A common problem in outdoor photography : unwanted obstacles. Digitally removing the object can be easy or very difficult.
If the object obscures a plain background such as blue sky or beach sand, then computer software can easily fill-in any space that is vacant when deleting the unwanted object. If the object obscures something more complex such as a person’s face, there is no way to recreate what the camera never captured. While this is surely changing with today’s advances in generative AI, there will always be limitations.
In this image of the Groveton covered bridge, removing the yellow marker post would not be difficlut. The real problem is a telephone/utility pole that stands near the front of the bridge; see the unmodified photo below.
The technique that solves this problem is to capture two images. After taking the first photo, take a few steps to one side and make the second photo. That second capture reveals what was hidden behind the pole in the first capture. In post-processing, I removed the pole and then used pieces of the second image to fill in the blank.
Original photo – Before editing
Of course there are still many wires and shadows of wires across the image. Removing those can be easy against a clear blue sky but becomes more difficult across varying clouds, trees, and the shingle roof. I expect generative AI can make this task much easier … and better. If you look closely at the edited image, you may find a few breaks in cable shadows that I have not yet remedied. AI could potentially figure out the pattern of the roof shingles and extend the pattern, completely fixing the shadow breaks.
With all digital cameras, my general practice is to capture RAW images instead of JPEG. Particularly when photographing with DJI Mavic 3 aerial drone, I not only capture RAW but additionally I frequently utilize exposure bracketing and HDR post-processing.
Portland Maine
The image shown here is the result of post-processing with Adobe Photoshop.
Having used the original DJI Mavic Pro, Mavic 2 pro, and Mavic 3, all have exhibited similar difficulty holding fine details in the highlights. This commonly occurs with architectural details under full sun; highlight details are easily lost. My solution is to use exposure bracketing and HDR post-processing; this means the original capture includes the best exposure, then two other exposures, one that is a bit brighter and one that is a bit darker. For the example, the photo here. I expected in advance that the highlights were at risk of getting lost; in retrospect, yes it was true.
The original three exposures are shown below. The best exposure is in the middle. As has been typical of Mavic 1,2, and 3, architectural details in white buildings have not been fully captured. The second problem is that the green trees are too dark. That second problem can be remedied in post-processing without much difficulty. However, if details in the highlights are blown out, recovering this can be difficult or impossible.
Initially, I perform basic adjustments in Adobe Lightroom and then open all three using “Open as layers in Photoshop”. That opens the three separate files as ProPhoto RGB (16-bit color depth) and with the adjustments made in Lightroom. Once opened in Photoshop, select all three layers and choose “Auto-align layers” in case the drone may have moved slightly between exposures. The best exposure I move to the bottom layer. From the other two exposures, I select specific parts of the image and these are overlayed over the bottom layer, effectively replacing problem areas.
Because the darkest exposure has retained all details in the highlights, I select the brightest areas from this exposure. Typically, this can be accomplished with either Photoshop’s built-in “Color range” selection. Once that selection is made, I often need to tweak it a bit, manually deselecting some areas that were selected but I don’t want those areas selected. Then feather the selection and convert it to a layer mask.
Using the brightest exposure, I similarly selected the green trees. That proved to be more difficult and I spent much time tweaking that selection. This selection is also converted to a layer mask. This replaces the overly dark trees in the base layer with a brighter version. Of course, you might use tools such as brightness or tone curve to lighten the trees in the base image, but the underexposed trees are more prone to luminance noise. Leveraging the brighter exposed trees does not suffer from noise, but is a bit more work to achieve.
There are alternative methods. I sometimes use Raya Pro by Jimmy McIntyre.
The final image is a composite assembled from three separate exposures of the same scene. I save this layered file as TIFF, but you can also save it as PSD (Photoshop format). I may merge all layers and export a JPEG file, but I keep the layered file. Commonly, I do return to this file and make further adjustments. For example, I may decide later that one or more of the exposures has noticeable noise or is not sufficiently sharp. The layered file allows me to make adjustments to the individual exposures.
In addition to visiting Gloucester this weekend, I also ported all my photography and tools to a new computer. As I imported new images from a camera drone, I took the new computer on a test drive to verify that my tools were all in good order.
This scene had both very bright highlights and very dark shadows; I doubted that a single exposure could contain both the highlights and shadows. As you likely know, such situations are known as high dynamic range (HDR). I captured a bracket of three exposures. In retrospect, it was a wise choice. The middle exposure was spot on, however the foreground was nearly black and some background highlights were blown out – white boats and white buildings. The darker exposure provided correction for the blown-out highlights. The lightest exposure was used to replace the black foreground water with dark-blue water.
