The above modified photo is based on an original taken by my son, Ian Johnston, as part
of developing a promotional package for a theater production in a small
playhouse in Seattle. He is technical
director for Annex Theatre, and does all their photography as well. This
particular play was “El Hijo Prodigo” (The Prodigal Son), performed in May,
2010. The subject of the play was the
story of a man who returns home to Puerto Rico after an absence of 22 years. The actor portrayed in the photo is named Jose
Amador.
The Camera Raw images from this promotional package were made
available to me for this project: Thank you, Ian!
1.
Describe how
using Camera Raw to adjust your color settings, sharpening and vignetting
features to improved your images.
In
this particular picture, the best white balance was achieved by sampling from a
grey area between the shingles of the siding on the house. I made a number of other adjustments to the
color balance and sharpening, but adjusting the white balance made the biggest
change. Vignetting added significant
additional interest to the project.
Probably
the most significant improvement to any of the pictures in this project was in
the Death Valley image of a rising moon at dusk. The scene was so striking in person, and I
was very disappointed in how the image looked in the camera. Both adjusting the white balance, and using
sharpening restored that original look I remember from being at the scene.
The
third image I worked on – a church in Taos, New Mexico – did not see much
change from the use of Camera Raw editing.
The original exposure seemingly captured the light about as well as
could be done. I did warm the scene up a
bit, so that the Adobe had a slightly more orange cast than in the
original. Although the church may look “better”
this way, the change takes away the cold, windswept, midwinter feel which was
apparent in the original photo.
2.
Describe how you
will use the Preset feature in the future.
The
Preset feature in Camera Raw seems most useful for processing a number of
photos which were originally taken under similar conditions. I do take lots of pictures, so I imagine this
will be a very useful feature for me. As
a separate matter, one particular vignetting style may be useful to give a
uniform feeling to all pictures on a particular webpage. That should contribute to a unified feel for
the particular website.
3.
What was your
intent for results by using the dodge, burn and sponge features?
The
dodge tool I used primarily to minimize shadows or other dark areas on a
face. I experimented with the burn tool,
but did not find good uses for it in this particular project. The sponge tool was useful to increase the
saturation of colors. This seemed
particularly useful for the irises of eyes.
4.
Explain how you
decided which healing tools to remove imperfections of images.
I used
healing tools much as explained in the textbook. The spot healing brush was useful to minimize
wrinkles, remove hairs, and eliminate moles and zits. The healing brush was useful when the “content
aware” feature of the spot healing brush wasn’t working. I selected an area of the face that had the
same color tone and texture that I wanted to appear in the imperfect area. I used the clone tool, together with the spot
healing brush, to remove the glare from glasses lens. I used the paint tool, with less than 100%
success, to clean up the whites of one subject’s eyes. I used quick-select and the clone stamp to
whiten teeth. On all portraits, I used
surface blur, added in a new layer, and then subtracted from eyes, nose, mouth,
hair (and sometimes background), using the eraser tool.
5.
What challenges
did you experience in the process?
Probably
the biggest challenge was actually making a difference in the portraits. I started three other portrait fix-ups and
discarded them when I couldn’t seem to make much difference. Very young people don’t have much to
fix. Very old people, it’s difficult to
remove all the imperfections from their faces without completely changing their
image to the extent that you can’t recognize them.
In
terms of process, the biggest challenge is remembering to create a new layer
before modifying, have the proper layer selected, and keep notes as I go. Practice, practice practice!
6.
6.What keyboard shortcuts are you using regularly
now?
- Open bracket: [ to increase the size of the cursor/brush, and close bracket: ] to decrease the size of the cursor/brush.
- Ctrl-X to make the background transparent.
- Crtl-Z to undo the last editing step
- Ctrl-D to deselect
- Ctrl-0 to fit image on screen
- W to use the quick selection tool
- C for crop tool
- S for clone stamp tool
- Alt to change the quick selection tool from "add to image" to "subtract from image" or to change “zoom in” to “zoom out”.
- Alt-click to choose a clone source.
- Ctrl-0 to zoom to “fit on screen”
- Double click to zoom to 100%, and we mustn’t forget…
- Ctrl-C to copy
- Ctrl-V to paste
- Ctrl-X to cut
- Ctrl-A to select all
See more at my Project 5 webpage.
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