applied to it. As you can see, changing the white balance makes a big difference! Cycling through the list of presets is a great Cloudy Shade Tungsten way to experiment with color because it’s so darned easy and it opens your eyes to more color possibilities. After all, this color-correction mumbo jumbo is purely subjective; the color that’s closest to Fluorescent Flash Custom the original may not always look great or suit your taste. It’s all about what looks best to you! Note: Want to follow along? Visit this book’s Missing CD page at www.missingmanuals.com/cds and download the practice file Armadillo.zip. chapter 9: correcting color and lighting 383
Correcting Images in Camera Raw One of the big advantages of shooting in Raw format is that if you get the white bal- ance wrong in your camera, you can always reset it using Camera Raw. For example, if you’re shooting in an office using a white balance of Fluorescent and then walk outside and shoot in the courtyard, the light’s color will be off in the outdoor images. Another advantage is that Raw files store more color info than JPEGs because they’re not compressed (which is why Raw files are so much bigger). The point is that if you can shoot in Raw, you should. Note: Raw files are like raw cookie ingredients: Before you mix and roll cookie dough into balls and bake it, you’ve got all kinds of flexibility; you can change the ingredients, add nuts or chocolate chips, and form the cookies into interesting shapes. A JPEG, on the other hand, is like a baked cookie; there’s very little you can do to it because it’s already cooked. Sure you can add a topping or two, but it’s much less flexible than the raw (pun intended!) ingredients. In Camera Raw, you can change the white balance by using the presets in the Basic tab’s White Balance pop-up menu. Or you can set it manually (and maybe more ac- curately) using Camera Raw’s White Balance tool (see Figure 9-8). Press I to grab the tool (which looks like an eyedropper) and then mouse over to your image and click an area that should be white or light gray. Just keep clickin’ till the image looks right, and then adjust the Temperature and Tint sliders until you get the color you want. Figure 9-8: When you’re using the White Balance tool, be careful not to click a white reflection, like the one on the Lone Star bottle here. For more accurate color, click an area that’s really supposed to be white (or light gray), like this armadillo’s underbelly. If you can’t seem to get the color quite right, tweak the Tempera- ture slider; dragging it to the right warms up your image and dragging it to the left cools it off. Use the Tint slider to adjust the balance of green and magenta. Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual 384
Correcting Images in Camera Raw Note: You don’t have as much flexibility when resetting the white balance of JPEGs or TIFFs because those file formats have already been processed a bit by the camera or scanner that captured them—the only presets Camera Raw gives you are As Shot and Auto. Nevertheless, you can still tweak it by adjusting the Temperature and Tint sliders (doing so changes the White Balance menu to Custom). Fixing Exposure The next group of sliders in Camera Raw’s Basic tab lets you adjust your image’s exposure and contrast (the difference between light and dark pixels). Exposure is determined by how much light your camera’s sensor captures. As you learned on page 368, each image consists of three categories of color: highlights, midtones, and shadows. Problems can arise in one of those categories or all three; luckily, you can fix them all in Camera Raw as the following list explains. If you’re not up to fiddling with these six sliders, you can make Camera Raw adjust the image for you by click- ing the word Auto above the Exposure slider. But you’ll get better results if you adjust the following settings by hand: Note: If you’d like to follow along, visit this book’s Missing CD page at www.missingmanuals.com/cds and download the practice file Keywest.zip. • Exposure. Drag this slider to the right to lighten your image or to the left to darken it. Be careful not to drag it too far either way or you’ll start to lose details. For that reason, it’s a good idea to turn on Camera Raw’s clipping warnings (they look like triangles and are shown at the top right of Figure 9-9) so you can see if you’re destroying details. (Press U to turn on the shadow clipping warning and O—that’s the letter o, not the number zero—to turn on the highlight clip- ping warning.) It’s okay to lose a few details because you can bring them back with the very next setting. Tip: If you’re not a fan of the highlight clipping warnings and don’t want to see them all the time, you can temporarily see clipped highlights by Option-dragging (Alt-dragging on a PC) the Exposure slider to the right. Your image preview turns black and the clipped areas appear in bright colors as you drag. • Recovery. This aptly named slider recovers lost details in overexposed high- lights. If you drag it to the right, you can make the red clipping warnings in your image disappear and get some details back in those areas. If you can’t get rid of all the red, drag the Exposure slider a little ways to the left. • Fill Light. This setting is like a digital fill flash (an additional flash that you aim at shadows when you’re taking a photo): it lightens the shadowy areas of your image but leaves the highlights alone. Don’t get carried away with this adjust- ment; if you lighten the shadows too much, you’ll end up with an image so evenly lit that it looks boring and flat. chapter 9: correcting color and lighting 385
