Listening to the Light – Examples in Image Development – Part 2

The last post discussed concepts about listening to the light in an image—working to understand what’s not quite right and then finding a way to correct it. It’s an interactive and iterative process with each step building on what has been done previously. The process may require going back to adjust previous adjustment layers, printing the image and looking at it in different light to see things that the on-screen image might not reveal, and a willingness to experiment to find the best way to make a particular adjustment.

An important part of this process, I think, is finding and nurturing a relationship with the image and its light. While the Layers panel may have 10 to 20 different layers to complete the development process, only a few of them usually make significant changes in how the image looks. These “layers of significance” make the more dramatic changes to the image and set the overall tone and direction that development takes. These are the “finding the relationship” layers—the big steps. They’re the ones that spark interest in pushing ahead, rev up the imagination, and make one start to feel a bit giddy about the possibilities the light may hold in this image. These layers tend to create a degree of infatuation. There is increasing desire to be with this image and it’s light to see what might happen.

The other layers—the majority of layers in the layer stack—make smaller, less dramatic changes. These are the “nurturing” layers. They keep the relationship going, sometimes at a very deep level. When there’s no big changes happening during the development process, it’s these small steps that build on the themes first realized in the big steps. This is often a slower process, and it takes careful listening to figure out what the image wants. But as the whispers become reality, there is a certain closeness and intimacy that develops between the photographer and the image. The light will only speak to the photographer who took the picture at this point, and the photographer is the only one who can understand what the light is saying.

This post is going to take a look at the big steps in the development of an image. These are easier to see in mouse rollovers, so they lend themselves better to instructional purposes. Unlike the last post that showed the incremental changes in finishing an image, the rollovers here should be more obvious. A good place to start is to take a look at the final image, which is shown below. This is another sandstone abstract. The natural color in the rock, the warm light reflected from a nearby cliff face, and the blue light from an open sky combined to produce an interesting mix of colors. I saw the color, lines, and texture when I was taking the picture and felt like I would enjoy developing them out in Photoshop; however, I didn’t visualize this as the final image. The final image is the result of an ongoing dialog with the light as the image developed and the relationship that ensued. I felt there were three “big steps” that moved this image along, and I’ll go over each of them and how they were accomplished. First, however, rollover this image with the mouse. It shows how the image would look with the visibility of the three “big-step” layers turned off. (NOTE: It may take a few seconds for the second image to load.)

Healing/Cloning

The first big step that was important for this image was healing and cloning. My original thought was to keep this minimal since immediately after converting the RAW file everything seemed to look OK and work reasonably well together. About halfway through development, however, this changed. Richer colors and more pronounced contrast were starting to come out, and as a result, some of the lighter blue patches, especially in the foreground, were starting to look out of place in both brightness and color. So I cloned them out. There are different “ethics” with regard to how much cloning one should or should not do to an image. There seems to be more leeway given in nature photography to cloning out rather than cloning in. Removing twigs, leaves, and other “spots” seems acceptable, but cloning in birds, clouds, and animals is not. Personally, my ethics are pretty liberal on this subject. What the picture and the photographer do in the privacy of the computer is their business, not everyone else’s. In other words, it’s a personal decision. I also tend to be somewhat liberal when it comes to using Photoshop’s healing and cloning tools in my images when I feel it works to remove elements that cause visual distraction. If it’s done well and enhances the image, I think it’s a credit to the photographer and their skill. Photoshop’s healing brush, which was used here, generally produces good results, though it does require working on a magnified image to insure perfect blending. The image below is again the final image. The rollover shows how the image looks with the Heal/Clone layer turned off in which the blue areas distract the eye slightly from moving smoothly through the scene from lower right to upper left.

Below is the Heal/Clone layer that produced this effect. The healed ares show up well against the checkered background. Looking closely at this layer shows a bit of a dark smudge in the lower left corner. This isn’t healing/cloning; it’s luminosity painting. I had the wrong layer selected and accidentally added a thin layer of black paint to the Heal/Clone layer. However, I liked the effect it had on the image and simply left it in. The effect can easily be seen in the rollover above as a bit of darkening in this area.

Make-It-Glow

Make-It-Glow is a technique available in my complete set of tutorials and actions. I actually don’t use it all that often, but when it works, it can make a big difference in how an image looks. It simultaneously increases contrast and saturation in a smooth manner across the entire image. It essentially imparts a glow to the image that looks pretty natural. A low-contrast, low-saturation image that has lots of texture is a good place to try it. Images that have large areas the same color or significant color saturation tend to look garish with this technique, so it needs to be used judiciously. Since it makes a pretty dramatic change, lowering the opacity of the layer it’s on can help decrease the effect if it goes too far. Also, a vibrance mask on the layer can help restrict the effect to less-saturated areas of the image. In this image, it was applied soon after RAW conversion and before development had brought out the colors and contrast. As such, it worked well to increase the overall saturation without the need to lower the layer’s opacity or mask the effect. Again, the final image is below. The rollover is how it looks with the Make-It-Glow layer turned off.