Initially, I processed each of the three in Lightroom and then combined them together using Photoshop. From Lightroom, open the three images using “Edit In” -> “Open As Layers In Photoshop”. Once opened in Photoshop, select all three layers and choose “Edit” -> “Auto-Align layers”. Here, there are six Projection options; I chose “Reposition” because the three images were identical composition that varied only by exposure.
A selection of the highlights was applied as a layer mask on the darkest layer, such that only the highlights are used from that layer. A selection of the foreground dark water was applied as a layer mask to the brightest layer such that the foreground is lightened. The resulting image is shown here on the right.
From there, I applied three image filters by Alien Skin. First was Bokeh, to blur the image – except for the schooner. Then I used two different variations of Snap-Art. All this was done through Photoshop. Upon saving all of this (TIFF file), I was back in Lightroom. Judicious use of brightness, clarity, and color saturation enhanced the simulated brush strokes. The end result is shown here on the left.
I first began photographing tall ships during SailBoston 2000. Since then, I have photographed tall ships many times from Philadelphia PA to Camden ME. SailBoston 2017 was not to be missed, being the largest gathering of tall ships in the northeast since 1976.
As the weather for the grand parade of sail was a big foggy, the resulting images were low contrast. If your camera is capturing JPEG images, then you might change the camera settings to increase the contrast. But for those of us who are sticklers for image quality and therefore capture RAW images, the camera setting for contrast doesn’t actually do anything. Here’s how I post-processed RAW images using Adobe Lightroom.
Original low-contrast image before post
(click on the image to see the full-resolution image.)
When lighting is low contrast, you have a choice of keeping that or compensating for it. If you choose to compensate, the most important step is usually to lower the black point. Essentially, low contrast implies that the darkest parts of the image render as a lighter tone and the brightest parts of the image render as less bright. Dark isn’t particularly dark and bright isn’t particularly bright.
With the original settings shown on the left, notice that the histogram at the top shows none of the image information extends to the far left. None of the image falls into the leftmost one third, the region of darkest possible tones. To pull the dark tones to the left, use the black clipping slider control. The settings on the right show the modified histogram.
Adjustments in Adobe Lightroom
Lightroom divides tonality into five regions, black, shadow, midtone, hightlight, and white. If you hover your computer cursor over any of the five relevant slider controls, the corresponding region will be highlighted in the histogram.
Dragging the black point to -60 is relatively heavy-handed and tends to drag the shadow areas down. Although I have raised the shadow brightness here, that is primarily to hold the shadows closer to the original brightness, compensating for the drag of the -60 black point.
Further increasing the overall contrast, I have raised the overall exposure brightness and the highlights. And I have made minor adjustments in color, to compensate for a slight green cast and slight yellow cast.
In addition to the overall image adjustments, I have made a few local adjustments. The hull of the Eagle was bit dark, due to the angle of the sun; so I brightened the hull slightly. The sails of schooner Adventure picked up a slight blue cast from the environment; so I moved that color slightly toward yellow. The white stripes of the American flag also picked up a bluish cast; so I moved that color slightly toward yellow, reduced the color saturation, and added a touch of brightness.
Finally, the foreground water appeared to be less bright, perhaps due to shallow depth. I applied a gradient filter to the foreground and bumped up the brightness to match the rest of the image.
Maybe these adjustments seem like a lot of work. But the overall image adjustments can be quickly and easily copied to other images. If the natural light of the day hasn’t changed, these adjustments are appropriate for many images, not just the one. Wherever the light did change, I have to make small adjustments and then apply that set of adjustments to a group of images.
With more than fifty ships in the parade of sail, I shot 250 images. I don’t give detailed attention to every single image. Duplicating adjustments to a group of images is a necessary time saver. And, of course, I will give the most attention to my favorite images, those that might be submitted to publishers or printed for wall decoration.
If you are in the Boston area during August 2017, stop by Boston City Hall and check out my exhibit of tall ship photography at the Mayor’s Neighborhood Gallery (2nd floor).
If you have a personal checking account, you can have your own photographs printed as custom backgrounds on your checks.
While some of my bills are payed automatically, either through my bank or credit card, I do still write checks for some things. Upon discovering that I only had one blank check remaining, I was about to order more through regular channels, but the price seemed a bit high. Searcing on-line, I found that other providers will print blank checks for far less money and you can order checks direct through their web sites.
Some companies allow you to upload your own photographs to be printed as the background image on your checks. Caution – some of those providers do not include security features, such as microprinting of the signature line. I found two providers that offer custom photo checks with security features, then researched them on-line to find positive/negative reviews. I selected one of these providers and then searched on-line for freely available discount codes. I found a discount code that saved me $3 per box of checks.
The photo I selected from my own catalog is shown here, an image of the Boston skyline.
Unfortunately, no guidelines were given how to size my photo appropriately. The web site did list specific file types that were acceptable and a maximum file size of 5MB.
