Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Digital Image Processing => Topic started by: Peter McLennan on May 14, 2007, 09:04:08 pm
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Suppose you want to darken the top third of the sky. A common enough function, no? With all previous versions of PS, you could draw a rectangular selection across the frame, feather it and use curves to adjust. This no longer works as before.
Now, if you feather the selection, it doesn't remain rectangular. Rather, the corners go round and the selection moves in from the edges of the frame. You can't darken the entire frame width. This happens whether you use the rectangular selection tool or the rectilinear lasso tool.
Am I missing something? Can you alter the behaviour of feather?
Why did they change this?
What's an efficient workaround?
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It gets weirder. I can't replicate the problem. I was clearly seeing oval-shaped results to my feathered rectangular selections, now I don't. I saw the behaviour on a stitch, but not on a single frame.
Time to put on my tin-foil hat, I guess.
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Well, even in CS2, depending on how much feather, the rectangular marquee selection ended up with round corners - it's a natural consequence of softening the edge.
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Suppose you want to darken the top third of the sky. A common enough function, no? With all previous versions of PS, you could draw a rectangular selection across the frame, feather it and use curves to adjust. This no longer works as before.
Now, if you feather the selection, it doesn't remain rectangular. Rather, the corners go round and the selection moves in from the edges of the frame. You can't darken the entire frame width. This happens whether you use the rectangular selection tool or the rectilinear lasso tool.
Am I missing something? Can you alter the behaviour of feather?
Why did they change this?
What's an efficient workaround?
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=117587\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Perhaps a bit off topic, but there are better/more controllable techniques for doing this. For example use Color Range to select the sky, no feathering, put it on its own layer. Clip a Curves Adjustment Layer to it and darken it to the tone you want the dark portion to be. Add a Hide-All Layer mask to the sky layer and draw a gradient vertically down the Layer Mask. You can adjust the tonality of the gradient and its placement as you like until you get exactly the transition you like between the tone of the underlying layer and the tone of the sky layer.
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It gets weirder. I can't replicate the problem. [a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=117591\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
In CS2 you can select past the image (and hence avoid rounded tops) when in 'windows' view but not of you are looking on a greyt background
Or it might be the other way round cant remember
I put a 25% canvas round my images and crop it off at the end to solve this 'problem'
I have an action that changes in canvas size
S
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Am I missing something? Can you alter the behaviour of feather?
Why did they change this?
What's an efficient workaround?
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Set the marquee to square corners by selecting the rectangular marquee tool and changing the amount in the feather pixels box in the toolbar to zero.
DC
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In CS2 you can select past the image (and hence avoid rounded tops) when in 'windows' view but not of you are looking on a greyt background
Or it might be the other way round cant remember
I put a 25% canvas round my images and crop it off at the end to solve this 'problem'
I have an action that changes in canvas size
S
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=118236\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Keeping the document in a window, rather than full frame (against gray) seems to avoid this, as does clipping the rounded ends. Thanks, Morgan
MarkDS wrote:
Perhaps a bit off topic, but there are better/more controllable techniques for doing this. For example use Color Range to select the sky, no feathering, put it on its own layer. Clip a Curves Adjustment Layer to it and darken it to the tone you want the dark portion to be. Add a Hide-All Layer mask to the sky layer and draw a gradient vertically down the Layer Mask. You can adjust the tonality of the gradient and its placement as you like until you get exactly the transition you like between the tone of the underlying layer and the tone of the sky layer.
Thank, Mark. Your technique is definitely more controllable but if you're after a quick and dirty solution, even just "feeling around", trying various ideas, a feathered selection works very well, too, especially if you're practiced at it.
I can repeat this new behaviour and the feathering of straight-sided, edge to edge selections has definitely changed with PSCS3. I test-reverted to CS2 and the "round corners" behaviour is not apparent there. Be advised that it takes a SIGNIFICANT curve move to reveal the change in the image, but it is there, just as the marching ants indicate. I was doing big curve moves on a monochrome image when it became apparent. If you darken the upper sky a lot with this technique, you will get lighter corners since they're affected less. The marching ants do not indicate this in CS2.
I still wonder why it was changed. It was easy to invoke the current behaviour in previous versions, should you desire it. Now you have it like it or not.
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Peter,
Is this still happening after doing what dct123 suggested?
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Peter,
Is this still happening after doing what dct123 suggested?
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Yes. By default the rectangular selection tool feathering is and was zero.
P
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Perhaps a bit off topic, but there are better/more controllable techniques for doing this. For example use Color Range to select the sky, no feathering, put it on its own layer. Clip a Curves Adjustment Layer to it and darken it to the tone you want the dark portion to be. Add a Hide-All Layer mask to the sky layer and draw a gradient vertically down the Layer Mask. You can adjust the tonality of the gradient and its placement as you like until you get exactly the transition you like between the tone of the underlying layer and the tone of the sky layer.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=117678\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
I just select the sky w/the magic wand tool and while the sky is selected, choose the color range (foreground and background) and then pull a gradient line top to bottom or side to bottom or whatever direction you want. Also, while an area is selected, click on the refine edges button to fine tune the selection.