Luminosity Painting

Luminosity painting once again had a significant impact on this image, but it was used in a decidedly different manner than in the last post. In the image in the previous post, most of the burning and dodging were done through a Basic Mid-tones mask to even out the brightness across the image. This resulted in decreased general contrast, which was restored in the next step. For this image I was more concerned about the lack of local contrast that I was seeing in the image and wanted to paint in more contrast while at the same time evening out the light across the image. To increase contrast with luminosity painting, there is an easy rule to remember: LIGHT through LIGHTS, DARK through DARKS. What this means is that to increase contrast when luminosity painting, paint a LIGHT color through a LIGHTS-series masks or paint a DARK color through a DARKS-series mask. For luminosity painting, LIGHT color paint = white, and DARK color paint = black.

So here’s a summary of my goals and how I’ll accomplish them:

• 1st Goal: Darken and increase contrast in areas that are too light.
  Technique: Paint black through a Darks-series selection (Expanded Darks, Darks, Dark Darks, Shadow Darks, or Super Darks).
• 2nd Goal: Lighten and increase contrast in areas that are too dark.
  Technique: Paint white through a Lights-series selection (Expanded Lights, Lights, Light Lights, Bright Lights, or Super Lights).

While it’s necessary to follow the “LIGHT through LIGHTS, DARKS through DARKS” rule in order to to increase local contrast while balancing overall light, it’s also possible to do it in a more nuanced way that offers greater control. Instead of using the “straight” Darks- and Lights-series selections to paint through, subtracting one mask from another creates a subtracted selection that selects image tones nearer the mid-tones. So, for example, paint won’t be applied to the full range of tones in a Darks selection. Instead, just the Dark tones near the mid-tones are selected. For this image the “DARKS” selection that was painted through was actually the Darks minus the Shadow Darks. This selection contains the image’s dark tones, but the darkest tones are subtracted off making the selected tones the darker mid-tones of the image.

Black paint is going to be applied through this selection to the Burn/Dodge layer to darken the too-light areas of the image, which generally contain light tones. As such, it’s necessary to be a bit careful in how the paint is applied. The subtracted selection still favors dark tones, so dark tones can easily get more paint than light tones when black paint is applied through the selection. So it’s important to choose the right size brush that doesn’t spread the paint too far outside the intended areas to be darkened and to control the brush strokes so they predominantly hit in the light areas that need to be darkened. Sometimes a slightly harder brush (30-50% hardness) can be useful in not straying into the dark areas too much.

You might be thinking that this approach sort of goes against the main advantage of luminosity painting, which is that errant brush strokes are of little consequence since the selection is controlling which pixels receive paint. This is a consideration, of course, but also keep in mind that painting is occurring through a luminosity selection, so it will still blend into the image. It’s just a matter of making sure that most of the paint gets stroked onto the areas that need to be changed. Additionally, the selected tones that receive paint are near image’s mid-tones; the darkest tones in the image are subtracted off and don’t receive much paint.

Again, the selection being painted through here is Darks minus the Shadow Darks. The mask of this subtracted selection is shown below.

The light areas are darker in this mask but aren’t completely black. This means they will still receive paint if they are stroked with a brush of sufficient opacity. Because the mask reveals dark tones more than light tones, darker pixels get darker faster when black paint is applied through the selection to the Burn/Dodge layer. So if the light tones are painted black through this selection, all the light tones get a bit darker, but the darker light tones get darker faster than the lighter light tones. This increases contrast in the light tones, and is exactly what is expected from the “DARK through DARKS” rule, and what is desired in this image.

Lightening the dark tones to increase contrast works the same way except this time the selection being painted though needs to come from the Lights-series of mask. A subtracted selection is once again desirable and the Lights minus Light Lights works well for this purpose. It selects the lighter mid-tones in the image and subtracts off the image’s lightest tones. It’s a pretty narrow selection and it’s mask shows a predominance of dark gray tones as shown below.

When loaded as a selection, there are no pixels more than 50% select, so no marching ants appear. Still it’s the right selection for the job and will be effective in lightening the dark tones while increasing their contrast. However, it’s again necessary when painting to be a careful to brush primarily the dark areas of the image that need adjustment and not stray too much into the light areas. With a little care, the LIGHT paint through the LIGHTS-series of masks lightens and increases the contrast of dark tones in the image.

