All Categories : Web Graphics Teach Yourself Photoshop 4 in 14 Days - 10 - Photo Repair and Special Effects Repairing damaged or "just plain lousy" pictures is the number one reason why most people buy Photoshop. It can really work miracles on old, torn, faded photographs and it can also make up for most, if not all, of the flaws in your snapshots. You can use Photoshop to recompose a picture that's off-center, tilted, or has too much empty space. You can also adjust the colors to fix a picture that's turned yellow with age, or has too much red, green, or some other color in it. You can compensate for slight to moderate under- or overexposure, but you can't put back an image that's just not there, unless you paint it in. You can also edit out the power lines and trash cans that spoil the landscape. You can take the red out of your daughter's eyes, or the unearthly green out of the cat's eyes. You can even remove unwanted former spouses, or that awful boyfriend your daughter finally dumped, from family portraits. Does your husband wonder how he'd look with a beard, or without one? Would your wife like to consider a change in hair color? Try it electronically first. It's less risky if the change is only on the screen. Easy Fixes Let's start by looking at some of the things you can do to fix up an old picture that may have faded, yellowed, or been torn or damaged. First, we'll consider a couple of old wedding pictures that need a little bit of adjusting and touching up. We'll run (literally) through the steps involved in fixing them and the tools you'll need to know how to use. (Remember, you can always flip back to Day 3, "Painting and Drawing Tools" to refresh your memory about these tools, too.) Finally, we'll take an extremely damaged picture and work through it step-by-step, until it looks like new again. Some pictures don't need very much work. The photo in Figure 10.1 was taken in 1900 but has been kept in an album away from sunlight for most of the past 97 years. It's turned a little yellow, but all in all is remarkably well-preserved. Figure 10.1 This needs only minor touch-ups. To fix this picture, we first crop the borders to remove any unnecessary edges. Then, we set the mode to grayscale, which will remove any color information that the scan picked up. That immediately eliminates the yellow and brown tones. Next, we use Curves (Image+Adjust+Curves) to tweak the contrast a little. By using Curves, we can lighten the light tones without affecting the darks. In Figure 10.2, the very slight curve in the window lets you see just how subtle this adjustment is. Figure 10.3 shows a magnified before and after view, so you can see how the contrast improved. Figure 10.2 The curve adjustment was very slight. Figure 10.3 The contrast was good before (before: upper left), now it's better (after: lower right). A couple of spots in the picture could use some minor enhancement. We'll apply the Burn tool to darken some areas where the contrast could be a little better. By applying the Burn tool only to the shadows and with a low percentage setting, we can darken the gentleman's fingers without darkening his whole hand. Similarly, applying it to midtones, we can separate the lady's jawline from her high whalebone collar. Figure 10.4 shows the final result. Figure 10.4 Studio portraits, even of this age, generally come out well. NOTE: Many Photoshop users make a habit of applying the Dust and Scratches filter (Filters+Noise+Dust and Scratches) to every scanned photo. This is often a mistake, because while it does make dust particles less obvious, it also softens the focus of the picture. If you decide to try it, evaluate the results carefully, using the Preview checkbox to toggle back and forth, turning the filter preview on and off until you're certain that it's an improvement. A second wedding picture, this one only 50 years old, is in much worse shape. It is both yellowed and faded, and it looks as if somebody tried to do some retouching on it with a pencil, making matters worse. The untouched photo is shown in Figure 10.5. Figure 10.5 This one needs more serious work. Again, we'll start by cropping, and then go to grayscale to get rid of the yellow tones. The contrast ratio in this picture isn't as good as in the previous one, so our next step will be to attempt to improve it. The Levels window shows the histogram for this picture, which tells us that the whites are too dark and the darks not dark enough (see Figure 10.6). Resetting the black and white points helps a good deal. Resetting the midpoint to the center of the peak in the histogram helps even more. The best way to learn to make these adjustments is to work on a copy of a "bad" picture, and simply experiment with the settings until you see the picture looking the way you want it to. Notice what happens when you move the sliders to the right or left. Figure 10.6 Changing the Levels adjusts the contrast. The Eyedropper Sometimes you need to paint over part of the image, either to fill in scratches or to remove unwanted lines, spots, or in-laws. Use the Eyedropper tool to select a color to paint with. Simply click the Eyedropper on any color (or in this case, shade of gray) in the image that you want to replicate, and that color becomes the foreground color, ready to apply with the Paintbrush, Airbrush, or whatever painting tool you choose. Double-clicking the Eyedropper opens its options window (see Figure 10.7). A