This is how we edited the steam train cab image of the Umgeni Steam Railway train from the before and after post.  The following screenshots show the process of editing in Camera Raw to finished photograph.

The image was taken on a very wide angle lens. We bought a Voigtlander 15mm manual lens for our Sony A7r and A7 before we left for a South African trip. Have to be honest here. I (Tim) am a wide angle lens freak. I can’t get enough of them. If I could only have one lens ever, it would be a prime super wide. Not only that, I really like manual focus.  Ally, on the other hand has a more rounded view of lenses and is happier with longer focal lengths but will still use wides.

The great thing about wide angles is the huge amount of depth of field they give so for the image below, I didn’t have to focus through the camera. I just set the lens to about 2m and everything from o.5 to infinity was in focus at f11.

I was standing outside the cab and just held my hand with camera inside and pressed the shutter.

Finished image with Raw editing

The Raw file editing

The whole image exactly as it came from the camera

The first thing to do was to crop the extra unwanted detail away in Raw for a better composition.

Post crop without any Raw editing

Post crop after global Raw editing

Once this was done I set about doing a global adjustment in Raw. Darker areas were lightened with the shadow slider and the lighter areas darkened with the highlights slider. Don’t over do it or it will look either too flat or like a bad HDR effect. All the editing in Camera Raw here can all also be done in Lightroom, Affinity Photo or any other raw file editor.

Doing the dodge and burn dance

Most of the work on this image was done with adjustment brushes. Every little white dot you see on the above screenshot is an adjustment brush. Most of the brushes affect the lightness / darkness as well as clarity (micro-contrast) and finally saturation and colour.

The image was finally taken into Photoshop for resizing and sharpening.

If you wish to learn Photoshop on the iPad or Affinity Photo on the iPad have a look at our Udemy courses below.

Click here for amazing money off deals to Learn Photoshop or Affinity Photo v2 on the ipad with his Udemy course

Remember – All the adjustments I have done are just a form of dodge and burn but affecting colour and contrast, not just dark and light. All the great photographers from Dorothea Lang to Ansel Adams used dodge and burn so you are not ‘cheating’.

Final image verses the original from camera Raw file. Drag the slider to see the difference between before (right) and after (left).

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What is shooting Contre-jour? Well Contre-jour is a French term for “against daylight” and it is a technique where you photograph directly into the sun. The technique has been used for decades as it was originally a painting technique.

The New Forest in the UK just after dawn photographing directly into the sun

So what should you do to create awesome contre-jour images?

There are a few things to watch out for when you point your camera at the sun. It does however usually depends on the type of final image you want but here are our top recommendations.

Lens flare

Unless you want lots of lens flare on your image make sure your lens is scrupulously clean. Smudge and dust-free will make all the difference. Very often, we will take off the protective UV filters we use so that we have a perfectly spotless lens. You could also cary a spare clean filter for just such an occasion, say if you were photographing in a very dusty or sea spray environment.

Sunrise on our local river with a clean lens for very little flare

More lens flare

Of course maybe you want tons of flare. The same applies in reverse. Carry a spare old filter that you  have smudged with oily fingers. The heavier the smudge, the more flare you can expect.

Contrast

This also goes with flare. If you are shooting a contre-jour image it will have a lot of contrast as you are photographing and possibly exposing for the sun, and of course the objects in the scene that face you are in shadow. Think silhouette. Haze in the scene will also reduce contrast. If you look at our New Forest image above you will see where the light streams through the early morning mist there is very little contrast.

Shadow details

The issue with contrast is that it’s very hard to get all the detail your eyes see in the scene. Your eyes dart around the scene that you are photographing and your iris opens and closes to get you detail in all areas. In photography we don’t have that luxury, so in order to let the viewer see all the detail (in a suitably contrasty scene) we need to help things along. If you were photographing in a studio you would help things along with a reflector to get details in the dark areas. In landscape photography we dodge and burn.

How it works in practice when shooting contre-jour

We usually increase the shadow slider in Raw to claw back some of the darker details. However we then counter this by increasing micro contrast with the clarity slider. After doing the basic edit we will then use adjustment brushes to dodge and burn (as well as selective contrast) specific areas. Even the most basic Raw file converter will allow you to do these edits. Finally we resize and sharpen our images.

