How do you??????????????

[ignatiusjk]

I have a 4x5 neg I'm printing on my computor and it's a shot of Yosemite falls with the surrounding rocks.The rocks print excellent but the waterfall's contrast is just a little to high.How do I tone down the contrast of the waterfall without messing with the rest of the print?

[Bill_1856]

Dodge it, just like you would in a real darkroom.

[Walter Calahan]

Scan for the highlights, adjust your curves for the mid-tones and shadow detail.

Or you can scan it twice. First for the waterfall and the second scan for everything else, then combine the two in Photoshop. This is called High Dynamic Arrange merge.

You've got lots to learn, so start making mistakes! Grin.

[ignatiusjk]

No kidding, Every time I mess with photo shop I see just how much I have to learn.

[Brian Ellis]

The easiest way is to open Photoshop, click on Image > Adjustments, then scroll down to Shadows/Highlights and click on it. At the top of the panel that opens you'll see "Shadows," under it you'll see "Amount." Move the arrow under Amount all the way to the left because you aren't adjusting the shadows. Below "Shadows" you'll see "Highlights." Under it you'll see "Amount," "Tonal Width," and "Radius" (you'll see these under "Shadows" also but you don't need to worry about them there as long as the "Amount" slider is all the way to the left). For starters set Tonal Width to 50% and Radius to 30 px. The "Amount" slider will control the density of the highlights. Move it around until you get the highlights looking like you want them.

This is a crude method (because it may adjust highlights in areas you don't want to adjust) but from your description of the photograph it should work o.k. in this case because it sounds like the highlights are only in the waterfall.

[Andrew O'Neill]

You could make a Quick Mask (using a soft edge brush) of the falls, and put it on it's own layer. Then apply Levels to the falls.

[Bill L.]

Everyone has their own way of doing things in photoshop. In the situation you would describe (i.e. you're happy with the rocks but not the waterfall), I would then make a curves layer and adjust to the point where you're happy with the waterfall (steeper slope to the curve in the tones of the waterfall > greater contrast; flatter slope > less contrast). Then use the paint bucket to fill the layer mask with black, and a white brush on the mask to paint in the areas of interest on the waterfall (that way you can vary the size of the brush, the opacity, etc. to season to taste).

Cheers!
Bill

[nathanm]

The question is almost too broad to answer, but essentially it boils down to making a selection of the area you wish to change and adjust those pixel values independently. But there are dozens and dozens of possible tools to use to get there. Regardless of what you use, my advice is to work non-destructively with adjustment layers and not permanently alter your original base layer.

[DrPablo]

How did you scan it?

Unless the waterfall is VERY dense or the rest of it VERY underexposed, most scanners will be able to pull in the highlight and shadow detail from a B&W neg. You can determine the amount of contrast and/or the tone curve in the scanning software.

If the scanner can't pull in enough detail, then you might want to get it professionally scanned, because high end scanners will do better with dense highlights and thin shadows.

Once it's digitized, there are a million techniques to tame local contrast. I'd avoid shadow/highlight like the plague, though -- it imparts ugly halos in the image if you're not extremely precise with it (or use a mask).

[Lenny Eiger]

A others have said, there are a lot of ways to accomplish this. However, one should not use the dodge tool. One should use a technique that involves an adjustment layer.

A gradient mask, a selection of the highlights for a mask (my preferred method), and then a curve adjustment...

I'm sure there are any number of people here who cold explain the technique to you...

Lenny

[Bill_1856]

A others have said, there are a lot of ways to accomplish this. However, one should not use the dodge tool.
Lenny

Why not? Don't make it more complicated than it needs to be. The criteria is "how does the final print look," not how you got it to look that way.

[nathanm]

The Dodge\Burn tool is pretty crude, it always tends to build up too quickly and every click is permanent and irreversible (aside from Undo that is). A curves layer can accomplish everything it can do and more. I've only ever used the DB tool to touch up masks.

You could also make a blank Overlay mode layer and paint on it with white or black at low brush opacity to get a similar effect as Dodge\Burn effect, but non-destructively.

[Lenny Eiger]

Why not? Don't make it more complicated than it needs to be. The criteria is "how does the final print look," not how you got it to look that way.

There are a few reasons. First of all, good printers make a print, study it and decide if they need to make another. It's not a one-shot deal. What if you look at it and decide that you burned in an area and overdid it? There is no way to undo it. The only recourse is to now dodge it. Every time you do something with a tool like this, which is not a very sensitive one, you degrade the image. You may notice an amount of graininess appear, or a fog-like effect, what we call double-dipping over here. It's when you ask the computer to darken something in one layer and lighten it in another. Sometimes it flattens the area out.

When you come back to the print 6 months from now and want to make another you will likely have to adjust the area again. There is the final print today and the final print at another time.

With an adjustment layer you are in control. You can move it up 10 points, then back off 2. No damage to the file... It's the way to do this...

Lenny

[Bill_1856]

There are a few reasons. First of all, good printers make a print, study it and decide if they need to make another. It's not a one-shot deal. What if you look at it and decide that you burned in an area and overdid it? There is no way to undo it. The only recourse is to now dodge it. Every time you do something with a tool like this, which is not a very sensitive one, you degrade the image. You may notice an amount of graininess appear, or a fog-like effect, what we call double-dipping over here. It's when you ask the computer to darken something in one layer and lighten it in another. Sometimes it flattens the area out.

When you come back to the print 6 months from now and want to make another you will likely have to adjust the area again. There is the final print today and the final print at another time.

With an adjustment layer you are in control. You can move it up 10 points, then back off 2. No damage to the file... It's the way to do this...

Lenny

I never said to dodge the original image. My images seldom need more than a minimal amount of correction, so I just duplicate the file and work with the "copy." "UNDO" works quite well if needed, and generating more layers isn't generally necessary. No reason that you can't use DODGE/BURN in a layer -- I believe that's how Clyde Butcher does it before flatening the image.

[Lenny Eiger]

I never said to dodge the original image. My images seldom need more than a minimal amount of correction, so I just duplicate the file and work with the "copy." "UNDO" works quite well if needed, and generating more layers isn't generally necessary. No reason that you can't use DODGE/BURN in a layer -- I believe that's how Clyde Butcher does it before flatening the image.

I have nothing bad to say about Mr. Butcher. I like the picture of him in the water with the 8x10.

By making a copy, I presume you are duplicating a layer, which is "making another layer". It is also making a "data" layer, which will double the size of the file, where an adjustment layer will add only a little. I constantly work on multi-gigabyte files so this is a concern. I believe that the Dodge burn tool is an imprecise, "sledgehammer" tool. Curve adjustments are far more controllable...

More layers is better. Masking is a very important technique to learn.

Lenny

[nathanm]

In the Luminous Landscape videos with Clyde it shows him making a radial gradient Quick Mask, then floating the selection in Multiply mode. Because he works in inverse this is a dodge. The same thing could be done by floating a copy of the whole document in Multiply or Screen and using a layer mask to brush on the effect. It's all more or less variants on the same idea. I don't know how the hell he works with 1GB scans on a G4; that must be why his beard is grey. If I were doing that I'd probably adhere closer to the KISS principle too.

Here some yokel demonstrates how you can pile on adjustment layers to achieve a desired result. Overkill? Perhaps, or maybe the most stunning photograph of a window in a burnt-out farmhouse the world has ever seen!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBASuOpQxAM