This week we reviewed the feedback from last week’s Digital Projected Images competition and came up with the following hints and tips on how to improve the images and make the corrections suggested by Doug.

Quality Improvements: Some of the images contained noise, unnatural-looking halos and JPEG compression artefacts. Doug had speculated if these images had been taken on a mobile phone camera. Check the settings of your camera (looking for the gear wheel symbol on a mobile phone) and look for an “Image Quality” setting. If your camera has the option to save to RAW, switch this on. If the camera can only save to JPEG, change the quality setting to “High”, “Large” or “Fine”. If you see an “Image Compression” setting, change it to “off” or “minimum”. Also check the “Image Size” setting and make sure you are saving to the largest size possible. If you find a “Sharpening” setting, turn it off or reduce it to minimum, as the unnatural-looking halos can be caused by over-sharpening in the camera. Some mobile phone cameras have a “Pro” setting which allows you to change more settings when turned on. One of the poor quality images (a soft-focus view of the setting sun called “Pink Evening”) could be saved by reducing the clarity and blurring out the defects. That particular image worked because of the beautiful colours.

Cloning Improvements: Some images contained cloning artefacts, such as unnatural focus changes, duplicated objects or background areas laid on top of foreground objects.

• Always apply cloning to your images at 100% magnification, so you can see the changes being made. If possible, clone your images in a duplicate layer, so you can erase mistakes.
• If you are cloning around the edge of a foreground object, first make a selection around the edge of that object and then invert the selection. The selection will prevent your clone brush strokes accidentally replacing parts of the foreground object.
• Look carefully when cloning and ensure you choose a clone source with the same level of focus as the area being replaced. Ensure there are no unnatural sharp-to-fuzzy boundaries.
• Look carefully after cloning and look for duplicated objects. Clone these duplicated objects out a second time to remove the evidence of cloning.
• Lastly, look for any mistakes you might have made during the cloning. Do the boundaries of all the objects still look normal? One of the competition images showing a cricket match looked odd because there was chunk missing from a wicket, showing where the photographer had used Photoshop to move one of the bales. Clone the wicket again to hide that mistake.

Better Composition: Some images were technically good but lost out because of poor composition. The best way to improve your composition is to view the works of other successful photographers, especially those entered for exhibitions and salons. For example, the Edinburgh International Exhibition of Photography 2022, the Dingwall National Exhibition, or the SPF Digital Championship. You can also “Google” for images of specific subjects you are interested in (e.g. “Images of wellington boot plant pots“) and see how some of the stock photos are composed. You will notice the most striking compositions tend to be the simplest, where the subject stands out from the background and isn’t competing with other distractions. Best of luck.

Tonal Corrections: The simplest way to make tonal corrections is to use the “Exposure”, “Contrast”, “Highlights”, Shadows”, “Whites”, “Blacks” and “Clarity” sliders in Adobe Camera Raw. If someone suggests toning down the highlights, try moving the “Highlights” slider to the left. To brighten the shadows, move the “Shadows” slider to the right. To make an image more punchy you can try moving the “Clarity” setting to the right. The “Blacks” and “Whites” sliders can also be adjusted so the image fills the whole histogram. However, when David Clapp spoke to us in March 2022 he told us that he makes his landscape photographs look more natural by lowering the contrast and not including the blackest black or whitest white in his images. So whether the brightness and contrast looks right can be a matter of individual taste.

You can make more specific tonal corrections by using the dodge and burn tools in Adobe Photoshop. Select one of these tools and use it like a brush. Change the “Range” setting to select where you would like most of the changes to be made (highlights, midtones or shadows) and reduce the “Exposure” setting to a small value (15% or less). Using a low “Exposure” setting helps you build up the effect gradually by brushing over the area that needs correcting. The “Burn” tool was used to darken the highlights in the background of one of the portraits without darkening the face.

• The “Dodge” tool, which looks like a black wand, can be used to lighten areas. Try Range=Shadows or Midtones.
• The “Burn” tool, which looks like a white hand, can be use to darken areas. Try Range=Highlights or Midtones.
• The “Sponge” tool, which (funnily enough) looks like a sponge, can be used to change the colour saturation of an area. More about this later.

Lastly, if you have an image that needs a lot of dodging and burning (lots of areas that are too dark or too light) and would lose its punchiness if you just reduced the contrast of the whole image, there is a Photoshop shortcut you can use to save a lot of work:

1. Open your image in Photoshop and duplicate the background layer by pressing Control+J.
2. Select the background layer and desaturate it with Image/Adjustments/Desaturate, or by pressing Shift+Control+U.
3. Now invert the background layer with Image/Adjustments/Invert or by pressing Control+I. You will see a black and white negative version of your original image.
4. Now blur this black and white layer with Filter/Blur/Gaussian Blur or Filter/Noise/Median (the “Median” option is better if you want to preserve sharp edges). The amount of blurring determines the overall look of your final image. More blurring will give you a more natural look in the end.
5. Now change the blend mode of this black and layer to “Overlay”. Voilà! You will see an automatically flattened version of your original image. The result might not always work. If you don’t like the look, try changing the blending mode to “Soft Light” or go back the step 4 and change the amount of blurring.
6. Once the image has been adjusted in this way, you can now increase the contrast without losing the shadow and highlight areas.

Colour Corrections: An image showing a train emerging from under a bridge had a blue colour cast in the smoke. You can check for colour casts in your images by using the “Colour Sampler” tool in Photoshop. It’s the one that looks like an eye dropper next to a crosswire. Click the colour sampler on an area that is supposed to be white or grey and check that the R, G and B values are about the same. If the values are different it suggests a colour cast. (This works even in that frustrating situation when you are colour blind and a judge can see colour casts you missed.) The first thing to try is correcting the colour cast by adjusting the colour balance. You can use the “Temperature” slider in Camera Raw or the “Colour Balance” adjustment tool in Photoshop. Try selecting more than one area that is supposed to be white or grey. If you can correct them all by changing the colour balance then the job is done. But if you are happy with the overall colour and want to remove a cast from just one area (the smoke in this case) you can use the “Sponge” tool mentioned above. Change the “Mode” to “Desaturate” and use a fairly high “Flow” setting.

Sharpness and Focus: We reviewed some of the images which had poor focus or sharpness. It is worth trying the Photoshop “Filter/Sharpen/Smart Sharpen” tool to sharpen your images one last time after reducing them to 1600×1200 pixels for the DPI competition. Set the “Radius” to 0.5 and move the “Amount” slider to recover the fine detail that is sometimes lost when reducing the image size. I tend to use “Amount” in the range 20-80.

It can be really difficult to get the depth of field and sharpness right in a macro image. Poor light, combined with a moving subject, might force you to use a wide aperture or high ISO. Adding more light with the aid of a diffused flash is one way to improve hand-held macro images. There are apps you can use to calculate the depth of field in macro shots: for example PhotoPills. Some members have also successfully used the Topaz Sharpen AI tool to recover detail and correct motion blur (as long as you check carefully for artefacts before accepting the changes it makes).

Thank you everyone who entered the competition. I hope you all got some useful feedback from the experience.