Martin Virtual's List: post processing

• two alternate ways of expanding your tonal range
• DOUBLE-PROCESSING RAW
• more detail
• helpful with subjects that move, such as a street scene, wildlife or a landscape on a windy day
• process your single RAW file twic
• once to make the highlights look their best and then again to make the shadows look their best.
• one set of tonalities at a time look really good without any compromise
• You may find a lot of noise as you do this; noise is part of the dark areas of an image.
• can be done with Adobe Camera Raw
• Lightroom
• Create Virtual Copy
• Then select both and right-click on either one. Select Edit In from the menu and Open as Layers in Photoshop

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• before and after mode that, along with the individual Black&White Mix sliders, allows you to see which colors each Black&White slider correlates to, giving specific control of each color channel and the resulting gray-scale toning of that color.
• Black&White Mixer dialog appears in the HSL/Color/B&W section
• Targeted Adjustment tool allows you to adjust the tones directly on the image itself by clicking on that section and moving your mouse up or down.
• click on the icon consisting of concentric circles
• (it looks like a small target) located in the upper-left corner of the Black&White panel to grab the Targeted Adjustment tool
• I normally create a Virtual Copy of my image before converting to black-and-white
• large variety of colors and hues that allowed me to accurately convert the image as I wanted it to look in black-and-white
• using the multiple views available in the before and after mode, I could concentrate on key parts of the image.
• In my workflow, with both color and black-and-white images, I find that to effectively finalize an image I need to continue the postproduction in Adobe Photoshop once I export images out of Lightroom
• as 16-bit ProPhoto RGB color files at 300 ppi
• in Photoshop, I can convert the files to grayscale, set the black and the white points in the image, make the final Levels adjustments and perfect the contrast with either the Curves dialog or with the Brightness/Contrast tool.
• Levels adjustment, some precise cloning on the hat and a brightness/contrast adjustment.

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• during dusk; when the sky isn't completely black
• Use a high ISO if required
• flash will freeze the foreground and the long exposure will reveal the background
• combine flash with a long exposure
• set the shutter curtain sync to the second curtain

  • rear curtain
• Using second curtain sync will also put your friends in front of any motion blur so nothing is covering their faces
• Shoot for High Dynamic Range (HDR)
• three exposures: one darker, one lighter, and one just in the middle
• Load the images into Photoshop and create HDR file out of the three exposures
• you can apply tone mapping to to reveal more details
• Stack
• shoot the same photo a few times (more is better), and use Photoshop CS3 image stacking
• take a couple of very deep breaths before taking the pic. Let the second breath out slowly and trip the shutter when your lungs are almost empty. You'll get less shake than you will by holding your breath.

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• Content-Aware Fill
• is as simple as hitting the Delete key or selecting this mode with the Spot Healing Brush
• works by analyzing the pixels surrounding those you select and “imagining” what would be there if the object wasn’t
• Spot Healing Brush in Content-Aware mode and simply brush over the object
• small objects
• arger elements
• faster to use the Content-Aware option of the Fill tool
• quick selection around a sign we wanted to remove. We didn’t create a detailed mask, just a simple rectangular marquee selection
• don’t spend a lot of time refining the selection—this is supposed to be fast and easy
• it the Delete key to bring up the Fill tool dialogue
• Blending Mode set at normal and 100% opacity, and clicked OK
• mode set to Content-Aware
• ou may want to make some minor additional touchups with the Clone Stamp

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• Darken
• chooses the darker of the two to display
• Multiply
• Any applied tone darker than  white darkens the lower layer. White becomes transparent.
• Color Burn
• burns  in the color of the upper layer with the lower layer
• Lighten
• uses the lightest pixel value
• Screen
• ightning the lower layer based on the lightness of the upper  layer
• good mode  for correcting exposure in photos that are too dark.
• Overlay
• multiplies  the light colors and screens the dark colors
• Hue changes the hue  of the lower layer to the hue of the upper layer but leaves brightness  and saturation alone.
• changes  the saturation of the lower layer to the hue of the upper layer  but leaves brightness and hue alone.
• changes the  hue and saturation of the lower layer to the hue and saturation  of the upper layer

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