Practical Photoshop March 2022

Welcome to issue 132 of Practical Photoshop! If you enjoy the issue, why not subscribe and get a whole year for just $19.99? The recently updated local adjustment tools in Camera Raw and Lightroom aren’t just good, they’re game-changing. This issue we take an in-depth look at these tools, and explain how you can use them to craft beautiful photos by targeting and perfecting the parts of the frame that matter most. james.paterson@futurenet.com www.digitalcameraworld.com Editor James Paterson Art Editor Rosie Webber Production Editor Kyle Hearse Content Director Chris George Senior Art Editor Warren Brown DOWNLOAD THE PROJECT FILES To download this issue’s files, type the following link into your web browser on your PC or Mac: https://bit.ly/pho_132 FIND US HERE… http://bit.ly/practweet http://bit.ly/pracface Also available on: http://bit.ly/pp_pocketmags http://bit.ly/pp_app_store http://bit.ly/zinio_pp…

We’re absolutely loco about local adjustments. The ability to alter specific parts of an image can help you create incredibly rich photos, and also rescue those that you might have thought beyond repair. So over the next few pages we’ll explore some of the best tools for local adjustments. Camera Raw and Lightroom are the ideal place to make these edits, so that we can take advantage of the extra quality in raw files. But don’t worry if you prefer to edit jpegs, as these tools can be used on both raws and jpegs to great effect, especially now we can make use of brilliant new masking features like Select Subject and Select Sky. We’ll begin here by looking at the basics of local adjustments in Camera Raw, then take…

HOW TO GET STARTED The way local adjustments work in Camera Raw can be split broadly into two stages. We use the tools in the masking panel to define an area of the image – whether that be by painting, adding a gradient, using Select Subject or otherwise. Then we alter the area using tonal sliders. Each stage is interchangeable, so we can change the expanse of the area or the tonal changes within at any time. We can also build up several adjustments so that they work in combination and – here’s where things get really interesting – use different masking tools in combination to create very precise masks that zero in on different objects or areas. Here’s how to get started… 01 TARGET AN AREA Open an image in Camera Raw (you…

Before the recent updates to the masking tools in Camera Raw/Lightroom, each adjustment you made would be represented by a little pin somewhere in the image. This system worked well enough, but now things have moved on considerably with the masking panel. This is the control centre for all your local adjustments. It can either be docked with the other panels, or dragged out over your image. Here are the key features… 1 SELECT SUBJECT/SKY These automatically isolate your subject or the sky with a mask so you can begin enhancing the area in seconds. While powerful they’re not perfect every time, but even if they go wrong they can still be invaluable timesavers as starting points for more manual masking. 2 ADJUSTMENT BRUSH This works just like a paintbrush, and like all brush-based…

You might wonder why we choose to make these edits in Camera Raw/Lightroom rather than opening up into Photoshop. While Photoshop’s main interface offers all sorts of great options for local adjustments, best practice is to make these kinds of edits at the raw processing stage. Raws hold more colour information and greater dynamic range, so when editing in raw format you can make use of the wider array of colours and pull extra detail out of highlights and shadows. Essentially you have greater headroom for pushing tonal adjustments, changing white balance and recovering details. What’s more, you can copy these edits from one photo to another, so if you have a sequence of images shot using a tripod, then you can choose one photo from the set to work…

In landscape photos the sky tends to come out brighter than the land, so a simple edit to darken and boost the area can help to balance out your outdoor scenes. The Select Sky command is a game changer when it comes to enhancing skies. We can simply click Select Sky then use the tonal sliders, perhaps by decreasing Exposure to darken the area, then by boosting Clarity to enhance cloud detail and Saturation to give the colours more impact. However, sometimes making edits like this over the entire sky can create an unnatural-looking transition with the land below. If so, it helps to fade out the effect along the horizon with the Linear Gradient tool. Simply click Subtract, choose the Linear Gradient tool and drag up from land to…