07.30.08

Toning photos - Using the History Brush for selective toning in Photoshop

Posted in Photoshop, Toning photos, Tutorials at 6:44 am by John

I used this History Brush toning technique frequently before Photoshop grew up and included adjustment layers. I still use it sometimes when I am in a hurry and on a deadline for an assignment, but really it is not the best way to selectively lighten and darken, but it is a whole lot better than using the burn and dodge tools that we looked at in the last post.

A lot of Photoshop users I know don’t use the history brush very much, but there are some really useful reasons for giving this tool a whirl.


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Toning photos - how (not) to lighten and darken areas of an image in Photoshop

Posted in Photoshop, Toning photos, Tutorials at 5:47 am by John

Burn & Dodge tools

Back in the old days of darkroom printing I used to burn (darken) and dodge (lighten) areas of a photo I was printing to draw attention to areas of the photo that I thought were important for the viewer to see.

With digital processing this process is a lot easier, and there are a lot of different ways to do it - some better than others.

Photoshop has burn and dodge tools in the Tool pallet, but I find these to be probably the worst method of selective toning and would never suggest using to anyone but the most novice Photoshop users.

For those of you who are interested, this is how it works:

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Transamerica building and Bay Bridge - San Francisco

Posted in Architechture at 1:51 am by John

This is a photo I took of the Transamerica building and the Bay Bridge in San Francisco from the Crown room of the Fairmont Hotel.

Transamerica tower

I like the angular lines on this. It was shot with a Panazonic DMC-TZ4, which I am finding to be a great little camera to keep around all of the time. The lens on it is a Leica DC Vario-Elmar f/3.3-4.9 with a focal length of 4.7-47mm. In 35 mm terms that translates to a 28mm-280mm lens. Pretty sweet!

BTW - we’re not talking digital zoom here - this is pure OPTICAL 10x zoom).

Exposure was 1/800th of a second at f/4.9. The lens was zoomed to its’ max telephoto range of 49mm (or280mm in 35mm film terms). No digital zoom on this. The original file was 3264×2176 pixels.