Photoshop Tutorial
levels adjustments and backscatter retouching
There are a few things in this image that need to be
cleaned up. First I would say that the blue/green
colour cast needs to be addressed, which I would
say is the most common fault that needs to be fixed
on underwater compact camera photos. I could
easily use the Underwater action I used in the turtle
tutorial, but this time Im going to look at the levels
editor
Image>Adjustments>Levels.
Yes of course I could have used the an levels
adjustment layer which would have given me the
freedom to change my adjustment at anytime, but
for this exercise Im going to just use the plan old
fashioned levels, and I will talk about adjustments
layers in a later tutorial.
Levels will show you the histogram A histogram
illustrates how pixels in an image are distributed by
graphing the number of pixels at each colour intensity level. The histogram shows whether the image
contains enough detail in the shadows (shown in
the left part of the histogram), midtones (shown in
the middle), and highlights (shown in the right part)
to make a good correction.
In levels you can adjust either globally or by colour
channel.
Looking at the individual colour channels you can
easily see that in the red channel that there is no
detail in the highlights and very little in the shadows, the green channel has no detail in the shadows and the blue channel has lost a little detail in
the highlights.
To correct this you need to move the black arrow
under the histogram right, and move the white arrow left until they are under the graph and some
detail returns to the shadows/highlights and repeat
on all channels as needed. The middle arrow adjust
the gamma. Gamma can be described as the measurement of contrast that affects the midtones of an
image, but is actually quite a complex subject, with
much more to it than making pictures look lighter or
darker
Its worth trying to set your black, grey and white
points. You do this by using the eye droppers on
the bottom right of the levels window. Select the
black point tool (left) and click on a part of your
image that should be black, do the same with the
white point tool (right) and finally the grey point. Remember that you dont have to set all of the points
if you dont want too.
Lastly its always worth mentioning/trying the
Auto adjustments. Auto levels, Auto contrast and
Auto colour.
Auto Levels works by expanding the levels in each
of colour channels to give you an image that has a
fuller tonal contrast, basically it adjust the black and
white point of the image.
Auto Contrast automatically adjusts highlights and
shadows to fix poor image contrast. Auto Contrast
is similar to the Brightness/Contrast command,
which is a fast, easy way to adjust an images tonal
range while sacrificing some image detail. But Auto
Contrast is designed to preserve image detail and
also to complement the Auto Levels command, to
create a more accurate tonal and color-correction
workflow
Auto colour combines a combination of both auto
levels and auto contrast. The Auto Color command adjusts the contrast and color of an image by
searching the image to identify shadows, midtones,
and highlights. By default, Auto Color neutralizes
the midtones using a target color of RGB 128 gray
and clips the shadows and highlight pixels by 0.5%.
You can change these defaults in the Auto Color
Correction Options dialog box
I have used the Auto colour adjust here as it seems
to work very well, but it may not on your image,
if it doesnt work just undo the command and try
something else.
One little tip is to remember that there is a fade
option that can be used after most tools in Photoshop, I sometimes like to use this option when Im
doing any colour correction Edit>Fade. It allows
you to knock back (make less intense) any operation like a filter, colour adjustment or even a brush.
Once all the colour correction has been finished
(but remember you can always go back and adjust
things later if you really need too) it s time to do
any retouching, on this image there is a fare bit of
debris floating around which needs to be removed.
If I had all the time in the world I would us the healing brush and the clone tool to fix this, but there is a
quicker way.
Using the Dust and Scratches filter is a quick way
of sorting out problems like this. First using the
lasso selection tool, select the area you need to retouch. On this image there are more area that needs
attention, I prefer to work in small section but select
as much as you feel comfortable with and select
the dust and scratches filter Filter>Noise> Dust
and Scratches.
The best way to use this filter is to start the radius
and levels at 0. Drag the radius up until the partials
in your image start to blend into the background
be careful not to go too far otherwise it can start to
look cartoony by increasing the radius you will
loose some edge detail but by dragging the levels
up you can can some of it back. Again be careful not to go to far or the particles will come back.
Repeat as needed.
Any stubborn or sensitive areas may need to
touched up using the tools I talk about just now.
The Healing brush would be my first option here. To
use it first choose a brush big enough to cover the
blemish and with 0% hardness so that the edges
blend it the rest of the image. Here for the spot on
the fishes back I have chosen a 65 pixel brush, then
find an area similar to the area you want to touch
up and press alt on keyboard click on and off the
sampled area and take your finger off the keyboard.
Then go to the area to that need correction and
paint. You should see a cross were you are copying from and a circle where you are copying too. Try
and change as few pixels as possible as the fewer
you change the less apparent your touching up
will be. Also if you are touching up a large area try
and simple different areas, otherwise you may get
repetitive pattern appearing.
Almost finished now. One of the final steps would
be to sharpen the image. As I said in one of my
quick tips Almost all images that have been
scanned or taken with a digital camera need a little
sharpening Im going to use he same method as
before using the High pass filter.
Drag the background layer down to the new layer
icon in the layers pallet to duplicate it.
Then select the new copied layer and apply the high
pass filter Filter>Other>High Pass. Start by taking
the radius slider down to 0 and drag it up until you
start seeing the edges of you image appear, when
you start to see any colour bleed though stop.
Once you have applied the high pass filter you then
need to change the blending mode of this layer in
your layers pallet to Overlay and you should see
your image sharpen, dont forget that if you need to
lessen the affect you can change the opacity in the
layer pallet. If you need a stronger effect try changing the blending mode to soft or hard light.