What's new
Photoshop Gurus Forum

Welcome to Photoshop Gurus forum. Register a free account today to become a member! It's completely free. Once signed in, you'll enjoy an ad-free experience and be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

have a specific question on blending/feathering


Rein Ise

New Member
Messages
4
Likes
1
So I know you can feather edges of areas you've edited. but what i can't figure out is pretty specific to the photo. So I took a picture of the sunset behind some mountains, with the city underneath. Shot in RAW, 100 ISO, 1/60-1/125 exposure (cant remember), and f/5. so the sky looks perfect, just how it did in real life. the mountains were pretty dark, but not quite as blacked out as they appeared in person. and the underlying city was pretty dark. So in Camera Raw, i was able to edit the foreground using a graduated filter and lighten up the city a good bit, but this also lightened up the mountains too (tried to change the area the filter covered but dragging it any lower really darkened the upper part of the city.

so, i decided to open in photoshop and edit from there. my plan was to use the selection tool and add contrast to the mountains do make them appear darker (almost as a sillhouette). ok great, that worked. but now my problems lies at the bottom of that selection and the top of the city, its just a very obvious black line where the contrast was added. I can't figure out how to feather just that area, or make the dark blend with the light. i'm going to try to insert a pic for reference.

also, if this looks completely ridiculous, or there's a better approach, i'm all ears. i'm down for constructive criticism.

p.s. sorry for any improper lingo, still learning.
IMG_3480.jpg
 

Tom Mann

Guru
Messages
7,223
Likes
4,343
You're on the right track. You definitely don't want to use any sort of soft gradient with a hard-edge subject like silhouetted mountains. You want to make a good selection of them and adjust their brightness, contrast, color, etc. completely separately from the bright sky.

The only error you made was that the selection you used for the photo you attached seems to have ended about half-way up the foothills instead of going all the way up to the top of the mountains. I'm not sure what selection method you used, but I would suggest you try the "quick selection" tool (Google it) it's very, very fast and quite accurate in a high contrast situation like this. Then, once you have a good selection, save it ( "Select / Save Selection" drop down menu in PS), and then use it as a layer mask in each of the adjustments you want to make to the lower part of the picture.

Although this isn't exactly what you asked, may I suggest that if, in the future, you come upon a similar high contrast situation, if at all possible, put the camera on a tripod or brace it against something, and then take two exposures of the scene. One, a perfect exposure of the sky, and the second, a perfect exposure of the ground, and then composite the two together into a perfect landscape.

HTH,

Tom M

PS - Nice sunset! Welcome to PSG!
 

Rein Ise

New Member
Messages
4
Likes
1
You're on the right track. You definitely don't want to use any sort of soft gradient with a hard-edge subject like silhouetted mountains. You want to make a good selection of them and adjust their brightness, contrast, color, etc. completely separately from the bright sky.

The only error you made was that the selection you used for the photo you attached seems to have ended about half-way up the foothills instead of going all the way up to the top of the mountains. I'm not sure what selection method you used, but I would suggest you try the "quick selection" tool (Google it) it's very, very fast and quite accurate in a high contrast situation like this. Then, once you have a good selection, save it ( "Select / Save Selection" drop down menu in PS), and then use it as a layer mask in each of the adjustments you want to make to the lower part of the picture.

Although this isn't exactly what you asked, may I suggest that if, in the future, you come upon a similar high contrast situation, if at all possible, put the camera on a tripod or brace it against something, and then take two exposures of the scene. One, a perfect exposure of the sky, and the second, a perfect exposure of the ground, and then composite the two together into a perfect landscape.

HTH,

Tom M

PS - Nice sunset! Welcome to PSG!

to your first paragraph, that's what i did. the result, a hard line across the bottom, exactly what i wanted for tops of the mountains, as to not also increase the contrast of the bright sky, as you said.

i left the space at the foothills because i thought there might be a way to create another area of the same color as the mountains and feather/blend it into the beginning of the cityscape.

you lost me at layer mask, not too familiar with layers (yes, i know thats a huge part of photoshop that i need to become familiar with, baby steps)

a tripod would've been ideal, i agree. I would have loved to combine 2 or 3 exposure and make an HDR picture. i ordered a portable tripod but it is not in yet, there werent flat enough rocks to get the levelness and stability i wanted. next time though.
 

