Category: Miscellaneous

A polarizer is a basic filter which every photographer who works outdoors should have and know how to use. In many ways it’s the only filter, the effects of which can’t be fully reproduced in post using tools like Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. But, it does have its limitations.

For one thing, you have to own one and have it with you when you are out shooting. It soaks up 1½ to 2 stops of light, slowing your shutter speed or opening your aperture. If you are using it to darken a blue sky, it works best when the sun is at right angles to the direction your camera is pointing, and not at all when the sun is behind you. On top of this, you really can’t use a polarizer to darken skies with lenses wider than say, a 35mm on a full frame camera. Anything wider than this encompasses such a wide field of view that the darkening effect will uneven across your frame, as in this image below

So, faced with the task of darkening the sky to add impact to this next image, what is the best approach “in post”? You might be tempted to simply crank up the saturation. You might think that you have to create a complex selection of the sky in Photoshop to mask off the foreground, and go work on just the sky. But the answer is much simpler. As with many other selective adjustment problems, the best approach is to simply let the image do the work for you.

The image above is OK; the warm light of early morning complements the stone buildings of the Provencal town of Reillane. I’d really like to make the moon “pop” a bit more, and darkening the sky will also make the foreground buildings seem even warmer and more saturated. Since the sun is behind me, over my left shoulder, a polarizer would not work well here. When you are shooting in the warm light of early morning or late afternoon, the foreground subject will contain a much higher percentage of warm tones compared to the blue sky above (even more so with this subject). Knowing this, we can use the HSL controls in Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw (“ACR”) to darken just the blue sky. The HSL (“Hue-Saturation-Luminance”) controls are located in the Lightroom Develop module, under the pane titled “HSL / Color / B & W”. We will click “HSL”

In ACR, the HSL controls are found by clicking the third button from the left (screen shot above). I’ll use Lightroom for the purposes demonstration; ACR is identical. The HSL controls are global in effect: whatever you do here affects all areas and all colours in your image. But, since the sky contains a much higher percentage of blue compared to the foreground, any adjustments you make using the blue sliders will have their greatest effect on the sky, and only minimal effect on the foreground. Because of this, we can use a global control to create a localized adjustment, making the image do the the work for us. Under the HSL Pane in LR, Click the “Luminance” option (the “Luminance” tab in ACR: on the left below)

Now simply adjust the Blue Luminance slider to the left to darken the sky in a natural way. Notice that the foreground is largely unchanged with this adjustment; there is such a small blue component in the foreground colours that this adjustment has little if any effect on them. Don’t be tempted to use the Saturation slider under this pane. It will quickly make the blue sky appear garish and unnatural. It will also become difficult to print without the blues blocking up. For this particular image I chose an adjustment of -54 for the Blue luminance slider.

Which resulted in this:

Now the Moon really stands out and the warmth of the stone buildings is enhanced as well.

Aside from working at all orientations to the direction of sunlight, this also works with extreme wide-angle lenses; both would be problematic with a polarizing filter.

Does this mean you can now leave your polarizer at home? Absolutely not! I started out by saying that the polarizer was perhaps the only conventional filter, the effects of which are difficult to reproduce entirely in digital post-production. A polarizer’s ability to remove reflections from wet foliage, water and other non-metallic surfaces, thereby saturating colour, can greatly enhance the impact of your images. So, you definitely want to have a polarizer in your camera bag.

Finally, here’s one last little trick to remember. At times, dSLR sensors end up reproducing blue skies with a slight cyan hue. To fix this, make a quick visit to the HSL tab, using the “Hue” option this time, move the Blue slider just a touch to the right. This will shift the blues just a bit to the magenta end of the spectrum and away from its complement at the opposite cyan end. Don’t overdo this, a little goes a long way, or you’ll end up with purple skies.

In my Introductory Printing course  the primary focus is getting students to a point where they are in control of the technology; so that what emerges from their printer matches as closely as possible what they see on the screen. Along the way, by looking at each other’s images we discuss many simple adjustments, like the one we have been looking at here, to enhance the impact of our images in print.

It isn’t always easy creating an ink-jet print that meets your expectations. In fact it can be downright frustrating. Here are my top 5 things that are ruining your prints.

5) Trying to create a great print from a lousy file.

A poorly exposed image, particularly an over-exposed image with blown highlights will be difficult or impossible to print. Poor focus and camera shake induced blurriness can’t be corrected with any amount of Photoshop magic. The image below contains a pretty extreme brightness range. Careful exposure and processing can still produce a print that retains detail in the white clouds and detail in the important shadows.

4) Unreasonable expectations.

Out in the field, the range of brightness values can reach upwards of 1,000,000 to 1… meaning that the brightest sunlit areas can be up to 1,000,000 times brighter than the darkest shadows. That’s a range of about 20 stops! Your camera can’t capture a range this great; your computer monitor can’t display a range this great, but most importantly, no paper and ink combination can reproduce a range of brightness values that comes anywhere close to this range. So to deal with this, we have to take steps to reduce the brightness range when we can (setting aside HDR techniques for the moment, this means using reflectors or additional fill light, or using a graduated ND filter), expose carefully and correctly, and process the image files properly.

