Selective levels adjustment and Lonestar sharpening action

[Tobers]

Bit of Photoshop geekery here...

I had a good play with Pirate's lonestar sharpening action (see this thread). It appears awesomely clever, sharpening without introducing halos by using a special channel. Top stuff - I'll be using it a lot I think.

I used it on a couple of images from my recent sunset pics and I'm pretty chuffed with the results. Sharp but not artificial looking. Just left everything on defaults.

At the same time, I thought I'd also play with some selective levels adjustment techniques that I saw in the latest Digital Camera mag (in the B&W conversion bit).

I'd never thought of just selecting an area of an image and fiddling with the levels on it - I always adjusted levels on the whole pic. Daft really - it's pretty obvious. Anyway, select your area, feather the edge (I used 120px), then do image->adjustments->levels and fiddle away.

I used it in the same two sunset pics to really draw out the sky. In this first one, I selected an area just above the trees, and fiddled with the levels, then selected the area of water in the bottom of the pic and did the same to match the sky. I left the middle of the pic alone.

And here's the original...

I also had a play with a pic I hadn't previously touched. Same technique again. Did the lonestar sharpening thing, then did levels on the upper sky part of the pic only, then again on the main area of cloud. Did a bit of levels on the water to get it to match as well. Then lightened up the grass a bit (too much I think looking at it again but it's just an experiment...).

Upshot - Pirate's Lonestar sharpening action is a great find and adjusting levels on only selected areas of a pic can have quite massive results.

There's so much to this Photoshop stuff isn't there. It's going to keep my interest for a very long time....

Tobers

[allymac123]

There's always stuff you didn't even think about eh?!!

The sky in that last pic is absolutely gorgeous tobers. Think the grass does need toned down a tad and maybe if you'd used a longer exposure to blur the water which would have given slightly better reflections.

Its seems a funny method adjusting stuff via selection. I always do it via layer masks. Create a new adjustment layer and do all the adjustments you want then use the brush on various opacity's and hardness to only apply that adjustment layer to the parts you want.
Unless I've misunderstood using a layer mask gives you much more control over where you apply the changes and by how much you apply them. It's also extremely simple to change brush from black to white and thus take bits out again etc.

I'd go as far as to say that discovering and using layer masks is my greatest photoshop find!!! I seriously couldn't live without them!!

[SweetGirl]

Originally Posted by Tobers

Tobers

This is nice.

.....looks like there's a thunderstorm on its way

could do with some more 'green' on the grass

[Tobers]

Originally Posted by allymac123

Its seems a funny method adjusting stuff via selection. I always do it via layer masks. Create a new adjustment layer and do all the adjustments you want then use the brush on various opacity's and hardness to only apply that adjustment layer to the parts you want.

Yep - I actually used a layer mask as well to rub out some of the areas I'd tweaked. I like it because on one layer you can select one area, do a particular thing to it, then select another etc etc without having to fiddle with flattening the layers.

Sweetgirl - the thunderstorm had just gone over. Very dramatic it was too, hail and all. From a couple of days back (Wednesday I think).

T.