PS CS2: How to create shadows to fix photo

[3v1lm0m]

I am new at using Photo Shop CS2 and am hoping that someone can help me find the right tool to fix a photo that I obviously shot at the wrong time of day. What I was trying to do was to recapture the same scene from a postcard (the only one ever produced) because it happened to be 25 years later. I went to the approx. the same spot (in the middle of a cactus field, so I didn't have to much space to move around) and shot several pictures using my 28-80 and 75-300 zoom lenses (Minolta 505si super) on Agfa Vista 100. It was also around Easter and the postcard must have been shot in the summer or fall because the vegetation seems burnt.

I need to fix this photo because I can't go back anytime soon to try and do it over.

I would like to change the angle of the sun so that the shadows appear on the buildings like on the postcard so they don't look so flat.

I thought that I had read that there's a tool for this in PS but I can't find it.

Could somebody please help me? I've spent hours going through the help section here but there is so much to read (and I do admit at getting side-tracked discovering others having same other problems I have) and I also can't find help in the PS help section.

I will try to upload the scanned in postcard and my photo to illustrate my question, but if it doesn't work here, I'll upload them into my gallery.

Thanks in advance,
Catya

[cyberlord]

Other than hand touching the side of the building you want shadowed I don't think there is any magical tool in Photoshop that will figure out where to put shadows.

What's wrong with the image you have now? Other than the camera is a bit low in the vegetation it's a fine photo. No amount of shadow will fix the foreground.

You could try to boost the contrast and lower the brightness and see what happens to the buildings.

[Medley]

I hope you don't mind, but I downloaded your photo and played with it some to better answer your question. Before I post a long step by step process, let me ask you- Is this something along the lines of what you were after? If so, I'll be glad to post the procedure, as I'm sure the original photo was much larger than 640x424.



-Joe U.

[livin4lax09]

you really can't do this easily in photoshop. In order to create realistic shadows from a direct source, you would actually have to define a light source and the buildings would have to be defined as shapes, and photoshop would not be the program to cast the shadows at that point. The computer recognizes the buildings as one 2d subject, not as the buildings themselves. You just gotta get it right the first time...

[3v1lm0m]

What's wrong with the image you have now? Other than the camera is a bit low in the vegetation it's a fine photo. No amount of shadow will fix the foreground.

You could try to boost the contrast and lower the brightness and see what happens to the buildings.

Thanks Cyberlord. The camera was extended to the max. and I was on my tippytoes in the middle of this cactus patch on a steep hill which had grown quite a bit in 25 years. I don't really like the stroppy plant growing out of the cacti on the right, but that is the reality I was documenting. I have variations which are a bit more pleasing, just not from that spot.

Thanks also to you, Joe U., could it be that you boosted the contrast and lowered the brightness, as Cyberlord suggested?. I'm glad you downloaded my image to play with it. I think that's what I did, too, and came up with something similar to your posted result, but the buildings' plasticity is not anywhere near the postcard..

I had to reduce the size of the images to be able to post them, I wasn't allowed to upload bigger ones. They're really 1.7 and 1.4 MB large.

Researching the lighting situation properly would have been the answer as you, livin4lax09, rightly pointed out in order to get it right the first time :blush2: . However, it was my last day of vacation, I had drunk all the water on the hike up there and it was getting hotter all the time, plus balancing myself, the camera/tripod, and trying to avoid the cacti, I just didn't have the option. I definitely have learned from the experience....... (was just hoping to salvage the result).

Anyway, thanks a lot, to y'all for your help.
Catya

[Medley]

Here's a second attempt that 1) I like a little better than my last attempt, and 2) is quite a bit simpler to achieve. This was basically done through a multipass sharpening technique:



I'll be happy to tell you how I achieved it, but the settings on the sharpening commands would have to be vastly different for the larger files.

-Joe U.

[another view]

The only other thing I can think of is to try the "Burn" tool. You'd have to do this almost like painting it on the image and it will take a long time. Use the postcard as a reference, and some areas will have to be burned in more than others to darken to the levels that you see. Still, after a lot of time spent, the result might not be good enough - it might look too fake...

[3v1lm0m]

It IS much better, Joe, you're a genius! Thank you SO much! It looks so crisp, clear and the village has more depth to it. I'd love to know how you did it. I couln't find anything in the help files under "multipass sharpening technique" but the description under "sharpening images" sort of sounds like it.

