How about a small tutorial for today. Today I’m going to show you how I use Dodge & Burn to correct problems with layers masks and luminance selections.

The problem

If you use mask, you have probably noticed a situation, where they just don’t select only what you want. It’s mostly visible around the horizon line, around buildings and similar. When you start to blend, it will just create ugly halos around objects. This is because the mask does not fit the area perfectly, and you also effect a bit of the surrounded areas.

Similar, if you for instance try to select an object with a lot of empty space in between (like for instance the Eiffel tower), this also results in a lot of unwanted selections.

In this example screen-shot, I created a darks mask, to select the buildings. But as you can see, part of the selection are also the clouds, which I didn’t want to include. I hope it’s visible, as it is quite faint.

The solution

You can of course just take the brush and paint out the unwanted areas, or try and select just them and fill them in, but using Dodge & Burn is just quicker. First to remember, burn makes pixels darker, dodge brighter. So when correcting a layer mask, one needs to use Burn on Shadows when trying to remove parts from the mask, and Dodge on Highlights when trying to add more to the mask.

Here, I used Burn at 100% strength and just went over the sky. As it was set to Shadows, it only took the darkest areas (the sky in this instance) and made them even darker. The bright areas of the building were not effected at all, or only very gently. If I wanted to do the opposite, select the buildings more than they are, I would go with Dodge and Highlighs. They would get brighter in the selection, so selected to a bigger degree. Doing this few times, can create a very strong contrast between the selected and unselected areas, but the transition will not be the best. If you use this gently, you will keep the original transition between light and dark areas.

I posted some tips for most programs I’m using, but never for the panorama software PTgui. So I’m correcting this today with this blog post :) So here goes:

Increase the number of control points

PTgui is great in combining photos into panoramas, but sometime even it can’t create a nice blend. One thing that can really help, is to adjust the number of control points it’s using. By default this number is quite low, and it may be not enough for all situations. I usually change this to at least 50 control points per pari of images. You can go even higher, but too much may result in very bad performance in PTgui.

Open options

Choose a higher number

Load HDR series

PTgui has also support for HDR series, it just has to recognize them. That means, that every series that you want combine into a panorama has to have exactly the same number of exposures, and the same exposure times. If you don’t have this, the HDR series will not be recognized and you will not get the HDR pop-up. In that case, you have to check the exposures, as porobably one or more has a wrong exposure time and this needs to be corrected in the EXIF.

Loaded series

HDR exposure popup

Save blend planes

Another thing, especially for HDR, is the option to save blended planes. This is a must if you want to blend the HDR manually. When you are saving, you can choose if you wnat the blend planes or the HDR photo. Going for blend planes is better, as you can use them in any tonemapping software, and Photoengine or Photomatix give better results in tonemapping then PTgui.

You also can change the quality of what you save by clicking the text that indicates it.

Choose quality

Choose blended planes

Use 16-bit files

If you use 16-bit files (as you should) you may be surprised by the strange colors PTgui show. This is normal. It will show wrong colors, but the saved ones are correct. So no worries :) Also when you are doing a HDR series, dont worry that the colors and the blends don’t look the best. It’s just a HDR preview, and that is not how it looks after saving.

Strange colors when using 16-bit files

Strange look when doing HDR

Try different projections

You will notice that PTgui support different projection types. There are three visible, but you get much more by clicking the small triangle next to them. For most cases, the cylindrical is great, but sometimes it’s good to try other even if they are not what you were shooting for. The reason is that the distortion will be different and you may end up needing to crop off much less. Also play around with the two sliders on the sides. PTgui sometimes crops off stuff, and with them you can expand the area of the photo and so get everything you need.

Equirectangural projection

Rectilinear projection

Mask out problem areas

When combining photos for panoramas, it happens quite often, that you have something in one photo (moving people for instance) and a empty space in another. You of course want to use the empty space, but the program chooses the other photo instead. So in this case, you have to go into the mask tab, and using the green and red masks, choose areas that will always be included and those that wont be included. This will help a lot, but be careful so you don’t remove the same area from all photos, as you will end up with a hole. Also to much masking makes PTgui create worse blends, so use it only when needed.

The mask is copied to all the exposures if you are doing a HDR series.

Choose mask tab

Mask wanted and unwanted areas

And that’s all for these tips. Feel free to ask if you have any questions to them.

Some time ago I posted an article with 11 tips for Lightroom, and today, I’m continuing it, with another list of additional 11 tips :)

Remove chromatic aberrations

I would think that this is widely known, but I see so many photos with visible Chromatic aberrations, that I have to mention it. Removing them in Lightroom is so easy, that not doing it, is just lazy. Just going in Develop under Lens Correction and checking the box next to Remove Chromatic Aberration. This will remove them in 95% of cases. In the other cases you also have to go under the Color tab (still under Lens Corrections) and play with the Amount sliders until there are no more visible.

With Chromatic Aberrations

Corrected

There is only a very slight downside by using this, the overall sharpness will get a tiny bit lower, but this can be easily corrected and compared to Chromatic Aberrations, this is not visible.

Secondary window

This is one thing I started using more with the new monitor. It’s a great thing if you screen is huge, or you are running a multi screen setup. Just go under Window/Secondary Display/Show (or F11) and a new window will pop up. Here you can choose what you want to see, I prefer the library or the compare view.

Full screen view & Lights out

Lightroom has a lot of tool-bars and sometime you just want to see the photo and nothing else. There are two ways to get a better view of the photo. You can either hit F to switch to a full screen view, or even better turn the light off. This is done by pressing L. Doing so, everything except the photo will get much darker, but you can still use all the tool-bars. Pressing L again will circle through three states Normal/Dimmed/Black background.