DC
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I just select the sky w/the magic wand tool and while the sky is selected, choose the color range (foreground and background) and then pull a gradient line top to bottom or side to bottom or whatever direction you want. Also, while an area is selected, click on the refine edges button to fine tune the selection.
DC
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The magic wand is useful when there are no complications in the selection, such as multiple pockets of sky behind foreground elements that dissect it into numerous isolated patches, each one of which needs to be selected. In these situations "smarter" tools will make an easier selection. The colour adjustment approach you describe can work if you are satisfied with at least part of the Background sky information. If you are not satisfied with any of it, you need something like the approach I suggested. Unless you manufacture your foreground or background with an adjustment layer and draw the gradient in that layer's mask, once you complete the steps you mentioned above it becomes a hard-wired change that you can't undo or change "non-destructively" once you sve and close the document.
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Another method is to select 'the land' and then 'select inverse' and the sky will be selected up to the edges
The rounding has always happened if you select your feather amount before making the selection I know it is possible to make a selection then choose the feather - I have never done this
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Does anyone know how to feather/soften the magic wand selection which I find to be brutal ??
SMM
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Does anyone know how to feather/soften the magic wand selection which I find to be brutal ??
SMM
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Yes - after you make the selection and before you convert it or do anything with it, go to Select>Feather, enter the pixel size of the feather you want, click OK and you're done. BUT, I would not recommend feathering selections of skies. I've experimented with various settings quite a bit, and I've found that in most cases the sky should sit very tightly abutted to its adjacent areas, otherwise there is a serious risk of halos or artificial looking transitions once you start altering the sky's colour and tonality.
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BUT, I would not recommend feathering selections of skies. <snip> there is a serious risk of halos or artificial looking transitions once you start altering the sky's colour and tonality.
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A feathered rectangular selection that doesn't "round" at the ends mimics a traditional graduated neutral density filter almost perfectly. I
It's easy to compensate the filter's effect by changing the selection's shape or angle to avoid darkening image areas that don't need as much adjustment.
The softness of the "grad" can be adjusted easily and quickly. Haloes do not appear with the feathering selection values I use - usually hundreds of pixels.
Results are instantly visible and changeable.
There are no colour shifts if the density only is adjusted. I use LAB mode.
Applying the curve as an adjustment layer preserves the original image data.
IMHO, the magic wand is probably the dullest tool in the selection toolset. I seldom use it. CS3's "refine selection" may restore some of its usefulness.
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A feathered rectangular selection that doesn't "round" at the ends mimics a traditional graduated neutral density filter almost perfectly. I
It's easy to compensate the filter's effect by changing the selection's shape or angle to avoid darkening image areas that don't need as much adjustment.
The softness of the "grad" can be adjusted easily and quickly. Haloes do not appear with the feathering selection values I use - usually hundreds of pixels.
Results are instantly visible and changeable.
There are no colour shifts if the density only is adjusted. I use LAB mode.
Applying the curve as an adjustment layer preserves the original image data.
IMHO, the magic wand is probably the dullest tool in the selection toolset. I seldom use it. CS3's "refine selection" may restore some of its usefulness.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=118527\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Peter, there are so many ways of doing anything in Photoshop that whatever works best for each of us there is no argument. I suppose I don't understand this workflow well enough to make my own evaluation of it. Could be useful if you were to lay it out in a more step-by-step manner, and I'd be curious to give it a test-run. My initial impressions (at least till I understand it better) are that (1) working with feathered selections can be tricky because they can spill-over to unwanted areas so you need to be very carefu/experienced about shaping and configuring them, or be prepared for multiple redos (versus using Gradients and Blending Options which admittedly also involves some experience and redos), and (2) using LAB to apply Curves without colour shifts has an alternative - an RGB Curve in Luminosity mode - does pretty much the same thing without the workflow issues that arise moving back and forth between LAB and RGB (not thinking of data destruction here - that is a controversial red-herring, but more about the overall lesser functionality of LAB in Photoshop).
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Peter, there are so many ways of doing anything in Photoshop that whatever works best for each of us there is no argument.
I suppose I don't understand this workflow well enough to make my own evaluation of it. Could be useful if you were to lay it out in a more step-by-step manner, and I'd be curious to give it a test-run. My initial impressions (at least till I understand it better) are that (1) working with feathered selections can be tricky because they can spill-over to unwanted areas so you need to be very carefu/experienced about shaping and configuring them, or be prepared for multiple redos (versus using Gradients and Blending Options which admittedly also involves some experience and redos), and (2) using LAB to apply Curves without colour shifts has an alternative - an RGB Curve in Luminosity mode - does pretty much the same thing without the workflow issues that arise moving back and forth between LAB and RGB (not thinking of data destruction here - that is a controversial red-herring, but more about the overall lesser functionality of LAB in Photoshop).