Tom Mann

Guru
Messages
7,223
Likes
4,343
If you are interested, you could post the original CR2 file for your image, and I'll be happy to walk you through how I would process it. If you are worried about people stealing your photo, just put a watermark in the center of it. To be honest, because of the extremes of brightness, I wouldn't even try processing the in-camera JPG or re-processing a JPG that you have already done -- this needs the full dynamic range of the raw file. IMHO, it's a lot easier to explain a PP approach with a real file in hand and give you screen shots, rather than trying to speak about the process in the abstract or using some other photo as a stand-in.

WRT to you leaving space in the foothills for further processing, yes, there is a way to do this, but if you don't yet have a good working knowledge of layer masks, it would be a big leap, so my suggestion is that you take a look at a simpler approach and then, move on to the more complicated masking that you envision.

WRT a tripod, if you like this sort of photography, and you are definitely in the part of the USA for some great night landscapes, it is almost essential that you equip yourself with a set of *really* good quality tripods ranging from mini / table-top models (for hiking / backpacking), all the way up to rock-solid, full-size, several hundred dollar models. I can essentially guarantee you that if you scrimp on these now, you'll just wind up re-buying better versions in a year or two (LOL), so just bite the bullet as soon as your budget will allow. For night landscape photography, these are arguably considerably more important than even the camera body (but not the lens).

WRT HDR and conventional compositing approaches, those are *extremely* important skills for a modern landscape photographer to develop. As an example, I've attached a photo I took from an overlook part way up the Mt. Lemmon Road (NE of Tucson) back in the early-1990's. I actually spent an hour or so with my camera immobilized on one of my heaviest-duty tripods for the entire period, watching the sun go down, as well as a flurry of pix right after sunset. Every 5 or 10 minutes, I would fire off two or three shots (one for the sky, one for the land, and later, another shot for the stars). This was just around the time that Photoshop was just an upstart, and many people were still using programs such as Picture Publisher by Micrographics. I composited (traditionally ... this was pre-HDR) some of the shots, and lived with the results for many years. A few years ago, I dug out the slides, and re-digitized and re-composited them using newer technology, and came up with the attached image. I see lots of errors in my original photos, but unfortunately, haven't gotten back to your area since then so I could re-shoot the scene.

Anyway, let me know if you would like me to walk you through how I would process such an image.

Best regards,

Tom M

PS - If you want to send me the CR2 file, just zip it and attach the zipped file just like you would attach any photo in the forum. Ignore the big "question mark" that appears, LOL.

PPS - If you do send it, I probably won't be able to work on it till tomorrow night at the earliest, so give me a bit of time.

PS #3 - In the interest of full disclosure, as I recall, the stars are actually a composite of one of my images that I took on Mt. Lemon, and another shot of the night sky that I took at a different time and place because of the light pollution from the city, even back then.

PS #4 - If by some strange chance, you ever drive up to Mt. Lemon, by carefully checking the relative locations of the peaks in the background with the notches in the foreground terrain in my photo, I bet you could figure out where I stood to get that shot, to within a couple of feet, LOL. If you ever do this, could you please let me know the GPS coordinates so that I can add this to my info on this image.
 

Attachments

  • Tucson_AZ_early_1990s-multiple_exp_composite.jpg
    Tucson_AZ_early_1990s-multiple_exp_composite.jpg
    253.9 KB · Views: 41

Rein Ise

New Member
Messages
4
Likes
1
If you are interested, you could post the original CR2 file for your image, and I'll be happy to walk you through how I would process it. If you are worried about people stealing your photo, just put a watermark in the center of it. To be honest, because of the extremes of brightness, I wouldn't even try processing the in-camera JPG or re-processing a JPG that you have already done -- this needs the full dynamic range of the raw file. IMHO, it's a lot easier to explain a PP approach with a real file in hand and give you screen shots, rather than trying to speak about the process in the abstract or using some other photo as a stand-in.

WRT to you leaving space in the foothills for further processing, yes, there is a way to do this, but if you don't yet have a good working knowledge of layer masks, it would be a big leap, so my suggestion is that you take a look at a simpler approach and then, move on to the more complicated masking that you envision.