The image below shows the painted Burn/Dodge layer for this image. White paint lightens and black paint darkens the underlying image and it’s possible to combine both these things on one layer by painting through the appropriate selections as described above. The rollover shows the image before painting in order to see how white paint was applied to the dark areas of the image and black paint to the light areas in order facilitate the appropriate burning and dodging.

The more even light across the image and the good maintenance of local contrast that resulted from luminosity painting can seen below. Again, this is the final image and the rollover is the image with the Burn/Dodge layer turned off.

A quick summary of this procedure might be useful, so here are the steps

1. Create the Burn/Dodge layer.
2. Create a Darks minus Shadow Darks selection and hide the ants.
3. Apply black paint to the Burn/Dodge Layer through this selection to areas of the image that are too light, being careful to adjust brush size and hardness to only paint in the light areas as much as possible.
4. Create a Lights minus Light Lights selection, clicking OK when the warning box comes up that no pixels are more than 50% selected.
5. Apply white paint to the Burn/Dodge Layer through this selection to areas of the image that are too dark, being careful to adjust brush size and hardness to paint mainly in the dark areas where increased brightness is desired.

I like this technique enough that I recommended it to Alban Fenle when I saw one of his images. I requested to use the image in this post as it worked well to demonstrate this luminosity painting technique and he agreed. His image is more “realistic” than my sandstone picture and is shown below. The only adjustment I added to this image was luminosity painting on a Burn/Dodge layer as described above. The too-light areas of the image were painted with black paint through a Darks minus Shadow Darks selection, and the too-dark areas were painted white through a Lights minus Light Lights selection. The paint was somewhat carefully applied with a 30% hard brush to makes sure the right pixels received paint. This evened out the light across the image and maintained good contrast in the areas being painted. The end result, I think, is richer colors with stronger detail in both the highlight and shadow areas. The rollover shows the image after luminosity painting using this technique.

The Burn/Dodge layer that resulted from painting is shown below. The rollover is the original image so that it’s easier to see which light and dark areas received paint.

Alban’s version after applying this technique is posted on his Google+ page. It’s different from what I did, and that’s one of the nice things about luminosity painting—it’s a very personal way to interact with the image; no two photographers can do it the same. There are many interpretations of an image, and the photographer and the image will together decide what works best.

Listening to the Light – Examples in Image Development

One of the hardest things about developing an image in Photoshop is figuring out what changes to apply to improve it. This is an acquired skill, I think, that, like composing an image with the camera, improves with practice. Sometimes I know exactly what I need to do in Photoshop, but I also spend a lot of time going back and forth on different possibilities, experimenting with alternate techniques, and generally exploring options before settling on a particular adjustment. Even then, I may go back and readjust an adjustment layer depending on what happens with subsequent layers.

Image development is a dynamic process, not a one-way street. I receive questions asking which technique to use in developing an image and when to use it, and the answer is always the same: It depends on what the image needs. Responding to the image often means that a standard “workflow” probably isn’t going to work. It’s really the image dictating what needs to be done, not the photographer or some repeatable steps. It’s necessary to respond to the light in the image in the same way you respond to the light in the field. Don’t try to control it. Instead, work with it, listen to it, and let it determine the direction of development.

There’s a corollary to this concept of listening to the light that is very important. Once you do figure out what the image needs, you have to have the right tool or technique to address the issue. As such, I thought it might be instructive to occasionally write a post on how I think about what an image needs at different points in its development and discuss my approach to solving the “problems” that I perceive. In other words, what I heard when I listened to the light, and how I responded to what it was saying. The goal being not to go over every layer in the development of a particular image, but rather to look at a few of them and attempt to discuss the collaboration that was occurring between the image and me at that time. I’ll say up front that it’s not always easy to describe exactly what I was thinking. Sometimes it’s just intuition and sometimes just a fortunate experiment that helps to move image development forward. However, I also think that instances like this maybe reflect our deeper understanding of the light and that we just don’t always have the vocabulary to communicate these feelings.

The image below is one that is partially developed. It shows a sandstone detail that I recently photographed in twilight shortly after sunset. I know abstract images can be confusing, so just to get past the perceptional difficulties here, the camera is pointing downward to capture the layers of texture and color as they recede from the camera. Four Photoshop layers were added after this point in development. I’ll go over them one by one explaining what was going on and my reasons for adding the layers.