3) Over-processing your images

The most common example of this is pushing the saturation levels too far. Once again the limiting factor here is the paper and ink combination you are using. Coated papers can handle higher saturation than matte papers before blocking up: losing the subtle differences between the tones within an area of a single colour (think of the subtle shades of red in a Rose petal) I loved the complementary colours in the image of this doorway in the Provencal town of Lourmarin. At first these colours looked great on my monitor, but needed to be dialed back to produce a good print and avoid losing the shading variations in the yellows and the blues.

Other than trial and error, the best way to gauge this is to learn to create and print from a soft-proof, (which I cover in my upcoming course, “The Art of Printing Your Art” at bpsop.com)

2) Setting the brightness of your monitor to high.

This is a pretty common situation. Most people have their computer monitors set far too bright for printing. A monitor that is too bright will result in prints that are too dark, (because you instinctively dial down the image brightness on your monitor in Photoshop or Lightroom to compensate). If this is happening to you… turn down your monitor brightness!

1) Not calibrating and profiling you monitor

This is the big one. Every computer monitor, even different examples of the same brand and model will reproduce colours differently than other monitors. Lightroom and Photoshop need to know how your particular monitor reproduces colour. With this information either of them can do the required colour transforms on-the-fly so that what you see in your prints ends up as close as possible to what you see on your monitor. Despite these common problems,

it’s actually pretty easy to create a great print; for most people the missing ingredient is simply knowing a bit about what’s going on inside Photoshop or Lightroom, and then consistently following an appropriate workflow.

The Art of Printing and Selling Your Art begins October 9: I hope to see you then!

Sometimes the simplest things, the most obvious things, are the things of which we need to remind ourselves most often. A few weeks ago we had a brief break in our usually grey winter days here in Vancouver. By late afternoon I noticed broken clouds filling in on the horizon to the west; the kind of clouds that often produce some interesting sunset possibilities. So I headed down to a point of land a short walk from my home. I arrived there to find a group of photographers setting up for the approaching sunset; big tripods and long lenses everywhere. For me, there was also an obvious wide-angle composition; nice, but nothing out of the ordinary.

After working that for a bit, I moved on, eventually heading back to find the same group; still busy shooting the setting sun with long lenses. So intent on this one possibility, it was apparent than none of them had thought to look behind them at the incredible light developing on the harbour and distant mountain.

We all love to shoot sunsets, after all who can resist a spectacular sunset? The problem though, is that absent a defining landmark, most look like they might have been shot anywhere in the world. The first image above could have just as easily been shot on the coast of France, or a few hundred meters from by back door. Turning your gaze 180 degrees often produces more interesting results that say more about the place where you find yourself. The Light on the Land is often more interesting than the Light itself. It’s always worth a look behind you before moving on to your next location.

The Forgotten ALT Key

Lightroom has become (as for many others), my primary image adjustment tool. I can’t imagine life without it. But when I get together with other photographers, I’m surprised to hear how few of them know of the hidden power contained within the -ALT key (“Option” on a Mac). Here are a few of my favourite -ALT key shortcuts.

Highlight and Shadow Clipping

This is one that every Lightroom user should understand and use. Holding the ALT key while clicking any of the Tone sliders in the Basic Panel of the Develop module allows you to see precisely where Clipping is occurring in your image. Clipping represents areas where the tones have been pushed together at either end of the tonal scale. Clipped highlights will reproduce as pure white in a print, and clipped shadows as featureless black areas. Let’s use this image as an example; preserving the brilliant white highlights in the clouds, along with the deep shadows under the lone tree will be a challenge for any medium, particularly for most printer/paper combinations

Holding down the -ALT key while adjusting the Exposure, Highlights or Whites slider causes the image area to turn black. Any clipped highlights will immediately show up as white or coloured areas in the image area. Adjust the highlights or whites sliders to eliminate as much as much of the clipped areas as possible. Keep in mind however that specular reflections from light sources off water, glass or metallic surfaces will always be clipped, and this is acceptable.

Holding down the ALT key while adjusting the Shadows or Blacks sliders will cause the image area to turn white. Crushed (clipped) shadows will appear in the image areas as black or coloured areas. Most images, particularly in print are more tolerant of some clipping in the shadows than they are in the highlights, but large featureless black areas in your prints are not generally aesthetically pleasing. There exceptions to this of course, so let your artistic vision guide you.