Correcting Images in Camera Raw • Blacks. To darken your image’s shadows, drag this slider slightly to the right. You’ll get a bit of a contrast boost, too, though it’s best not to go much past 6 (if at all). If you do, the details in your shadowy areas disappear into a big ol’ black hole. You can turn on the shadow clipping warning by clicking the triangle at the top left of the histogram (also shown in Figure 9-9) or pressing U. From then on, Camera Raw highlights any clipped areas in blue. Tip: Just like with the highlight clipping warnings, you can temporarily see clipped shadows (while leaving the shadow clipping warning off) by Option-dragging (Alt-dragging on a PC) the Blacks slider to the right. Your image preview turns white, and the clipped areas appear in bright colors as you drag. • Brightness. You can use this slider to adjust the midtones in your image. If you darkened the image by dragging the Exposure setting to the left, drag this one to the right to brighten it back up. • Contrast. Drag this slider to the right to increase your image’s contrast (the difference between light and dark pixels) or to the left to decrease it. Increasing contrast makes the light pixels in your image lighter and the dark pixels darker. Figure 9-9: Shadow clipping Highlight clipping When you turn on the highlight clipping warning by clicking its icon (top right), areas that are losing details— like this woman’s hand and her glass—turn bright red. The farther you drag the Exposure slider to the right, the more red areas you see. Don’t let this worry you too much because the Recovery slider can bring back most (if not all) of the lost details. A little known fact is that both clipping warnings appear black if no pixels are being clipped; how- ever, if the shadow clipping triangle turns blue or the highlight clipping triangle turns red, some clipping has occurred. Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual 386
Correcting Images in Camera Raw Making Colors Pop If you want to intensify your image’s colors, give the next three sliders in Camera Raw’s Basic tab a tug: • Clarity. This slider boosts contrast in the midtones, increasing the depth so your image looks clearer. You’d be hard-pressed to find an image that wouldn’t benefit from dragging this slider almost all the way to the right. • Vibrance. Use this slider to intensify colors without altering skin tones (it has more of an effect on bright colors and less on light colors, like skin tones). If you’ve got people in your image, this is the adjustment to use (see Figure 9-10). • Saturation. Intensifies all the colors in your image, including skin tones. Don’t use it on people pictures unless you like fluorescent skin. Figure 9-10: As you can see, Camera Raw can greatly improve the color and light in your image. The original, under- exposed image is on top and the end result is on the bottom. That’s an impressive result from just drag- ging a few sliders back and forth! Tip: To reset any slider in Camera Raw back to its original setting, simply double-click the slider. chapter 9: correcting color and lighting 387
Correcting Images in Camera Raw Camera Raw’s Adjustment Brush The Adjustment Brush lets you selectively adjust certain areas of your images by painting them (see Figure 9-11). When you activate the Adjustment Brush by press- ing K, you see a host of adjustments appear on the right side of the Camera Raw window. They’re the same adjustments you’ve learned about so far, along with an extra one called Color that lets you paint a tint onto your image. Figure 9-11: See the dotted line around the brush cursor? It indi- cates the feather amount, which softens the edge of your adjustment to make it blend in with the rest of the image. The solid line indicates the brush size, and the crosshair lets you know where you’re apply- ing the adjustment. The Flow slider (near the bottom of the window on the right) controls the strength of the adjust- ment, and the Density slider (just below it) con- trols the transparency of your brushstroke (think of it as the brush’s opacity). To use the Adjustment brush, choose the type of adjustment you want to make us- ing the sliders on the right, mouse over to your image, and then paint to apply the adjustment. A little green pushpin appears to mark the area you adjusted (though on a PC it looks more white than green); press V to show or hide the pin(s). Behind the scenes, Camera Raw creates a mask that hides the rest of your image so you can continue to tweak the adjustment sliders even after you’ve finished painting. Camera Raw updates the area you painted to reflect those changes. You can click the little + and – signs on either end of the adjustment sliders to strengthen or lessen the adjustment (respectively) by a preset amount (.5 on Expo- sure, whose scale ranges from –4 to +4, and 25 on most other sliders, which range from –100 to +100 [though Brightness ranges from –200 to + 200]). If you want to Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual 388
