Richard Curtis's Blog

Adobe will be presenting it’s portfolio of imaging solutions at Focus on Imaging from the 3rd – 6th of March at Birmingham NEC. We have decided to present our solutions across multiple stands, this will allow us to provide a flexible time schedule for everyone and to also accommodate any questions that you may have. Why not come and visit the Adobe team at the following locations and times and see how Creative Cloud, Photoshop CS6  and Lightroom 4 can improve your image making and workflow (you may even pick up some new valuable techniques!).

N.B Please note that the presentations on the Hasselblad stand will cover Lightroom for the Hasselblad Cameras only and on the Nikon stand we will be convering Lightroom 4 in action.

With Creative Cloud™ it’s never been easier or more affordable to get access to all of our tools. For more information and registration, click here.

It’s creative Friday once again, unfortunately  this will be the last post for a couple of weeks, as i am making a Photography trip to the 2013 Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, India.If there is an internet connection, i’ll try to post images here so you can get a snapshot in time.

Today’s blog is about retouching eyes. You have taken the photo of your favorite model, but, when you get back to the studio you see that there are some dark areas underneath the eyes. You can use the standard repair tools (Spot heal, healing brush, patch etc, in  ’normal’ blending mode), but another  or additional way is to use the Clone Stamp tool with a blending mode applied to it, to work on just the dark areas and leaving the light areas alone.

I would sugest that you work on the transparent technique (found in a previous post) to do this, then at least you are able to control the opacity as well as reverting any changes that you have made. Once you have selected the tool and created the transparent layer, just pain on the affected areas and watch the dark areas dissapear…If you change the Blend mode to Darken, you will make the opposite effect.

Photoshop’s 23rd birthday is coming up and we want YOU to be a part of the celebration!

We’re asking everyone to create a birthday cake design using Photoshop (why not try the new 3D features in Photoshop Extended, for a short demo have a look at these demos 1, 2, 3) !

We’ll choose one submission to be created into a REAL cake to be delivered to Adobe HQ on our birthday, Feb. 19!

We’ll also share your artwork in a photo album on our Facebook page. SUBMIT your photo here before Feb. 8…

If you don’t have Photoshop Extended and want to have a go anyway, why not try the Creative Cloud 30 day free trial, you can download here.

We are looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

Would you like another great way to re-touch skin? A good photographer/freelancer and Photoshop trainer friend of mine (Dave Wall) explained a great skin retouching technique in Photoshop. This particular process isolates the skin texture from the colour so that they can worked on separately, it is relatively simple to apply, but will touch on some more complex uses of blending modes.  It’s an amazing process and will certainly help the process of re-touching skin and keeping the delicate texture in tact. Dave’s technique focuses on beauty, however, i am going to show this technique based on a travel photography scenario.

Open the image inside Photoshop.

As you can see in the image, there are a few blemishes in the skin which i might want to fix. I can use the spot heal tool as well as other tools in Photoshop, however this is focused on skin as opposed to generic retouching. I posted the transparent layer technique last week, so please refer to this for non destructive editing.

We may have made other adjustments to the image before we do the retouch, so to make sure that we are working non destructively with a way to get back to the prior enhancements, press the keyboard shortcut CMD(Mac) or CTRL(Win) + Shift+ alt+E (probably the longest photoshop keystroke i know, this keystroke will not work on a single layer). This action will create a merged visible layer at the top of the layer stack. Then duplicate this layer twice.

Rename the layers ‘Texture’ and ‘Colour’ as in the example above (it’s good practice to rename the layers so that you can retrace your steps), to edit a layer name, double click on the name itself and type in the new name. Then turn off the Texture layer, by clicking in the eye icon next to the layer.

Place a surface blur on the ‘Colour layer’, by using Filter / Blur / Surface Blur. When working with this filter i am looking for a smoothness of the skin that will remove any texture and detail. I have used a value of 25 pixels for radius and 25 levels for threshold, you may need to work with different values to achieve a similar look on your image. Then press OK.

Next, turn on the ‘Texture’ layer by clicking the eye next to the layer and select it.

We are now going to use an old school technique to combine two layers, once you have chosen the ‘Texture’ layer, choose Image / Apply Image, the dialog below should be displayed.

Choose the ‘Colour’ layer from the Layer drop down box, also choose a blending more of ‘Subtract’, a scale of ’2′ and and offset of ’128′. Then press OK.

(The subtract blending mode will subtracts pixel values of one layer from the other. In case of negative values, black is displayed). To find more about blending modes review the Adobe documentation here)

To enable the texture to be worked on and use this magical technique, change the blending mode of the ‘Texture’ layer to be ‘Linear Light’ (I also tried Vivid light here an achieved an interesting smoothing effect).

You are now able to fix the texture and the colour separately by cloning and healing on the independent layers.

Cloning and Healing….

The first option for cloning and healing is by making changes to the ‘Texture’ or  ’Colour’ layer(s), but it is important to note that the clone/heal brush settings must be set to ‘current layer’ only when using this approach.

