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)

As every Monday, I have for you a new process post today. This time I chosen to show you this photo from Prague. This is taken from one of my favourite spots there (you can see my list of spots here).

So let’s first look at the finished and the original 0EV exposure.

Finished photo

Original photo

There was not to much there regarding the dynamic range, but still a lot of things to tweak. For some reason, I don’t remember, I took 7 exposures here. In retrospect, I would probably be OK with three, but since I already had all, I used them.

I started with tweaks in Lightroom, where I corrected the white balance and lens distortions.

All exposures

Lightroom edit

From there I loaded all the exposures into Oloneo Photoengine, and just by changing the strength and contrast. From there I continued into Photoshop (layers numbered from bottom up):

1. Oloneo Photoengine result
2. 0EV exposure, set to 20% opacity, to recover a little of the contrast lost in the merge
3. 0EV exposure once more, to remove ghosting
4. -2EV exposure to darken few bright areas
5. desaturated a little the strong yellow lights
6. Color Efex pro contrast to add more local contrast to the photo.
7. Retouched out the light streak I caught in the bottom left
8+9. Added glow to the photo
10. Little more contrast to the whole photo
11. Color efex detail extractor to add more details to the sky and the trees in the foreground
12. Color balance to make the photo a little warmer
13. A little more contrast
14. Brightened the photo a little
15. TK actions Vibrance mask to add more color to less saturated areas of the photo.

Oloneo merge

Photoshop editing

And that’s all I did with this image. To find out more on how I edit, check out the guides and before after categories on this blog, or check out my video tutorial series here:

When one blends images, one thing that one needs to do over and over again, is to load different exposures into Photoshop layers. Depending on what program you use, this can be done in many ways, and here I will show you 4 of them.

1.Copy & Paste

Probably the worst way to do this, is just to load all photos into photoshop, and then one by one select the photo (Ctrl+A), copy the photo (Ctrl+C) and then paste into a single file (Ctrl+V). Of course you can also open the brackets next to each other, and drag and drop. Here I would suggest holding Shift while dragging, as that will center the photo in the new file automatically.

Drag & Drop in Photoshop

Loading from Lightroom

2. From Lightroom

It’s already much simpler in Lightroom. Here you can either select the files in the library view, or in the bottom photo list, and just right click on any of the photo and choose Open in Layers into Photoshop. This will export all selected files and open them right away in one in Photoshop.

3. From Bridge

This is similar in Bridge. Here you can also just choose any files you want, and by selecting Tools/Photoshop/Load files into Photoshop layers all the images will be loaded into one file. This is my favorite way of doing this, as I often include also the HDR tonemapped image, which I don’t import into Lightroom at all.

Loading from Bridge

Using Photoshop script

4. Directly from Photoshop

But what to do when you don’t have Lightroom, and cant acces Bridge? There is a way to load files into layers also directly from Photoshop. To do this, you have to go under File/Scripts/Load files into Stack. In the new window that opens, you have to choose Brows and choose which files you want to include. Once this is confimed, all selected files will be loaded into layers of a single file.

If you took the images hand-held, you can also check the option for Photoshop to try and align the exposures.

There are so many ways to sharpen a photo, and it usually is not enough to know only one way. One needs to use the one that is currently available, and provides the best results. So in this post, I will go through some of the sharpening methods I use, or have tried out :)

First thing firs. I really suggest to sharp the photo once it’s in the size you plan to use. If you sharpen a full size photo, and then downsize it, you will lose a lot of the sharpness in the process. So first resize, then sharpen.

1. Lightroom sharpen

Probably the simplest sharpening you can find. And if you are already using Lightroom to organize your photos (as most of you probably do anyway :)) it’s a sharpening thats always on hand. You can find it the Develop module under Detail. You add it just by changing the amount slider. You can of course tweak it more with Radius – only bigger details get sharpened, Detail – how much additional detail is created and Masking – removes the smaller detail and focuses on corners. All there are dependent on the Amount setting, so if that is low, these will also have a small effect.

I personally use this mostly for photos I don’t plan to edit in Photoshop. I use a Amount of around 60 to 70, and leave other settings at their default. Btw. you will also notice, that default value is not 0, as Lightroom adds a little sharpening to all raw photos automatically.