Correcting Images in Camera Raw see the mask, turn on the Show Mask checkbox beneath the sliders or press Y. You can change the color of the mask’s overlay by clicking the little white square to the right of the Show Mask checkbox and then choosing a new color from the resulting Color Picker. Turn on the Auto Mask checkbox to limit your adjustment to brush- strokes that fall on similar-colored areas. To undo part of the mask, turn on the Erase radio button near the top of the window and then paint that area of your image to remove the adjustment. Likewise, to add to the mask, turn on the Add radio button and then paint your image. To apply a new adjustment to an existing mask, turn on the New radio button. To select the mask, click the pushpin. And if you want to delete the mask, click its pushpin and then press Delete (Backspace on a PC). Camera Raw’s Graduated Filters The Graduated Filter tool lets you apply adjustments much like a real graduated filter you screw onto the end of your camera lens (the filter is a thin piece of glass that fades from gray to white so it darkens overly bright parts of the scene you’re shooting). When you select this tool by clicking its button at the top of the Camera Raw window (it’s circled in Figure 9-12) or pressing G, you get the same set of ad- justments you do with the Adjustment Brush (though there’s no erase mode). The difference is that, with the Graduated Filter tool, you apply them by dragging rather than painting, as shown in Figure 9-12. This adjustment is great for fixing over- exposed skies because Photoshop gradually applies it across the full width or height of your image in the direction you drag. Behind the scenes, this tool creates a gradient mask (page 287), which restricts the adjustment to specific parts of your image. You can continue to make adjustments using the sliders at the right of the window even after you’ve used the tool, and use the little + and – signs on either end of the sliders to strengthen or lessen the adjust- ment, respectively. To draw a perfectly vertical or horizontal mask, press and hold the Shift key as you drag. More Fun with Camera Raw As you can see, the Camera Raw plug-in is crazy powerful and each new version is bursting with new features. You can use it to adjust Curves (page 406), softly darken the edges of your image (called vignetting; see page 656 to learn how to add a dark vignette with a filter in Photoshop), and much more. Camera Raw deserves a whole book all to itself, and there are plenty of ‘em out there. When you’re ready to learn more, pick up Getting Started with Camera Raw, Second Edition by Ben Long (Peach- pit Press, 2009), a great guide for beginners. Or check out Real World Camera Raw with Adobe Photoshop CS4 (Peachpit Press, 2008) by Jeff Schewe and Bruce Fraser. If you’d rather learn by watching a video, check out Ben Willmore’s Mastering Camera Raw DVD available at www.digitalmastery.com. chapter 9: correcting color and lighting 389
Using Levels Using Levels The adjustments you’ve seen so far are okay when you’re starting out with Photo- shop, and they’re darn handy when you’re pressed for time. But to become a real pixel wrangler, you’ve got to kick it up a notch and learn to use Levels and Curves. With a single Levels adjustment, you can fix lighting problems, increase contrast, and—in some cases—balance the color in your image. (If you’ve got serious color problems, you need to use Curves; skip ahead to page 406 to learn how.) Levels adjustments change the intensity levels—hence the tool’s name—of your shadows, midtones, and highlights. They’re a very visual and intuitive way to improve your images. And because they’re available as an Adjustment layer (yay!), they’re non- destructive and won’t harm your original image. In this section, you’ll learn how to use Levels adjustments in a few different ways so you can pick the one you like best. But, first, you need to get up close and personal with the mighty histogram, your secret decoder ring for interpreting problems in your images. Figure 9-12: You can use the Graduated Filter tool to darken and inten- sify this sky gradually. The horizontal dotted line that runs through the green dot repre- sents the start of the mask, and the similar line running through the red dot represents the end. To delete the mask, click the red dot and then press Delete (Backspace on a PC). To move the midpoint of the mask (where the adjustment begins to fade), drag the red dot up or down. Histograms: Mountains of Information A histogram (Figure 9-13) is a visual representation—a collection of bar graphs, to be specific—of the info contained in your image. Once you learn how to read it, you’ll gain an immensely valuable understanding of why your image looks the way Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual 390