Essential techniques for unique silhouette photography

Why silhouette photography

In this post we would like to show you all the essential techniques for silhouette photography so you can create very unique and awesome images.

Now the first thing we hear from a lot of photographers is “silhouettes? I don’t do those tacky things!”

However did you know there are different degrees of silhouette not to mention so many ways to create them and incorporate them into your work? Maybe you’re looking for an ‘in your face’ silhouette or maybe you’re looking for something a lot more subtle. We would like to help you to take whatever silhouette photography knowledge you have on to a new and exciting level with our list of techniques ranging from the basic camera settings through to advanced Photoshop techniques.

Let us show you how to add the special interesting ingredients to your images.

Original ‘Donor’ image.

Original silhouette photographer image.

Select the photographer. I used a quick selection tool in Photoshop and then cleaned the image up with the Select and Mask tools.

Photographer cut out.

Photographer is on new layer. Position and scale cut-out so it looks correct.

Final composition.

Original image with white sky.

Original sky image.

Use Multiply to get the top layer to show darker areas of lower layers

The post All the Essential Techniques for Silhouette Photography to Create Unique Images appeared first on ImageExplorers.

There was a new release of Photoshop today as Photoshop CC 2019 on Adobe Creative Cloud. Adobe never cease to amaze us with the updates that come forth making editing images easier but still allowing you to be creative. This release has made user experience improvements and is more intuitive.

The Content Aware Tool

This has evolved over the past few years and gets better and better. If you’ve never used it, you are in for a treat. The Content Aware tool can be used with the Patch, Lasso and other selection tools. It looks at the pixels around the selection and will intelligently fill your selection with these. It’s not foolproof and will sometimes get it wrong, but generally is an awesome way of filling in gaps or removing unwanted objects / marks. However, they’ve improved it so that there is now more control and you can even choose which pixels to use and which to exclude, as well as create fills on separate layers.

The older version was great at getting small parts of a larger image, but if you had a larger area to fill then it needed more work.

Now there is a new option in the Edit menu called Content Aware Fill. This is different to going to Edit > Fill > Content Aware and will bring up a dual pane.

New Content Aware Fill from Edit Menu

The green area is your sample area, so now, if you don’t want it to include anything you paint it out! It’s much more accurate with amazing results. The panel on the right is the preview of the final image.

The right hand panel is a preview

The green area is the sample area

You then paint in anything you want to copy from and paint out anything you wish to exclude.

There are blending modes (Color Adaptation) that you can experiment with to get slightly different results.

By default, it also outputs your new content aware fill to a new layer so it’s non-destructive. This also means you can have a couple of goes and blend those results to get an even better result if required.

Technology really is incredible isn’t it!

Frames

These are really good and are similar to frames in InDesign. You set your frame and then drag in an image from wherever you wish (can be Finder, Libraries, local disc etc) and it fills the frame proportionally with your image. They are a neater version of the Clipping Mask.

New Frames in Photoshop CC 2019

This is not limited to images. Bringing in some text, you then convert to a frame (makes it non-editable). Then apply an image or effect!

New frames can convert images and text to frames

You can also click over an embedded image with a frame and it converts to a frame and a smart object.

Another really cool feature in frames is you can create your own shape – you then right click in the layers panel and convert to frame!

New Symmetry Painting Mode

This is really beautiful. Adobe have improved on the Symmetry tools that were released recently adding various options – you can paint in perfect symmetry – not so much a photographic feature but more illustration but stunningly good.

Painting in Symmetry in Photoshop CC 2019

Auto Commit

You can now work uninterrupted with the new Auto commit when using various tools – you no longer have to hit return or the tick (check) any longer. Tools crop, place, transform and text entry will be automatically committed when you click on a new tool or layer.

Blend Mode

Previously, unless you used the Shift + shortcut, to scroll through the different blend modes to see which one you would like to use, you had to apply it each time. Now, you see a preview by just hovering over the blend mode without having to guess and then undo! We have a bunch of our favourite shortcuts we’ve put together – check them out there.

New blend modes preview in Photoshop CC 2019

Transform

You now don’t need to hold down Shift to keep the aspect ratio. This will take some getting used to but is a great addition!