pop-up menu gives you the choice of a single pixel color sample or taking an average color from either a 3 by 3 or 5 by 5 pixel sample. In the photo in Figure 10.5, someone, probably the bride, tried to shave a few pounds off her waistline the easy way, by drawing on the photo. You can see it better in the magnified view in Figure 10.8. With the Eyedropper, Brush, and Smudge tools, we'll repair the damage and, at the same time, give her the silhouette she hoped for. All we need to do is to pick up the appropriate background gray from elsewhere in the picture, paint it in, and smudge it a little bit so it blends. At the same time, we'll darken the edge of her glove, just a little, so it doesn't blend into her dress quite so much. Figure 10.7 The Eyedropper is selected from Photoshop's toolbar. Figure 10.8 You can see the changes from "Before" to "After." Using the Eyedropper tool in a situation like this is much easier than trying match an existing color or shade of gray on the color wheel. All you need to do to paint in the background is to find another spot in the picture where the color or gray shade is the same one that you'd like to use. Select the Eyedropper and click it to make that color the foreground color. Then, use your brush to paint in the selected shade. Smudge the edges very slightly if necessary to make the new paint blend in. Taking a closer look at the couple's faces, we can see white streaks, which are apparently an artifact from the scan, because they aren't on the original. Again, Figure 10.9 shows the close-up view, before and after retouching. Because the area to work on was so small, we used a single pixel brush as a Smudge tool, and set it for only 20% pressure to not overdo the smudges. When you are working on corrections this small, it's much easier to apply them gradually and let the effect build up rather than trying to do it all in one pass. Figure 10.9 We also darkened the groom's hair, which the photo had made lighter than it was. Rubber Stamp The Rubber Stamp tool is perfect when you need to copy small pieces of the picture and paste them elsewhere. Technically, it's a cloning brush. It samples from a chosen point in the image and duplicates it, exactly as if you'd made a rubber stamp of the selection. Figure 10.10 shows the Rubber Stamp tool and its options window. To select a point to clone from, press Option (Mac) or Alt (Windows) while you click the mouse on the spot you want to copy. Release the key, and start stamping by moving the mouse to the new spot and clicking. You can stamp as many times as you need to. Figure 10.10 The Rubber Stamp tool's icon looks just like a rubber stamp. Because the Rubber Stamp tool functions like a brush, you can apply all of the brush modes, such as Dissolve, Multiply, and so on. The size and shape of the Rubber Stamp area will be the same as the brush size and shape you have selected. You can also apply the same opacity settings that you would to any brush. Feel free to flip back to Day 3 to review these tools and settings in greater detail. The Rubber Stamp Options window lets you select among several ways for the stamp to operate: Clone (aligned): When you select a reference point, the stamp creates a duplicate of the image anywhere you start painting, expanding the duplicated portion of the image as you go. Conceivably, you could reproduce the entire image, if you have enough blank canvas. Clone (non-aligned): After you select your reference point and start painting, the duplicate portion of the image expands only while you continue to hold down the mouse button. When you release it and press it again, you start painting another duplicate image from the same reference point. Pattern (aligned): You can define a pattern and stamp it with the Rubber Stamp tool. Use the Rectangular marquee to select a piece of image to use as a pattern, and select Define Pattern from the Edit menu. Now, when you use the Rubber Stamp, the pattern will be tiled over the area as you stamp. Pattern (non-aligned): Select a pattern as above, but each time you release the mouse button and then press it again, the pattern starts over instead of tiling. From Snapshot: Use the Rubber Stamp to apply changes to your image selectively. Make the change, take a snapshot of it, then undo the change, and apply it selectively with the Rubber Stamp. You can take a snapshot of your image by choosing Take Snapshot from the Edit menu. From Saved: This works like a magic eraser. Where you stamp, the image reverts to the way it was the last time you saved. It's essentially the opposite of the process above. Instead of selectively applying the changes, you're selectively undoing them. Impressionist: This is more or less useless. This stamp applies the last saved version of the image in a smudged, spotty, uneven pattern. When you use the Rubber Stamp tool to retouch, always choose a soft-edged brush in a size only slightly larger than the scratch or blemish you're hiding. Retouching is generally easier if you enlarge the image first. For this next photo, we'll need the Rubber Stamp tool and probably all of the tricks in the book. As you can see in Figure 10.11, this picture has been folded, ripped, spilled on, and generally beaten up. We'll go through this one step by step, so you can see exactly what happens at each stage. If you want to work along with us, the picture is 10file01 on the CD-ROM. Figure 10.11 When it's the only picture of her, you try hard to salvage it. Cleaning Up a Picture, Step by Step To make this picture look like new: 1. Crop the image, to remove the border and any unnecessary parts of the image. (Anything you remove doesn't have to be retouched.) Select the Cropping tool from the toolbox. (It pops out from the selection marquee when you hold the mouse button.) Drag it across the picture, holding the mouse button down. Use the handles on the Cropping window to fine-tune the selection, then double-click inside the window, to crop the image. 2. Set the mode to Grayscale (Image+Mode+Grayscale) to remove the colored stains. 3. Open the Histogram window (Image+Histogram). Look at the Histogram to see what needs to be done to equalize the contrast (see Figure 10.12). In this case, the white and dark points need to be reset and the middle point shifted lighter. To make these changes, we'll need to adjust the Levels. Figure 10.12 The Histogram shows a preponderance of darks. 4. Open the Levels window (Image+Adjust+Levels) and adjust the levels by dragging the dark point to the right until it's under the beginning of the dark peak of the Histogram. Drag the white point to the left until it's under the beginning of the white peak. Figure 10.13 shows our adjustments. Figure 10.13 Adjusting the levels improves the contrast. 5. Now, try out the Dust and Scratches filter (Filters+Noise+Dust and Scratches). In this case, it seems that the good it does outweighs the slight fuzziness it adds. (See Figure 10.14 to see the filter applied.) Click OK to apply the filter. Figure 10.14 Removing dust can also remove detail. 6. The filter took care of some of the dust, but left most of the scratches. Use the Rubber Stamp tool to cover them. Select the tool, and open the Brushes and Options windows (Window+Show Brushes and Window+Show Options). Choose a small brush and set the opacity to 90%. Choose Clone (non-aligned), pick the dark tone adjacent to the scratch, and start stamping it out. Remember, to set a spot to use as a stamp, press Option (Mac) or Alt (Windows) while you click the mouse on the spot you want to copy. Figure 10.15 shows the partially treated photo. Remember to change your stamp selection as the areas the scratch runs through change value. Figure 10.15 Help stamp out scratched photos! 7. The best way to remove the scratches in the little girl's hair is to use a Paintbrush and repaint the hair, rather than trying to stamp it. To make the task easier, enlarge the picture. Click the Magnifying Glass tool at the bottom of the toolbox to enlarge the picture. 8. Select the Eyedropper tool and click on the medium dark gray on the right side of her bangs. Choose a small Paintbrush and paint over the scratches, changing shades of gray with the Eyedropper as you need to. Figure 10.16 shows before and after views of this step. 9. At the same time, you can use the Smudge tool to remove the dark shadows under her eyes. Select the Smudge tool and a very small Paintbrush. Then set the pressure option to about 40% and smudge gently, as if you were using a fingertip to wipe away the spots. You can also use the Smudge tool to make the hair blend in better. Stroke it gently with short strokes. Figure 10.16 Be careful not to apply paint too evenly. 10. Next, apply the Dodge and Burn tools as needed to bring out details. Dodging lightens the image and burning darkens it. Sponging increases or decreases the saturation of colors. Figure 10.17 shows these useful tools. (See Day 6, "Moving Pixel Paint," for more details on using them.) Select the Dodge tool and set its exposure to 25%, so the effect will be gradual. 11. We can dodge her shoes so they aren't lost in the grass and burn a little on the top of her head to even out the hair tones. The effect will build if you release the mouse button and then click it, and go over the same area again. Be careful not to overdo it. Burning in the background behind her head gets rid of the light patch. Figure 10.18 shows the final version. Be sure to save your work when you're finished. We'll come back to this picture later on. Figure 10.17 The Dodge tool looks like a lollipop, the Burn tool like a hand, and the Sponge tool like a sponge. Figure 10.18 Compare this to the picture you started with. Color Retouching So far, all of the pictures we've worked on were old, black and white photos. This doesn't mean that you can only retouch in grayscale. You can use the same tools and tricks in color, with the exception of converting your pictures to grayscale to get rid of unwanted stains and yellowing. Obviously, if you convert a color picture to grays, you lose all of the color. So, instead, you must apply the curves and/or color balance adjustments to change the overall coloring of the image. In Figure 10.19, we have a digital photo taken on a snowy day. Glare on the snow made the white look pink in places. Using the Curves window, as shown in Figure 10.20, we can adjust the red channel to remove most of the pink. Rather than trying to remove all of it, which would turn the image too blue, it's better to compromise and leave a faint warmth. To adjust a single color with the curves window: 1. With the image open, open the Curves window (Image+Adjust+Curves). 