The first layer added was a luminosity painting layer, which involves dodging and burning through luminosity mask selections to lighten or darken specific parts and specific tones in the image. It’s described in detail in this tutorial. My goal in luminosity painting is generally to create an evenness of light so that the colors and textures assume a large role when viewing the image. This often involves lessening some of the natural shadows and highlights in the scene that might draw the eye unnaturally in the print. Dodging (lightening) with luminosity painting can sometimes remove excess saturation in dark areas and can add texture in light areas. Burning (darkening) can improve color richness to areas that look washed out and can remove distracting highlights that draw the viewer’s eye.

I usually start the process by painting through a Basic Mid-tones selection since it can be used to both lighten and darken the image, but I also use other selections or combinations of selections from masks of both the Darks-series and Lights-series depending on what I want to accomplish. Once the even light starts to come out in the image, the uneven places seem to stand out a bit more. In this way, luminosity painting sort of becomes self-directing. It’s just a matter of looking at the image and seeing and addressing the unbalanced light and then painting through an appropriate luminosity selection to correct it. I usually have all the Darks- and Lights-series of mask sitting on my Channels panel, as well as a Basic Mid-tones mask, so I can quickly grab what works best. Below is the luminosity painted Burn/Dodge layer for this image. The mouse rollover shows how the image looked before luminosity painting to provide a better idea of where paint was applied to even out the light. (Note: For all the the rollover images, it might take a short time to load the second image, but continue to hover the mouse over the image until it appears. Once it does, you should be able to move the mouse quickly back and forth over the edge of the image to see the change.)

Blacker areas on the luminosity painting layer darken the image, whiter areas lighten it, and 50% gray areas are unchanged. The luminosity selection being painted through determines which pixels receive paint and how much. The luminosity painting layer is generally one of the most dynamic in the layer stack. I continually return to it as subsequent layers shift the light, and apply additional paint, black or white, to bring back the evenness. Below is how the image looked after luminosity painting. The rollover shows the image before the luminosity painting layer was added so you can readily see the difference between before and after.

Once I had the light somewhat balanced with luminosity painting, the next thing I noticed was the lack of saturation in the colors and an overall flatness to the image. While luminosity painting can be used effectively to increase local contrast, using the technique to even out the tones across the entire image can result in a loss of general contrast. The benefit of balancing out the light almost always outweighs the risk of increased flatness though, since general contrast can be easily improved. Because the image was both lacking in general contrast and saturation, the most logical choice for addressing both issues is an S-curve on a Curves adjustment layer. One concern I had with this, however, was the fact that my histogram was looking pretty good at this point. An unmasked S-curve could cause loss of shadow detail as the dark tones got too dark, and the lighter tones might also start looking too light. I certainly didn’t want to clip any shadows in this image taken in soft light, and I generally try to avoid strong whites. S-curves also can really punch up the saturation, sometimes out of proportion to the desired contrast change. A mid-tones luminosity mask (Basic Mid-tones is always a good one to try) would be useful in this case for confining the adjustment to just the mid-tones in order to keep the dark and light sides of the histogram unchanged and for providing a more gentle increase in saturation. The Basic Mid-tones masks for this image is shown below.

This mask is always a bit hard to “read” in that it’s overall grayness is confusing. Essentially what a Basic Mid-tones mask reveals is the image’s mid-tones. Both the light and dark colors are darker (concealed by the mask from being adjusted) and mid-tone values are lighter (revealing the adjustment). The lack of pure black and pure white in the mask makes it seem like it would be ineffective at concealing or revealing anything in a meaningful way, but it actually does a very good job of targeting adjustments to just the image’s mid-tones, as designed, sparing the dark and light colors from being overly adjusted. The histogram below demonstrates this. The S-curve adjustment that was applied on the masked adjustment layer is shown in the figure below.

Like luminosity painting, an S-curve adjustment through a Basic Mid-tones mask seems to find its way into all my images since it’s a really good way to adjust overall contrast without messing up the histogram. If the saturation looks right before the adjustment, I change the layer’s blending mode to Luminosity to avoid adding saturation to the image, but generally the boost in saturation, especially with a small adjustment like this one, looks right and improves the image.

Below is the histogram before the curves adjustment was applied. The rollover is the histogram after the Curves adjustment through the Basic Mid-tones mask. Notice how the two ends of the histogram remain fixed. The improved overall contrast comes entirely from expanding the tonal range in the mid-tones.

Below is how the image looked after the addition of the Curves adjustment layer with the Basic Mid-tones mask. The rollover shows the image before this adjustment layer was added.

At this point I thought the on-screen version of the image was looking OK. I really didn’t see anything else that bothered me all that much. Whenever I reach this point of satisfaction, though, I make a print, and without fail, the problems I couldn’t see on my monitor are now quite obvious. I think this is because the transmitted light of the monitor makes almost everything look better. Pictures generally look better on-screen than on paper. So in this regard, viewing a print in reflected light encourages criticism, and it’s a useful tool, I believe, in helping to understand where the light in the print wants to go. The print in this case indicated a couple of problem areas, and the last two layers for this image are a direct result of viewing a hard-copy version of the image.

