Section 4.8. Using Camera Raw for Creating Effects

4.8. Using Camera Raw for Creating Effects

Most of your adjustments in Camera Raw will be for changing brightness, contrast, and other overall characteristics (such as noise, sharpness, and vignetting) using a tool that is completely nondestructive. Most "effects" processing is terribly destructive, which is why it is placed toward the end of the book and workflow (Chapter 11, to be specific). However, there are a few effects that you can at least begin in Camera Raw. After all, the more nondestructive processing you can do for an image, the better.

4.8.1. Making Multiple Exposures in Camera Raw

Now that you know how to use and make adjustments in Camera Raw, we've come to one of the more creative benefits of using the programto use the RAW files' larger range of brightness as multiple exposures. There are basically two reasons you might want to do this: to create an especially interesting interpretation of the image by exporting the image as a particularly high-key or low-key interpretation (see Figure 4-34 and the next two sections of this chapter, "Increasing Dynamic Range by Making Multiple RAW Renditions" and "Increasing Dynamic Range Using the HDR Command") or to create exposures that can be combined to show detail in both the extreme highlights and shadows (see the two sections on HDR techniques later in this chapter).

Figure 4-34. Three different "exposures" of the same image, all made approximately two f-stops apart in Camera Raw and opened in Photoshop. Of course, as long as you haven't obviously under- or overexposed the image recorded by the camera, the difference in exposure can be varied by as much as five f-stops in Camera Raw.

4.8.2. Increasing Dynamic Range by Making Multiple RAW Renditions

One of the great limitations of digital images is that present day printing methods ultimately force us to reduce our image data to 8 bits because that's all the printer can handle. So the ultimate dynamic range is somewhat less than that of film and we often suffer clipped highlights and shadows. Of course, there are various ways to get around that limitation. One of the best is to simply create different interpretations of the RAW file and then use a simple process to merge them together so that we get detail in all the shadows and all the highlights.

NOTE

Most of the time, I actually prefer this method instead of Photoshop's HDR command (discussed in the "Increasing Dynamic Range Using the HDR Command" section next). With this method, you're not limited to static subjects because you're making a pair of interpretations of the exact same moment that, when combined, show pretty much all the brightness and tone that you could possibly see. Also, it is easier to previsualize and produce the end result.

In Figure 4-35, I use a photo of a forest just because there's so much brightness detail in that type of subject, but the nature of the actual subject matter matters little. One thing you should be extra careful of is to watch your camera's Histogram to make sure that all the tones are inside it. The process is as follows:

Figure 4-35. The low-key and high-key "exposures" of the same RAW file.

1. Go to Bridge and open your image in Camera Raw. When you see the image in the Camera Raw workspace, press Cmd/Ctrl-U until all the Auto checkboxes are turned off. Then create a low-key exposure, but don't worry too much about keeping detail in the shadows. The overall image should look as though it's about two stops underexposed. The most important thing is to be sure that you see plenty of detail in the Highlights. When you like what you see in the Preview window, click Open. Your low-key image will open in Photoshop. Be sure to leave it open.

2. Reopen Bridge and reopen the same file in Camera Raw. This time, make the adjustments so that you see plenty of detail in the darker midtones and the shadows. These shadows are going to replace the shadows in the previous (low-key) interpretation you just made, so make sure they contain plenty of detail. At the same time, make sure that anything that needs to be black is black. The best way to do this is to turn on the Shadows preview box. You can see the results of both exposures in Figure 4-35.

3. Click inside the overexposed or high-key image so that it's active and then choose SelectColor Range. The Color Range dialog appears (see Figure 4-36).

   Figure 4-36. The Color Range dialog.

4. Choose Highlights from the Select menu. When the selection marquee appears, click OK.

5. Choose SelectFeather. Enter a feather radius large enough to give you plenty of blending. I find that something around 150 pixels generally works best for merging markedly different dynamic ranges, such as we have here, but you will have to experiment on individual images to get the best result. If you select a feather radius that is too large, youll lose a lot of detail in the midtones. If the feather radius is too small, you'll get very unrealistic halos around darker-toned objects.

6. Press Cmd/Ctrl-I to invert the selection and then Cmd/Ctrl-C to copy the contents of the selection to the clipboard.

7. Make the low-key image active by clicking inside it. Press Cmd/Ctrl-V to paste the contents of your selection layer into the low-key image. You can see the final result in Figure 4-37.

   Figure 4-37. The Camera Raw Auto adjustment of the file (left) and the "fake" HDR result after the merge of both Camera Raw exposures (right).

