Saturday, March 20, 2004
Luminous Landscape article on Local Contrast Enhancement
PhotoKit Sharpener Pro review by Luminous Landscape
PhotoKit Sharpener Pro review by Luminous Landscape
Sunday, March 14, 2004
Just got Photoshop Restoration & Retouching, Second Edition by Katrin Eismann and Real World Adobe Photoshop CS by David Blatner and Bruce Fraser. I have read the first edition of Katrin's excellent book, and the previous 2 or 3 editions of Real World PS. Katrin's book has changed a lot from the first edition, and should be a very educational experience. Real World book does not seem to have changed dramatically, but even if it did not change much at all, and just induced me to reread it, it is totally worth it. Just today, for instance, in the first 45 pages, I have read the answer to the very important question I had for a long time -- how to do cropping without loosing the rest of the image information.
In my previous (until today) workflow, I used to process the whole image (create a large set of adjustment layers) in the original document, and then save it as OriginalName_cropped.psd, crop it there, and continue editing the _cropped file thereafter. The down side of that was that burning/dodging, and often additional tonal adjustments, need to be done after cropping. This means some additional work had to be done in the new document, and thus if I made changes to the earlier layers, and then decided to recrop, some work would have to be redone. Also, this made it necessary to store another copy (_cropped). Without further delay, here is how to do it right:
1) When you start editing the document, double-click on the Background layer, and in the dialog box that opens, rename it to anything, including "Background". This will change it from the special "background" layer to a regular layer (which can be called Background just fine). This is necessary because the crop always kills the info present in the special "background" layer.
2) When you choose the crop tool (C), and then select the cropping rectangle in the image, the tool-specific option bar (under the menu) will have the following choice: Cropped Area: [] Delete [] Hide. Check the Hide option.
3) When you finish the cropping (press Enter), the crop will seem to have killed the outside-of-crop-area info just as before, but...
4) If you want to restore the cropped-off image information, you can either:
a) Choose Image >> Reveal All to reveal all of it, or
b) Use the crop tool again, but extend its borders outside the new image area.
In my previous (until today) workflow, I used to process the whole image (create a large set of adjustment layers) in the original document, and then save it as OriginalName_cropped.psd, crop it there, and continue editing the _cropped file thereafter. The down side of that was that burning/dodging, and often additional tonal adjustments, need to be done after cropping. This means some additional work had to be done in the new document, and thus if I made changes to the earlier layers, and then decided to recrop, some work would have to be redone. Also, this made it necessary to store another copy (_cropped). Without further delay, here is how to do it right:
1) When you start editing the document, double-click on the Background layer, and in the dialog box that opens, rename it to anything, including "Background". This will change it from the special "background" layer to a regular layer (which can be called Background just fine). This is necessary because the crop always kills the info present in the special "background" layer.
2) When you choose the crop tool (C), and then select the cropping rectangle in the image, the tool-specific option bar (under the menu) will have the following choice: Cropped Area: [] Delete [] Hide. Check the Hide option.
3) When you finish the cropping (press Enter), the crop will seem to have killed the outside-of-crop-area info just as before, but...
4) If you want to restore the cropped-off image information, you can either:
a) Choose Image >> Reveal All to reveal all of it, or
b) Use the crop tool again, but extend its borders outside the new image area.