Original image exposed to get enough detail in the highlights and a bit in the shadows

After a bit of dodge and burn processing in Raw I retrieved the shadow details

What else can you do when shooting contre-jour images to improve them?

Hide the sun

One of the tricks we use most of the time is to hide the sun behind an object in the scene. It could be trees or even the mast of a boat. We find this technique for photographing into the sun leads to our most pleasing images as we can still see some details as the sun doesn’t ‘blow out’ (overexpose) the main areas.

Watch your exposure

In digital we tend to expose for the highlights and let the shadows take care of themselves. This is the opposite of working with negative film where you expose for the shadows and let the highlights take care of themselves. (Unless you are a zone system shooter like Ansel Adams in which case you control everything with development based on the contrast of the scene.) We also bracket a lot (bracketing is when you take a number of different exposures of the same scene).

New Forest early morning contre-jour pan with added texture layer

The New Forest

The New Forest in the images above is in the south of the UK about 70 miles south west from the centre of London. It was proclaimed a Royal Forest by William the Conquer (First Norman king of England). It was later used by the Royal Navy as a supply of wood for their timber based war ships built in the nearby ports of Portsmouth and Southampton.

So finally give contre-jour photography a try. Get out early in the morning and don’t be afraid of the direct sun. Keep your lens clean and bracket like a crazy person.

Mostly just enjoy yourself. It’s why we all create photographs anyway isn’t it?

The post Shooting Contre-jour : Photograph into the sun appeared first on ImageExplorers.

The Tombs of the kings before and after image is of a UNESCO World Heritage Site about 2 km from Paphos Harbour. Many of the tombs date back to the 4th century BC. It has nothing to do with kings! The name comes purely from the magnificence of the tombs.  There are a lot of ruins obviously, some more interesting than others. But if you go down underneath some of them there are some amazing images to be made. One in particular, with lots of pillars, with the golden light coming through was beautiful. We visited the site late in the day so the light was streaming in at an angle.

Drag the centre line to see the difference

The problem image

The problem with the scene is that I wanted a bit of detail in the bright sunlit areas as well as in the darker bits. Most cameras have a range of light that the sensors can record. This is known as the camera’s dynamic range. Using Raw you can access a greater range of light, than photographing as a jpg will give you. I exposed my image so I definitely had a bit of detail in the highlights and then ‘pulled back’ the details from the shadows in Adobe camera Raw. I used a manual setting on the camera so as not to overexpose the highlights as the camera can lie to you about exposure.

To create more atmosphere, we kicked up some of the dust so it was hanging in the air. Unfortunately this didn’t give us the ‘correct’ looking light streaming through the haze so we added it in later in Photoshop.

Let me show you the steps we took with this Tombs of the Kings before and after tutorial. It is done in Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop but could easily have been done in Affinity Photo. Click the link to see our favourite Photoshop Shortcuts.

Into Camera Raw

Original out of camera image before adjustments

So straight into Adobe Camera Raw. (Quick tip: Instead of double clicking an image to open it in Raw try right-clicking it. This allows you to choose to open it in the Raw file converter without waiting or Photoshop to open first.)

Setting the base adjustment

Adjusting the exposure is not the way to get effective results

If you just adjust the exposure you will find that the highlights also get lighter. This is similar to what would happen if your camera was set to auto and the camera would try to lighten the large dark area.

Use the Highlights, Shadow, Clarity and Vibrancy sliders to set a base exposure

Instead of adjusting the exposure a lot, I pulled the Highlights slider down to darken the lighter areas, the Shadows slider up to lighten the darker areas, and the Clarity slider up to to get as much texture in the rock as possible. Finally I added lots of vibrance to bring out the colour of the rock.

Selective lightening with the adjustment brushes

Go to the adjustment brushes tab along the top of the screen (it’s a brush icon) and paint an area you wish to adjust. I painted a large area (where I put the green circle) and then changed the settings on the right until I liked what I saw. All the white dots you see are where I added a new brush adjustment. The red dot in the red circle is the active brush.