I would really appreciate it if you could point me in the right direction and perhaps mention any pitfalls or things to watch out for that are not mentioned in some descriptions in the help and that wouldn't occur to a beginner.

I really look forward to your response and sincerely hope I'm not overtaxing you.
Catya

[3v1lm0m]

I tried the "burn" tool and, yes, it takes a reeeeally long time and didn't really look good, and considering the amount of shading necessary, I don't think I'll continue with that, but thanks for the thought.

Since you're the moderator, perhaps you could tell me why I get logged out when I post a message or switch to different threads? It even happened when I tried to post a quick reply and then I had to rewrite it.

[lidarman]

Another example of messing

It's hard to achieve when you have middle day light. Best pix are at the magic hours during sunrise and sunset.

• Selected only white regions with magic wand set on addition operation in selection.
• Burn
• boost contrast and reduce brightness
• deselected and did slight curves tweak

I didn't spend a lot of time and to properly do this, you need to select every little bit of building. Thus, you can still see some overly bright white spots that I missed. But want to give you the idea. Once you select the regions, it doesn't take that long to burn. Of course doing this on the full size image is easier too.

[Medley]

It IS much better, Joe, you're a genius! Thank you SO much! It looks so crisp, clear and the village has more depth to it. I'd love to know how you did it. I couln't find anything in the help files under "multipass sharpening technique" but the description under "sharpening images" sort of sounds like it.

I would really appreciate it if you could point me in the right direction and perhaps mention any pitfalls or things to watch out for that are not mentioned in some descriptions in the help and that wouldn't occur to a beginner.

I really look forward to your response and sincerely hope I'm not overtaxing you.
Catya

No trouble at all. Open the image. Hit "D" to change the colors to the default white/black, and hit "X" to make white the foreground color. Go to Select> Color Range. From the drop-down menu, select "Sampled Colors". Set the fuzziness to 110. This does a good job of selecting the village. Click OK to make the selection. Next, go to Layer> New >Layer via Copy (Cmd+J). This creates a new layer that we'll call "Village". It contains only the white elements in the image. This is the layer we'll use for our first sharpening command. (By the way, "multipass sharpening" is another way of saying we're going to sharpen the image more than once)

Now, let's discuss sharpening. Sharpening works by increasing the contrast at the edges of an image. It has three settings. Amount controls how much contrast is added, Radius controls how far out (in pixels) from the edge to add that contrast, and Threshold controls (at least theoretically) what does and does not define an "edge". There are better ways to control what does and does not get sharpened, one of which we'll use in our second sharpening pass. So in theory, if you make the radius large enough you increase the contrast thoughout the image (or layer, in our case). But there's a downside- apply too much amount, and you obscure fine detail.

So our first sharpen command then, will be at a low amount and high radius to increase the contrast in the village. Go to Filter> Sharpen> Unsharp Mask and apply the settings Amount:50%, Radius 22.2 pixels, Threshold 2 levels. This boosts the contrast in the village some, but not enough. Duplicate the village layer (Cmd+J) and change the blend mode of the new layer from 'normal' to 'multiply'. This boosts the contrast even more. Make sure that the top village layer is highlighted in the Layers Palette (it should be), and go to Layer> Merge Down (Cmd+E) to merge the two village layers into one.

Now, let me point out one of the pitfalls you mentioned. Whenever Photoshop increases the edge contrast in RGB mode, there is a good possibility that it will change the color at the edges as well. This is because color and contrast are difficult to separate in RGB mode. generally speaking, it's almost impossible to change one without altering the other. But, there is a way around it. Always do your sharpening on it's own layer, and always set that layer's blend mode to 'Luminosity'. This tells Photoshop to use the contrast and detail from the top layer, but the color from the bottom layer. This avoids any color shift due to sharpening.

So, set the blend mode of the village layer from 'normal' to 'luminosity' and merge the layer with the background (Cmd+E). First pass of sharpening is now complete. (Whew!)
Actually, it takes a lot longer to describe than to actually do, especially when you're explaining why you're doing things.