Measure the height and width of your old checks. Then re-size your digital image accordingly. Personal checks (in the USA) are typically 6″ x 2.75″. I re-sized my photograph to slightly larger than 6″, thinking that the images are typically over-printed and then the paper is cut to a slightly reduced size. Set the print resolution to 300 dpi. Save the file as JPEG. Upload this file when the check-ordering web site prompts you to do so.
Choose a brighter image rather than a darker image. Text that is printed on the check will be difficult to see if the background image is too dark. The web site should show you a preview of the check with your photo and text. Upon seeing my check preview, I deleted the photo (the original shown here in this post), edited the photo to make it lighter, then uploaded the modified version.
To lighten a photo, raise the black point, which causes black to be rendered as grey instead of black. For example, in Photoshop, use either curves or levels. In Lightroom, in the Develop Module, use the Tone Curve. Simply drag the left-most point of the curve upward until it looks right to you.
You have three primary options for printing digital photographs on paper; I will offer a bit of insight to each of these.
Have a photo lab print it onto photographic paper
Have a photo lab print it via inkjet printing
Print it yourself via inkjet printing
Photo lab – print on traditional photographic paper
Traditional photographic paper has been used since before digital photography existed. Embedded within the paper, a chemical process reacts to light. With the advent of digital photography, the method of projecting the image onto the paper has changed, but the paper itself is basically the same technology as was used forty years ago. Once the paper has been exposed to light, it must be processed through several chemicals, washed, and dried. Though it may seem to be a complex process, the process is typically done by machines and is inexpensive. Because a the image is formed by a chemical change within the paper, no ink or dye is applied to the paper surface.
The light sensitive paper (produced by Kodak, Fujifilm, Ilford, and others) is available with a glossy surface, matte surface, of something in between, typically referred to as semi-gloss or luster. Some paper produces black & white (a.k.a. grey-tone) image, while other papers produce a color image. Metallic color paper is a widely available option that has reflective specs embedded in the paper; an image on metallic paper can be quite stunning, but should be displayed under very good light to achieve the best effect.
Photo lab – print via inkjet printing
Inkjet paper is a far more simple material compared to light-sensitive paper. There is no chemical process built into the paper; it is basically just paper, made from wood fiber, cotton fiber, etc. However there are many options available with varying characteristics of surface sheen, surface texture, tonality, brightness, and contrast. Each photo printing lab will offer a limited range of paper options, papers with which they have experience and of which they understand the characteristics. If you are uncertain which paper to choose, you can discuss this with the lab, particularly considering the specific image(s) you want to print.
Though I can print images on my own inkjet printer, I have sometimes chosen to use a professional print lab for a few different reasons.
Printing can be a pain. For example, when printing on thick paper, I have to feed paper into my printer one sheet at a time.
To print on a paper size larger than my own printer capability.
To experiment with some different papers, without buying a full package of that paper.
Just because you send your images to a professional print lab, doesn’t guarantee that what the print will look like the image on your display screen … what you see is what you get (wysiwyg). You still need to do some work BEFORE you send your image to the lab. The necessary preparation is the same as printing it yourself, so jump ahead to Print it yourself.
Photo lab – print via dye sublimation
Dye sub printing is far less common than other methods. I have not used it and we’ll just leave it at that.
Print it yourself
As inkjet printers are widely available for personal and business use, making photo prints is entirely within your grasp. If you are unsatisfied with prints made by photo labs, you can take matters into your own hands.
Manufacturers of inkjet paper may offer a sample pack containing a variety of different papers. See the image at top of this post.
Most digital photographs are represented via RGB color space … red, green, blue. In general, inkjet printers do Not use RGB inks. This implies that a conversion is necessary. Your printer likely will attempt this conversion. Your computer software may also attempt this conversion. Very possibly, the resulting print will not be quite as you hoped.
How can we best insure that the print will be as we expect? Achieving a good print requires a few steps BEFORE sending the digital image to print.
Color-manage your computer display
In general, most computer displays do not render colors accurately. What you see on your display screen can be very different to what comes out of your printer. To insure that your display is accurate, use a device called a colorimeter. This device measures the actual colors coming out of your display screen and then places a correction table into your computer so that colors are corrected. The two most popular brands are ColorMunki (by Xrite) and Spyder (by DataColor).
Who you gonna trust?
You can either trust your printer to manage color properly, or trust your computer application to manage color properly. If both are trying to manage colors, then that’s going to be a problem. Pick one or the other.
If you choose to trust your printer, then be certain that your computer application (that which is sending the image to the printer) is Not managing color. Then, depending upon the ink and paper you choose to use, you may need to update the RIP firmware of your printer, if that is even possible.
The more common approach is to control color within the computer application. In the printer settings, disable the printer’s own color processing. With this feature disabled, the job of insuring correct color is entirely in the realm of the computer software application. Not all applications have this ability. (I generally print from Adobe Lightroom or Adobe Photoshop.)
Three things can impact print color: the specific printer are you using, the specific ink, and the specific paper. For example, you might be using a warm-tone paper or a bright-white paper. A “color profile” includes everything your computer application needs to make a print using the specific combination of printer + ink + paper. For example, if I am printing with an Epson 3880 printer, with Epson ink, printing on Canson Infinity Photo Satin paper, the paper manufacturer provides a “color profile” absolutely free. After downloading the color profile from the paper manufacturer, I can specify this color profile when sending an image to my printer; this insures that the colors are rendered accurately for that specific combination of printer, ink, and paper.
Color profile selection in Lightroom
In the screen snapshot here (Lightroom), notice that the first option is “Managed by Printer”; the remaining options are all different color profiles, meaning the printer is Not managing color.
If the paper manufacturer does not have a color profile for your specific printer+ink combination, then you have a problem. You might experiment with some available profiles and find one that that seems to produce good results. Else, you have to make your own color profile. This requires the use of a colorimeter. This may or may not be the same device you used to profile your display screen. The difference here is that the device must measure light reflecting off printed paper rather than measure light emanating from a display screen. If you want to, you could print on a white paper shopping bag – there is no color profile for that, but you could potentially make your own using a colorimeter.
For the purpose of illustrating a theme, I was recently offered the task of photographing bread.
Final image (digitally modified using photoshop)
Here are the steps in making this image.
Although I originally thought this shoot might require actually baking my own bread, I quickly discarded that thought and went to my local market. The market sells specialty loaves that are far more attractive than anything I can make. So I purchased two different loaves of bread.
Initially, I photographed the unbroken/unsliced loaves. Then I thought to slice the bread, but instead chose to tear it in half for a more natural look. Good call.
Original bread photo unmodified
After photographing for a half hour, this is the image I chose as the best.
Compare this original to the final image (shown before it). For a larger view, click on either image.
In Photoshop, I copied the image onto two new layers and applied a different filter to each layer. The first is a stylized using a plugin by Topaz Labs. But the effect is largely obscured by the next layer above it.
The next layer applies an artistic painting look using a plugin filter called Snap Art by Alien Skin. Through the use of a layer mask, the effect is not applied to the inside of the bread loaf. See the layers panel snapshot below. Where the mask is dark, you see the underlying layer.
Finally, to highlight the bread, I created a darkened vignette using a curves layer. The final image is shown at the beginning of this blog post.
THE must-have application for photographers, Adobe Lightroom, is now available for mobile devices. The version for iOS devices (iPhone and iPad) is released and the version for Android devices is still in beta test. The beta for Android devices is available to KelbyOne members (http://kelbyone.com/android/).
Toying around with some software filters, I arrived at a painterly effect that I really love … in just 5 minutes. I’m not trying to put painters out of business – just having fun.
I started with an image from Lexington Massachusetts this past Patriots Day weekend. My first experiment did not yield a compelling result. Tried a second image, applied different filters, and shown here are all the phases of transformation.
The second step is done with Topaz Adjust. Adjust is one of my favorite tricks for adding a bit of “pop” to an image that seems a bit dull, however, here I used a preset called “Low key”, which I have never found any use for until today.
Processed with Bokeh, then Topaz Adjust, preset = Low Key
The last step is an painterly effect using Snap Art by Alien Skin.
Click on the image to see the larger view!
Processed with Bokeh and Adjust, then Snap Art
That was rather easy. Honestly, such experimental transformations are usually more difficult and end up with a result I don’t love … so, delete. I really like this one.
Last winter, I did a bit of backyard bird photography. Attached here is one of those images, where the bird looks quite good, but the background is distracting. As this was shot from my kitchen window, there was nothing I could do about the background (except maybe hang an artificial backdrop in the background trees
original image – shot with a MFT 45-200 zoom at f/8
Perhaps the background would be less distracting if the depth of focus was more shallow. A wider aperture might do the trick. This image was shot at f/8. The widest aperture on the lens is f/5.6.
Enter … a software filter called Bokeh2, by Alien Skin. The term ‘bokeh’ refers to the characteristics of an out-of-focus lens. Some lenses have a more visually appealing bokeh than others. The Bokeh 2 software simulates the bokeh effect and includes several presets that emulate specific lenses. So here is an edited version of the image, using Bokeh 2 to simulate an aperature of f/2.8 to soften the background and make it a bit less distracting.
Background softened using Bokeh 2
Although this does not entirely remedy the distracting background, it does reduce the distraction by softening it. You might achieve a similar effect with a basic Gaussian Blur filter, but Bokeh 2 aims to simulate characteristics of real lenses. This would be very significant if the background here had specular highlights, as real optical bokeh has a different effect than simple blur.