2. Choose the color closest to, or the complement to the color that needs adjusting, from the pop-up channels menu. Choose Red, Green, or Blue if those colors need lessening. If there's too much Yellow, add Blue. If there's too much Magenta, add Green. If there's too much Cyan, add Red. 3. Drag the curve up to increase the amount of the color. Drag it down to decrease the amount, by adding the complement. Watch the preview as you drag. Click OK when the colors look right. Figure 10.19 The snow on the tree looked pink. Figure 10.20 Adjusting the red channel separately lets us get the red out. The power lines at the top of the picture can easily be removed either with the Rubber Stamp tool or by lassoing a piece of sky and placing it over the wires. This is a simple way to fix large, plain areas. You can also use it to hide something like a trash can, by dragging shrubbery over it. To use the Lasso for this purpose: 1. Select the Lasso tool from the toolbar. Open the Feather dialog box (Select+ Feather) and set the Feather radius to somewhere between 3-6 pixels. This will help your copied sky blend in. 2. Select a piece of sky the same color as the sky behind the wires by circling it with the Lasso. 3. With the dotted line marquee flashing, choose the Move tool, and press Option (Mac) or Alt (Windows) as you drag the selection to cover the wires. (See a close view of this in Figure 10.21.) Figure 10.21 Be sure you cover all of the wires. 4. Repeat as needed, selecting different pieces of sky as the color behind the wires changes. You can also use this trick to hide any other parts of the picture that you don't want, like the small gray thing in the lower-right corner. 5. Press Command+D (Mac) or Ctrl+D (Windows) when you're finished dragging and copying to deselect the selection. Figure 10.22 shows the cleaned up picture. Figure 10.22 The finished picture minus wires and other unidentified clutter. Applying Tints It was common in the early days of photography for pictures to be brown, blue, or silver instead of plain black and white. Sepia toning, which gave a warm reddish brown color, was the most common, and one we tend to associate with most "old time" photos. If you want to restore the sepia tone to a picture you've been working on, Photoshop gives you several ways to accomplish this. Perhaps the easiest is to reset the mode to CMYK or RGB, depending on whether the finished photo will be viewed on the screen or printed, and use the Hue/Saturation window (Image+Adjust+Hue) to add color. After you open the window, as shown in Figure 10.23, check the Colorize box, as well as the Preview box. Then move the sliders until the image looks the way you want it to. Click OK when you're satisfied with the color. To see the photo in color, open 10file02 on the CD-ROM. Figure 10.23 This old paddle wheel steamer was digitally photographed in April, 1997. Duotones A somewhat richer tone can be achieved by using Duotone mode, which combines the grayscale image with a colored ink. Duotones are often used to extend the gray range of a photograph, because a typical printing press is capable of reproducing only about 50 shades of gray, while Photoshop can generate 256. To create a Duotone, start with a grayscale image. Within Duotone mode, you also have the option of adding additional colors, to make a tritone or quadtone. Although Duotones are usually composed of black plus a single color, as in Figure 10.24, there's no good reason why you can't use two colors instead, especially if the end result is to be displayed on a web page or as part of a desktop presentation, rather than in printed form. Figure 10.24 To create a tritone, add another color. Because it has a nice range of grays, the photo of the little girl and panda is a good candidate for conversion to a Duotone. To make a Duotone from a grayscale image, follow these steps: 1. Locate the cleaned-up photo that you saved and open it. Open the Duotone Options window (Image+Mode+Duotone). 2. Select Duotone from the Type pop-up menu, if it's not already selected (see Figure 10.24). This menu is in the upper-left corner of the dialog box. 3. Choose colors for your Duotone by clicking the color swatches. Choose Black or a dark color for Ink 1, and a lighter color for Ink 2. You must have selected the Photoshop Color Picker rather than the system Color Picker in order to access the Custom colors (Pantone process colors). If you need to switch to the Photoshop Color Picker, close this window temporarily, by clicking Cancel, and open the General Preferences window (File+Preferences+General or Command/Control+K). Set the Color Picker to Photoshop and click OK. Reopen the Duotone Options window and proceed as above. 4. Use the curve windows within the Duotone Options window to adjust the curves for your two colors. (They're the small windows with diagonal lines, just to the right of the words "Ink 1" and "Ink 2.") If you click the small window, it expands to a full-size curve grid, which works just like the regular one (see Figure 10.25). Click to set points and drag to adjust the curve. You can't see the effect on the image, but you can see it on the strip of tone in the Duotone window. Figure 10.25 Here we're adjusting the curve for Ink 2. 5. Click OK to apply the Duotone to the image. Unfortunately, there's no preview available. If you're not satisfied with the result, Undo it and try again. NOTE: Using blue as the color with black gives you an image that replicates an old, black and white TV set. Using a light to medium brown with black gives a pretty good imitation sepia, as does a combination of red and green. "Hand-colored" Photos Years ago, before color film was readily available, it was common to see hand-tinted photos. These had been painstakingly overpainted with thinned out watercolors to add a pale suggestion of color to the picture. The Photoshop Paintbrush and Airbrush tools are well-suited for recreating the look of a hand-colored photograph. You can even do the whole Ted Turner routine and colorize stills from your favorite Marx Brothers movie or Bogart classic. (You can find lots of movie stills and movie star pictures on the web to practice on.) After you have cleaned up the image that you want to hand-tint, change the mode back to color, either RGB or CMYK, as you did previously for the Duotone. Double-click the Paintbrush tool to show the Paintbrush Options, if this window isn't already open. Set the Blending Mode to color and the Opacity to somewhere between 15-20%. Remember to keep the mouse button down as you paint, since letting up on it and clicking it again will add a second 20% of color over the image. If you have large, uncomplicated areas to tint, use one of the Selection tools, such as the Lasso or the Magic Wand, to select the area. Select a foreground color, and choose Fill from the Edit menu, as shown in Figure 10.26. Figure 10.26 Use Fill for large areas. It's faster and smoother than painting. When the Fill window opens, set the opacity to about 25% and choose Color from the Blending Mode options. Set Foreground Color on the Use pop-up menu. Click OK to fill all of the selected areas with your chosen color at that opacity. If it's not enough, either re-open the fill window and apply it again, or Undo it and set a higher percentage. If it's too much, Undo and set a lower percentage. To see this image in color open file 10file03. Fixing Red Eye You've seen red eye. It's not a problem in black and white photos that you colorize, but it's often a problem in color pictures of people and animals taken with a flash camera. Basically, what happens is that the flash reflects off the blood vessels at the back of the eye and puts an eerie red glow into the pupils of anyone looking straight at the flash. Cats, by the way, can also display a similar phenomenon called "green eye," caused by the flash reflecting off taurine crystals in the back of the eye. You can avoid this if you make sure your portrait subject, human or otherwise, isn't looking directly at the flash, and by making sure there's plenty of light in the room so the subject's pupils have contracted as small as possible. Figure 10.27 shows a portrait of a cat suffering from a combination of red and green eye. This one was shot in a dark room and the flash caught the cat staring wide-eyed. If we correct the off-color eyes, it will be a nice picture. The original cat picture is included on the CD-ROM as file 10file06. Figure 10.27 Even printed in black and white the eyes look wrong. The correction is actually quite easy. Here's how to do it: 1. Open the image and zoom in on the eyes, by clicking the Magnifying Glass. 2. Use the Magic Wand to select the parts that need to be corrected (see Figure 10.28). Figure 10.28 Cat's eye selected at 200% magnification. 3. Choose the Paint Bucket tool. Set the foreground color to black. Double-click the tool icon to open the Tool Options window and set the paint mode to Darken with an Opacity of about 80%. This setting will darken the eye while maintaining the detail. 4. Pour the paint into the pupils of the eyes. With the Magic Wand selection still on, you will only paint inside the selection, so you won't have to worry about making sure not to pour into any white or colored highlights. You may need to click different selected parts of the pupil in order to cover all of it (see Figure 10.29). 5. Press Command+D (Mac) or Ctrl+D (Windows) to deselect the eyes so that you can evaluate the effect of the change. The semi-opaque black that we poured in, effectively darkened the pupils without losing detail. You can use this technique any time you have a small area in a picture that needs to have the color changed drastically. Be careful not to select any part of the image that you don't want to change. Figure 10.29 The highlights in the pupils are called catchlights. "Editing" a Picture There are times when you have to remove more than a scratch or a small imperfection from a photo. Sometimes you have to take out larger objects, in order to save a potentially good picture. Figure 10.30 shows just such a photo, snapped from a moving car as the sun came out from a crack in the clouds just in time to produce a marvelous sunset. Figure 10.30 Many things in here need to come out. However, since it was basically a "grab shot," there was no time to compose, no time to even stop the car. A fast shutter stopped the motion, and we can clean up the rest of the problems. The "raw" image is on the CD-ROM as 10file04, if you want to work along. 1. Open the photo (10file04). First, let's crop the picture to improve the composition. Select the Cropping tool from the toolbox and drag a rectangle that includes everything but the bottom of the picture (see Figure 10.31). Double-click inside the rectangle or choose Image+Crop to remove the non-selected part. Taking out some of the road at the bottom of the frame lowers the horizon, making the sky more important, and that's really what the picture is about. Figure 10.31 The sky, not the road, is what's important. 2. The next step will be to get rid of those cars. The easiest way to do that is to darken the road so they're just about to disappear. Then we can just blend them out. Using the Magic Wand, select the dark part of the road. Figure 10.32 shows this step. 3. Go to the Layer menu and select Layer+New+Adjustment Layer. Choose Brightness/Contrast from the Type pop-up menu, to open the Brightness/Contrast Layer adjustment window. Adjustment layers let you apply corrections to the whole picture or selected parts, but in a way that allows you to change your mind. Figure 10.32 Click on the road with the Magic Wand to select it. 4. Move the sliders in the Brightness/Contrast Layer adjustment window to lower the brightness and contrast in the image. You can set both to -48. Doing so lets you darken the road without darkening the entire picture. Figure 10.33 shows this step. Figure 10.33 Once you get past -50 there's not much difference. 5. Open the Layers palette (Window+Show Layers). Click the Background layer to select it. Since we've been working with the Adjustment Layer, it has been automatically selected. 6. Now, to get rid of the cars for good, we can pick up a piece of road and drag it over them using the Lasso and Move tools. Use the Lasso tool to circle a piece of dark road about the same size and shape as the car you're going to cover. Click the Move tool. (It's the pointer with crosshairs at the top-right corner of the toolbox.) Hold down the Option/Alt key and drag the selection to cover the car. Keep the Option key pressed, to copy the selection instead of just moving it. 7. After you have covered the cars on the right, drag some more black with the Lasso and Move tools, as above, to cover the white lines in the road (see Figure 10.34). Figure 10.34 Use Option (Mac) or Alt (Windows) to make the Move tool copy as you drag. 8. We should also merge the layers at this point, so we'll be able to paint over the car. To merge the visible layers, select Merge Visible from the Layers menu, or from the pop-up menu in the Layers palette, or press Shift+Command+E (Mac) or Shift+Control+E (Windows). 9. Using the Eyedropper, select some color from the water that shows between the trees. Use a small paintbrush and 100% opacity (set on the Tool Options menu) and paint in some more water on top of the car. Then select a darker tone to match the shoreline, and paint it in. Figure 10.35 shows this step. Figure 10.35 Use a small paintbrush for this detailed work. 10. The next step is to get rid of the radio tower, or whatever that structure is that's sticking up in front of the mountain. Since it's barely there at all, the Smudge tool is all we need to rub it out. Select the Smudge tool, and a small soft, edged brush. Set the pressure to no more than 40% in the Tool Options window. Smudge the tower into the mountain, with short strokes, until you can't see it any more. 11. As a final "fix" we can go back to the Curves adjustment (Image+Adjust+ Curves), darken the sky a little more, and add more red by adjusting the red channel to make the sky even more dramatic (see Figure 10.36). To see the final photo in color, open 10file05 on the CD-ROM. Figure 10.36 Boosting the red level will make the sunset more remarkable. How Much Change Is Okay? Editing a picture to improve the composition is entirely reasonable, if it's a picture for your own use. But it was precisely that action which got the esteemed National Geographic magazine in trouble some years ago. They were doing a piece on Egypt and sent a photographer to get pictures of the pyramids. The art director studied the pictures and decided the composition would be better if he moved one of the pyramids closer to the next. As soon as the issue was published, astute readers began calling and writing to the magazine to complain. An apology appeared in the following issue, but simply knowing that the manipulation was possible waved a red flag for many people both inside and outside the publishing industry. The question has been debated ever since. How much change is okay? How much is too much? It's clear that you can't always believe what you see. The supermarket tabloids frequently feature pictures that stretch the bounds of believability. Remember the one of the President shaking hands with the "space alien"? Or the "big foot" carrying off the scantily clad woman. (Why was she dressed like that in the snow, anyway?) On the other hand, if a model is having a bad hair day or her face breaks out, retouching is required and expected. Where do you draw the line? The answer depends on how the picture is to be used. Reputable newspapers and magazines tend to have strict guidelines about what they'll allow for photo manipulation. The general rule seems to be that if a change affects the content of the photo rather than its appearance, you can't do it. You can lighten an over-exposed picture of the politician, but you can't change the soda can in his hand into a beer can (or vice-versa). Blur Filters The Blur filters (Filter+Blur) are useful tools when you want to soften the effects, either of a filter you have just applied or of brushstrokes in the painting. Blurring can gently smooth a harshly lit portrait or, when used on a selection instead of the whole image, can throw an unwanted background out of focus, making it less obtrusive. The Blur filters include: Blur Blur More Gaussian Blur Motion Blur Radial Blur Smart Blur There are two basic Blur filters: Blur and Blur More. They do exactly as their names suggest. Blur is very subtle. Blur More is only a little less so. Figure 10.37 shows a comparison of the two, against a non-blurred original. As you can see, the changes are minor. Figure 10.37 Left: no blur; Middle: blur; Right: Blur More. Gaussian Blur You can apply the blur filter several times in order to get the effect you want or you can move on to Gaussian Blur (Filter+Blur+Gaussian Blur), which is a more controllable one. It uses a mathematical formula, (the Gaussian Distribution Equation or bell-curve) to calculate the precise transition between each pair of pixels. The result of this is that most of the blurred pixels end up in the middle of the two colors or values, rather than at either end of the spectrum, producing a generalized blur that neither darkens or lightens the image. The Gaussian Blur dialog box, shown in Figure 10.38, lets you determine exactly how much blur to apply by setting a radius value from .1-255. You can also use it to anti-alias the edges of an object, and to blur shadow areas when you want to create a drop shadow effect. Even at fairly small settings, it has quite a dramatic effect. Anything over 5.0 would make the image incomprehensible. Figure 10.38 Smaller numbers give you less blur. The Gaussian Blur is a useful retouching tool when applied to an area within the picture that you want to de-emphasize. The photo in Figure 10.39 was shot at a wildlife park in Canada. The tiger looks very happy, lying in his patch of sunshine, but we can also see the chain link fence behind him and the wire-wrapped tree he's leaning against. The picture would be nicer if we got rid of these reminders of civilization. Obviously, we don't want to blur the tiger's stripes. So, rather than applying the blur to the whole image, we need to select the fence and tree. Clicking the Magic Wand tool on the area in question selects it, and then we can adjust the blur radius until the fencing disappears. Careful inspection shows that while the Blur filter took out most of the fence, there are still a few spots on the tree where we can see chain links. A quick application of the Blur tool, with pressure set to 75%, blends these in, and the tiger appears to be back in the wilderness again. Use the Blur filters when you have a large area to blur. Use the Blur tool when you just want to soften a small area. It's more controllable, in terms of the degree of focus change it applies. Figure 10.39 Blurring the background also adds the illusion of greater depth of field. Radial Blur The Radial Blur filter can be interesting if you carefully choose how to apply it. It gives you two choices: Spin and Zoom. Spin mode gives you a blur that looks as if the image is spinning around its center point. Zoom mode theoretically gives you the effect of zooming the camera into or away from the image. Figure 10.40 shows the Radial Blur dialog box. In it, you can set both an amount for the blur effect (from 1-100) and a quality level (Draft, Good, or Best). Amount apparently refers to the distance that the pixels are moved to created the blur. You can see the difference in the window as you set the blur amount. You can use the same window to determine a center point for the blur effect. Figure 10.40 The same dialog box applies both Zoom and Spin. The Quality level settings determine the manner in which the blur effect is calculated; you can choose Draft, Good, or Best. Figure 10.41 shows a comparison of the three different quality levels on a single image. As you can see there's very little difference in quality between Good and Best. The biggest difference, in fact, is not in the image quality, but in how long it takes Photoshop to compute and apply the blur in each mode. Best can take quite a long time, if the image is complex and if your computer is an older model. Figure 10.41 From left to right: Draft, Good, and Best. Smart Blur The Smart Blur filter (Filter+Blur+Smart Blur) is probably the most useful one of the bunch, especially for image editing and photo repair. It blurs everything in the image, or selection, except the edges. Smart Blur calculates the differences between color regions to determine boundaries, and it maintains these boundaries while blurring everything within them. It's the perfect filter when you need to take 10 years off a portrait subject's face, or smooth out the texture in a piece of cloth, without losing the folds. Figure 10.42 shows the Smart Blur filter dialog box and Figure 10.43 shows before and after views of the filter applied to a portrait. You can set the Radius and Threshold to determine how much blur is applied, and also the Quality, as previously described, to determine how the effect is calculated. Figure 10.42 If you overdo the blur, the face starts to look like a plastic mask. Figure 10.43 On the left: before; on the right: after. The Smart Blur filter has three modes: In Normal mode, the preview window shows the effects of the blurring. Edge Only shows you the outlines that Smart Blur is working with. Edge Overlay shows the outlines as black lines on top of the image. You can use the Edge Overlay or Edge only to help you determine what threshold to set. Convert the mode back to Normal before you click OK to apply the effect. Motion Blur When we see lines drawn behind a car, a cat, or a comic strip character, we instinctively know that it or he is supposed to be in motion. Those lines represent "motion blur," which is actually