Lightroom sharpening

Unsharp mask

2. Unsharp Mask

The most basic, and still very useful, sharpening in Photoshop. I really don’t know what Unshrap mask means, but it works great anyway. There are two ways you can use this filter. You can use it in two ways. Either by using a high Amount and low Radius, which will give you sharpness, or small Amount and high radius, which will give you more local contrast. It’s always good to try both.

When using this to sharpen for web, it usually best to go with a very small radius (less than 1px) and with a very high amount (more than 200). This will give the best result.

You can find it under Filter/Sharpen/Unsharp Mask in Photoshop.

3. Smart sharpen

This is another filter directly in Photoshop. It works similar to Unsharp mask, but the result can be more refined in some image. I use it the same as Unsharp mask, with a high amount and small radius. But again, only on the already resized photo destined for web, not on the full size. It can also reduce noise, but I would suggest using a dedicated noise reduction plug-in for that, to get better results.

You can find it under Filter/Sharpen/Smart sharpen

Smart sharpen

High pass filter

4. High pass filter

A very popular method in Photoshop, that creates really nice results. What you do, is create a merged copy of the image (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E), on the new layer, choose Filter/Other/High Pass and choose a value at around 2px. Then jsut change the blend mode of the layer to Soft light. The higher value for High pass you use, the less this is about sharpness and more about local contrast. So depending on how big the photo is, you have to experiment to get a value that gives you best results.

I would not use this to sharpen a photo for web. It’s more useful to get a detail and sharpness into a full resolution photo, which you would then sharpen once more with a different method once it is resized.

5. TK Actions

The TK actions are not really a sharpening tool, as they use Unsharp mask as their sharpening method. But what they offer are Web sharepenig actions that do the sharpening settings for you. You only choose the size, and the action will do multiple passes of sharpening on a photo to get your result. This is currently my favorite way to sharpen photos for web.

You can find more about the actions on Tony Kuyper page here.

6. Nik Sharpener Pro

If you had bought the Nik plug-ins suite (which is wroth it just for Color Efex alone), you also get a Nik Sharpener plugin. It can really add a huge amount of sharpness, but I don’t use it so much. I feel that it creates too much small detail, which makes it too easy to over-sharpen the photo. Still I know that this is a favorite way to sharpen for many photographers. If you have Nik, give it a try.

For more info, check out the Nik page.

Nik Sharpener Pro

Topaz Detail

7. Topaz Detail

This plug-in is not just about sharpening, as it can do much much more. It can add sharpness based on the detail size, or brightness. It also can add color or change brightness levels, and include a huge number of presets. This plug-in is less about just making you photo sharp, but more about adding more detail to areas of the photo.

For more info, check out the Topaz page.

And many more

There are of course many more plugins, actions and ways to sharpen. For me currently the most used are high pass, unsharp mask and TK action. What are yours?

Today, I will show you how I edited this late night photo from Dubai. This is of course the Burj Khalifa, as seen with a long lens from the Palm Jumeirah. So let’s start.

Here you have the final photo and the original 0EV exposure. As you can see, it was really missing a lot of contrast. I also wanted to get more detail, make the buildings in the background more visible, and mostly, tweak the color, so it fit more with the strong neon color of the top of the Burj Khalifa.

Finished photo

Original 0EV

As always I started in Lightroom. I removed lens distortion, vignetting, and tweaked the tint, so it’s more purple. Then I exported all the exposures as 16-bit tiff files.

All exposures in Lightroom 

Lightroom tweaks

After that, I loaded all the exposures into Oloneo Photoengine, and added strength and contrast. I then loaded the result into Photoshop together with all the original exposures. The edits I did there were the following (layers numbered from bottom up)
1. Oloneo Photoengine result
2. Color efex pro contrast, but only on the buildings, as I wanted more local contrast just there.
3. A little overall contrast
4+5. More contrast to the brightest areas. I put the layer in a group with its own layer mask, as I wanted the effect just in few areas.
6. During the edit I decided that I want the whole photo purple, so I blended few parts from the -2EV exposure to change few lights.
7. Just a merged copy I forgot to remove :)
8. Color efex Darken/lighten center, to add a vignette back.
9. TK Actions vibrance mask, to tone down the most saturated colors
10. A little more overall contrast

Oloneo Photoengine

Photoshop Edit

And that’s all I did with this image. To find out more on how I edit, check out the guides and before after categories on this blog, or check out my video tutorial series here: