Understanding Black and White Filters in Lightroom

A Post By: Simon Ringsmuth

Shooting in black and white can be an amazingly creative way to explore new areas of photography, and help you see not only your pictures, but the world around you in a whole new light. However, unless you are shooting with black and white film or with a dedicated black and white camera like the Leica M Monochrom, all your pictures will initially be shot in color and later transformed into black and white through software tricks or filters.
Lightroom has an impressive array of presets that allow you to apply black and white effects to your color pictures, but in order to select the right filter for your particular pictures it’s important to understand how these presets work behind the scenes, and what they are really doing to your photos.

Back in the days of film photography, black and white film was composed of a single layer of silver crystals that were sensitive to light and affected the film in different ways depending on the wavelength, or color, of the incoming light. Green light (like reflected off of plants and trees) had a different effect on the film than red light (reflected off apples) or blue light (reflected off the sky).
When color film was invented it contained not one, but three layers of silver halide crystals, each of which produced different colors when exposed to light–similar to how the photosensitive pixels work on modern digital cameras. The problem with this method was that sometimes a photographer would need his or her film to be extra sensitive to different wavelengths of light, depending on the particular scene being photographed. One popular solution was to use colored filters that screwed onto the front of the camera lens, which still left the resulting image monochrome but changed its properties in significant ways.

A collection of color filters from Amazon that can be quite useful in black and white photography.

These filters operate by absorbing light on different parts of the spectrum while letting other colors pass through much more easily: green filters absorb more of most colors except green, blue blocks most colors except blue, and so on. This means that portions of the spectrum similar to the color of the filter will be lighter since more of that color of light makes it through the filter and essentially over-exposing those portions of the film. Conversely, portions on the opposite side of the color wheel from a given filter color will be darker since less of that light is allowed to pass through. For example, this diagram illustrates the basic principle behind a red color filter:

The fact that more red is allowed to enter through the camera lens means the camera’s light meter would then adjust itself accordingly: you’re essentially exposing for the reds, which means that a properly exposed black and white image with a red filter would have pleasing reds with very dark cyans, blues, and greens.

By taking this basic idea and applying it to modern digital photography you can start to see how different black and white post-processing solutions work. In Lightroom you can mimic the effects of a color filter when converting an image to black and white. It’s not quite the same as actually using a physical filter on your lens and shooting using black and white film, but it’s a decent approximation that gets the job done for most circumstances. The trick is knowing which filter to use in a given situation.
This shot of kids’ feet would be nice in black and white, but in order to choose the right style it’s important to know how each type of color filter will affect the results. A green filter will make the leaves lighter while darkening the skin colors, since they are somewhat opposite on the color wheel. A blue filter will lighten the bluish hue of the rocks and the darker areas in the leaves but darken the skin colors, though perhaps a bit too much.

Here’s what the same image looks like with five different Lightroom black and white filter presets applied:

In the end I chose a yellow filter to create the final image because it exposes the legs and feet a bit more while underexposing the blue and purple hues in the rocks:

Of course Lightroom is not actually putting a color filter over your picture, but using digital tricks to approximate the same effect. It does this by altering the values of various parameters in the Develop module when a given preset is applied. After selecting a Black and White Filter preset you can see how various color values change by choosing the B&W panel in the Develop module. Note how the sliders change for various selected Presets, such as the Yellow and Blue in the example below.

Lightroom is not applying different colors to a black and white image, but deciding how much of each color value to over or under-saturate in order to mimic the effect of putting the same type of physical filter on your camera. While it’s not quite the same as shooting in pure black and white, one of the nice advantages is how Lightroom allows you to essentially create custom black and white filters by adjusting the slider values yourself. You can tweak any of the existing Presets, not just the Black and White ones, by increasing or decreasing various sliders, and even save your adjustments as new Presets that you can apply instantly to any image.
As one more extreme example, here’s an image of some bocce balls with different filters applied.

The original color image, properly exposed.

Applying a red filter preset in Lightroom produces an image where the reds are properly exposed and a bit lighter, but the blue shirts are dramatically darker since red and blue are rather opposite on the color spectrum.

The same image with a Red black and white filter preset applied.

Now look what happens when a blue filter preset is applied. Just like a real physical filter on the front of the camera lens, the blues are lighter while all opposing colors are incredibly dark because very little of that light was allowed to pass through–or at least that’s the effect that Lightroom attempts to mimic.

A Blue filter preset now changes the image dramatically.

So how do you get a properly exposed image, with a well balanced amount of black and white across the frame? In real life you would use a green filter since this would block roughly equal amounts of both reds and blues, and the effect works quite well in Lightroom as well.

Using a green filter preset results in a well balanced image.

As you can see, getting a proper black and white conversion in Lightroom is not always as simple as just clicking a button. It helps to know not only what options are available, but why they function the way they do.
What about you? What are your favorite black and white tips and tricks in Lightroom? There is much more I have not covered in this article, and if you have anything you’d like to share leave your thoughts in the comments below.

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How to Achieve Awesome Black and White Photos with Digital Filters

By: Adam Welch 

When we think about black and white photographs, we generally associate them with an absence of color.
This is certainly not the case.
Like all photographs, black and white images are made from light, and light consists of innumerable wavelengths that produce the colors we see with our eyes. With black and white photography, we might not see the saturation of colors the same way, but the luminance values of these colors remain the same whether we view them in color or black and white.
This is why it’s so important to shoot digital black and white photos in RAW mode so that we can later manipulate these intact luminance values to control the contrasts within our digitally-converted black and white photos.

All of this is based on the use of physical “color” lens filters, which filter out different wavelengths of light to produce varying contrast effects in black and white photography.
A red filter produces dark, dramatic skies in landscape photos while orange filters can radically reduce the appearance of freckles and other skin blemishes in your portraits.
Of course, this means carrying a set of filters with you constantly and also compensating for the slight reduction in light with adjustments to your exposures.

But what if I told you that your DSLR or MDC (mirrorless digital camera) most likely has all of the color filters you will need for outstanding black and white work right at your fingertips?
I know, I was initially just as surprised as you are. Read on.

Black and white digital filters

Real black and white color filters work to filter out other wavelengths of light that don’t fall into the color spectrum of the filter. This means red filters allow red wavelengths to pass, blue allows blue, etc.
The cool thing is, many major camera manufacturers have seen fit to include digital amalgamations of these color filters. They could very well be slightly buried in your camera’s settings, but Canon, Nikon, Olympus, and Panasonic all offer models which sport built-in black and white color filters.
As always, your camera user manual is your best friend. However, you may often find these filter options (if you have them) in the monochrome settings of your digital camera. In our example, I’ll be using a Canon 5D MKIII.

I’m about to say something not usually encountered when it comes to digital photography these days – when using these digital black and white filters, it can be best to shoot JPEG…not RAW.
Sure, you’re going to lose some post-processing leverage, but seeing that you can see the effects of your filter choices and you likely intend to end up with a black and white photo anyway, there’s not much reason to save the color information with a RAW file.
The wonderful thing about digital black and white filters is that you can enjoy real-time feedback of the filter effects.

Which filter to use?

We’ve touched on a few of the circumstances where color black and white filters are best suited. In most cases, your digital camera will have a set of digital color filters from which to choose: red, yellow, orange, green and blue. These options, however, will vary. For instance, my 5D MKIII has no blue filter option.
Have a look at some examples and each of these below. I’ve used the same scene to show the varying effects of each filter. I’ve also listed a few quick scenarios that may help you choose a particular filter setting.
Here’s the original color photo for reference:

Color image with no in-camera black and white filters applied.

Red Filter

This filter is a great way to pump in instant drama to most black and white landscape photos.

Notice the immediate darkening of the blue sky with the red filter

The red filter drastically reduces the transmission of blue wavelengths, thus darkening blue skies and making clouds pop. Some scenes can take on an almost infrared appearance.

Orange Filter

Taking it down a notch from the heavily-apparent effects of the red filter, the orange filter produce similar, yet subdued, contrasts to its red cousin.

Orange color filters are great “general purpose filters” for adding in contrast to your black and white photos. They darken blue skies and help to bring out the appearance of clouds.
For portraits, they work great for reducing skin blemishes like moles and freckles.
Orange filters are also great for reducing atmospheric haze and fog.

Yellow Filter

A yellow color filter produces effects even less “in your face” than the orange filter. A yellow filter is a good option for bringing out the contrasts of foliage and can also be a good choice for a general black and white photography filter when the orange filter is a bit too harsh.

The next two filters are less useful for most shooters but still bear mentioning. Well, not less useful, but perhaps not found as commonly in black and white photography as the other color filters I’ve mentioned.

Green Filter

Of course, this filter allows the transmission of green light. This makes it a good choice for flower and foliage photography as it helps to add contrast between the often green-colored stems and leaves of the plants. All while providing separation from the different-colored flowers and blossoms.

Green filters can also brighten blue skies but not as much as the last filter we’re about to discuss.

Final thoughts on in-camera digital filters…

Digital photography has made many things easier and more accessible for photographers. Even more fortunate, many of the same tried-and-true technical and optical principles still apply to our digital cameras. Built-in digital black and white color filters are just one of the many benefits of our brave new digital age.

Many popular camera manufacturers have included digital black and white color filters with their digital camera offerings, so check your particular model.
Black and white color filters allow you to add instant strength and contrast to your black and white photos.
Depending on your particular scene or subject, you can produce amazingly powerful black and whites before you ever download them from your camera. Color black and white filters have long been a standby of serious photographers, and it’s great to see them still holding their own, albeit in a more modern, digital incarnation.
So go out and try these black and white digital filters, and share your photos with us in the comments section!

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How to Prevent, Detect, and Recover from Dumb Photographer Mistakes

By: Rick Ohnsman

I make ’em, you make ’em, all photographers make ’em sooner or later – dumb photographer mistakes.
Today’s cameras are now essentially computers, and the saying about computers is, “They do what you tell them to do, not what you want them to do.”  Leave a switch in the wrong position, forget to restore a setting after taking a prior image, or toggle any myriad of other possible things other than they should be and it’ll happen – the “gotchas will getcha.”
I’ve yet to meet the perfect photographer, the one that never makes dumb photographer mistakes.  The difference is learning to quickly discover a problem, determine what the problem may be, and knowing how to quickly recover.  The intent of this article is to cover some of the more common mistakes and perhaps spare you the pain of learning them the hard way.

“Smart people do stupid things. Stupid people don’t learn from them.”
Frank Sonnenberg

We all make ’em – Dumb Photographer Mistakes. When the gotchas getcha, being able to quickly
recover is key.

The “Happy Idiot”

The worst mistakes you can make in photography are the ones you don’t detect until later, after the photo session, maybe even back home when you finally sit down to edit your shots.
Before digital, this was the kind where you might happily shoot an entire session, get home, open the back of the camera and see you’d forgotten to load any film.
This might still happen in a digital camera if you have the setting “release shutter without card” turned on and then never “chimp” your shots to see what you’re getting.

When in a store in demo mode, it might be fine to have the shoot without card mode enabled. In
all other cases, it’s a very bad idea.

Some photographers will tell you that chimping your shots (checking them on the LCD after taking them), is a sign of an amateur.  Okay,  you “perfect photographers” might not need to do this.  Me?  I chimp whenever I can.  The times when I’ve been burned most often were when I didn’t check.
One of the best things digital photography gives us is the ability to immediately review our images after taking them. We can do so right there in the field where we can immediately detect and remedy any problems.
I still bow to the wedding photographers who used film. They shot an entire wedding and were so confident in their abilities that they rarely had any nasty surprises when they developed the negatives.
There’s nothing worse than snapping away like a “happy idiot,” clueless that you’re just making those dumb photographer mistakes.

Something’s wrong here

In the medical world, they talk about “early detection.” Catch a problem early, and you can reverse it. You minimize the damage and perhaps even find a cure.
So let’s use that medical terminology; symptom, diagnosis, and cure as we look at some typical dumb photographer mistakes you might make.

Everyone will make dumb photographer mistakes occasionally. A smart photographer can quickly
identify symptoms, diagnose the problem, and affect a cure to recover quickly.

Focus Faux Pas

Flubs, foul-ups, and a few other f-words can describe what happens when you fail to get fine focus in your photos. Worse is that while we can sometimes rescue an exposure issue in editing, to date, there is no cure for a misfocused, unsharp, image. Let’s use our terms to address some of the dumb photographer mistakes you might make.

Symptom – The entire image is fuzzy, nothing sharp in the shot

Diagnosis – If you’re using Autofocus, is the switch “on”? Are you half-pressing/holding/getting focus lock and then squeezing the button the rest of the way to trip the shutter?
I’ve seen many newbies either push the shutter button in one quick motion (both shaking the camera and not allowing it to get focus before making the shot). I’ve also seen them half-pressing, getting focus, releasing, and then pressing the button a second time.

Did you forget to turn on the Autofocus switch? Or used Manual Focus and then forget to turn it
back on? When you are having focusing issues, this should be the first check.