The second phase is to sharpen JUST the edges. We're going to apply our sharpening through an edge mask that will tell photoshop what does and does not get sharpened.
Duplicate the background layer, which should be the only layer you have. Go to Filter> Stylize> Find edges. Next, go to Image> Adjustments> Desaturate (Cmd+Shift+U). Lastly, go to Image> Adjustments> Invert (Cmd+I). You should now have a layer that has a black background with white edges. Now go to the channels palette. Select the red channel and drag it down to icon at the bottom that looks like a page (See below):



That should create a new channel under the blue channel named "red copy". Click on the 'RGB' channel and go back to the layers palette. We don't need the top layer anymore so delete it (Layer> Delete> Layer). Duplicate the background layer again. On the duplicate layer, go to Filter> Sharpen> Unsharp Mask and apply these settings: Amount 150%, Radius 1.0 pixels, Threshold 2 levels. This creates a high amount of contrast at the egdes, and serves to boost fine detail. It also "boosts" a lot of things in the image we really dont want boosted (noise, for example), so we need to limit it some. Enter the edge mask.

Go to the channels palette and Cmd-click on the "red copy" channel. This should create a selection based on the channel. The areas that are white get selected, the areas that are black do not. The areas that are gray get selected at a percentage based on how light they are. Go back to the layers palette, and click on the "add layer mask" icon at the bottom of the palette (see below)



This adds a layer mask that limits the sharpening to the edges we specified in the mask, and prevents us from sharpening the noise and other areas. Change the blend mode to 'luminosity' to avoid changing the colors, and merge down (Cmd+E).

Viola! Es Finito.

On the larger images, I would keep the radius the same, but increase the amount of sharpening. I would try an amount of around 75 on the first pass and 300-400 on the second. If you have trouble on the larger image, you can e-mail it to me (full size) at tandemduo280@comcast.net, and I'll look at them for you.

I apologize that this was so long-winded. I hope I've told you not only what I did, but why I did it.

-Joe U.

[another view]

Since you're the moderator, perhaps you could tell me why I get logged out when I post a message or switch to different threads? It even happened when I tried to post a quick reply and then I had to rewrite it.

Looks like you're on the right track with your shot. I'll bet a lot of us have been in a situation like that, where we just can't go back easily. I did a shot in 2001, didn't get the results I wanted and it was 2005 before I had a chance to do it again. Still not 100% but so close...

There is a box you can check when you log in to remember your ID or something like that - if you check it that should fix the problem. If close the browser and come back to the website, you won't have to log back in - it will do it automatically. If you don't want to do this or are on a shared computer, still keep the box checked but when you're done click "log out" (in the blue bar, on the right). Let me know if that doesn't work - or feel free to post in the Site Feedback section (bottom forum) if you're still having troubles with it.

[3v1lm0m]

Joe, I can't even nearly describe my amazement at your wonderful, detailed description - I can't wait to get to work on it, but since it's after midnight - I better start tomorrow. I just wanted to my heartfelt gratitude at all the time and thought you have invested in a complete stanger! It boggles the mind but warms the heart tremendously! Thank you ever so much! I will get to work on it tomorrow and let you know how I'm coming along. I am going to post the newest picture I picked up today in my gallery and then get a good night's sleep for a fresh start in the morning.
Catya

[Asylum Steve]

...to create the effect you want is to darken a copy layer of the original image, then using masking paint it in where the shadows would be.

Easiest, of course, being a relative term...

While everyone so far is trying to be helpful, truthfully, none of the posted re-do's look much like your original post card.

I may have some free time to work on it tomorrow (Saturday), so I can show you an example of what I mean...

[Asylum Steve]

I would like to change the angle of the sun so that the shadows appear on the buildings like on the postcard so they don't look so flat...

Now, keep in mind I did this VERY quickly, so I won't pretend the craftsmanship that's really needed is there, but I want you to get an idea of what the effect would look like.

Basically, like I said, you copy layers and darken them using levels, then mask the whole layer and paint in where you want darker areas (shadows).

BTW, I also adjusted the color of both the sky and the mountains to look more like your original.

I'd be happy to post a more detailed explaination as well as screen shots if you'd like...

[3v1lm0m]

Joe, I just sent you an email with my results using your descriptions. Both pictures are each 1 MB and I'm not certain if my email provider will deliver them. If not, please let me know and I'll resize them.
Catya