The most obvious problem was the blue color cast in some of the white rocks. This is completely natural given the light conditions at exposure—a clear sky with post-sunset glow in the west. However, in the print it seemed like the blue contrasted too much with the warmer elements in the scene. The image had become decidedly warmer as it developed, and these cool whites now felt a bit out of place. A warming filter would take care of this, but it wasn’t needed for the entire image and not even in all the white areas. Just the blue-colored whites need to be warmed. This is a situation where a painted mask works well. I created an Photo Filter adjustment layer with a warming filter and adjusted the filter until it removed the blue in the blue-tinted white areas. The adjustment is shown below.

The layer’s mask was then inverted to black to completely conceal the adjustment. A Lights luminosity selection was created to target the whites in the scene, and the marching ants were hidden. White paint was applied onto the layer mask to the blue-tinted white areas of the image. The lights selection helped target the paint to the lighter/whiter areas being painted. While this step was originally intended to remove the cool color in some of the whites, revealing some warmth in specific darker areas seemed to work well too. Because the Lights selection reaches into some of the darker tones, painting darker parts of the image turned out to be an effective way to warm-up other cool-toned areas as well. Below is the mask for the Photo Filter layer after it was painted showing the areas that were revealed to receive the warming effect. The rollover is the image before the warming was added to provide a better idea of how the blue-tinted areas in the image ware targeted for warming by the painted mask.

Below is the image as it appeared after the addition of the Photo Filter layer with the painted mask. The rollover again shows how the image looked before the Photo Filter adjustment layer was added. The blue-tinted areas in the rollover are now obvious and these areas look more coherent with the rest of the image once they’re warmed up, but again, it took viewing the print to see how this adjustment could benefit the image.

The final layer for this image involved color-cloning. While not all that bothersome in the on-screen version of the image, the unmatched rock color in the upper parts of the image, especially the upper right, looked unbalanced in the print. Revealing the Photo Filter warming didn’t help correct this A curve adjustment could be used to shift the color and then this color change could be revealed in the off-color rocks, but since there is plenty of the “right” color readily available in other parts of the image, an easier method is to simply paint in the desired color using the cloning color, retaining texture technique. Using this technique, the final layer is a pixel-containing layer set to Color blending mode. The desired color was sampled from other areas of the image and painted into this new layer where color change was desired. This technique worked particularly well for this image since the underlying color was slightly darker than the sampled color being painted into the layer. Color-cloning tends to lighten the painted area just a bit, so painting over a darker color keeps the area from appearing too light after painting. Generally when using this technique, I just paint the color onto the Color Clone layer at a low opacity to build up the color to the desired level. In parts of this image, however, I wanted to limit the color change to just the darker tones, so I painted through a Dark Darks and Shadow Darks selections to avoid adding the tint to the lighter tones. The image below is what the Color Clone layer looks like. Remember, this layer is set to Color blending mode so only the hue and saturation of things in this layer are transmitted to the image. The luminosity, which defines texture, comes from the composite of the layers below. The rollover shows the image before color cloning in order to see which areas were targeted to receive paint.

Below is how the image looked after color-cloning. The rollover is before this technique was applied. It’s a subtle change that once again probably benefits the print more than the on-line version.

In summary then, four techniques were used to provide the finishing touches to this image: luminosity painting, a Curves adjustment through a Basic Mid-tones mask, a painted mask with a Photo Filter adjustment layer, and color-cloning. The different layers for these steps are shown below. Each technique was applied after assessing the image (listening) to see where change was needed, and each was specifically chosen to address the particular concern that was uncovered. As often happens, an actual print of the image revealed more than the on-screen version, but adding layers to correct the print also led to subsequent and noticeable improvement in how the image looked on the monitor.

Painted Masks

NOTE: A more complete description of this mask painting technique can be found here.

Luminosity painting is one of my favorite Photoshop techniques and is described in a this tutorial. It is a method for burning (darkening) and dodging (lightening) specific areas of an image and specific tones in those areas by painting through luminosity selections.

Painting a layer mask for an adjustment layer is another example on how luminosity painting can be used. It provides a method to first make a global adjustment using an adjustment layer, then hiding it, and then painting to very precisely reveal the adjustment in exact areas and tones in the image.

The image below shows the final version of an image where an adjustment layer with a painted luminosity mask played an important role during development. The mouse rollover is the image with this adjustment layer’s visibility turned off. (It may take a few moments for the second image to load, but once it does, you should be able to pass the mouse back and forth across the edge of the frame to flip between the before and after image.)