WRT a tripod, if you like this sort of photography, and you are definitely in the part of the USA for some great night landscapes, it is almost essential that you equip yourself with a set of *really* good quality tripods ranging from mini / table-top models (for hiking / backpacking), all the way up to rock-solid, full-size, several hundred dollar models. I can essentially guarantee you that if you scrimp on these now, you'll just wind up re-buying better versions in a year or two (LOL), so just bite the bullet as soon as your budget will allow. For night landscape photography, these are arguably considerably more important than even the camera body (but not the lens).

WRT HDR and conventional compositing approaches, those are *extremely* important skills for a modern landscape photographer to develop. As an example, I've attached a photo I took from an overlook part way up the Mt. Lemmon Road (NE of Tucson) back in the early-1990's. I actually spent an hour or so with my camera immobilized on one of my heaviest-duty tripods for the entire period, watching the sun go down, as well as a flurry of pix right after sunset. Every 5 or 10 minutes, I would fire off two or three shots (one for the sky, one for the land, and later, another shot for the stars). This was just around the time that Photoshop was just an upstart, and many people were still using programs such as Picture Publisher by Micrographics. I composited (traditionally ... this was pre-HDR) some of the shots, and lived with the results for many years. A few years ago, I dug out the slides, and re-digitized and re-composited them using newer technology, and came up with the attached image. I see lots of errors in my original photos, but unfortunately, haven't gotten back to your area since then so I could re-shoot the scene.

Anyway, let me know if you would like me to walk you through how I would process such an image.

Best regards,

Tom M

PS - If you want to send me the CR2 file, just zip it and attach the zipped file just like you would attach any photo in the forum. Ignore the big "question mark" that appears, LOL.

PPS - If you do send it, I probably won't be able to work on it till tomorrow night at the earliest, so give me a bit of time.

PS #3 - In the interest of full disclosure, as I recall, the stars are actually a composite of one of my images that I took on Mt. Lemon, and another shot of the night sky that I took at a different time and place because of the light pollution from the city, even back then.

PS #4 - If by some strange chance, you ever drive up to Mt. Lemon, by carefully checking the relative locations of the peaks in the background with the notches in the foreground terrain in my photo, I bet you could figure out where I stood to get that shot, to within a couple of feet, LOL. If you ever do this, could you please let me know the GPS coordinates so that I can add this to my info on this image.

hey tried to attach the zip file, it only compressed to 18.5mb, it wont post on here. i tried to send you a pm a couple days ago, but its not in my sent folder, so im not sure if it went through. any suggestions?
 

Tom Mann

Guru
Messages
7,223
Likes
4,343
Sorry, I just double checked, and I never got any PM from you. Check your inbox. I'll send a private msg to you in just a minute.

Tom

PS - Glad to see you back. I was wondering where you disappeared to, LOL.
 

Tom Mann

Guru
Messages
7,223
Likes
4,343
I received and could open the cr2 file with no problem, Rein.

The approach I took was to do two separate RAW conversions -- one optimized for the sky, and a separate one optimized for the ground.

The main issue with the sky was to keep the highlights from blowing out (clipping), even if only in one channel. This required a strong negative exposure compensation plus lots of tweaking of the tonality sliders in the "Basic" tab of ACR. I also used a high clarity setting to bring out interesting structure in the clouds, but I didn't do anything to the white balance at all. The more saturated orange in my version is entirely because the red channel was clipped in large areas of this sky in a normal conversion, thereby reducing it's saturation, as well as slightly changing its hue.

The main issue with the ground was (obviously) that it was severely underexposed and had a murky brown color (as in your conversion). This required a fairly strong positive exposure compensation in ACR. Lightening this area by so much brought out a lot of digital noise (some of which I filtered in ACR, plus some more noise reduction afterwards in PS. I also changed the white balance of the ground to give it a magenta look. I don't know if this was the actual color, but it is a color commonly seen in somewhat after sunset and into the night, so it tends to be accepted by viewers as an "ok" night color.

