IanB
23-08-2008, 6:37pm
This is a response to Mikeala’s question» » Manarola, Cinque terre, Italy
To reduce shadows: Shadows in a photo are in a sense an underexposed parts of an image. There a few different ways, to easiest for beginners is to use the dodge tool which in photoshop is located at the bottom of the tools palette with the burn and the sponge tool; used to apply saturation or desaturation to parts of an image.
The strange names of dodge and burn comes from the dark room where to burn, extra light is added to parts of a photos to darken those parts. Dodge being to opposite to burn, light is reduced to lighten parts of a photo.
That’s the hard part; to lighten the darker [shadows] parts of a photo, take the dodge tool and set the exposure to less then 10% and apply with a soft brush to the shadows and just like magic shadows will be reduced. Burn does the opposite.
As always, use a little at a time and work on a layer or a copy. There are few others setting like shadows; highlights and midtones. The best teacher is to fiddling around to see what they do.
You can also select the area with the lasso tool; feather it, and use levels.
The one I use is the overlay blending way; I just hope Rick knows that one because he could explain it better than myself. And Rick you are also welcome to add or charge this thread so it may be easier to understand. [I thinking you might add the PS pages; I have not worked that one out yet.
Hope this helps someone in the photoshop jungle
Cheers
To reduce shadows: Shadows in a photo are in a sense an underexposed parts of an image. There a few different ways, to easiest for beginners is to use the dodge tool which in photoshop is located at the bottom of the tools palette with the burn and the sponge tool; used to apply saturation or desaturation to parts of an image.
The strange names of dodge and burn comes from the dark room where to burn, extra light is added to parts of a photos to darken those parts. Dodge being to opposite to burn, light is reduced to lighten parts of a photo.
That’s the hard part; to lighten the darker [shadows] parts of a photo, take the dodge tool and set the exposure to less then 10% and apply with a soft brush to the shadows and just like magic shadows will be reduced. Burn does the opposite.
As always, use a little at a time and work on a layer or a copy. There are few others setting like shadows; highlights and midtones. The best teacher is to fiddling around to see what they do.
You can also select the area with the lasso tool; feather it, and use levels.
The one I use is the overlay blending way; I just hope Rick knows that one because he could explain it better than myself. And Rick you are also welcome to add or charge this thread so it may be easier to understand. [I thinking you might add the PS pages; I have not worked that one out yet.
Hope this helps someone in the photoshop jungle
Cheers