Survey view

Survey view should help you with selecting a photo from a set, but I use it for something else. When working with a HDR series, I like to switch the library view into this view, to quickly get rid of all the photos I’m currently not working on, and only see what I need. It’s also great for my Process post screenshots :) You can get to this view by clicking the button in the bottom left, or by pressing N.

Normal library

Survey view

Drag&drop to import

Lightroom is not that Drag&Drop friendly, as you just cant drag a photo from it into a second program. But one thing where this works great is by import. Just select what photos you want to import and Drag&Drop them into the Library view (will not work in any other). The import dialog will open with all the files in that folder, but those you dropped will be already selected and you just need to confirm it.

Rotate images

I don’t really understand the placement of the rotate image buttons in Lightroom. But if you were ever searching for them in the Development mode, search no more. There are none. Your only choice there, is to go under Photo menu and choose either Rotate Left or Rotate Right from there. But if you need to rotate more at once and just overall do it quicker, there are rotate buttons in the Library view. There are quite small and visible only if you hover your mouse cursor over a photos. Also, they will rotate all selected photos at once, so you don’t have to use them one by one.

Rotate in library

Rotate in develop

Quickly filter your photos

It’s very easy to quickly filter your photos based on ratings. Just by pressing 0 to 5 on the keyboard you can add a rating to any photos, and then just filter by that. I like to give 5 starts to photos I want to edit, 4 stars to those I already edited and 1 to those I plan to discard. Like this, it’s very easy to find photos to edit, or photos I still have to look at.

To filter, just click on Atribute above the Library and choose the rating you want to see.

Use manual lens correction

The buttons under Lens corrections, like Level, Vertical, Full, are very inviting, but I would stay away from them. The Manual tab gives you much more control about the correction, and you can create a much better result. But still, I would avoid doing very strong corrections here. Lightroom will not resize the photo to include the expanded area and you will loose big parts of the photo. In that cases doing this in Photoshop is a much better option.

Not corrected

Corrected

Avoid Constrain to Warp

This is for when you are editing HDR series, as with single exposure there is no problem. Constrain to Warp automatically crops image, to avoid any empty space due to the distortion corrections. This is quite often great, as it’s easier than cropping yourself, but there are two big drawbacks. Firstly, Lightroom will crop usually much more that it’s necessary and a lot of stuff that is cropped can easily be filled in using Photoshops Content aware fill. Secondly, this crop is not synced properly between photos. So if you use it on one photo from a HDR series, and then sync, you will often end up with photos of a different size and that is not the best start for any HDR tonemapping. If you just crop manually using the crop tool, the problem is not there.

Change the camera calibration

From time to time you will see, that the color in Lightroom just don’t match what you have seen on your camera screen. The reason is simple. Lightroom automatically applies a Adobe Standard profile to all photos, and that can be different to your cameras profile. To correct this, you need to go under Camera Calibration, and choose the profile you used on your camera. The available profiles vary based on what camera you use and if Lightroom supports it.

Adobe Standard

Camera Neutral

Use the same color space

When one edits in more than one program, it’s best if the color space used is the same in all of them. So if you work for instance like I in Lightroom, Photoshop and Oloneo Photoengine, the best results are if all of them use the same setting. I use the ProPhoto RGB for all my edits (except when saved for web) and so I have it set up in all of the software. To have Lightroom export to Photoshop in this color space, go under Edit/Preferences and under the External Editing tab choose the Color Space for Adobe Photoshop.

Open preferences

Change color space

That’s all for this list and feel free to ask if have any questions.

As I mentioned yesterday, I’m crazy busy today, and so have absolutely no time. So for today, I’m only reposting this short video I did on one way to use luminosity masks.

You can also download the PSD of the final file that you can see in the video from Dropbox here.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask, and don’t forget to switch the video to 720p :)

For more videos from me, check out my Video tutorial series Master exposure blending here:

Photoshop is a very solid piece of software, but as every other software, it tends to crash from time to time. For me it’s sometimes happens when I use a plug-in, or work with a very big image, and each time I of course forgot to save my work beforehand. But that’s normal, as the crashes are so rare, I never developed the habit to save regularly :)

Have auto recovery save on

One can’t really prevent a crash, but one can be prepared for one. You could either learn to save regularly, or even better, use the Photoshops auto save function. This is turned on by default, but it’s set to every 10 minutes. I think this is a little too much time. I suggest changing this, so it saves a copy every 5 minutes. If you are painting in a mask, 5 minutes is a long enought time, to do a lot of work.

You can find this setting under Edit/Preferences/File Handling/Automatic save recover information every. There you can also change how often it’s saved.

There is also a second setting here, that should stay on, that is Save in Background. This is so you are not interrupted in your work while Photoshop is saving.

Photoshop settings

Folder location

What to do after crash?

If you are lucky, and Photoshop saved a backup, once you open it again, your file will be loaded automatically. If it does not load, you still have a chance to get it.

What you need to do, is go directly into Photoshops Auto recovery folder, where it saves all the backups as PSB files (PSB is almost same as PSD, it just supports bigger files, it can be opened in Photoshop). You can find the folder under System drive (C:)/Users/ your user name here/AppData/Roaming/Adobe Photoshop (CS6 or CC)/AutoRecover. It’s possible you will not see the AppData folder, as it’s hidden. In that case you have to go under View/Options int the File explorer, and in the tab named View turn on Show hidden files. Be careful opening the files in the AutoReover folder directly in Photoshop, as when you do, Photoshop will delete the recovery immediately.  I suggest copying them to a separate folder first.

This is all under Windows 8 and Windows 8.1. Under Windows 7 this will be very similar, but I can’t really tell where the folder is on a Mac, as I don’t own one, and can’t try it out :)

Btw. for a little more info on crashes, check out the very first comment under the post by Foster Brereton (fbrereto)