Essentially what is happening is that an adjustment layer is affecting the image (darkening it), but only in specific tones and in specific areas. All similar tones are not equally affected, as would be expected with a specific luminosity mask serving as a layer mask for the adjustment. In fact, no single luminosity mask is able to mask the adjustment with the accuracy needed for this particular image. A painted mask, however, is able to do this with relative ease. It augments a luminosity selection to over-reveal the adjustment in some parts of the image, completely conceal the adjustment in others, and even incorporates parts of two different luminosity selections into the same painted mask. In this way, painted masks allow greater customization depending on what the image needs.

To make this adjustment, I started by first creating a Curves adjustment layer and changing the blending mode to Multiply. Multiply blending mode is like placing two identical transparencies in register on a light box. Even though each may be properly exposed, stacking one on top of the other makes the image look much darker, as if it were noticeably underexposed. In a similar way, Multiply blending mode darkens an image except that pure white (255,255,255) and pure black (0,0,0) are unchanged. Below is how the image looked after doing this.

While clearly excessive when not moderated by a mask or decreased layer opacity, Multiply (and its image-lightening counterpart, Screen) blending mode tend to make very natural-looking tonal changes to the image when properly applied. Provided that they are used in moderation, these blending modes can subtly and appropriately change image tones without unexpected saturation or contrast changes that sometimes accompany Curves and Levels adjustments.

By default, Photoshop creates an all-white, reveal-all layer mask when adjustment layers are created. Once the blending mode is changed to Multiply, the image is clearly too dark because the pure white mask conceals nothing. While Multiply blending mode will benefit parts of the image eventually, this full-on effect is not desired. To return the image to its original state before the adjustment layer was added, simply type Ctrl+I (Mac: Cmd+I) to invert the layer mask from white to black. This completely hides the adjustment from the image. The menu command Image>Adjustments>Invert can also be used to do this. The figure below shows how the new layer looks on the Layers panel. It’s worth noting that no adjustment was made to the curve for this adjustment layer. Changing the blending mode from Normal to Multiply is all that was needed to darken the image.

Once the desired (but exaggerated) adjustment is created and concealed, it’s necessary to create a luminosity selection to paint through to reveal the concealed adjustment just where it’s needed in the image. The easiest way to get the right selection to paint through is to make an entire series of masks on the Channels panel and choose what works best. For this image, I want to darken some of the lighter tones in the image. The Lights-series of luminosity masks provides several choices of masks that target progressively lighter tones. The figure below shows this series of masks as they appear on the Channels panel.

Masks are graphical representations of selections, with light colors showing selected pixels and black representing pixels that aren’t selected. Shades of gray correspond to the degree to which pixels are selected—dark gray pixels are less selected than light gray pixels. Any mask can be turned into a selection with a Ctrl+click (Mac: Cmd+click) on the mask’s thumbnail image.

Examining the masks by clicking them one-by-one on the Channels panel helps find the most appropriate one for this image. The mask that shows white (or light gray) in the areas that need to be changed (darkened in this case) is a good starting point. However, it’s also good to think about combining masks to make an even more refined selection to paint through. For most selections I use for luminosity painting, I’ll generally subtract off a selection at the extreme end of the series. So, for example, in this case I chose the Light Lights mask as targeting the tones I wanted to reveal on the adjustment layer. Instead of just creating a selection from the Light Lights mask and painting through it, however, I also subtracted off the Super Lights. I want the very lightest tones to stay nearly white, and by subtracting them from the selection that is painted through, they won’t receive much paint and will remain concealed from the adjustment and unchanged in the image.

So, after creating the Lights-series of masks on the Channels panel, here’s the process for making my desired selection:

1) Ctrl+click (Mac: Cmd+click) on the Light Lights mask thumbnail—this loads this mask as a selection.
2) Alt+Ctrl+click (Mac: Opt+Cmd+click) on the Super Lights mask thumbnail—this subtracts these tones from the selection.

I now have a selection that is targeting the tones enclosed by marching ants in the figure below–light tones are selected but very whitest tones are not.

The next step is to paint through the selection onto the black layer mask to reveal the blending-mode adjustment in the desired parts of the image. There are likely marching ants from loading the selection, and it’s helpful to turn them off by typing Ctrl+H (Mac: Cmd+H) so they don’t hamper judging the effect that painting has on the image. Even though the selection outline is hidden, the selection will still be active and directing paint to the desired tones.

Single-click on the black layer mask on the adjustment layer making sure the framing brackets are around the mask.

The “color” to paint with is easy: white. The mask is 100% black, completely concealing the blending mode adjustment. To reveal the adjustment in the image, white paint needs to be applied to the mask. So make sure the foreground color is white. Type “D” to reset the colors if white is not the foreground color.

