electric boogaloo

Whatever Tiffany, so you celebrated Christmas, babies are cute, Santa talks with a Texas accent, FASCINATING. But what about the photo tips? Aren’t those the real meaning of Christmas? Besides, don’t you owe us since you told us to turn off our flash and now we did and all of our holiday pictures are too dark and it’s all your fault and now all our Christmas memories have been ruined, you selfish prostitute?

Fair enough.

First, a couple of general notes:

• The internet is already full of excellent advice from people who are way smarter than me and who can tell you all about the technical side of photography, how to use your F-stop and photon settings and how to attain an ISO 9000 rating and what happens to your camera’s Flux Capacitor if you drive it 88 miles an hour. And there are good tutorials and books out there on how to use Photoshop. So I’m just going to share some of the cheater tricks refined techniques that I use to improve my own images. These are things I learned while working as a graphic designer, not necessarily while doing the work I was supposed to be doing but still.
• Don’t stress or let any of this stuff make you feel dumb. Most digital cameras are hugely complicated and Photoshop is an overwhelming thing that few professionals ever fully learn. The best way to be able to use both is to simply assign yourself a single task and try to do it. Every time you get stuck, jot down the question that is stopping you. Then dig up the answers to all your questions, and get back to it.

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HOW TO ADJUST THE LIGHTING IN YOUR PHOTOS LIKE YOU MEAN IT
Part two of… three I think? Four tops.

STEP 0: Sucks to be a Mac user.
First, if you’re on a Mac you need to do this annoying little thing that experts call “setting your proofing mode or whatever”. If you’re planning to print the finished file, then go on to the next step and forget I said anything. The default is print. If you’re planning to share or view the finished photo on screen, you need to go to View>Proof setup> and change it to RGB yadda yadda. Everything will look brighter and less saturated.

I know that was an annoying step but it took me two motherfucking years to figure out why my images looked so washed out when I went to “save for web”.

But wait! What if you want to post your photo on your web site and then send a print out to grandma? First of all, depending on the type of web site you are operating, your grandmother doesn’t want to look at that filth! What is wrong with you?
But honestly the only way I’ve found to handle this is to use “save as” to create two copies of my file: One is set up for web, and the other for print. Sucks. This is what is known as the ultimate suburbanite problem.

STEP 1: Create several duplicate layers.
It’s easy! Everybody! Layer>duplicate layer.
Create three duplicate layers of your original image – name the bottom one: “bright as hell” and name the middle one: “light adjusted”. Name the top one Larry. Hide the top two layers (Light Adjusted and Larry). How do you hide them? To the left of the layer name there’s a little picture of an open eye – click it to toggle between showing and hiding a layer.

STEP 2: Reveal hidden details.
All kinds of cool details can hide in the shadows. This is especially true if your photo is on the dark side, so I like to check before I get too far into editing a picture in case there’s any details or things I want to pull out of the shadows. Here’s how to do it:
2A. Click on the layer that you named “bright as hell” in step 2.

2B. Go to image>adjust>curves. If you aren’t familiar with the curves tool, there are great tutorials out there… but really all you need to know for this step is: See the diagonal line? Click somewhere towards the bottom of that diagonal line and drag it violently upward. Your image will go all wonky and bright. Click OK.

Click the diagonal line…

…and drag it upward. Your image will go all wonky and bright.

2C. Now look – there are lots of details in his hair that we couldn’t see before, and look! Pants.

2D. We’ll come back to this layer in a minute. Mentally set it aside for now.

STEP 3: Create a nice, normal light adjusted layer.
3A. Now click on your “light adjusted” layer. Here’s where that curves tutorial would really come in handy. Basically what you want to do here is make your whites look white and have everything else fall in line and look normal based on that. I usually just grab somewhere near the top of the line and tug upward, making the whole image a bit brighter. Then I tug the darks down a teeny bit, just so they don’t feel left out.

Play with the curve, watching the skin tones of your main subject or your main focal point change with the changes you’re making. A more gentle curve is going to give you more natural-looking results. Sharp weird funky things in the curve is going to make your photo appeal to my brother who, while not a stoner, does have a great appreciation for things that look totally trippy.

STEP 4. Reveal the hidden details (for real this time).
I love this step a little too much.
4A. Click on your “light adjusted” layer in your layers palette.

4B. Choose the eraser tool. Select a nice-sized airbrush, set to maybe 50% strength. Whatever’s comfortable for you.

4C. Erase away the too-dark areas, revealing! The groovy details on the too-bright layer beneath!