Undo

We now have multiple undo – instead of Cmd (Ctrl) Alt Z, it’s now just Cmd (Ctrl) Z. That’s also going to take some getting used to … but it’s great because it’s the same as InDesign!

So that’s the latest update for Photoshop CC 2019. We look forward to using some of these and giving in-depth tutorials in future posts. We also have a number of tutorials on other issues such as how to make your image black and white, dodging and burning, what makes a good black and white image and looking at shadows and highlights to bring back things like a ‘blown-out’ sky using Adobe Camera Raw.

If you’d like training in Photoshop, check out our training site. We love all things graphics so train not just in Photoshop but other packages too.

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“TOAST! Tim and Ally…. Really?” “Erm yes…It really does help with Dodge and Burn tools. We’ll get to that later but first things first.”

Dodge and burn tools have become a bit old hat to many photographers. With so many quick and easy digital ‘fixes’ it’s easy to see why, but these tools, although going back to traditional printing times, are some of the best ways to make your black and white images (and colour too) look amazing. We can safely say that there is not an image on our blog that doesn’t use at least one of these in some way or other. See our tips and geeky explanations for what makes a good black and white image.

Dodge and burn in traditional printing

In traditional printing, you have an enlarger which projects your negative onto paper. The more light you expose the paper to through the negative, the darker the print will be. After you’ve done a test strip, which helps you work out the required exposure, you would then expose the light from the enlarger onto your paper. Depending on the exposure, there can often be areas of the image that would be too dark or too light. You would then do another test strip over those areas to work out that exposure time. Dabbling or jumping into film photography – see our post on the best film for travel photography and filters for black and white photography.

Dodging

When it comes to the final exposure of the print, you would expose for the final image with adjustments, but for the area that was too dark and needed less time, you would use a piece of card, normally attached to a piece of wire to wave madly over that area to prevent light getting to it – well maybe not madly, but moving enough to prevent a hard edge being projected onto the paper. This lightening technique is called dodging.

Dodging the print with cardboard ellipses on sticks

The further away from the paper you manipulate the light, the softer the dodged or burnt area edges will be.

Burning

For the area that needs more light, you would expose the image with the normal exposure, then you would give the area the needs more light, the extra light that it needs. How do you do that? Well, depending on the size and shape of the area, you can use your hands cupped together to block out the light and only allow certain areas to get extra light, or you could also use a piece of card with a hole cut in it to give that area more light … directing (or burning) the light. Again you wave it gently between the enlarger and the paper (to prevent getting a hard edge).

Burning in areas by giving them extra exposure through the cardboard hole

Pro tip:

Now one of the advanced traditional techniques used by traditional film printers is to dodge or burn with a different contrast. This is done by using multi-grade paper and changing the grade filter on the enlarger lens before dodging or burning. This technique allows you to have a combination of high and low contrast so for example in your scene you might need more contrast in the sky to get awesome looking clouds but the foreground needs sensitive shadow and highlight detail so a lower contrast.

Dodge and burn in Photoshop or Affinity photo

Now digitally, the darkroom effect can be applied in Photoshop. In your toolbar, normally down the left-hand side, you should see what at first glance looks like a lollipop. This is in fact a version of the round piece of card on a piece of wire or stick, used in dodging. Click and hold that and you’ll see 2 other icons and the text. We’re not going to look at the Sponge tool but the Burn tool has a hand with a hole made with the fingers and the thumb. This is depicting one of the options you can use when burning in!

When you choose any of these you will see your options along the top menu change to something like this.

This means that you can control how much dodging / burning you will do to your image with the exposure, and what tones you will affect, such as Highlight, Midtones or Shadows.

Most of the time you will need midtones, but if the area you wish to adjust is in the highlights or shadows, you then choose the appropriate Range from here. Choose a brush size and click and drag around the area you wish to lighten / darken. Be careful not to overdo it and use a brush bigger than you think. Undo is your friend here!

So where on earth does toast come in?

Well a lot of people get confused with which one darkens and which lightens.

The easiest way to remember this is:

If you burn the toast it will go darker – hence Burn darkens – easy to remember now.