Select the Brush tool by clicking on it on the Tools panel or by typing the letter “B”. The opacity setting for painting will depend somewhat on the mask(s) chosen or combined to make the selection to paint through. Selections made from masks with pure or nearly pure white areas in the mask pass more paint through the selection and require a lower opacity setting to reveal the adjustment. A good starting value for opacity in this case is 10 to 20 percent. Selections made by subtraction within the same series will often have the “white” pixels subtracted out of the selection, so a higher opacity setting is necessary to force paint through the “grayer” pixels that remain. Fifty percent is reasonable choice for these selections. There will always be some experimentation in mask painting, and opacity is easily reset based on what happens as paint is applied.

Now that this is all set up, it’s just a matter of clicking and dragging the mouse across the image in the areas where the adjustment (darkening in this case) needs be revealed. Releasing the mouse stops the painting. One brush stroke is usually NOT sufficient to create the desired or perfect reveal of the blending-mode adjustment. There are two alternatives. If the reveal is insufficient, additional brushstrokes can be applied. Perhaps increasing the opacity or changing the size of the brush (bracket keys) will be necessary. However, layering in multiple brushstrokes to slowly reveal the adjustment is often desirable as long as each stroke makes a slightly visible difference.

If the reveal is too pronounced after a single brushstroke, undo it using Ctrl+Z, (Mac: Cmd+Z), and then lower brush opacity, reduce brush size, or possibly load or create a new, more restrictive selection to paint through.

The goal is to sequentially add white paint to the layer mask to allow some amount of the full-on blending-mode adjustment on the adjustment layer to be revealed in the image at just the desired level in the just the areas where it’s desired and in just the tones that need it. By only passing paint through selected or partially-selected pixels, the luminosity selection automatically directs the paint to just the tones that need to be adjusted. The luminosity selection also insures that less than perfect mousing keeps paint inside the desired tonal lines.

The image below shows the painted mask and can help to better understand what’s happening with this type of luminosity painting.

The first thing that can be seen in the mask is an outline of parts of the image. Since the primary luminosity mask (Lights) is a gray-scale of the original image, all subsequent luminosity masks derived from this primary mask show image detail as well. A selection created by subtracting different luminosity masks, as was done in this case, still has partially selected pixels that mimic the luminosity in the original image. Painting through a selection based on the pixel variables in the original image (a pixel-based selection) recreates the contours of the image in all subsequent masks and when painting through these masks. It also helps insure that the painted areas blend perfectly with the rest of the image.

Luminosity painting works because not all pixels receive the same amount of paint. The desired tones that need to be adjusted by the adjustment layer’s blending mode receive more paint, and the tones that don’t need adjustment receive less or none at all. To increase the effect in certain parts of the image, apply more paint with additional brushstrokes or use a brush with a higher opacity setting. This variability in the final mask is one of the advantages of luminosity painting. Instead of being limited to the selection defined by single mask, the mask can be enhanced in any area by simply applying more white paint through the selection. The enhancement can continue until the area being painted is 100% white, a complete reveal of the adjustment layer’s adjustment. The painted mask clearly shows that differing amounts of paint were applied to different areas. Some areas are very white to reveal more of the blending-mode adjustment, some are completely black where no painting occurred at all, and some areas show various levels of gray indicating partial reveal of the layer’s adjustment.

This painted mask is actually the result of painting through two different luminosity selections, and it points out another advantage of this technique: It’s possible to paint through any number of selections to create the desired reveal of the layer’s adjustment. So it’s like using several luminosity masks on one layer mask and choosing which parts of them and to what degree they will benefit the image. In this case, most of the painting was done through the Light Lights minus Super Lights selection described above, but when repeated brushstrokes started to reveal darkening in some adjacent areas where darkening was not desired, a Bright Lights minus Super Lights selection was used to restrict the reveal of the adjustment to even lighter tones in the image.

Once you have a feel for luminosity painting, using it to create or enhance layer masks becomes a logical next step. Painting through a pixel-based selection, like a luminosity mask, applies paint in proportion to the pixel-based selection(s) in the original mask. The pixel-based quality of the mask is retained so that what is revealed or concealed by the painting blends perfectly into the rest of the image. Very precise masks are possible using this procedure. Selections from multiple pixel-based masks can be used, and they can be painted to any level between pure black and pure white to make the perfect reveal of the underlying adjustment. The effects can be subtle or significant; it all depends on where the light wants to go. I hope that you’ll try it and that your images will benefit from this technique.