Adding your own lighting

I was still not happy with the light rays, so I decided to create my own. I will be dedicating a full tutorial to this technique but basically I made a selection where I wanted the rays to be, added a solid white adjustment layer and then feathered the mask. Finally I reduced the opacity of my new ‘ray’ so it’s barely visible.

Final Image

Tombs of the Kings in Cyprus

So to sum up the edit of the Tombs of the Kings Before and After image.

• Photograph in manual
• Do your initial Raw edit with the whole image in mind
• Use adjustment brushes to ‘dodge’ and ‘burn’ areas until the image you envisaged appears.
• Possibly add extra lighting you were unable to capture in camera.

I was really happy with the final result as it was just how I had envisaged the final photograph.

The big question is! Is this a “cheating” image, as I added in the rays that were not visible? Well… I think that it reflects what I saw when I stood there but you might think differently.

The post Tombs of the Kings – Cyprus – Before and After Image appeared first on ImageExplorers.

The Avakas Gorge was super contrasty with direct sun streaming in and lighting some walls with a golden sandy glow. I exposed to get detail in the highlights knowing that I could rescue the shadow detail in the Raw file converter.

Why did I do this? Well I find that I can rescue detail in the shadows and the trade off is some noise (grain). I struggle to get back the super bright highlights that have been very overexposed. This way of working comes from my film days of photographing with transparency. The thinking was to photograph for the highlights in transparency but for the shadows in negative film. I rightly or wrongly equate digital to transparency.

I did bracket this scene. This means taking pictures at varying exposures above and below what you think is correct, however never rely on your auto setting as your camera, as good as it is, doesn’t understand the scene and the context of the light. See our why your camera lies post for more details. See our post with more information and images.

What happened in Raw

Out of camera Raw file

In Raw I then did the basic exposure as well as colour and contrast corrections because I like to get a good starting exposure and neutral colour to work from. As you can see in the screen shot below I pulled the Highlights slider back to get more detail in the bright sunlit areas.

Basic corrections in raw

Next, was to lighten and darken various areas like I would do by dodging and burning a traditional B&W print. The difference here is that I can also adjust colour and contrast as well as exposure.

Area adjustments in Raw

A vast difference from the original with very little work.

Have a look at a similar technique I used on this London Temple.

Cyprus – Avakas Gorge

The post Avakas Gorge before and after appeared first on ImageExplorers.

Queen Caroline’s Temple is a classical style summer house overlooking the Long Water, east of Lancaster Walk in Hyde Park, London. When I saw it at sunset I envisaged a beautiful temple with all the detail of the brick work against a blue winter sky. You can see this is not what the original Raw file shows.

Drag the line in the middle to see the before and after image.

Let us see what we can do to fix it.

The Image that I originally created appears to be under exposed. It’s not that this was an error on my part. I deliberately chose this exposure so I could get some detail in the bright area of the sky as I knew I could pull back detail from the shadows. It’s so much harder to get detail from the highlights as once its gone it’s gone. For those used to shooting film it’s like using transparency – shoot for the shadow.

As you can see from the image sequence below I open the image in the raw file converter (similar setting can be done in Lightroom). Why do I use Bridge and not Lightroom? Well I do a lot of work in Adobe Illustrator and Indesign as well as AfterEffects and Bridge works with all these formats. I will do a separate post about the pros/cons of each bit of software.

Original image in raw direct from camera

Straighten Image verticals

My first area to work on is to fix verticals, horizontals and perspective. I then crop the image to the correct ratio.

Crop image

Set up basic lightness and colour balance

Next is to sort out the lightness and darkness of the entire image. I use exposure and shadow and highlights sliders for this. Next comes contrast. I do use curves (not pictured here. I will do an entire post on using curves soon.)but also a lot of micro-contrast called clarity. Next comes colour correction. This needs to be done after sorting out your lightness/darkness as its easiest to correct colour on a well exposed image. I add vibrancy and saturation after this if it needs it.

Use adjustment brush to augment areas

I then go into the adjustment brushes and adjust any areas I think need it. For you traditional film photographers this is like your dodging andd burning stage but with so many more options. You can see how I brought back detail in the building and increased the saturation and contrast in these ares. I did saturation/vibrance and contrast/clarity as these are usually lost in the darker areas of an image.

I finally keep this as raw file so I can always edit it later.

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