Another possibility is that the shutter speed is too low. If you’re handholding the camera, remember the “Reciprocal Rule,” which simply means your shutter speed should be at least the inverse or your focal length. So, with a 50mm lens, that would be 1/50th. Out at 400mm, that would be 1/400 second.
You might get away with a slightly longer shutter speed if your camera or lens has image stabilization. However, it’s better to err on the side of a faster shutter speed when you can.
Of course, if you want to freeze a fast-moving subject, a shorter shutter speed will be required.
If you’re manually focusing, such as when making landscape photos, you can go to live view. Use the magnifying feature to check critical focus on a particular spot, and then make your shot. But here’s the “gotcha” with this one. (Don’t ask me how I know about this.) You use that method to make your photo, then go onto making other shots, but forget you’ve turned off autofocus. The camera may still fire, even if the focus is slightly off. While you might not detect a very slight misfocus while in the field, you’ll cuss later when back in edit, you detect your mistake.
Cure – There is no editing cure for photos where the focus is soft.  Yeah, I know Photoshop and other software has some tools that claim to fix blurry photos.  Some are even using  Artifical Intelligence (AI) to do it now.  It sorta, kinda works, but there is no substitute for getting it sharp in the field.  Learn proper focusing techniques.  Let’s look at some other typical focus flubs.

Understand and use the autofocus points in your camera. Most cameras will default to the center
point, and if your subject is not in the center, you may not get focus on the subject you want.

Symptom – Some things in the image are sharp, just not where you wanted

Diagnosis – Did you use the focus-points in your camera and put them on what you wanted in focus? Beginners often don’t know about focus points, merely using the default center point. Then, when what they wanted in focus wasn’t in the center, they wonder why the subject isn’t focused. Another possibility is too wide an aperture giving too limited a depth of field. A good example is a group photo where people in the front row are in focus, but the second-row people aren’t.
Cure – There’s no cure for the shots you already made that are blurry. However, if detected in the field, check to be sure you are using the focus points properly.
If your subject is moving, perhaps continuous (servo) focus might be appropriate. Be sure your aperture selection gives you adequate depth-of-field too.

When working on a tripod, turn off the image stabilization. It won’t help, and in fact, might hurt
image sharpness.

Symptom – You were on a tripod, but your shots are still slightly soft

Diagnosis – Is the stabilization switch on your camera or lens on?
Cure – When working on a tripod, turn off the auto stabilization.  It won’t help and could possibly hurt your images, attempting to compensate for motion that isn’t there.

Switches and buttons and menus, oh my!

There are so many settings in modern cameras that it can be overwhelming. Many of the auto modes can be lifesavers, relieving the “chores” of photography and letting the photographer instead concentrate on being creative.
They are great when they work.
Where they fail is when the camera is “fooled” by circumstances where an intelligent photographer would choose differently, or when settings are inadvertently left on or off.
Let’s look at some examples.

Spot metering has its uses, but forget to switch back to something like matrix/evaluative metering
when you’re done, and you will puzzle over why your images are wildly exposed.

Symptom – The exposure seems completely out of whack, regardless of the mode you’re using

Diagnosis – Did you go to Spot Metering for a previous shot and forget you left that on?
Cure – Many cameras now warn the user they are in spot metering mode with a “!” mark in the viewfinder.  Spot metering has very specific uses, and in those cases, it’s terrific.  In most other cases, it will wildly mess up your exposure and leave you to wonder why.

Auto Noise Reduction works by taking a second black frame and combining it with your exposure.
You get to wait while it does that. Decide if that’s acceptable before engaging the option.

Symptom – You make a shot and it seems to take the camera a long time before it’s ready to make another.

Diagnosis – If you have the Long Exposure Noise Reduction feature turned on and are making longer exposure images, the camera will take a second “black frame” image and then use that to reduce noise.  Sometimes that’s great, but realize it will take twice as long for the camera to process and store the image, sometimes making you wait.
Cure – Use the Low Exposure Noise Reduction feature only in special circumstances (perhaps when doing astrophotography where high ISO and noise might be involved). Otherwise, turn it off.

You might use multi-shot bracketing to make images you’ll combine later. Be sure to turn it off
when done or you’ll get a surprise when making subsequent shots.

Symptom – You click the shutter, the countdown timer activates and then fires off five shots

Diagnosis – You probably set up the camera with a 2-second timer and also for a 5-shot bracket.
Cure – This is a great feature when you want it, but after you’re done, return the settings to single-shot and turn off the countdown timer setting.  Otherwise, when you only want a quick single shot, you’ll wait while the time counts down and then get several.

You might have an occasion to only want .jpg images, but don’t forget to put it back to Raw when
you’re done. Your editing options are much more limited with .jpg files. You will be very sad if you
intended to make Raw images and only come home with .jpgs.

Symptom – You get home from a session and all of your images are .jpg, no raw images to be found on the card

Diagnosis – You probably did an earlier shoot where you only needed .jpg images. You set the camera to do that, and then forget to put it back.
Cure – You can still work with .jpg images, but you will have greatly reduced editing options.  Chimping will not tell you when this is happening as the image you see on the LCD is always a .jpg. So make it a habit to always put your camera back in Raw Mode after a shoot if you’ve changed it.

Return to a standard

I could go on about all the settings, buttons, and dials you might have in the wrong position, what will tip you off, and how to correct such problems. There are dozens of “gotchas” when this occurs.
The common cure is to always return to your personal defaults if you’ve strayed for a special situation. Make it a habit to check and return your settings to your defaults when you put the camera away. Then, when you’re driving down the road on the way home and Bigfoot (Yowie in Australia, or beasts with a few other names in other parts of the world), suddenly steps out of the forest, you can quickly turn on the camera and have a better chance of getting the shot.
Seriously, for any situation where you don’t have time to fiddle with all your settings, you want a standard that will pretty much give you quick point-and-shoot capability. I can’t tell you what that is for you, but it’s your base settings. It’s the place you most often work from and use for a good majority of your photos.
For me, this is the “P” or Program mode of my camera, Single-point Auto-focus, Auto White Balance, and Auto ISO. Sure, that’s quite automatic and perhaps not where I’ll ultimately go. Maybe I’ll be using Aperture Priority, Continuous Focus, and ISO 100 or even Manual exposure mode, but it’s a great default to work from.
My brain might (hopefully) be better, but the camera is quicker. Plus, the engineers that developed auto modes were no dummies. When seconds count, and Bigfoot appears, I can be ready.

Program in specialized settings

I love that I can also have more sophisticated set-ups stored in the Camera User (C1 and C2) modes on my Canon 6D. Many other cameras have this option too, a way to set-up and store various settings and then recall those so that with a spin of the mode dial, you can use all those settings.
For example, should I want that 5-shot bracket with a 2-second timer, Evaluative metering, ISO 200, Auto ISO, Aperture Priority with a f/11 f-stop, and perhaps a few other things thrown in, I can get there with a turn of the dial to C1 or C2, wherever I have that combination stored. When done, I put the dial back to my standard. Quick to turn on, quick to turn off, no “gotchas.”

Mistakes are lessons inside out.”
Matshona Dhliwayo

My Canon 6D has two memory storage locations; C1 and C2. They are great for entering more
complex camera settings with the ability to turn them on and off with the turn of a dial.

Filter forgetfulness

I wish I didn’t know about this one first hand.
I was shooting earlier in the day with my circular polarizer on. Later that evening, as the light was getting low, I knew I’d have to perhaps raise the ISO a bit, so I did. So why was I still having to use longer shutter speeds and wider apertures than I thought I should? Oh well, I made my shots figuring I could deal with the issue later in post-production.
As I was putting the camera away, I saw my blunder – the polarizer was still on! Arghhh!!
I’d needlessly given up two-stops of light because I hadn’t taken the filter off when I was finished using it. I won’t make that mistake again. The takeaway? Turn your mistakes into lessons so you won’t repeat them.

Here’s a fun and educational game to play with your photographer friends.

Play “Stump the Chump”

Here’s an exercise I’ve used with photo students to teach them to quickly detect, diagnose, and recover from a camera problem. I take their camera, have them turn their back, and then purposely change a setting, flip a switch, or do something else that will create a problem. I might even swap in a dead battery or a full storage card.
When they turn around, I hand them the camera. They have three minutes and three shots to put things right and make a good image. The fourth shot, when the three minutes are up, must be a good one.
This exercise teaches them the controls of the camera and how to detect and cure camera problems. It’s all too easy to inadvertently bump the wrong button, select the wrong menu item, or leave a setting in the wrong position after a previous shot.
Something else to practice is learning where all your camera controls are in the dark. How many times have you fumbled in a low light or night photo session because you haven’t memorized the basic buttons and settings on your camera? When the situation is fleeting, and you must get the shot now, having to futz around with the camera is the mark of a rookie.

Take a page out of the Boy Scout Handbook when packing your camera bag for a photo session or
trip and Be Prepared! It will head off many dumb photographer mistakes.

Be prepared

It’s the Boy Scout motto – Be Prepared!  You will head off many dumb photographer mistakes by taking the time to check, maintain, properly pack, and re-check your gear before you go.
Here is a checklist that you might want to copy and save:

• Have the camera bodies and lenses you might use?  Don’t carry more than you need, but also don’t leave home something you might want. Learn how to properly pack for any given photo session or trip.
• Batteries fully charged?  You wouldn’t start a trip with a half-tank of gas.  Don’t go out with a battery only half-charged.  Don’t be “half-gassed.”  Have extra, fully-charged batteries and charger.
• Storage cards off-loaded, formatted, and empty before you go?  Always have more storage than you expect to need.  You never want to have to delete photos in the field so you can make more room.  Don’t use your cards for long term storage.  After a session, offload your images to your computer, make a backup elsewhere, and then format your card with the camera.  Deleting images with the card in the camera increases the risk of file corruption.

A smudge on your lens can ruin an entire photo session if it goes undetected. Clean your lenses
before a shoot and then periodically look at them during a session.

• Lenses cleaned? A big smudge, undetected can ruin an entire session.
• Have your filters? Digital editing tools have greatly reduced the need for specialized filters, but the one for which there is no substitute is the circular polarizer.  What you want will, of course, depend on what you expect to be photographing.
• Tripod cleaned, screws tight?  Is your tripod plate or L-Bracket on the camera or attached to the tripod?  Not being able to mount your camera to the tripod, or having something break or fall off, will ruin your day and maybe your camera too.
• Sensor cleaned?  Yeah, you can remove sensor dust specks in editing, but save yourself the work by checking it before a shoot. Clean it when necessary or have a pro do it if you feel you don’t have the skills.
• Have your camera strap? When going handheld, the camera strap is your “safety belt.”  Fumbling and dropping an expensive camera has been known to make grown men cry.
• Have a camera rain cover? Check the forecast, and if in doubt, have a rain cover.  I just keep one in my pack at all times.
• Have photographer comfort items Hat, gloves, sunscreen, and bug repellant?  When you’re miserable, your photos will suffer.
• Water and snacks? A happy photographer is a well-fed, well-hydrated photographer.

“Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

It’s been said that if you’re not making mistakes, you’re not trying hard enough. I would add that if you’re not more adventurous and explorative with your photography, always shooting the same subjects with the same camera settings, in the same way, you’re likely in a rut. You might make fewer mistakes, but you will also make fewer unique and exciting photos.
The same goes for learning what you can do with your camera. If you always work in full Auto or Program mode, always use Auto-Focus, always shoot .jpg or rely too much on your camera to do your thinking, you’ll make fewer mistakes, but just average photos. Be adventurous, go full-manual, try new things, and make some mistakes. It’s okay. When you do, think about what went wrong and try it again.
As for the just plain “dumb photographer mistakes,” the kind we covered here, they are a fact of photographic life. You’re gonna make ’em.
Learning to quickly detect, diagnose, and rapidly recover – that’s the mark of a pro. We can also learn from each other, so be a little humble and share your mistakes here with your fellow photographers in the comments section below. We can all have a chuckle and then perhaps not have to make those same mistakes ourselves.

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The 6 Top Photoshop Tools for Still Life Photography

By: Darina Kopcok 

Even if you do most of your editing in Lightroom, you’ll still find that you need Photoshop to really finesse your photos. Because it’s a pixel editor, Photoshop offers you more retouching tools and gives you further control than you can obtain from Lightroom.
In still life photography, like food and product, every aspect of your image needs to hold up to scrutiny for maximum impact. It needs to look clean and perfect.
There are certain tools in Photoshop that will help you tweak the best out of your images.
Although this article won’t go in-depth for every single tool – you’d need several articles for that – it will get you up and running in applying some basic treatments to your still life photography.
So without further ado, here are the most useful Photoshop tools for still life photography.