A PSD file containing the complete Photoshop workflow for this image can be downloaded at the bottom of this page.

eBooks from My Friends

Steffen and Isa Synnatschke and Guy Tal have recently released new eBooks. This electronic publication format is becoming increasingly popular as photographers attempt to share what they know with a larger audience without the expense of traditional publishing and distribution of actual books. Tal and the Synnatschkes are good friends who I’ve encouraged to write and share what they have to offer as I believe their unique perspectives will resonate with many nature photographers. These new eBooks validate this conviction. Both offer new insights into what makes photography such a popular activity, and both provide photographers new avenues for exploration.

Guy Tal’s blog is widely followed for its insightful commentary on photography. There is almost an infectious passion in his words that makes readers want to take their own photography to a higher level. Tal is now bringing this enthusiasm to a series of eBooks that take a deeper look at the creative aspects that inform his own body of work. The first was entitled “Creative Landscape” and it took readers into the natural world to explore processes for extracting personal and original compositions. It was a combination of practical knowledge and spiritual attunement that is at the heart of the creative process. The new eBook, “Creative Processing Techniques,” provides a similar perspective, but this time applied to image processing in Photoshop.

The emphasis on creativity in this publication is obvious from this excerpt:

“Given the irregular and unpredictable nature of creative epiphanies, your processing workflow should not be linear or very strict, but rather one of continuous refinement until the desired result is achieved. While the process has a known beginning (the RAW file) and a desired outcome (the visualized image), the transition from one to the other may be the equivalent of navigating a complex maze of paths and creative choices. A non-linear, or iterative, approach is one that relies on progressive refinement and course correction; where goals are re-examined at every step and inform the next iteration in ways that may not be obvious from the start. For best results, we may sometimes need to take a step sideways or even backwards before moving forward.”

This book, appropriately and fortunately, is not another step-by-step guide to Photoshop workflow. Yes, it reviews many tools within Photoshop and Lightroom and explains, in very clear terms, how they work and can be applied to an image. Tal offers some good cases of the so-called “sideways” and “backward” steps that can be quite useful in image development as well as numerous, practical examples of how he applied a variety of other techniques to his own images. However, pixel-wizardry is not this book’s objective. There is a constant emphasis on using the digital darkroom to further the photographer’s creative intent and to encourage a personal interpretation of light. Once again, Tal’s own words are probably best:

“The digital studio offers boundless opportunity for creative expression, experimentation and infusing your work with your own style and vision. Seen in this light, it is much more than just a set of tools for adjusting or correcting pixels. Rather, it is the place where your thoughts and ideas take shape and manifest themselves visually in your creations.”

This combination of practical application of software with creative exploration of the light is very much in line with my own concept of how we should approach our images and their light. I consider myself reasonably facile with Photoshop, but I still learned new techniques in Tal’s book that I’ll use to process my images from here on. And while I read it front to back to glean these pearls, it was the message that image processing is an integral part of photographic creativity that resonated most strongly. Guy Tal’s ability to fuse practical skills and existential concepts into eminently readable prose helps us all become better photographers.

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Steffen and Isa Synnatschke are perhaps the premier place-finders when it comes to the Colorado Plateau. From their home in Dresden, Germany, they scour many online resources to assemble bits of information on possible places to photograph during their semiannual trips to the United States. They explore continuously while they’re here and, based on my own time spent in their company, frequently walk right to the place they are looking to find. Wind Song, Sandstone Nebulae, Towers of Hasi Nagi, Lower Chamber, Sitting Ducks, Desert Mushroom, Momo’s Brain, and The Wing and a Prayer are examples of images from my website that owe their existence to the Synnatschkes and their irrepressible quest for new light. Their websites (linked above) show just how many places they’ve photographed and how dedicated they are to good light.

The iconic quality of many of the places discovered by the Synnatschkes makes these locations a natural draw for many photographers. If your vacation and picture-taking time is limited, photogenic subjects in the right light help insure you’ll come home with many good pictures. The Synnatschkes are particularly adept at sniffing out such sites. They have spent nearly a decade traveling and finding these places and are finally starting to share their secrets in the “Closer Look” eGuide series. They recently released their first book centered on the fascinating sandstone of Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada.

This park has been one of their favorite locations over the years, and they have hiked and photographed here extensively. This is an extraordinary place with unusual sandstone everywhere you look. Their desire to explore and eye for composition have uncovered many places within the park whose photographic potential was previously unrecognized. The eGuide provides detailed information about these places: how to get there, GPS waypoints, and recommendations on the best time of day for exposure. If you’re planning to visit the Southwest and are interested in seeing or photographing some astonishing sandstone, Valley of Fire State Park should be on your itinerary and the Closer Look eGuide to it should be in your daypack.