To be blunt, your your 55-250 zoom caused major problems with veiling flare in the shadow areas. It is also causing significant significant color fringing (chromatic aberration) near high contrast sharp edges like the very top of the mountains.

High zoom ratio lenses like this are almost always worse than low ratio zooms, which are almost always worse in this regard than prime lenses. In addition, this zoom was used at its maximum focal length, and is near the very bottom of Canon's zoom product line, so it's really struggling. Even if you took several shots to use in an HDR approach, the flare and chromatic aberration of this lens will continue to give you problems in very high contrast situations like this. My suggestion is that if you like this sort of photography and don't want to spend $1500 on a pro zoom, you should keep your eye out for sales and start picking up a set of wide, normal and tele primes. However, I would suggest that you only buy from reputable dealers like KEH.com and BHphotovideo.com, so in the unlikely situation that there is something wrong with one of their used products, they will take it back.

Anyway, I took both raw conversions into PS, put them on separate layers, and developed a set of three layer masks to select different areas of the two different conversions. The three masks are shown below and are (1) all ground; (2) just the mountains, no flatland and no sky; and (3) just the very tops of the mountains and areas on the groud near the right and left edges of the image that were unusually bright (not sure of the cause of it, but it does not look like a natural phenomena). From these three masks, I can make pretty much any other mask that is needed. For example, to select just the sky, I can invert mask (1).

BTW, you were absolutely right when you said that this photo needed some fairly complex masking. I'll be happy to walk you through the process of making the masks in a separate post just let me know.

Anyway, I then applied different adjustment layers (eg, "curves", "vibrance/saturation", etc.) to these three areas to merge them into what I thought was a nice, believable, overall visual effect. See what you think. Double click on the color in-forum preview to see it at significantly higher resolution -- so that any problems become obvious.

Cheers,

Tom M
 

Attachments

  • Mask01-all_ground.jpg
    Mask01-all_ground.jpg
    30.6 KB · Views: 19
  • Mask02-mtns-no_flatland.jpg
    Mask02-mtns-no_flatland.jpg
    34.6 KB · Views: 18
  • Mask03-only_tops_of_mtns_and_light_leak_areas.jpg
    Mask03-only_tops_of_mtns_and_light_leak_areas.jpg
    45.3 KB · Views: 19
  • IMG_3480cr2-tjm01-acrX2-ps02a_3400px_wide_sRGB_flattened-02.jpg
    IMG_3480cr2-tjm01-acrX2-ps02a_3400px_wide_sRGB_flattened-02.jpg
    3.9 MB · Views: 4
Last edited:

Tom Mann

Guru
Messages
7,223
Likes
4,343
Whoops - I looked at this on another computer and it looks like I made a color space error - it is too saturated and contrasty. I'll fix it tonight.

Tom M
 

Tom Mann

Guru
Messages
7,223
Likes
4,343
After listening to me go on and on for years about the importance of calibration of one's monitor, and especially, how incredibly easy one can be fooled by what your monitor is telling you, this problem has given me a taste of my own medicine, LOL.

A couple of days ago, my monitor "hiccuped": When I turned my system on, and computer didn't recognize that my nice wide gamut NEC monitor was attached. It claimed that all I had a generic. After checking the cables and a reboot of the computer didn't work, I decided to reboot the monitor. That worked, it recognized my monitor, and I thought I was back in business. Wrong!!!

My wonderful wide gamut monitor had become uncalibrated, and because I wasn't using the computer very much immediately thereafter, I had absolutely no idea this happened. So, in complete ignorance, I blissfully worked on the OP's photo, thinking it looked just wonderful. Wrong again! Anyway, when I looked at it on another system, I knew almost immediately what happened. So, I re-profiled and recalibrated the monitor and re-tweaked the OP's photo (attached below).

Bottom line - make sure your monitor is well calibrated, and check regularly to make sure its calibration hasn't drifted or become completely un-done.

Tom M
 

Attachments

  • IMG_3480cr2-tjm01-acrX2-ps03a_3400px_wide_sRGB_flattened-fix_color_space-01.jpg
    IMG_3480cr2-tjm01-acrX2-ps03a_3400px_wide_sRGB_flattened-fix_color_space-01.jpg
    4 MB · Views: 5

Top