PS Guru Help Needed

Sam

Oh PS masters, I need help.

This image was taken this morning. I bracketed and have a shot with the sky nicely exposed. I need to put the sky in.

I have 4 exposures and tried HDR in CS5 but no success.

While I have added sky's and masked / blended images in the past. This type of image has always had me stumped. The area of concern is the tree. As you can see there are openings in the leaves which allows the sky to show through, and the top of the tree / leaf / branches are, for me, impossible to isolate / mask out. The clean edges are easy.

How would you suggest attacking this?

(Yes, I know about the garbage can. This is no problem to fix. )

Sam

Richard

Sam,

Yeah, these are hard. If the sky you want to add is blue, though, I would try using blend-if sliders in LAB mode. The sky shouldn't be yellow or green, so if you keep the A channel positive and the B channel negative, that should give you a good start. If it looks weird, try splitting the markers to provide a gradient. If there are some clouds, just forget about them near and through the tree and paint a mask to get them in separately.

BinaryFx

Sam, Richard is referring to the layer option blend if sliders in a Lab colour mode document, if that was not clear:

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/blendif.html (this article is only about luminosity RGB slider, however the mechanics are the same for individual channels or other colour modes).

Another option may be blend modes, such as darken or similar - which may be done separately for the holes if this does not work for the main sky as well.

If you can resize and post a shot of the sky to the same dimensions as this shot it might help with live examples.

If there is no movement between the shots, then I would perhaps try exposure fusion/blending - such as with the free Enfuse software (look for a version of Enfuse with a GUI front end).

EDIT: What issues did you have with CS5 HDR? Did you use the new HDR Pro accessed from Bridge? Were there alignment issues? Tone mapping issues such as weird artefacts? What particular tone mapping operator did you try and what options were selected?


Regards,

Stephen Marsh

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
http://prepression.blogspot.com/

Sam

Thanks Richard & BinaryFx,

Working with the blend mode is an area I haven't played with yet. ( I should probably already know this but I don't) I am going to read and re-read your posts and work on this blending.

Using CS5 HDR Pro I couldn't keep the sky dark? I had 4 images from -2 to +2. Maybe I needed more?

Here is the dark / sky image.

I will let you know how I made out!

Thanks!!

Sam

BinaryFx

Sam, I used the free EnfuseGUI app to blend the two JPEG files:

http://software.bergmark.com/enfuseGUI/Main.html

See below for the example.

There is a version for Lightroom from a different author:

http://www.photographers-toolbox.com/products/lrenfuse.php

P.S. One may have to do some extra contrast work, as blending exposures tends to "flatten" contrast slightly. One can also stack the layers over the Enfuse file, then use layer masks to manually "paint in" selective details as required, simply using the Enfuse blending to do the dirty work of merging the sky to the foreground elements. You may also wish to try blending more than two exposures.


Stephen Marsh

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
http://prepression.blogspot.com/

Richard

Hey, that's a neat program, Stephen. I only wish that the preview worked in real-time as you adjust the sliders. But the results are much better than anything I came up with using blending options, channel masks or CS5 HDR photomerge. Pretty cool.

BinaryFx

Richard wrote: »

Hey, that's a neat program, Stephen. I only wish that the preview worked in real-time as you adjust the sliders. But the results are much better than anything I came up with using blending options, channel masks or CS5 HDR photomerge. Pretty cool.

Exposure blending is my preferred method for HDR, over most tone mapping operators found in other HDR software. Some HDR software that is more famous for the wild tone mapping can do fusion/blending without the tone mapping!

Photoshop is not all that bad by itself, one just needs to experiment and know a thing or two...however RGB mode may not be best for this type of blend if. Lab mode offers unique blend if abilities, separating the magenta/green and blue/yellow hues from tone - which can be of great help when it comes to blend if with certain images (not every image).

Here is a sample using colour channel blend if in Lab colour mode, which is then flattened and blended in RGB over the original in darken mode. A layer mask is used, however it is not used to merge the sky into the skyline, it is only used very roughly on the foreground.


Stephen Marsh

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
http://prepression.blogspot.com/

Sam

Thanks again.......I appreciate your effort. I was up until 2:30 AM working on this and I need a short break.

I have been able using your suggestions to get close to your posted shot.

One remaining issue is the top of the trees, it's just barely visible at these small sizes but is very evident in a larger size, the tree tops are gray / desaturated and dark. Short of spending my next life time hand blending / cloning (this isn't the only image from the set ) I haven't figured out how to do it.

I will pick up my sword and go into battle later today!

Sam

Sam

OK,

Here is the result.

I'm not sure I got here with science, but luck has it's place.

I took the dark / sky image and tone mapped it for the sky tree tops. Then placed the bldg image on top and then masked out the blown out sky. I didn't need to be uber careful with masking the tree tops because the bottom (tone mapped image) tree tops were a close match.

This is as close as I can get. The tree tops have green and don't go to gray.

I tried to download and try out the EnfuseGUI program, but I couldn't get to work at all????

Thanks for all your help!!

ziggy53

Sam wrote: »

... I tried to download and try out the EnfuseGUI program, but I couldn't get to work at all????

...

Did you install both Enfuse "and" EnfuseGUI?

BinaryFx

Good idea Ziggy. AFAIK the Mac application from the first link is self contained, there is no need to install the command line version and then the GUI front end. I have used the EnfuseGUI on both a PPC running Tiger and on an Intel running Snow Leopard and have had no issues with either. One simply adds the source files, changes the count to match the amount of soure files and then one hits the enfuse button. One can of course play with the sliders, I leave them at defaults as this is not an interactive process and I don't know exactly what I am doing, however I usually blend using CIECAM colour rendering. I have not found a good tutorial on Enfuse or EnfuseGUI that lists the various options and their effects on the image.


Stephen Marsh

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
http://prepression.blogspot.com/ <!-- / message --> <!-- attachments -->

Sam

Ziggy, BinaryFx,

First I tried downloading the EnfuseGUI. Download went well, program opened, selected 2 images, hit preview, slid sliders, yelled at it. Nothing!!

Downloaded the Enfuse, thought maybe the EnfuseGUI was maybe the front end only and the Enfuse was the code back end. Same results.

Nothing, Nada, zip.........

Sam

BinaryFx

Sam wrote: »

Ziggy, BinaryFx,

First I tried downloading the EnfuseGUI. Download went well, program opened, selected 2 images, hit preview, slid sliders, yelled at it. Nothing!!

Downloaded the Enfuse, thought maybe the EnfuseGUI was maybe the front end only and the Enfuse was the code back end. Same results.

Nothing, Nada, zip.........

Sam

On the Mac, I do the following:

1. Launch EnfuseGUI

2. Drag the source files into the list on the left hand side

3. Change the "Bracket Count" field to reflect the amount of source files

4. Check the "Use CIECAM02 to blend source files" option on the right

5. Hit the Enfuse It! button (no use of preview)

Wait for the app to do it's magic, it will then write an folder to the desktop with the high res. blend and a smaller thumnail etc.

It "should" be that easy to get basic, usable output from EnfuseGUI. It can of course get more complex and better results may be achievable by setting the sliders and options to a better setting than default.


Stephen Marsh

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
http://prepression.blogspot.com/

jjbong

Sam wrote: »

I took the dark / sky image and tone mapped it for the sky tree tops.

This is a new term to me. What did you do in Phtotshop to tone map?

Sam

jjbong wrote: »

This is a new term to me. What did you do in Phtotshop to tone map?

Unfortunately I am more of a visual / intuitive image processor than a scientific image processer.

But in CS5 there is a tool / function called HDR toning. This tool tries to mimic HDR blending using only one image as opposed to muliple images with multiple exposures.

By using this I was able to have the sky tree interface from the dark under exposed image to closely match the color and darkness of the top image where the exposure was correct for the bldg. Note while the dark image processed this way yielded good sky and nice interface between the sky and trees, the bldg was totally whacked out and unusable in any way.

I hope this helps.

Sam

ziggy53

Relating to EnfuseGUI and Windows 7, at first I too thought that the Preview did nothing. After some snooping I discovered that the Preview window was buried beneath the other open windows. Once I knew where to find it, it seems to work fine. (If nothing else in all modern Windows just hold down the "Alt" key and tap the "Tab" to move between applications and application windows.)

Once you find the Preview window, you can test different EnfuseGUI settings by pressing on the "New" tab of the Preview window before each test. This sets a new tab and a new preview test for each setting, and each preview tab also resets the EnfuseGUI settings to match the particular preview. Once you find the settings that work best, just submit the job using the "Enfuse It!" button on the EnfuseGUI interface.

The output files appear in a new subordinate directory, beneath the source directory of the source/input image files.

Sam

Thanks Ziggy,

I will give this a try later today.

Sam

malch

Here's a super-fast, super-easy trick for making a white sky blue without any problematic masking issues:

1. Add a Selective Color Adjustment Layer.
2. Select "Whites" on the drop-down and make sure "Absolute" is selected.
3. Set Cyan to +8, Yellow to -8, and Black to +20. Tweak to taste.
4. Use a mask to protect any foreground whites.

Instant blue sky. If you want some clouds, you can blend them in from another image or simply paint them in using some Cloud Brushes (Google for lots of good free cloud brushes).

It's not the only way to accomplish the goal and probably not the best. But it's very fast and easy and produces excellent results. A good one to keep up your sleeve.

Sam

Malch,

Thanks....this works very nice as far as blending with objects like trees!

I will futz with this later. (I printed out your email.

Now as to EnfuseGUI...................I downloaded it again and followed the instructions................................I still get the same results. :cry

Might be a Snow Leopard thing.

I quit.....I'm done with EnfuseGUI.

Thanks for everyone's help!!!

Sam

BinaryFx

Sam, I don't know what is wrong with EnfuseGUI on your system, this is not a fast process and it does take a lot of time when using hi-res images.

Anyway, another free exposure blending option that may be useful can be found here:

http://imagefuser.sourceforge.net/

Then there are many commercial options, one such here:

http://www.pangeasoft.net/pano/bracketeer/index.html


Stephen Marsh

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
http://prepression.blogspot.com/