Get better photos through glass

• Clean the glass – As a photographer, you probably carry a microfiber cloth with you anyway. So why not use it and clean the glass in front of your camera to get rid of fingerprints and other dirt from it. The cleaner the glass, the cleaner the photo.
• Use a bigger aperture – If you use a bigger aperture (smaller F-number), focus on something in the distance. Keep the camera close to the glass and the whole area of the glass will be completely out of focus. And that’s what you want. You don’t want to see the fingerprints or scratches in the photos. Like this, they will completely disappear.
• Put the lens right against the glass – The closer you have your camera to the glass, the less it will be visible in the photo. So try putting the lens right onto the glass wall or window (but first make sure your lens has a flat front, don’t try this with a fisheye). Like this, not only the glass will be out of focus, but you are blocking all reflections from the side of the lens.
• Turn off all the lights inside – If you can, especially in the evening and at night, turn off all lights. If it’s darker inside that it’s outside, you will get rid of most of the reflections. This is of course not possible if you are at a lookout platform or something similar.
• Shade the camera with a piece of clothing – To get rid of reflections, you can try to shade your camera with your jacket or other pieces of clothing. Just put the camera as close as you can to the glass, and then hold the jacket over it. Take a test shot and you will quickly see if it worked.
• Use a dedicated shade – If you tend to take many photos through the glass, I would suggest getting a dedicated shade, like the Lenskirt. I use it and it just makes the whole process very easy. Check out my review of the Lenskirt for more on this one.

If the window or wall is double glass, with space between, you are mostly out of luck. A lot of things just don’t work in that case. You can try all these tips then.  But if there is a gap between the glass, there will always be a reflection there. Turning off lights and shading as many areas as you can works the best here, but don’t expect great results.

Btw. the photos in this post were taken through glass walls, both with the help of the Lenskirt.

Blending photos using Luminosity selections

The process here is almost exactly the same as when you are editing photos using luminosity selections. So as in the last article let’s take an example to show you how it’s done. I will be blending these three exposures here.

We will start again with a photo, for which we created the Bright 1 to 4 selections and Dark 1 to 4 selections. Additionally to that, I will put the brighter exposure and darker exposure on separate layers, both hidden (they have to be hidden when you create the luminosity selections, or else they will be made from them not the base image).

So what’s our goal here? If you look at the image, you will see some areas that are too bright and some that are too dark. The goal here is to brighten the dark areas by using the overexposed photo and darken the bright areas using the underexposed photo. You could look at it as if you cut up the photo into puzzle pieces and then put together a new one using all the best pieces from all the exposures. Let’s start.

Blending in the dark areas

1. Make the brighter layer visible, and add a black mask to it (hold down Alt and click on the add mask button). This will again make the layer invisible.
2. Go into the Channels window and with Ctrl+click select one of the Dark selections. The best process is to select each one going from 1 up until you see the selections that best matches the area you want to blend. Just look at the marching ants that show the selection. Usually having a selection that’s a bit bigger than what you want to select here, works the best. For this photo, I will choose the Dark 3 selection
3. Go back into the layers window. Click on the mask next to the brighter layer to select it. Choose the brush tool, white color, 0% hardness, 50% opacity. Hide the selection by pressing Ctrl+H. It is still there just not visible.
4. Now that all is prepared, you can start painting into the mask. Everywhere you paint, you are painting with the brighter layer into the base layer. To get more brightness in, paint over the same spot multiple times.
5. Continue doing this until all the areas are brightened as much as you want them to be. If you feel you overdone it, just switch to a black color and paint over the same spot to remove the blend.

Create selection

Paint it in

Finished mask

Blending in the bright areas

1. Fist deselect the selection you already have, with Ctrl+D. You don’t see it as it’s hidden, but it’s there. Same as before, make the darker layer visible and add a black mask to it.
2. Go into the Channels window, and choose one of the selections, based on which one fits the photo the best. Again, go through all the bright selection starting from 1, and choose the one that selects the area you need to edit the best. Again, bo with a bit bigger selection to what you need. That results in a better blend. Here I have chosen the Bright 2 one.
3. Return to the layers, select the mask on the darker layer, and start painting with the white brush on it, until you recover all the bright areas.

Create selection

Paint it in

Finished mask

Blended photo

And we end up with a photo that has the dark areas brightened and the bright areas darkened. Of course, this is not the finished photo. There are still thing one would have to correct, mostly the contrast. As I mentioned with the other edits, contrast is lost anytime you work with bright and dark areas of a photo.

This explains the basics of blending. If you need to blend more exposures, you do the exact same thing. You choose the base you want to work with and blend other exposures into it as I showed here. The only difference is, that you have to recreate your selections. As they are created from the base layer, once you blended in something into the base layer, they will no longer be as accurate as you need them to be.

So if I had a photo taken at 0EV, and I blend in a -1EV exposures to darken the highlights, I would have to create new selections if I wanted to blend in the -2EV photo to darken them even more. This is where Photoshop extensions like Raya pro and TK actions make the whole process much easier.

Taking photos without a tripod

• Place the camera on something – If you can, put your camera on something, a bench, wall, pillar, anything with a flat top. Then push your camera down so it stays firmly in place when you are taking the photo.
• Brace yourself against something – If you can not place the camera on anything, try bracing yourself against something. Lean on a railing, pillar, sit on a bench, on the floor. The less your body is moving, the more stable will you be able to hold the camera.
• Hold your camera close to your body – Your body is always moving, holding the camera away form the body will transfer much more movement to it. Hold it close to you, so minimizing this movements.
• Use a timer – Pressing the shutter button will move your camera. Even on a tripod this can cause movement. Set your camera to a two second timer, so it takes the shot automatically. The less movement the better.
• Underexpose your photo – If you shoot in a RAW format, you can easily underexpose all you photos by 1 to 3 stops (depending on your camera) and still get a good photo. You just overexpose it later in post-processing. Each stop down splits in half the time needed to take the photo, so one stop down is 1/2 the time, two stops is 1/4 of the time needed and 3 stops is 1/8 of the time needed. So for instance, if you need a 1s exposure taken handheld, just by underexposing by 3 stops, you shorten this to 1/8th of a second.
• Set minimum exposure time – On some cameras you can set up the ISO speed settings. This is an option where you can set the longest exposure time the camera uses in automatic modes. So if you see that you just can’t hold a 1/25s or 1/50s steady enough, you can set you camera to always use a shutter speed shorter than 1/125 or 1/250 and similar. You of course limit this by the max ISO you set in the camera. If you set this up, you can be sure that you camera stays in faster shutter speeds, so you have better chance of sharp photos.
• Take multiple shots with the same settings – Don’t take just one photo, take multiple photos with the same settings. You can put your camera into burst mode, and just hold the shutter down. If you take multiple photos, there is a bigger chance one of them will be good. If you take only one, you just have to be lucky.
• Forget about bracketing – Bracketing exposures in pointless when shooting handheld anyway. I know photographers that do it, but I personally never been able to get a really good result by doing so. Even in very bright situations. The shots never align anyway. Rather, take multiple same exposures, or underexpose the shot. By using RAW you will get enough information most of the time anyway.

This one is one of the very few photos I took without a tripod. Here I pout the camera on wall, and hold it down to keep steady.

Editing photos using luminosity selections

Let’s start with a photo in the state we left in the last post. Go into the channels window, and create the Bright 1, Bright 2, Bright 3 and Dark 1, Dark 2 and Dark 3 channels. Each time from now on, when we need to select a certain one, just go back to selections and Ctrl+click on the one you want to select.

There are two ways we can approach editing from here on. Either we want to effect the whole selection, or just paint in a part of it, exactly where we need it. The process is a bit different for both of these, so let’s look at them now.

Global edits on whole selection

When you want to effect the whole selections, the two steps you have to do are:

• Select the luminosity selection you want to use – Go into the channels window, and Ctrl+click on the selection you want to use. Go back to the layers window afterwards
• Add the edit you want to use – Create new fill or adjustment layer, by using the button (circle icon, half white, half black) in the bottom right. You can use any adjustment you need. The selection will be automatically added a layer mask to the new layer and you can then edit your adjustment.

Let’s look at an example to understand this. For this photo, I want to brighten the shadow areas and I want to darken the highlights. Let’s start with the shadows.

1. Go into the channels, and select a Dark selection. The more restrictive selection you choose, the less efect your edit will have. So if you go to Dark 3, or even 4,5 and higher, you effect only the very dark areas in the photo. For this example, let’s choose Dark 2. Ctrl+click on the channel with that selection
2. Go into layers and add a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer (one can use also other adjustments, like curves or levels to get the same effect). A new layer will be created with the mask applied to it.
3. Now in the properties of that layer, adjust brightness to make the shadow areas brighter. You will see, that the bright areas of the photo are not effected at all and only the shadows are brightened.

Going to the second edit, darkening the highlights, just do the same, just change the selection and the adjustment. For instance, select a Bright 2 selection, create a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer and lower the brightness. And you have darkened the highlights of the photo.

Don’t limit yourself to just darkening and brightening a certain area. You can use this to change the color balance, saturation, detail, white balance and much more. Just use the adjustment layer you need. Also, one note about changing the brightness. Each time you brighten a dark area or darken a bright area, you photo looses contrast. A good practice is then, that every time you do this, to add a bit of contrast to the same area. If you use Brightness/contrast, add a bit of contrast, in levels, move the mid-tones a bit, in curves, create a S curve. Like this, your edits will look natural and photos will not become grey and flat.

Local edits by painting in the effect

If you don’t want to use the whole selection, the process is a bit different. The steps you have to follow then are:

• Create an adjustment layer – In the layers window, create the adjustment layer you need, and set it to parameters you need. It will effect the whole image, but that is OK for now.
• Add a black mask to it – We need to hide this layer for now. So click on the white mask next to this layer, and press Ctrl+I to invert it to a black mask
• Make a luminosity selection in the Channels window – as before Ctrl+click on the Bright or Dark channel that closely matches the part of the image you want to edit. This will create a selection for you.
• Paint in the edit – now go back to the layers window, choose the Brush tool, white, 0% hardness. Select the black mask you inverted before and start painting in the areas you want the edit to have effect. If the marching ants of the selection are distracting or in the way, you can hide them by pressing Ctrl+H. The selection will limit where you can paint, so you will only effect the area you need to.

Let’s go back to our example. Let’s say I still want to brighten the shadows, but not everywhere. I want to just brighten them around the buildings in the middle of the photo. I will use levels in this example

1. create and edit a new adjustment layer – With the button in the bottom right of the layers window, create a new levels adjustment layer. Brighten the photo by moving the white triangle to the left
2. invert the mask – Select it’s mask, and press Ctrl+I to invert it. Now the adjustment layer will have no effect on the image
3. create your selection – Go into channels and let’s select the Dark 2 one by Ctrl+click on it
4. paint in the effect – go back to the mask, hide the selection with Ctrl+H, and with the white brush start painting around the are you want to brighter. The more times you paint over a spot, the stronger effect the adjustment will have on it. But it’s all limited by the selection, so for instance the bright castle in the middle will not be effected at all.

If you ever add to much, just switch your brush to black color, and paint over the same spot. By switching back and forth between white and black, you can add or remove the effect until you are satisfied with your result. If you see that you selection is too narrow or broad, delete the layer and start again. Don’t forget you can use this with any other adjustment. You can paint in saturation, detail, colors, brightness, contrast and anything else you can put on a layer.

Keeping fewer photos

• Don’t take photos you know you will not like. Sometimes the camera can just stay in the bag. Once you taken enough photos, you just know. Happens to me sometime. I look at the scene, look at the conditions, and just don’t bother. I know I will not like the results anyway. And trying to force it usually does not result in great photos also.
• Don’t take many versions of the same composition. I have a bit of problem with this one sometime, and should try more to fix this. One does not need the same photo over and over. Take one or few, if you want to be sure to have a good one, and move on to a new composition. Like this you maximize you chance to get a great photo. I would make an exception here, for sunrise and sunset photos. The conditions change so quickly then, that even staying with the same composition can produce different results.
• Limit the number of brackets. I tend to say, better safe then sorry, but one can also overdo it. You don’t need 9, you don’t need 7, mostly you don’t even need 5 brackets. If you are not shooting into the sun, 3 brackets is mostly enough. Try a sequence and check the histogram directly on the camera. If you see that you are getting the whole dynamic range in fewer brackets, adjust your settings accordingly.
• Delete technically bad photos immediately. You can’t always tell directly on the camera if a photo is bad. But often there are problems that you can spot immediately, and you won’t be able to fixt them anyway. Maybe you bumped into your tripod. Maybe there was a strong wind. Maybe you used the wrong settings and over/underexposed you shot complletely. Maybe you forgot to turn off autofocus, so your focus is completely off. This and other problems can be seen immediately on the camera, and it’s pointless to keep those photos. Easier to delete them right when you checking the preview.
• Mark the photos you like. I do this usually if I’m doing photos at an event. I tent to go through all right away, as I have to deliver them to a client, and mark the ones I will edit and send. When I’m done I wait for 1-4 weeks and then just delete the unmarked photos. I keep the ones I deliverd, as in my experience, there does not exist a company or a person that does reasonable backups. I had clients coming back to me after years, taht they lost the photos.
• Be decisive. When you look at a photo and you dont like it and don’t need it, delete it. If you are undecisive and not sure, you will probably just delete it sometimes later, or just keep it for nothing. The thing is, the first feeling about it is usually the correct one. You can’t force yourself to like something even if you try.