Photoshop "Revisit and Retouch" Challenge #1

Grand Cayman Fuel Depot
Click for large view

Neat looking image, eh? Well, what if I told you it started as the frame to the right?

The above is my contribution to the CameraPorn Blog's "Revisit and Retouch" project (don't worry - it's just a clever name... work safe!). Ryan Goodman took this photograph a few years ago in Grand Cayman and produced a nice image (after some editing) which you can see on his site.

Interested to see what other folks would do to this in the digital darkroom, he's inviting those interested to download the RAW files and give it their best shot.

In this post...
In this post I'll give a detailed look at my steps for completing this retouch and at the end I'll link to some books and podcasts that will help teach you these techniques in more detail.

Note: Clicking on the images will take you to a gallery where you can see larger versions of the screen shots shown here. The screen shots have detailed info in their captions.

My Steps for Retouching this Photo
Lightroom
Ryan mentioned that he had shot this at f/22 & he got every spec of dust on the lens & sensor to show up nice and clear as a result! I didn't count, but once I loaded the files into Lightroom I must have added 50 or more spot removals! I'll touch on the f/22 thing a bit later.

I did some basic tweaks to the files in Lightroom - mostly just the dust and also warmed them up a bit. This is a near-sunset shot so we'd expect the light to be considerably warmer. I also pumped the colors a bit via vibrance and the HSL tools.

Lightroom Capture Sharpening and CA Removal
Though Ryan used a small aperture, I felt that all of the photos were a bit soft. They could use a significant dose of Capture Sharpening. This probably was a result of camera shake - a problem that plagued the +2EV exposure greatly. More on that later.

There was also some cyan Chromatic Abberation in this image. Removing this was a piece of cake with the Lightroom tools.

Export & Bring into Photoshop CS3
We've gone about as far as we can in Lightroom. Now, we'll Export TIFFs of the three images and load them into Photoshop CS3. Take two of the files and drag them on top of the third using the Move Tool and holding down SHIFT to ensure the images line up exactly. Next comes magic!

Ryan didn't seem to use a tripod between these exposures - they were slightly different. Fortunately using the CS3 Auto Align Layers tool makes quick work of it: Just highlight all three layers & select "Auto-Align Layers" from the Edit menu. Chose the default option of "Auto" and click OK. CS3 will massage the layers until the static areas all line up exactly!

Do a ton of masking
Next, we need to do a bunch of masking in order to get the various layers showing through in the way we want them. I want to use:

• The -2 EV exposure for the nice dramatic sky
• The 0 EV exposure for the containers and the rocks
• The +2 EV exposure for the whitecaps and the blurry water

In order to accomplish this, I'll make some masks on the various layers to show and hide the parts I want from each. Clicking on that thumbnail will get you a closer look at the masks I ended up with, as well as some details on the way I handled the selection in the trickier parts.

Also, note that I ended up using the sky layer (-2 EV) in Soft Light Blending Mode. This gave a more natural look to the scene... ALWAYS experiment with the different Blending Modes!

Initial Painting with Light
If you look at the screen shot from the last section you'll see that I've added two curves adjustment layers - one to darken, one to lighten. I'm masking off different parts of each of these to get the effect I'm looking for from the light. More of that will come later.

Pump up the Jam, er, Color: Lab Color Mode
Now that our image is looking pretty good I think it's time to take it up a notch. A great way to really crank the color is to use the Apply Image command in the Lab Color mode. First, do a stamp visible (CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+E) to get everything merged onto a new layer. Now, switch to Lab Color mode via Edit | Mode.

At this point we'll unfortunately lose our adjustment layers. If this were a real image, it'd be advisable to save off this file and begin working from a separate TIFF.

Now that we're in Lab Color mode, choose Apply Image from the Edit menu. First, set the Blending Mode to Soft Light & the Layer to our merged stamp. Then, try out the various channels to see what works best. In this case it's the 'b' channel, but that won't always hold true.

Boom! Now *that* is some saturation!

Out of the Lab, into the Crop
We're done in Lab, so convert back to Mode RGB. We're going to do some cropping on this image to give it some punch. First, I felt that the original crop was a bit static - there's a lot going on above & below and your attention isn't really led to anything. Plus, the horizon right in the middle isn't helping our quest for drama.

I've decided on a nice wide 16:9 crop on this scene which leads you up through the turbulent waters and then to the No Smoking stencil on the main container. While I was at it, I straightened the lines just a tad counterclockwise (based on the horizon). The new crop is really taking this image somewhere!

More Light Painting and Some Sat for the Sign
Next, I've added a new layer in Soft Light mode & used my black & white brushes to do dodging and burning in various areas for creative effect. Note that I use a drawing tablet, so I can vary the opacity of my brush with the pen pressure. It's really nice working this way as you can be expressive as you draw.

I also added a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer to punch up the red paint on the No Smoking sign that stenciled onto the main container. Since this seems to be where I'm drawn in this image I really wanted that to pop.

Creative Sharpening
Finally, we get to sharpen. We've got two separate problems to deal with in sharpening: the camera shake on the rocks and the overall image.

We'll use the motion blur mode of Smart Sharpen to fix the rocks as best we can. The +2EV exposure was 1 second, which opened the door for all sorts of movement. I tried to avoid using the rocks & just getting the water, but it turned out that I needed a portion of the rock from that exposure. This correction is masked to just those rocks that were affected by the shake.

Last but not least, we'll use an overall sharpening on the image to make it just a bit tighter. After applying the effect I've masked out the water and sky - I don't want to have any more definition in these areas.

Here are the final layers:
Total editing time: about 2.5 hours

Conclusion, Thoughts, and Photoshop Resources
I'd like to thank Ryan Goodman for putting a great idea for a project out there. I'm looking forward to seeing what others come up with!

One comment I have about the image itself is that f/22 is almost always a little overboard when it comes to DSLRs. While Ryan's intentions of getting maximum Depth of Field were good, in this case the small aperture led to slow shutter speeds and (slightly) soft results. Here, f/16 or f/11 would have likely have been fine & would have gotten us 4 times the shutter speed!

Of course, this would then take away from the ethereal-looking water, but you could always back it up with an exposure just for the water & blend it in later. A steady tripod would have also have helped in this situation, but that's not always possible.

Overall I'm pretty happy with the results of my edit. In the real world I'd probably let this sit over night and come back to it fresh to see what other tweaks I'd like to see. (And hopefully that doesn't result in starting over!)

Photoshop Resources
If you'd like to learn more about the techniques I've used here, check out some of the following:

• Scott Kelby's 7-Point System for Photoshop
• Steve Caplin's How to Cheat in Photoshop CS3
• My list of Recommended Photography Podcasts

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