4D. Select all, copy merged, paste. This is actually three steps I use all the time together as one. Any time I’m happy with the way my image looks at that point, I want to merge it into a single snapshot of the different layers all together. To do this:
1. Select all (CTRL-A)
2. Copy merged (SHIFT-CTRL-C)
3. Paste into a new layer (CTRL-V)

4E. Congratulate yourself on now knowing one of the true secrets of the universe. Aren’t you fancy?

STEP 5: Turn into a total obsessive nerd about your photo.
But wait! The skin tones look nice, but now we’ve lost this cool detail in the curtains. Those things weren’t cheap you know. I mean, they were, but I love them and… anyway. What do you do if different areas of your image seem to need different levels of light adjustment? You can use the same technique from steps 1-4 to pull in details that are getting lost in the highlights of your photo.
5A. Cry because you are officially a huge nerd for noticing or caring about this level of detail.

5B. Remember Larry? The darkish layer from Step 1? Click on the layer named Larry. Better, name it something relevent to your photo like Curtains or Clouds or Wet T-shirt.

5C. Adjust it, this time looking only at the cool IKEA curtains (knopp inez curtains, pieces, $14.99) or whatever area of your photo you want to bring out. Make it a little brighter or darker as needed, but not so bright that you lose the cool details. This layer will be darker than your “light adjusted” layer.

5D. Move Larry underneath “Light Adjusted”. Click on the Light Adjusted layer.

5E. Erase away the curtains from Light Adjusted, revealing the lovely adjusted Larry layer underneath.

5F. Select all, copy merged, paste. This is actually three steps I use all the time together as one. Any time I’m happy with the way my image looks at that point, I want to merge it into a single snapshot of the different layers all together. To do this:
1. Select all (CTRL-A)
2. Copy merged (SHIFT-CTRL-C)
3. Paste into a new layer (CTRL-V)

STEP 6: Make the eyes stand out
When you take pictures of people, the eyes are everything. If the details of the eyes are lost in a muddy shadow, you’re throwing away much of the impact of your photo. Use the same technique described above to bring out the details in your subject’s eyes.

6A. Create three layers: 1 called “Super Freaky Bright Eyes”, 2 called “Eyes Erased”, and 3: called “Normal”.

Hide the top two layers (Eyes Erased and Normal). To the left of the layer name there’s a little picture of an open eye – click it to toggle between showing and hiding a layer.

6B. Click on Super Freaky Bright Eyes. Go to Image>Adjust>Curves, and make this layer freaky bright. It won’t look natural at all, but that’s okay for now. You’re after as much of the detail in the iris as possible. Click OK.

6C. Sharpen the Super Freaky Bright Eyes layer. To do this, go to Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask. Slide the slider to 100 or so and click OK.

6D. Saturate the Super Freaky Bright Eyes layer. Go to Image>Adjust>Hue/Saturation. Slide the saturation slider to the right a bit.

Here’s the resulting Super Freaky Bright Eyes layer, after curves, sharpening, and saturation:

6E. Now click on your Eyes Erased layer. Select the eraser tool, zoom in and! Erase the eyes. The result will look creepy as hell:

6F. Click on the top layer, called “Normal”. Adjust the opacity of this layer to reveal some of the freaky brightness underneath. Like this:

Slide the opacity thingy back and forth until the eyes look natural. Here’s the final result next to the original. Closer to what Nicolaus’ eyes really look like:

This trick is even more dramatic and effective when your subject has blue or green eyes.

STEP 7: Bring out textures
This will be quick because I’m being ousted from my perch on the couch. There’s a tool! Called the BURN tool. Or maybe it’s the dodge tool. Shit. It’s this one:

Click on it. Set it to burn shadows at between 8-10%.

Now brush over areas of your photo to see what it does. It should darken the creases of clothing, bring out the texture in woven fabric, leaves, grass, hair, fur, etc. It’s a subtle thing, but it can really add depth and cool professionalness to your photos.

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My kids are pouring dry cereal all over my lap, so I’m going to stop here for now. You should have a nicely lit image, but this was written by someone who was being pelted with cereal so probably some of it doesn’t make sense. Please leave questions in the comments.

And! Coming soon! Color adjustment for emotional impact and converting to black and white. Ooooh and how to deal with graininess (short answer: add more natural light when you can. When you can’t, then use Photoshop tricks to work around the grain. Either by blurring, converting to black and white, and/or giving in to the grain and adding enough other graininess that the grain looks deliberate.)