As in all clone and heal retouching, make sure you select a source texture area near the target to keep a similar texture. Press the ALT key and chose the source, then paint in texture with a nice soft brush, with a size relative to the area you are fixing (i find a Wacom tablet good to paint with, as i can control the pressure with the pen (see demonstration here)). Make sure you try different opacity and flow strength to achieve the texture required, but as always be careful and don’t over do the retouch. Alternatively  you can create a transparent non destructive layer above this layer (see this post) and have it selected, change the sample layer in the tool to be ‘current and below’, then paint the replacement texture on the transparent layer.  Remember that you are able to change the opacity on the transparent layer to control the effect.

If you want to work on the ‘colour’ as opposed to the ‘texture’, then switch layers and perform the above in the same way (on the actual layer or on a transparent layer).

Glyn Dewis and Calvin Hollywood are hosting a very special Photoshop event at the Tabernacle in Nottinghill (London) on March 24th 2013. The Photoshop Freak Show will be an advanced Photoshop day, but knowing Glyn will be full of surprises and you’ll be guaranteed to learn a lot of new Photoshop techniques.

(Click on the image to enter the site to find out more)

Calvin Hollywood is a member of the NAPP team (more information here) led by Scott Kelby and a Digital Artist & Photographer.

Glyn Dewis (more information here) is also a contributor to the NAPP team and is a Professional Photographer / Retoucher and trainer.

The Royal Photographic Society and Adobe have teamed up and are running a series of Lightroom and Photoshop roadshow to RPS members and non-members around the UK over the next few months. Please find a quick overview on this post, but for more details of the events and booking facilities please following the hyperlinks on the title headings.

• 22nd March 13 - ABOBE Photoshop & Lightroom 4
  Yorkshire Region are pleased to be able to bring this special workshop demonstration presented by Richard Curtis of ADOBE which has been developed for the RPS with a focus on the new 3D engine that has developed within Photoshop CS6 Extended.

• 24th March 13 – D.I.Group 2013 Special Presentation Tour
  For this special event we are moving from our normal venue to Clyst St Mary as we want to invite as many of our photography friends along to enjoy hearing Richard present to us on Elements 11, CS6 and Lightroom 4.  There will be the three sessions throughout the day PLUS we will have a couple of trade stands and a members print display for everyone to enjoy.

• 14th April 13 DI Group Thames Valley: Photoshop/Lightroom Master Class
  This Photoshop/Lightroom Master Class is designed for both beginners and intermediate users. Richard will be looking at both Photoshop CS6 and Lightroom 4 and how we can use both Adobe packages to improve our images before printing or publishing.

• 18th April 13 – Macro and Art Photography
  We are delighted to announce an extension of John Humphrey’s Macro and Art Photography workshops through a joint venture with Adobe Systems. Based at Adobe’s new state of the art headquarters, the day will include John’s techniques and tips for producing images with impact, together with a presentation from Adobe on the latest features in Creative Cloud, Photoshop CS6 and Lightroom 4.

• 19th May 13 – DI.Group 2013 Special Presentation Tour
  This Photoshop/Lightroom Master Class is designed for both beginners and intermediate users. Richard will be looking at both Photoshop CS6 and Lightroom 4 and how we can use both Adobe packages to improve our images before printing or publishing.

• 9th June 13 –  Adobe Lecture Tour
  This talk will be around using Photoshop CS6, Photoshop Elements 11 and Adobe Lightroom 4; this really is a talk not to be missed.

If you require more information about the content please get in touch.

The ability to make a panoramic images from Lightroom has been there for a while, this post will explain how to preserve the whole image using content aware fill and remove the need to crop the image (this technique is image dependent, it works great with Sky, Grass and other non complex pixel areas)). Once the images that need to be stitched together have been selected in Lightroom, right click one of the images and select ‘Edit In/Merge to Panorama in Photoshop’.

The files are automatically transfer into Photoshop and the Panoramic dialog box is displayed.

For now, leave the ‘Layout’ to Auto and the ‘Blend Images Together’ checked on. Then click ok.

Photoshop will automate the layer alignment, cutting out and blending of the images.

Blend the active layers together (Make sure they are all selected (notice the blue colour in the layers pallet)), right click, then choose Merge Visible.

The two layers will be merged together.

For Photoshop to make new pixels  it needs to know more information about the pixels it will be generating from. For this we will follow the next steps to tell Photoshop this information.

1. Choose the Magic Wand tool and select the transparent space (the checker board looking areas)

2. To make sure that all transparent areas are selected, choose, menu item ‘Select/Similar’

3. To provide Content Aware with enough pixels to work it’s magic, choose menu item ‘Select/Modify/Expand’ and choose 2px or so (this tells Photoshop what pixels to base the new one’s on).

4. To make the extra pixels, choose menu item ‘Edit/Fill’ and make sure the ‘Use’ option is set to ‘Content Aware”, then press Enter.

5. Photoshop will work it’s magic and try to create the new pixels. (This example works really well on these images due to the non complex image information around the edges).