Dodge and Burn in Raw (adjustment brushes)

There are a number of reasons to dodge and burn using adjustment brushes in the Raw file converter but the 2 main ones ore these.

• This is a non-destructive technique so you can always come back and re -edit the image at a later stage.
• You can use the dodge and burn with contrast adjustments like the advanced traditional film technique mentioned above.

In Adobe Photoshop (CS6 or CC) Open your Raw image in the Raw file converter and navigate to the adjustment brushes. It’s along the top.

Paint the area you wish to dodge and burn and then adjust the settings on the right hand side. We usually use the clarity slider to add contrast when needed and the contrast slider to reduce contrast.

Do a new adjustment for each area you wish to work on. (Not sure about Photoshop or Affinity – see our post which gives the lowdown on them). See also our Top Photoshop shortcuts.

Putting it into practice

We photographed the tower on the City wall in Dubrovnik, Croatia, but the original looks so uninspiring that a bit of Dodging and Burning was required.

• The sky was quite tricky as while the whole area needed darkening, some parts needed less contrast and some more. We did this with 2 large burning in areas with adjustment brushes. Both darkened with the Exposure slider but one added contrast with the Clarity slider while the other reduced contrast with the Contrast slider. See our post about dramatic skies.
• The sea was burned in and had added clarity
• The tower was dodged to lighten it but with added clarity to show detail in the texture.

Original image

Areas we adjusted with the brush

Final result

Revolutionise your new images and give new life to old ones

Dodging and burning has been used by film photographers since photography was invented and it’s still one of the best ways to get what you want from an image. Give your new images that exquisitely beautiful look you have admired in the masters printers work or add new life to old photographs.

Mostly, enjoy what you do.

If you are in the London / Essex / Suffolk area, we run training at your office / premises in Photoshop. Want to buy Photoshop – click the Adobe image at the bottom of this page from this link.

The post How toast can help you to create awesome B&W images with Dodge and Burn tools appeared first on ImageExplorers.

Everyone has seen the images of scenes where the sky looks really dark and the clouds stand out and look awesome. From a slightly darkened down adjustment to an almost black sky these skies just bring out the cloud formations beautifully. We’d like to show you how you can also make the sky dark in a photo, whether it’s black and white film, black and white digital, colour film a or colour digital. Each requires a slightly different technique but by the end of this post you will be a “dark sky photo-ninja”!

Black and white film

Black and white film uses a full range of colour to create a full range of tones on your black and white negative. What we need to do, is to stop some or most of the blue in the scene from reaching and exposing the film. To do this we use a filter. The filter we need to stop blue is the opposite to blue on the colour spectrum, so a filter that is yellow, orange or red will do the trick. Try out different colours to achieve different amounts of darkness. See our post on what makes a good black and white image. New to film photography? See our guide on best film cameras for beginners.

To make the sky dark in a black and white film image use a yellow filter – Hoya make really good quality filters

A few things to note:

• Anything blue in the scene will also go darker.
• A filter stops light from getting to the film so if you are using a hand held meter you might need to compensate for the exposure. A through the lens meter should give you an accurate reading.
• (You can also use a polarizing filter like in colour film. See below.)
• Experiment with other colour filters. A colour filter in black and white photography will lighten the same colour and darken the opposite one.
• If you are printing your own photographs you can also ‘burn’ in the sky in the darkroom.

Colour Film

You can’t use a red, yellow or orange filter to make the sky dark in a colour film photo, as it will just give you a colour cast. So how do we do it? We use a polarizing filter.

Here is the techy-geek explanation first, and then I’ll do the normal human one after that.

Light reflected from a non-metallic surface becomes polarized. A polarizer allows light to pass in only one direction. This allows us to reduce reflections on non-metallic objects.

Light from the sky is also polarized, so a polarizing filter will polarize the light and reduce how much light enters the camera. As a result this will make the sky dark in a photo.

The normal persons explanation!

A polarizer will darken down blue sky but not affect clouds. (The effect is most prevalent on the area of sky that is at 90 degrees from the sun – Look at the sun and then the darkest sky will be at 90 degrees.). It will also reduce reflections which can make trees etc seem rather vivid in colour. To use the polarizer just turn the filter until the sky goes dark or the reflections disappear.