4.8.3. Increasing Dynamic Range Using the HDR Command

Although you can create HDR files from other formats, they work best when created from RAW files, thanks to the extended range of data already in those files.

The exercise described here works best when you use a series of three to five RAW files taken two full f-stops apart. The camera should be on a tripod, you should use a remote shutter trigger (or cable release), and your subject must be still as a stone. You must not change the aperture or focus, so it's best to shoot in Manual mode for both exposure and focus and to shoot in RAW mode.

Once you've done all that, upload the pix to your computer. Although it's possible to process HDRs directly from the Bridge Tools menu, don't. You'll get much better results from the following sequence of steps:

NOTE

If your camera can shoot a sequence two full f-stops apart in a bracketed sequence, you may be able to shoot an HDR sequence without a tripod (but you still need to be very steady when shooting). Be sure to put the camera in Aperture Priority mode to force the bracketing by shutter speed, rather than by changing aperture or ISO. It will help a lot if you can at least brace the camera against a lamppost, tree, or railing. At the very least, don't breathe or wiggle in the slightest. If you do risk handheld sequences, be sure to check the Auto-overlap box in the Merge to HDR dialog that opens when you choose FileAutomateMerge to HDR.

1. In Bridge, select the images you want to merge, then press Enter/Return to open them in Camera Raw.

2. Click the Select All button to select the entire sequence. If you think there are too many in the set or that some exposures are too close together, press Cmd/Ctrl and deselect those you don't want to include.

3. Press Cmd/Ctrl-U once or twice until all the Auto boxes are turned off. You should now see a distinct one or (better) two-stop difference between the brightness of each of the thumbnails.

4. Leaving the chosen thumbs selected, click the Open button. Each image will open in a separate window in Photoshop.

5. In Photoshop, choose FileAutomateMerge to HDR. A Merge to HDR dialog that looks similar to the Camera Raw multiple exposure dialog will open. Be sure to click the Attempt to Automate box at the bottom if you attempted to shoot a handheld sequence. From the Use menu, choose Open Files. Click OK. Wait and watch.

6. A new file opens that is titled Untitled HDR. If you want to save up your image for the day when you can actually make use of all that brightness information in some future version of Photoshop, save the file as a Portable Bit Map file.

7. You now have two choices for finally adjusting the file. If you want to adjust it in 32 bits, your only choice is ImageAdjustExposure. You can see the Exposure dialog in Figure 4-39. The Exposure dialog pops up. Drag the sliders until you like what you see and click OK.

   Figure 4-39. The Exposure dialog.

   If you want to use the usual adjustment commands, you'll have to convert the file to 16 bits. You can convert to 8 bits, but why throw out that much data when you've gone through the trouble to collect it? At least keep it to 16 bits until you've finished doing all your work on the file. Then you can make a copy, flatten the layers, and reduce the bit depth for publication without destroying all the work you did on the original, which you may want to change someday without having to do it all over again. Choose ImageMode16 bits. An HDR Conversion dialog appears, as shown in Figure 4-40.

   Figure 4-40. The HDR Conversion dialog.

8. You now have several methods you can choose from to interpret the final version of the image. You'll probably find Exposure and Gamma the most useful. The sliders are extremely sensitive, so start by getting the Exposure adjusted to something close to what you want as an end result. Now adjust the overall contrast with the Gamma slider. These are subjective adjustments, so just experiment until you like the results. You can see my results from the original images I shot in Figure 4-41.

   Figure 4-41. The final result from the Exposure and Gamma dialog. Of course, you'd crop out the railing, but not until further along the workflow.

Since you now have a standard 16-bit Photoshop file to work with, you can use any of the Photoshop commands to further enhance this image. Of course, some Photoshop commands and adjustments work only in 8-bit mode, so you should wait until you're further along in the workflow before applying those commands or you'll lose a large percentage of your brightness information.

4.8.4. Create a High-Key Version of the Image

High-key images are those that are very bright in tone and have few (if any) deep shadows. High-key interpretations of an image tend to look dreamy, glamorous, and idealized. That's one of the reasons they keep cropping up as a fad in fashion, female portraiture, and cosmetic ads. However, high-key images can be equally effective in creating a dreamy or foggy landscape or romantic wedding photo.

One precaution: any image that is destined to be interpreted as high-key should be adjusted in RAW so that all the detail falls inside the borders of the Histogram. In other words, you don't want to see any more "blocked" detailespecially in the highlightsthan absolutely necessary, even though you may decide it's appropriate when you finalize the adjustments in Photoshop. The Camera Raw Histogram should look something like the one in Figure 4-42. Of course, this is an ideal Histogram for virtually any type of RAW file exposure interpretation. But it's more important here because if highlight detail is blocked to begin with, there will be even more detail blocked when you use Photoshop to further interpret the image as high-key.

Figure 4-42. The ACR adjustments and Histogram of a high-key interpretation.

It would seem that the "no brainer" way to create a high-key version of the image would be to simply drag the Exposure slider far enough to the right. The problem with that is you push a lot of the brightest details, which are precisely the ones you want to keep, right off the edge of the Histogram. That means those highlights are blocked and you won't be able to see any detail in the area where it is most important to have it.

Now, let's try an interpretation that keeps detail in the highlights (although perhaps not as much as we'd have in a "normal" or low-key interpretation) and in which there are at least enough blacks to keep the image from looking like it was a mistake. Then, go to the Curves tab and select Linear from the Tone Curve menu. The Linear curve is superimposed over the image's Histogram. At the point where the Histogram reaches the greatest height (has the most pixels), click the tone curve directly beneath. Now, while watching the Preview window, raise the tone curve to the point where you get the high-key effect you are looking for. Figure 4-43 shows the before and after.

Figure 4-43. The before and after.

If the image is a portrait, it will often need some retouching in Photoshopespecially skin smoothing and lightening the shadows around the eyesbut the above high-key steps provide a much better start than you would be likely to get otherwise. The following are the steps normally required for this type of effect. After, I'll tell you what I did in Photoshop to improve these effects when applied to a portrait.

1. Open your image in Camera Raw.

2. Move the Highlight slider until the highlights are just touching the right foot of the Histogram.

3. Move the Shadows slider as far to the left as you can without pushing the shadows off the left end of the Histogram.

4. Move the Brightness slider all the way to the right. If a significant amount of the Highlight detail has moved off the end of the Histogram, look at the brightest tones in your image. If they lack detail that you'd like to see, drag the Highlight slider back to the left until you reach the best compromise.

5. Drag the Contrast slider both ways until you feel you've gotten the best effect that you can get from this particular image.

6. Click the Open button.

You will almost always want to do some further work on your high-key image in Photoshop. The main reasons are retouching, layer blend modes, and masked Adjustment layers, since none are available (yet) in Camera Raw.

In this portrait in Figure 4-44, there are still areas of the face that are in shadow and, as a result, aren't very flattering. In fact, they're even less flattering than in a normal tone portrait because the lighter skin tones contrast more noticeably with the shadows. After opening the RAW file you just made in Photoshop CS2, open the Layers palette and click the New Layer icon at the bottom of the palette. A new layer will appear just above the background layer.

Figure 4-44. The high-key portrait as it came out of Camera Raw (left) and after further adjustments in Photoshop (right).

There are big advantages to burning and dodging with the Brush and an Overlay layer, rather than the burn and dodge tools. First, it has no effect on the original image's layer. So, if you goof, you can just paint that part of the layer 50 percent gray and then start over. Second, there's no loss of contrast or change of color balance in the burned or dodged areas because you are changing brightness with absolutely color-neutral tools. Third, you can "blend" the effect by changing the layer Opacity after the fact. To burn and dodge with the Brush and a 50% Gray Overlay layer:

1. Fill the new layer with 50 percent gray. Of course, this will hide your portrait momentarily, but choose Overlay from the Blend mode menu in the Layers palette and the gray suddenly becomes transparent.

2. Press D (for default) to set your foreground colors to black and white, then press X to switch your foreground and background colors so that White is the foreground color. Now you can dodge by using the Brush tool to paint in white. In the Brush Options, set Opacity to about 12 percent. Size the brush so it covers a bit less than the area you want to dodge and start painting into the shadows you want to lighten. Keep stroking (just as you would with the Dodge tool) until the area is as light as you like. In Figure 4-44, I did the following:

   • Created a large feathered brush to darken her hair slightly. To do this, I switched the foreground color to Black, lowered the opacity, and painted over the highlighted areas of the hair.

   • Created a new layer above the background layer to remove the wrinkles and skin blemishes nondestructively. But this time I selected the background layer. I also turned off the Burn and Dodge layer I just created (and any other layers that might have been added for whatever reason), leaving only the new, transparent layer and the Background layer visible. Next I chose the Spot Healing brush. In its Options bar, I make sure the Sample All Layers box is checked (clicking the box toggles the checkmark on and off). Now I "heal" all the spots. The Healing and Clone Stamp brushes will work the same way, but not the Patch tool. All the healing strokes appear on the new transparent layer.

