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The Idiot’s way round Photoshop |
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Page 2 of 4
Whew, that’s the first bit done. Next I would correct the leaning
verticals a bit, not strictly necessary but just for the sake of
demonstration. Again click “select”>”all”. Go to “edit”
>”transform” >”perspective.” Now note how the picture has been
outlined and small squares have appeared at each corner. Click on one
of those squares, hold down and drag, WOW........sea sick anybody? Well
it’s pretty obvious how you make that one work. Oh by the way back to
the darkroom, it’s only the same as tilting the baseboard and or the
negative stage, and overcoming the focussing problems by stopping down.
However in respect of correcting perspective the digital software can
perform amazing feats far beyond the simple method of tilting an
enlarging easel.
You will find in practice that straightening the image and perspective
control will require a little cropping of the surplus. But cropping is
a very straight forward job. You will note that there is a menu of
tools floating around on your worktop, you can click on the blue bit at
the top and place it anywhere out of the way. The third tool down on
the left hand side is a sort of square, this is the cropping tool. Just
click on it and then click again on the picture, holding down the mouse
and dragging it across the picture will give you an area, when the crop
is right go to the top of the page and a “tick” and a sort of
de-restriction sign, a circle with a diagonal stroke has appeared.
Click on the “tick” to confirm the crop, or the other one to cancel it
and try again. Doing the crop this way will mean that the ratio of the
picture is maintained. But when you have a few spare moments to
practice look closely at the lines that outline the crop area. You will
note that on all sides, half way along, is a small rectangle. Click on
one of them and you can push and pull the cropped area to suit. But as
with 35mm film, don’t forget it is far better to crop the subject at
the taking stage rather then throw away areas of what is already a tiny
format.
So the light distracting area of sky and a bit of the right hand side have been cropped out and the perspective corrected.
In the traditional darkroom the last stage before mounting a print was
re-touching. Re-touching was an art in itself, accomplished with water
colour media and sable hair brushes and spit. I kid you not, spit dries
with a slightly shiny surface, ideal for painting on photographic
paper. (In fact real professionals suck boiled sweets all the time to
aid this process.) Then re-touching knives were used to scrape away the
emulsion from the paper and from the negative for the very brave. Wimps
or those less experienced used Potassium Ferricyanide or Pot Ferry as
it was affectionately known. Things are a lot easier with digital even
if some of the skill required has changed. Now what would have taken
hours of highly skilled work can be undertaken with a few clicks of the
mouse. And of course the beauty of digital is that a click on “edit”
then on “step backwards” instantly corrects any mistake. Unlike a slip
of the re-touching knife which meant that the 20”x16” exhibition print
was consigned to the waste paper basket. However even with digital it
does require skill, it is very easy to make a mess of it and often that
mess won’t be seen until the rather expensive print emerges from the
printer. So, take care and really do look closely at the image on the
screen.
Here’s a lovely mess. O.K. I cheated, I put the big white spots in
above the T of Taj. To remove them some of the bricks need to be copied
from another part of the wall and popped into the white area. I like to
work at a large magnification here so I go to 100%. Hold down “Ctrl” on
the keyboard and repeatedly click on the + key until 100% appears in
the bottom right hand side of the screen. Now select the clone tool
from the vertical tool box, it’s on the left hand side and looks like a
rubber stamp. Move the mouse into the image area and you will see that
a circle has appeared which can be moved around in order to make a
selection. However you will need to change the size of this area to
suit the job in hand. Go to the horizontal tool bar at the top and you
will see “Brushes” click on and a menu will appear. Don’t bother with
all the controls, just move the slider a bit until the brush size is
suitable. Next to the brush menu is another one entitled “Mode” this
allows the user to select what the brush is required to do. For the
problem we have with this image we need to select “darken”. Next along
we have “intensity” I normally select 50% on the slider which means you
have a little more control, 100% is often a bit over the top. On the
image select an area which is the same as the one you intend to repair,
in this case the brickwork. Place the brush circle over this area at
the same time pressing the “Alt” key on the keyboard. This will pick up
your bricks. Now move the circle to the area to be repaired and click
the mouse. This will, with any luck, drop a pile of bricks into the
right place, if it’s not enough click again.
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