To make the sky dark in a colour film image use a polarising filter

A few things to note:

• This polarizing filter technique will work with both film and digital, colour and black and white.
• There are 2 types of polarizer. A linear and a circular. A circular CPL polarizer is best for modern cameras as linear polarizers can affect exposure meters and autofocus adversely.
• In case of a photographic emergency you can even use your polarized sunglasses in front of the lens to achieve a dark sky.

Black and white as well as colour digital

Lightroom or Camera Raw converter to the rescue. Find the HSL / HSB (Hue, Saturation and Lightness/ Brightness) tab in either software package. Choose the Lightness or Brightness tab and move the blue slider over to the left to darken down the blue of the sky. (This technique will also darken down any other blues in the image.) Not sure whether you want to colour or black and white? See our video on how to change colour to black and white in just 30 seconds.

Using Photoshop? See our Top 10 favourite shortcuts.

Use camera Raw to make the sky dark in a photo like this one of the Vatican statues

Anything else?

Do remember that a dark sky, whilst looking awesome, can also give the post–apocalyptic feel to some images that you might not be looking for. Photograph the same image with and without filters to give yourself more final options. If your sky exposures are a little out with the highlights and shadows, check out how you can rescue them with Camera Raw.

There you have it. A few ways to make the sky dark in a photo. Most of all – have fun doing it.

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Photoshop shortcuts can really speed up your workflow, so we’re going to share our favourite top 10.

1. The Tab Key

The tab key will show and hide all of your panels and toolbar. This is one of those Photoshop shortcuts that if you don’t know about it and you hit by mistake, you will wonder where your tools have all disappeared to! Well tab again and to bring them back!

2. Shift and Tab

Shift tab is really cool because if you hold down the shift key and then press tab you can hide all of your panels but not the tools, so you can work away with your tools then just shift tab to bring back to panels. If you’re like me you’ve got panels all over the show and this is a really easy way of working.

3. F key

No Ctrl or Cmd. No Alt. No Shift. Just the letter F! What the F key does is, it changes your screen mode so you can go between standard screen, full screen and full screen without the menus or panels. Really useful!

4. The Square Brackets

Left [ = smaller brush
Right ] = larger brush
Just keep hitting either one and you will change your brush size appropriately.

5. Shift and the Square Brackets

Shift and [ = Makes your brush softer and
Shift and ] = Makes your brush harder
Just hold down Shift and keep pressing the left or the right square bracket to make your brush softer or harder.

6. Ctrl Alt click and drag (Mac) or Alt Right Click and drag (PC)

This sounds confusing but is a really handy shortcut for once again, making your brush larger or smaller, if you drag left and right, or softer and harder, if you drag up and down. Now you should see a red preview of the brush hardness and size but if you don’t, don’t worry about it, it’ll still work – (it’s to do with the graphics card on your machine as to whether you can see it or not).

7. D key

Now most people know that if you use Ctrl or Cmd D, it’s for deselect in Photoshop, but if you just press the D key by itself you will be changing your foreground and background colours to the default which is pure black and pure white this is very useful if you’re going to be working on layer masks and you need a pure white or black.

8. X key

Now of course if you are working on a layer mask you want to flick between black and white really quickly so that you can either show or hide the layer. Now what X does is it flicks your foreground and your background colours over really speeding up working and erasing and showing on masks.

9. Cmd + or – or 0 (Mac) / Ctrl + or – 0 (PC)

These are your zoom-in, zoom-out and fit to screen shortcuts for Mac or PC.

10. Spacebar

By holding down the spacebar you can change whatever tool you’re in, except for the Type tool into the hand tool so you can move around on your document. This is really good because those little buttons on the right hand side at the bottom for scrolling around are just so unbelievably annoying!

Although these are the Photoshop shortcuts, a lot of the Affinity Photo shortcuts are similar. See our blog post on Photoshop vs Affinity Photo.

For tons more tutorials on Photoshop and other Adobe graphics software, see Red Rocket Studio tutorials.

Go forth and give the software a thorough thrashing and don’t forget enjoy it!

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