Old Ford with a Fancy Radiator Cap
Recently went to the wonderful Classic Car Museum of St. Augustine with some of my Club buddies. There was so much to see so if you are in the area, be sure to check them out – lots of great old cars and the owners are happy to share information on all them. I forgot to get the information on this particular car, but I believe it is roughly about a 1930-ish Ford Model A Deluxe Sedan from its appearance. What is so interesting is that the hood ornament is a Boyce MotoMeter that is actually a radiator cap indicator and was designed in 1912. From the driver’s side, you can see what the car temperature is while driving. The wings are a separate part added to the cap. I wish I had looked on the other side!
Well just a few comments on the post processing here. Used Topaz Denoise AI (see sidebar for website link) and the Clear version – worked great! Then a stamped layer was created (CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+E) and the Sponge Tool (yep – that’s what I said) was used to desaturate some of the extraneous colors on this layer that appeared on the car because it was so shiny. The Options Bar was set to Mode Desaturate, Flow 100%, Airbrush on and Vibrance unchecked. It does not have a Sample All Layers box so that is why a stamped layer was needed. A little Clone Stamp was used to clean up a few areas and a Color Lookup table was set to a Joel Grimes preset called Detailed Warmth – set it to Overlay blend mode at 47% layer opacity. On another stamped layer Viveza 2 was applied to sharpen the cap detail and darken down the corners a little bit. Last step was to do a Red Channel Luminosity Curve to bring out the cap more. That was it – lots of fun!…..Digital Lady Syd
Defringe that Nasty Blue Edge from Trees On a Bright Blue Sky!
 |
This is a short but sweet way to get rid of most of those blue and cyan edges on trees shot in bright light against a blue sky. There are just times you have to take that image in the bright light of day and the fringe occurs frequently. These tips also work when you have a horizon line in a landscape shot that has similar issues.
Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer: The image above has that very problem and this method was used to get rid of most of the fringe. Hover the above image to see the before defringing image.
1. Simply add a Hue/Sat Adjustment Layer in Photoshop and in the Master field drop-down, adjust the Saturation slider left quite a bit and possibly the Hue slider a little until the blue edging disappears. For the above both Blue (Saturation set to -50 and Hue set to -8) and Cyan (Saturation set to -64).
2. Then Fill the attached adjustment layer mask with black (click on mask and CTRL+Backspace).
3. Click on the black layer mask and use a white brush to paint around the edges at roughly 40% opacity to remove the fringe color. You may have to go over it a couple of times but it will look more natural than setting the brush to 100% and painting over just once. You may need to adjust the opacity of the brush down more so the desaturation is not so noticeable.
Sponge Tool Method: Perhaps the easiest way to get rid of any extra fringe that might still be lurking in the image is to select the Sponge Tool and set it to Mode Desaturate. Turn off Vibrance in the Options Bar since that will only work on the more or less saturated colors and not the already saturated colors which we want to get rid of. Brushed over the fringe areas but try not to discolor too much of the neighboring sky also – it will look white and not the natural blue sky color.
Camera Raw Method: Open image in Lightroom or ACR and go to the Lens Correction Panel Manual Tab in the Chromatic Aberration section, set the Defringe to All Edges and adjust the Red/Cyan slider to the left and Blue/Yellow slider to the right to get the best result. This may take a bit of adjusting to get the right balance and watch out for any color shifts in the sky area around the leaves. There is no way to use a Saturation Adjustment Brush effectively to paint out the fringe as it does not have the choice of colors to remove – it desaturates everything you paint over – and it is hard to just pinpoint the fringe.
Saturation Layer: Digital Lady Syd’s Favorite way to eliminate a slight fringe edge is with a tip I presented a while back in a Tidbits Blog called “Selective Desaturation – the Easy Way!” This is a very simple technique – simply add a New Layer on top of your image and set the blend mode to Saturation, select the Brush Tool, set color to black (white or gray will also work) and 15% opacity in the Options Bar. Paint over the area you want to desaturate several times until you get the look you are after. If too much desaturation occurs, add a layer mask back and use a black brush to paint back any areas that you did not mean to desaturate. I think this gives as good a result as the first method so give it a try if you do not like the results using any of the other methods. I would post the image again but it is very similar to after image above.
Here are four options to try: Bottom line, try it and if you don’t like the results, don’t use it and try something else!
The final thought is a great quote I found from TWCDM’s Blog: “While these tricks are fine and dandy the best way to fix purple fringing to is avoid it in the first place. You can prevent purple fringing by using high quality lenses, stopping down your lens (shooting at an aperature of f8-f22), and if you are using a zoom lens avoid using the maximum and minimum focal range. A lenses “sweet spot” is usually somewhere in the middle focal lengths.” If you shoot it right to begin with you will not have this problem. (That apparently is my problem – hum!)
Hope these tips help you on those bright outdoor daytime images…..Digital Lady Syd