1. Spot Healing Tool

The Spot Healing tool is one Photoshop tool that you’ll use on every still life image you retouch in Photoshop. This tool has improved greatly over the years.
Similar to the Healing Brush tool, it samples pixels from the surrounding areas to correct blemishes and imperfections. However, unlike the Healing Brush, it automatically samples the pixels without your having to specify where they should come from.
Why is this so great? Because the Spot Healing brush does this way better than it used to. This means you can remove dust and small marks very quickly.
If you’ve ever tried the Spot Removal tool in Lightroom, you’ll know that clicking on it repeatedly will quickly slow down Lightroom’s performance. Photoshop will give you better results, more quickly.
When you’re dealing with still life photography, remember that you want a clean-looking image. Zooming in on your photo at 100% and cleaning up any dust or blemishes will make a big difference in the overall aesthetic.
To use the Spot Healing tool, select it from the tool menu or hit J.
Zoom into your image and simply click on the blemish you wish to correct. It will automatically sample from an appropriate area and apply the pixels.
You can also clean up a larger area by brushing over it.
One thing to note is that if you use it repeatedly in a small area, the pixels can start looking unnatural and plastic-like.

2. Patch Tool

The Patch tool is another Photoshop tool for still life photography that you’ll most likely use on the majority of your images.
It works great on small areas by creating a selection and replacing the pixels with other pixels of your choosing. It considers lighting, shade and texture when sampling an area.

In the image below, I wanted to get rid of the yellow filament from my flower because I found it distracting.
There are many ways to do this in Photoshop, but I find the patch tool quick and seamless for this type of correction.
To use the tool, select it from the toolbar.
Draw a selection around the area that you wish to correct.

Click on your mouse and drag the selection to an area that you would like to replace the selected pixels with. Let go of the cursor.
Press Command D to undo the selection.
To have greater control over the final result, make sure you have Content-Aware selected in the tool menu and play with the Structure and Color to further influence the edges.

3. Content-Aware Fill

Content-Aware Fill is sort of like the Patch tool on steroids.
It was first introduced in CS5 as a fill option in the Fill Dialog box. In 2019, Adobe improved this tool by leaps and bounds.
Content-Aware analyzes the pixels from a chosen area to determine what pixels it should use to remove unwanted objects. With the improvement, it allows you to choose exactly where you want it to sample the pixels from. It gives you so much more control and also allows you to rotate, scale or resize your selection, and preview the results.
To use Content-Aware Fill, draw a selection around the area you would like to correct. The Lasso tool makes a nice, versatile tool, but I often use the Rectangular or Elliptical Marquee tools.
Go to Edit and choosing Content-Aware Fill from the dropdown menu.

This opens up the Content-Aware task space.

On the right-hand side of the task space, you’ll see a Preview area that will show you how the changes are affecting your image.
If required, resize the sampling area with the Sampling Brush Tool.
You can find the tools for Content-Aware Fill in the left-hand corner of the workspace. The Brush tool is the first one on the top and the one you’ll most often use.

You’ll also notice on the right-hand side of the workspace that you can make adjustments to the opacity.

Save your changes as a Duplicate Layer.
I often use Content-Aware Fill to even-out my still life photography backgrounds, which tend to look less even in color and texture as I would like.
In this image of a salad, I wanted to even-out the left-hand corner of the image, which was looking too dark, despite my removing vignetting. I used the Rectangular Marquee tool to select the part that I wanted to change and brushed out the parts of the image I didn’t want sampled from.

I played around with the opacity until I got something that looked good, which in this case was 66%.

4. Clone Stamp Tool

Can anyone live without the Clone Stamp tool?
No matter what kind of photography you do, you probably use the Clone Stamp tool a lot. Great retouching is largely about cleaning up the little things, which all come together for a powerful, transformative effect. Clone Stamp is one of the crucial Photoshop tools for still life photography.
The Clone Stamp tool allows you to copy pixels to a different part of the image to another. It’s great on areas where you have texture and pattern, or an edge. However, with this tool there is no real blending, so you often have to use it with other tools to get a more seamless-looking result.
Note that if you work with the Clone Stamp tool on its own layer, you can use it with other tools such as Free Transform to make further adjustments to the cloned areas.

In the image above, I used a surface that was textured and knotty, but I wanted it to look smoother. I did this (achieving the image on the right) by cloning smoother areas over the bumpy areas.
To utilize the Clone Stamp tool, select it from the toolbar by hitting S for the shortcut, or hit Cmd/Ctrl+S 

Select the area that you wish to paint the pixels from by choosing Opt/Alt. The selection point will be indicted by the crosshairs.
Paint with your cursor over the area you want to correct while making sure the crosshairs don’t pick up any pixels you don’t want.

5. Transform

Transform is another of the useful Photoshop tools for still life photography because it allows you to make changes and adjustments to objects in your image, like straightening and shaping.
For example, I decided to make a change to the olive oil bottle in the image below. I wanted to adjust the direction the handle was facing and to make the bottle appear larger in scale. I did this easily and quickly with Transform.

Start with your background layer or your top layer. Use the appropriate tool to make a selection. In this case, I used the Lasso tool but I could have also used the Quick Selection tool.

Copy the selection onto another layer by hitting Ctrl/Cmd+J.

Then hit Ctrl/Cmd+T to bring up Transform, or go to Edit and choose Transform from the Menu.
Make the adjustment by manually rotating or expanding the Transform box by clicking on the white points/squares.

Hit Enter to accept the adjustment.
Always make sure to constrain proportions when necessary.

6. Focus Stacking

If you’re shooting a product, you’ll usually need your subject to be sharp throughout. This means using a high F-stop number like F/13 or F/16. However, this requires a lot of power if you’re using flash.
You can also get lens diffraction at these higher numbers, which will degrade the quality of your photo.
The answer to shooting with a wider aperture and still getting a sharp image is to focus stack in Photoshop.
This is when you take two or three images with different focus points and blend them together to create one image file that is sharply in focus throughout. It’s a quick process and isn’t anywhere near as complicated as it sounds.
To utilize focus stacking, make sure your images have the same exposure and alignment.

Export PSD files into a folder or onto your desktop where you can easily navigate to them. 

Follow these steps:

• Open Photoshop.
• Go to File and choose Scripts.
• Select Load Files into Stack.
• Click Browse and select all the images from where you saved them initially.
• Check the Box for Attempt to Automatically Align Source Images.
• Click OK. Each of the images will open as a new layer in Photoshop.
• Hold down Shift and click on the top layer in the Layers panel to highlight all the layers.
• Under Edit, select Auto Blend-Layers.
• Check the box for Stack Images and also for Seamless Tones and Colors. DO NOT check ‘Content-Aware.’ Click OK.
• Save the final image.

If you have uploaded a lot of images, flatten the final image by selecting Layer -> Flatten Image -> Save.

Three images focus-stacked in Photoshop

Photoshop is a powerhouse of a program and there are many tools that can help you retouch your photography. The tools mentioned here are my top Photoshop tools for still life photography. They are easy to learn and utilize, and will quickly take your images to the next level.
Do you have any other Photoshop tools for still life photography that you’d like to share? Do so in the comments section!

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Sony Is Now Beating Nikon in Camera Sales. What Does This Mean for the Industry?

By: Jaymes Dempsey

According to Nikkei, Nikon has now dropped behind Sony on overall camera sales, leaving the market with these adjusted rankings:
Canon, #1.
Sony, #2.
And Nikon, #3.
This hardly comes as a surprise, given recent market trends in digital camera sales, along with Nikon’s recently forecasted loss in imaging products (instead of an originally predicted profit).
The truth is that digital camera sales are bleeding across the board, not just for Nikon. In recent years, sales have dropped for Canon, Nikon, and Sony, but Nikon’s poor performance has allowed Sony to creep past them in the rankings.
Note that Sony was already leading the industry in full-frame camera market share, and was also leading Nikon in interchangeable lens camera sales.
In other words: Sony’s success is simply another step on the road to its digital camera dominance.
For Nikon shooters, this is far from good news. As of right now, Nikon’s full-frame mirrorless lineup is in its early stages, with only two cameras and a handful of lenses. But if Nikon decides that its imaging business is costing too much money, the leadership may decide to head into the safer waters of its precision equipment business (where Nikon is performing well and profits are steadier).
If this happens, we could see a decline in both the number and quality of Nikon products.
And then, assuming that digital camera sales continue in the downward direction, and assuming that Canon and Sony continue to push for market dominance, we might see the end of Nikon’s imaging business, period.
Is speculating about the end of Nikon cameras a bit alarmist?
Maybe.
But reports regarding camera sales have been nothing but alarming in recent years, defying expectations and suggesting that things are changing faster than anyone could have predicted. And with recent speculation about Olympus’s camera business shutting down, well, it’s hard not to wonder.
So what do you think? Will Nikon remain competitive in the camera industry? Or will the company decide to focus on other areas and drop its image business entirely?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

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