Making "Heart of the Canyon"

Heart of the Canyon

I recently shared this photograph of Antelope Canyon that I took last May while my wife and I were traveling around Utah and Arizona.


I wanted to share how I edited this photograph. So here it goes...

Editing Process

1. Compare Adobe Camera Raw vs. Use Raw Photo Processor
2. Process RAW to obtain the overall colors and exposure I'm looking for
3. Edit in Photoshop

1. ACR vs. RPP

I like to use both Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) and Raw Photo Processor (RPP). If you are not familiar with RPP, you should spend some time after reading this and check it out. Its an excellent tool that I think sometimes gives you better colors than ACR. 

So I will load the RAW file into both ACR and RPP and compare what each of the two tools comes up with after fiddling with each a bit. What I'm looking for is which tool is going to "work for me" creatively. Sometimes the colors are too "off" in ACR. Sometimes the highlights or shadows are not working for me in RPP. Sometimes the underlying curve and exposure automatically applied to the RAW file doesn't work for me in one or the other tool. I try not to spend too much time fiddling here and I make a decision fairly quickly on which one I'll use. Once I chose which tool to use, then I'll close the other and start processing the RAW file for preparation of my final edits in Photoshop.

ACR - defaults

RPP - defaults

To the right is what the image looks like when opening in ACR with my defaults. As you can see, I start with everything zeroed out pretty much. However, all RAW processors apply some type of exposure and curve/tonal adjustments and there's also the question of color profile and how the colors are interpreted. I wasn't too happy with the way things looked in ACR and I know from experience that when this happens, I'm going to have a tough time usually getting ACR to come up with something I like.


So let's take a look at what the image looks like in RPP. To the right is how RPP presents the image, again with my defaults in place, which like ACR, are pretty much zeroed out. My first reaction was that this is probably going to be from where I want to start. The colors are not as wild and the overall tone is more subtle and possibly closer to what it was like when I was photographing this scene. The decision is made and I'm going to work with RPP for this image.

2. Process RAW in RPP

RPP - final

The first things I correct are both the overall exposure and the colors. I work with both at the same time because as you increase or decrease the exposure, the colors will change and either become more or less saturated. I'll try to fix and clipping during this step. In this case I did use the Highlight Recovery feature in RPP and compressed the highlights where the sunlight was peaking through the canyon walls.

I did bump the exposure up about 1 stop in RPP. You should not that even with a 1-stop exposure increase, the RPP image on my screen is still underexposed compared to the ACR default settings. RAW processors are not all equal and here is one place where you can see a difference immediately.

I adjusted the colors in RPP and brought them to a place that I liked. In RPP, you have access to individual multipliers of the Red, Green, and Blue channels. There are presets under the White Balance drop down with values such as 4000k, 5000k, 6250k, etc. I usually choose one of these and then sometimes make small incremental changes to the individual channel multipliers as I see fit. In this case, I first picked a temperature of 5560k and then bumped up the Red channel multiplier by .01 by entering into the field and hitting the UP arrow twice. Pressing the UP arrow once adds .005. This is how RPP allows you to fiddle with many of the values. I find this way more precise than moving sliders.

The only other edits I made in RPP were to add some Local Contrast (10), a little bit of Saturation (10), and made a very small Black Point adjustment (0.20) which is sort of like raising the shadows or shadow recovery in ACR. 

And that's it. Now I have prepared my image for its final editing that will be done in Photoshop.

3. Edit in Photoshop

Photoshop - Final edits

There are a few key goals that I have when working with an image in Photoshop. They are:

1. Color
2. Contrast
3. Creativity

3.1 Color

I try to arrive at the colors I want when processing the RAW file before I get to the Photoshop step. However, some tweaking is usually needed during this step in Photoshop because as I apply other changes to the image, the colors may be affected. When this is the case, I'll generally add or subtract saturation globally using a Vibrance adjustment layer. If there are colors casts or color corrections I think that are needed, I'll use a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and adjust individual color channels as needed. I'm usually never happy with the way greens come out of the camera so I will make those adjustments during this step in Photoshop and now when processing the RAW file earlier.

In this case, I ended up desaturating the image because the colors were still just a little too "wild" and saturated for me for this image. I did this with a Vibrance adjustment layer. I made Saturation a -9 and Vibrance a +40. When I desaturated the whole image, the less saturated colors were too washed out and thus I attempted to bring them back up by adding a lot of Vibrance. 

3.2 Contrast

I apply contrast to the image using Luminosity Masks and Curve adjustment layers put together by Tony Kuyper. Tony has a panel extension for Photoshop called TK-ACTIONS Panel. Using Luminosity Masks with Curve adjustment layers lets you target specified tonal ranges of your image and apply contrast to them individually, rather than globally to the whole image. I love using these and Tony's panel extension in Photoshop make these a breeze to use.

For this image, I used two Luminosity Mask - Curve adjustment layers; an Ultra Mid-tones one and an Ultra Darks one. In both adjustment layers I applied a simple S-Curve to add some contrast to just those tonal ranges within the image.

3.3 Creativity

Layers

The last thing is a bucket I call creativity and its anything else I want to do to the image that will complete my creative vision. Those things often include:

• Dodging and Burning
• Shadow/Highlights
• Vignetting
• Levels and Exposure

I made a small Exposure adjustment after adding the contrast layers. I found things getting a little too "dark" so a +.60 to the Exposure got me back to where I wanted things.

I added a 50% gray layer with a Soft Light Blending Mode and then used the Dodge and Burn tools to draw attention and focus to some of the areas of the photograph where the light was "kissing" the walls of the canyon.

The last thing I did was use the Shadow/Highlights tool to tweak with the highlights and actually reduce them a bit which consequently allowed more color in those highlighted areas to shine through. To do this, I made a composite of all visible layers using the shift-command-option-E keyboard shortcut in Photoshop. I then made my edits in the Shadow/Highlights tool. Finally I moved this layer down lower on the stack before the other layers simply because I liked the look and effect of it there, rather than on top.

Now one thing I neglected to do with the Shadow/Highlights adjustment layer is make it a Smart Object so I can go back and fiddle with the adjustments as needed. I'm so used to working with smart or non-destructive tools adjustment layers that I forgot to use the Smart Object feature.

The End

So that's it! That's my process for editing this image and that's my basic process for editing any image now. I hope maybe you learned something new and I hope to remember to use Smart Objects when needed!

 

Recovery?

I want to talk about something I've learned recently and that's about the blinkeys, blown highlights or clipping, and the magical Recovery slider in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR). You know, the blinkeys. Those insipid pixels that blink on the back of your camera when you review an image and the camera wants to let you know that you've gone too far and clipping is occurring.

Up until now, I've thought of the blinkeys and blown highlights or clipping as being truly evil and something to avoid at all possible cost because its lost data. 255, 255, 255, pure white, no detail. Something your printer won't even print out because there's no white ink!

In order to combat this we are armed with the Recovery slider in ACR. With one quick movement to the right we can eliminate said blinkeys and blast those blown highlights back into the realm of subtle detail! But alas, sometimes the Recovery slider falsely leads us astray and alters our images with a flattened dynamic range and bleeds any pop from them. What's left is a distant memory of the zeal your original image contained.

All is not lost. I've come to realize that not all blinkeys and blown highlights are created equal. Some are not as evil as other would lead you to believe. Sometimes you don't need to touch that Recovery slider at all!

Above is an image where highlight clipping is obviously occurring. Thanks to ACR we can clearly see that and said areas are highlighted in a fantastic and not so subtle red. Usually I would be tempted to slide the Recovery slider to the right until I've eliminated all clipping. In many cases, you'll end up with an image now with a flattened dynamic range and a lot less pop in the highlights and bright areas of the image. Since there's a lot of sky in this photograph, using lots of Recovery has an adverse affect on the image. You can compromise some, leave some clipping but recover some of the blown out areas.

So what's going on here?


I started thinking about what these clipped highlights actually are and what effect do they have on my final product and image. I typically share my images on the Internet like many do and then I print the images that I like best.

So, for sharing on the Internet, do the clipped highlights really matter? I don't think they do.

What about printing? Hmm, well, yea, I think they do matter.

Why? Well first off like I said before, there's no white ink, and second, my printer has a limited color gamut so it's best to try to process my images so they match my printer's color gamut as much as possible so screen and print match as closely as possible.

With this new thinking, clipping matters to me when I'm printing. And what my printer can print is what I should really be concerned with. That lead me to my next question and discovery...

What colors are actually present in these clipped regions?

Lucky for us ACR has the Color Sampler Tool (S). Select this tool and then select a point in your image and ACR will tell you what color is there. So I did that and selected nine different points in the clipped regions.

Those nine different points revealed some very interesting information from them.

It would appear that many of these clipped regions are not actually pure white which I thought was the case. It appears that only some of the RGB values are 255. True, there were some that were pure white, 255, 255, 255. But others were really really light shades of pink and magenta.

So I know my printer can't print out pure white but maybe it can print out really really light shades of pink and magenta. To test that theory out I let go of all desire to slide Recovery to the right and just clicked Open Image with reckless abandon! Well, maybe I'm exaggerating just a bit.

In Photoshop, I turned on Proof Colors and loaded up a profile I would typically use to print out an image like this. I also turned on the Gamut Warning. The result on my screen was what you see below...

That's not so bad, right?


Seems like my printer can't handle a few regions of really really bright magenta and pink. The gray areas are where my printer doesn't have a color to match the color in those areas. Seems like my printer does a pretty good job of rendering the colors that ACR and the blinkeys normally would lead me to believe were evil!

In fact, if you overlay the ACR image and the soft-proofed Photoshop version, you can see how well the colors would hold up in a printed image.

The darkened red areas are the intersection of the areas that are out of gamut for my printer and what ACR says has highlight clipping. There are even regions where there are out of gamut colors but ACR didn't claim any highlight clipping there.

Now I have a lot of confidence in my printer and its ability to print this image and match colors so well that perhaps the subtle tone and color differences in these out of gamut areas won't even be noticeable in a print. I could find out by printing and reviewing. That sounds like a good test. I could also play the compromise game and go back to ACR and move the Recovery slider and then later play with Hue, Saturation, and Vibrance and use brushes or masks of some sort to try and bring these out of gamut colors back in gamut.

Sounds like a lot of work. Why not just print a test image and see what we see? Maybe things aren't as bad and as evil as we have been lead to believe. Perhaps the print will look great regardless of what all this technology says should not! Perhaps using our eyes and a little bit of faith is all we need instead of examining each and every pixel in our images and being fooled by all the alarms and warnings. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, isn't it?

So, know what is in your image as far as colors. Know your final product and goal. Know what your printer can handle. Print out a test print. Make adjustments as needed and iterate. Don't just blindly move sliders and alter colors simply because the computer told you there may be a problem. In the end, you'll end up with fewer if any compromises and much better images.