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Mark, that there are many ways of achieving the same effect in PS is so true it's dizzying. For this, we can forever thank the Photoshop coders.
Darkening skies is such a frequent requirement that I've succumbed to the easiest/quickest solution when I'm on the early stages of image adjustment. If I get really serious about extracting the maximum from the file, I'l revert to something like your workflow for more flexible and accurate control.
I use the feathered selection exactly as I've used a grad in the field. Most often, I use a rectangular selection in the upper half/third of the sky and feather it enough to make its resultant darkening invisible to all but photographers. I'll use it in RGB mode for gentle corrections (where colour shifting isn't a problem) and in LAB mode for larger curve moves. I see no downside to to-and-from LAB moves, other than time and the inability of some software tools to create thumbnails from LAB mode files.
I'll use the polygonal lasso (feathered) if I want to exclude or include objects from darkening. Darkening the bottom and corners of frame is very fast and flexible with this technique and I'm continually surprised by how much this simple, easy FX can add to an image.
Feathering usually is in the order of 250-500 pixels on my ~= 3000X2000 NEFs. Sometimes as low as 75-125.
P
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Thanks for the elaboration Peter.
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I discovered this annoying 'improvement' the other day. If you select say the bottom or top half of an image and then feather, then PS used to just feather the selection without feathering areas at edge of canvas, which was ideal for doing a quick gradation. The new feathering method is very annoying as it makes a quick and simple task a lot fiddlier.
Not even sure why it has been implemented. If I wanted this new type of feather, I would simply have selected just inside the border.
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It is unfortunate to have to observe that the list of PSCS3 annoyances is growing. Of course all software has annoyances, it's just that some are more consequential than others, and CS3 seems to have some consequential ones, to judge by the dialogue at least in Luminous-Landscape and the Adobe User Forums. One hopes that Adobe reads the Forums, or that the people who alpha and beta test for them do and advise them accordingly, hopefully leading to the issue of a "." version fixing a colletion of these issues. Overall, there is nothing on the market that equals Photoshop's capabilities, but the program is so good already that Adobe's customers have very little to lose by not buying Up-grades until there is evidence provided that we are paying for conceptually and technically robust up-grades that do not backslide relative to previous performance for core functionalities.
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I totally agree, Mark. I'm surprised that Jeff hasn't jumped in here to explain. Guess he's too busy *riding* Lucky dog.
Another annoyance I've noticed and I'm not sure if it's me or PSCS3, but I no longer seem to be able to use the arrow keys to "nudge" curve nodes in Curves. I miss this function.
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I totally agree, Mark. I'm surprised that Jeff hasn't jumped in here to explain. Guess he's too busy *riding* Lucky dog.
Another annoyance I've noticed and I'm not sure if it's me or PSCS3, but I no longer seem to be able to use the arrow keys to "nudge" curve nodes in Curves. I miss this function.
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Actually Jeff is here in Toronto producing a video with Michael. You may have seen his call for comments about the menu of items they intend to have completed filming by this evening. I wouldn't be surprised if they are working very long hours to accomplish all this; it is great that he issued this canvass for what people would like to see covered, and I hope it works out well. But I fully expect he will be back here in full form on short order. It could be interesting!
I just double-checked to make sure I wasn't in the wrong program, but no, it's fine, I'm in CS3 (Windows), and I have absolutely no problem using the arrows to nudge the Curve nodes. It could be that you are suffering from a case of keyboard lockout. I don't know if you are using a Dell computer, but we used to call this "Dell Disease". Actually, this is one illness that has been largely eradicated over successive generations of models, but periodically it surfaces, and you don't notice it unless you go to use the keyboard. Interestingly it can affect some functions and not others. Try unplugging, waiting a moment, then replugging-in the keyboard. If it still does not perform these functions, then do a re-start and see whether you are in business. I hope you are, because if not, I have no further ideas to help you! (Maybe others do.)
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I may be off-topic but I don't know where to insert this. According to a member of the Yahoo HP B9180 users forum, HP has decided in consultation with Adobe not to create a plug-in for CS 3 (at least for Mac) as the print functions in CS 3 do almost all the same things. So perhaps credit is due to Adobe for one less annoyance.
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I may be off-topic but I don't know where to insert this. According to a member of the Yahoo HP B9180 users forum, HP has decided in consultation with Adobe not to create a plug-in for CS 3 (at least for Mac) as the print functions in CS 3 do almost all the same things. So perhaps credit is due to Adobe for one less annoyance.
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I still haven't found it as convenient as the plugin. (I just use Qimage these days.)