Importing and Exporting Lightroom Catalogs

When I travel, I always create a new empty catalog for the trip on the laptop I take with me, giving it a suitable name like “Italy_2017”, for example. During the trip I ingest images from my cards to this catalog at the end of each day, and back them up to an external drive. I do a first pass edit, picking the keepers and rejects (although I never delete any images at this point), keyword at a high level, and I might even try some initial editing in the Develop module. When I return home, I simply export this new Lightroom catalog with all original image files, and import it back into my main Catalog on my office workstation. Holding down the ALT key In the Library module, causes the “Import” and “Export” (lower left) buttons to change to “Import Catalog” and “Export Catalog”

Print Copy

When creating a custom print layout, either as a new template, or with images, holding down the ALT while clicking and dragging an image will create a copy that you can re-position anywhere in your layout. This also works when creating a custom print layout, allowing you quickly duplicate and reposition new image cells. The newly created cells can then be resized and rotated if needed.

Reset Develop Settings

Sometimes you just want to reset all your tone edits back to neutral and start again. While in the Basic panel of the Develop module, hold done the ALT key to change “Tone” and “Presence” to “Reset Tone” and “Reset Presence”. Click either or both of these to reset all the sliders under them in one click.

Resizing a Cropped Area

Resizing and repositioning a cropped area usually involves grabbing multiple corners or moving the entire cropped area around. If you are close and just want to adjust the size of the cropped area without affecting its relative position, hold down the ALT key and grab any corner of the cropped area, and drag it to expand or contract the cropped area evenly.

Resizing the Grad Filter

When creating a Grad Filter, to knock down an overly right sky for example, the initial position you click becomes the first edge of the filter, as you drag away from this point the grad filter expands. The center point of the grad obviously moves along as you drag. If you want to change of the coverage of the grad filter without changing the center point, just hold down the ALT key as you drag either edge of the grad. The center stays put.

There are many more shortcuts using the ALT key, these are just a few. In my Printing Class, along with helping you establish a proper colour managed workflow to optimize your prints, we also discuss approaches to editing your images in post for maximum impact, using the ALT key and many other tools available to you in Lightroom and Photoshop.

Some months after the introduction of the Surecolor P-series printers, Epson revamped their line of high quality fine-art papers. The Legacy line of papers fills in some perceived gaps in their lineup that were perhaps being filled by third-party papers rather than their own. There are four new papers in this line; all are either completely OBA free, or make only limited use of these Optical Brightening Agents. As a result, these papers have very high archival properties. Of the four, I have been working exclusively with the Legacy Baryta for some time now and can offer some impressions.

Image quality

This is paper contains only modest amount of Optical Brightening Agents and because of this it has a brighter white surface tone than the others in the line-up. Up until now, my go-to papers for high quality prints have been a mix of Ilford Gold Fibre Silk, Canson Baryta Photographique or Epson Exhibition Fiber (although for some time now I have been working almost exclusively with Exhibition Fiber. The Legacy Baryta meets or somewhat exceeds the total colour gamut of these papers, but reproduces a noticeably deeper black. Comparing the profiles for each these papers using Chromix Color Think 3-D graphing software bears this impression out. The ability to reproduce deeper blacks translates into richer and deeper more subtle tonality in prints. Using the Outback Photo Printer Test image (reproduced below and available here; scroll to near the bottom to download the 40 Mb .TIF file), when printed on my P800 using the standard Epson profile for this printer and paper combination, I see very smooth tonal gradations in the grey-scale and color ramps Skin tones are pretty much spot on, reds are reproduced cleanly with little evidence of blocking up. It also exhibits excellent differentiation and neutrality in the darkest shadows.

Having printed many images with this paper, my subjective impression is that in general colours appear richer, with greater differentiation of subtle tonal differences than the papers I have used in the past. While it may not by immediately evident in the small jpeg below, the image contains a wide range of subtle variations in the blues and blue-green tones in the ocean water; these appear richer and have subjectively greater purity than with other papers. At the other end of the tonal scale, the beach pebbles are reproduced with all the rich shadow detail visible in the original image. Also of note, in contrast with other papers like Exhibition Fiber, Legacy Baryta required virtually no soft-proofing adjustments to match the monitor image with this paper. This is extraordinary. Soft-proof adjustments are virtually always needed to produce a print matching my expectations: a testament to both the quality of the paper and the profile Epson provides for the P800.

Feel and Handling

The paper has an exceptionally smooth finish, much smoother than the subtle “tooth” of Exhibition Fibre. This is a luster surface paper with a subtle and very uniform sheen, however it shows much less tendency to reflect hotspots from the ambient illumination than other luster papers. The most pleasant surprise with Legacy Baryta was this: it lies flat! Exhibition fiber (and other papers I have used) has a tendency to curl across the short dimension. When fed into a printer like the P800 the left and right edges of the paper lift slightly, at times causing the print head to strike the edges as it passes over them on each back and forth pass of the head. This can be mitigated to some degree by widening the platen gap in the printer, but it is not always possible to eliminate this entirely. Head strikes are not a good thing at the best of times; Legacy Baryta virtually eliminates this as a possibility. Legacy Baryta is a high quality fine-art paper, and priced accordingly; you will likely not want to use this for every-day work prints. However, If you are searching for a paper with an extremely wide-gamut, deep blacks and excellent archival properties Legacy Baryta is definitely worth trying.