a photographic mistake caused by using a slow shutter speed on a fast subject. The image appears blurred against its background because it actually traveled some distance during the fraction of a second that the camera shutter was open. In the early days of photography, motion blur was a common occurrence, simply because shutter speeds were slow, and film sensitivity was not very great. Today, motion blur is unusual unless the photographer has planned to try to capture it this way on purpose, by using the least sensitive film available and/or using a small lens opening and a correspondingly slower shutter. If you want to try to approximate the effect of motion blur, however, Photoshop gives you a tool that can do it. The Motion Blur tool (Filter+Blur+Motion Blur) can add the appearance of motion to a stationary object by placing a directional blur for a predetermined distance. In the Motion Blur dialog box shown in Figure 10.44, you can set both the distance and direction of the blur according to how fast and in what direction you want the object to appear to be traveling. The trick, however, is to select the right area to which to apply it. To get a convincing blur, you need to blur the space where the object theoretically was, as well as where it theoretically has moved to. Figure 10.44 Using the Motion Blur is tricky, at best. As you can see in the figure, we selected an area behind the ambulance, as well as the vehicle itself, to apply the blur. The difficulty with this is that the process also blurs things like the telephone pole, which weren't in motion. Thus, it's impossible to just select the object and make it look appropriately mobile since Motion Blur can only be applied to the selection. (Of course, we could paint out the telephone pole and whatever else seemed to be in the way.) If you attempt instead to apply the Motion Blur filter to the entire image, you'll get the effect that the photographer, rather than an object within the picture, was moving. This may have its uses, but it's not what we had in mind for the ambulance stuck in traffic. A much better motion tool is part of the Eye Candy package from Alien Skin Software. Eye Candy is a set of Photoshop plug-in filters that you can use to do all sorts of neat effects. You can get Eye Candy from your friendly software dealer, or download a demo version from www.alienskin.com. Eye Candy's Motion Trail filter can be applied to just the object and places a trail of whatever length you specify at the angle you set. It's shown in Figure 10.45. Figure 10.45 Set the length according to how fast the object is supposed to be traveling. However, even this is isn't a perfect solution. The Motion Trail filter applies only to the "trailing" edges of the object. The result is an object that appears to have been in motion and stopped while the picture was being taken. The motion trail is there, but the object itself is perfectly sharp. That suggests that the way to create continuous motion is to combine the two blur filters. Figure 10.46 shows the final result, an ambulance that's clearly going somewhere fast. Figure 10.46 Make sure both filters are applied at the same angle. Wind Photoshop's Wind filter (Filter+Stylize+Wind) would like to be the filter that Eye Candy's Motion Trail actually is. It smears the edge of an object, as Motion Trail does, but without the fine control that makes Motion Trail a workable solution. Figure 10.47 shows the Wind dialog box. Figure 10.47 Make sure both filters are applied at the same angle. Directionally, you have a choice of...well, left or right. (If you want a different wind direction, rotate the image, but rotate it back to normal after you have applied the wind.) As for determining how much wind Photoshop blows on your picture, there are three settings. Wind is the most evenly dispersed. Blast creates long horizontal trails of pixels; Stagger combines the two. Figure 10.48 gives you a comparison of the three wind modes. Figure 10.48 From left to right: Wind, Blast, Stagger. Obviously, these wind effects are artificial looking at best. Real wind doesn't act like that, but they may be useful for non-wind-related tasks, like blurring a texture, or adding a pattern to the drop shadow you've placed behind some text. Use the Wind filter carefully, or forget about it and use the Eye Candy version instead. Summary In this chapter, we have looked at ways to repair photographs that need help. When you have old, cracked, torn, or faded pictures, you can use a variety of Photoshop tools to cover up the imperfections and restore the image. The Eyedropper tool enables you to select a color and apply it with any of your painting tools. The Rubber Stamp clones a selected piece of the picture and places it wherever you want it, as much or as little as needed to cover a crack, fill in an empty space, or cover objects you want to hide. Tinting old photos can be managed in any of several ways. Toning may be applied by colorizing, or by turning the picture into a duotone, tritone or quadtone. Hand coloring can give you a different "old" picture look. Blur filters come in several varieties and are most useful for putting unwanted parts of the picture out of focus, and for softening hard edges. Motion Blur filters let you create the illusion of movement in stationary objects. © Copyright, Macmillan Computer Publishing. All rights reserved.

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