3. Use a masked adjustment layer to lighten, darken, or change contrast or color balance to specific areas of the image. Select the area of the background layer you want to change. You'll want to soften the edge of the selection enough so that it blends smoothly with the other areas of the image, so choose SelectFeather and then enter a number of pixels for the width of the transition from 100 to 0 percent opacity. Go to the Layers palette and choose the type of Adjustment layer you want to use.

For this example, I wanted to drastically lighten the blouse and background, so I selected both, feathered at 100 pixels, and then used a Levels Adjustment layer and dragged the Midtone (middle) slider to the left until those areas were bright enough to suit me.

You can see the result of both the Camera Raw and Photoshop CS2 steps in Figure 4-44.

4.8.5. Creating a Low-Key Effect

In case you haven't already guessed, a low-key image is the opposite of a high-key image. That is, most of the tones in the image are in less than 50 percent of the overall brightness range. Low-key images tend to lend a more classic or somber effect. They're also used more often for masculine subjects than for feminine. Think Rembrandt. Creating a low-key effect isn't just a variation on creating a high-key effect. After you've opened the image in Camera Raw:

1. Move the Highlights slider to the left until the highlights leave a bit of space at the right foot of the Histogram.

2. Move the Shadows slider a little to the right, cutting off a bit of the end of the Histogram.

3. Move the Brightness slider to the left. Take a look at the Histogram. If a significant amount of the Highlight detail has been cropped at the top, take a look at the brightest tones in your image. If they lack detail that you'd like to see, drag the Highlight slider back to the right until you reach the best compromise that you can.

4. Click the Curve tab and choose Linear from the Tone Curve menu. Now make a curve somewhat like that in Figure 4-45.

   Figure 4-45. A tone curve for a low-key image. Yours will vary according to the exact levels of brightness in your image. Be careful not to let the peak of the Histogram move above the top side of the frame, as this will cause a loss of data.

5. Click the Open button. Your low-key image will open in Photoshop.

You may need to repeat these steps for post-processing in Photoshop. You especially may need to burn in areas that were formerly very bright highlights.

4.8.6. Making a Black and White Image in Camera Raw

There are many ways to make black and white and other types of monochrome images in Photoshopso many in fact that it could almost become its own separate science. Bet you didn't know you could do quite a decent job and do it a lot faster (although with slightly less flexibility) using Camera Raw.

Simply making an ordinary black and white comes about as close as possible to being a no brainer. After adjusting Shadows, Brightness, and Contrast to your liking, simply drag the Saturation slider all the way to the left. Figure 4-46 shows the color and black and white renditions of the same photo after this treatment.

Figure 4-46. Left: a color portrait after adjusting Exposure, Shadows, Brightness, and Curves. Right: a black and white rendition of the same portrait made by simply removing saturation in Camera Raw.

You can do better than that, though. That is, you probably can but won't know until you try. There are two ways that Camera Raw lets you change the tonalities in the image. This is done in analog photography by choosing film or using filters that make the film more sensitive to different colors of light. You can do a similar thing in Camera Raw by changing the Temperature and Tint settings. You can then go one step further by changing the color sensitivities using the Calibrate tab. All of these actions will change the tonalities in the monochrome image without actually bringing any color back into the image. To create a black and white image:

1. Make the color version of the image look as good as possible in Camera Raw by using the steps described earlier in the Adjust Tab section.

2. Drag the Saturation slider all the way to the left (by the way, you can approximate a hand-colored process by removing nearly all the saturation; try entering -60 in the box).

3. With the Saturation at -100, move the Temperature slider back and forth until you're pleased with the new Tonal values. Figure 4-47 shows several different interpretations of the same image.

   Figure 4-47. From left to right, the color temperature has been changed to 2,000, 4,000, 6000, and 8,000.

4.8.7. Toned Monochrome from Camera Raw

You can actually use the previous techniques to create a "look" approximating sepia- or blue-toned images, although they'll still have a bit of color in them. It's an especially good trick for a web site photo or to approximate it for client approval in a proof.

To create a sepia-toned image, drag the Temperature slider so far to the right that the whole image turns a reddish-brown. Now drag the Saturation slider to about -55.

To create a blue-toned image, drag the Temperature slider so far to the left that the whole image turns blue. Now drag the Saturation slider to about -55. The result is Figure 4-48.

Figure 4-48. Faux sepia and blue renditions of a portrait.