The final image is displayed below

There may be new pixels that have been created that are in a similar pattern to the original pixels. This is simple to change using the Clone stamp tool, but more on that next time.

#CreativeFriday action – Why not try this technique on your images and see what results are possible.

A recent conversation prompted this Blog post. Traditional photographers still use contact sheets for reviewing and arranging their work with clients. Lightroom offers a flexible way to reproduce the same thing, however will add a few enhancements to the process. Contact sheets can be created equally using Photoshop, but Lightroom has it’s advantages, by providing a way to organise your images, and modifying the caption/description of the image on the contact sheet.

Images that have been imported into Lightroom are organised within the folders panel, this panel is a mirror of the physical location on the disk drive (Lightroom only provides a view of the file structure and doesn’t contain the files inside the program, regardless of a Windows or a Mac). Images cannot be moved around in this view, only sorted, which maybe required when telling a story using the contact sheet. Lightroom collections can be used in this case, allowing the manual organisation of images, therefore creating the required image order. Lightroom collections are also useful as they exist under every module within Lightroom (Library/Develop/Map etc).

To make a collection, click the plus button to the right of the collection panel and choose “Create Collection” (see below), this will create a simple manual collection that will give you control of the order of the images. Other options that are available to you here are “Create Smart Collection” which are used to apply automatic rules to the images it will contain, i.e. include images in the collection with 3 stars, or contains a keyword or a combination of rules. A “collection set”  is a group that can store other collections or groups (this all depend on how you would like to organise your collections and images).

The Create Collection dialog will be shown, you can name the collection and decide where to place it relative to the existing collection structure. If you would like the current images to be added by Lightroom, then make sure the “Include selected photos” is checked, otherwise turn off the check box.

Once the basic collection has been created, images can be added to it, by either manually dragging and dropping from the grid view under the LIbrary module, or they can be added by choosing the new collection to be a target collection. To make a collection into a target collection, right click on the selected collection and choose “Set as Target Collection” from the fly out menu.

The target collection indicator will be displayed by using a + by the side of the nominated collection (see Test Collection + below)

Any photo can be added to the target collection by pressing the “B” key when the image(s) is selected, when the “B” key is pressed a notification will be displayed that the image has been added to the target collection. The “B” key will also remove a  image(s) from the target collection. The chosen target collection is also changeable at any time, by removing the target collection (right click on the collection) or by making another collection a target collection (as we saw earlier in this blog post)

As soon as the images for the contact sheet are in the target collection, then click on the collection if not already selected.

In the collection, images can be moved around to create the story and placed in the correct order. To move an image(s), select it/them and drag to the new position in the grid (see below to show the 2nd image being moved in the grid)

Once the adding of images has been completed, there are a few ways to include the images into the actual contact sheet, one way is to pre-select them on the film strip (select all is CMD+A on a MAC and CTRL+A on a Windows computer), then choose the “Print” menu option (available at the top right of Lightroom). You can see in the screen shot above, all of the images in the film strip are selected (you are also able to use the “Use” function in this mode to select the required images).

Note that at the top right hand side of the screen the Single Image/Contact sheet function is selected. In the screen shot below there is only image per page. In the configuration below we have 5 pages (5 images have been selected in the film strip (located at the bottom of Lightroom dock)).

By changing the Page Grid (rows and colums) sliders under the layout panel you are able to re-layout the images and  including more images on a single page. Also, the Margins / Cell spacing and Cell size under the same Layout panel will help you get the correct look of the conact sheet that is applicable you for your client (see below for an example).

Typically for the client to be able to communicate back to you about the appropriate image, there is usually a label for each image. The current contact sheet is showing the file number as well as the date of the image (This configuration will depend on how you would like to reference the images with your client).

The Photo info option on the Page panel will enable you to use default labelling tags for each image, i.e. Caption, Date, Filename etc. Sometimes, this information is enough and needs to be more flexible.

Clicking on the “Edit” option on Page panel,will enable configuration of the data that will be displayed under the contact sheet images.

In this example the File name and Date are used to be the label for each image. A combination of other meta data elements may also be selected in the template editor (as shown below). Be aware of the amount of space that you have under the image, Cell Spacing, Margins, Cell size  and Font size can be adjusted to make sure that all your data is displayed correctly for each image.

When you have completed the contact sheet, you are able to print it using the Print job panel. (You are able to change the print resolution, print sharpening and if it needs to be 16 Bit output or if unchecked, will be 8Bit).

You are also able to Print to file, by selecting “JPG File” as the Print to option. In this mode, a JPG rendition of the file will be created, you are able to control the quality, file resolution as well as the quality of the JPG. These options will modify the size of the resulting output, which will make the file useful for other delivery options (i.e. email, web site etc)

N.B, you may find that Lightroom menus can become very cluttered due to the number of options that are available under each module. I always have my Lightroom configured so that panels are automatically closed down when a new one is open, to so this you will need to enable Solo mode.

If you right click on any menu item. you can then select “Solo Mode”, which will enable this panel collapsing feature. i find this cleans up the menu’s and allows me to work in a non cluttered environment.