Springtime Fog - First use of split toning

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In adding to the ability to work with layers and layer masks, curves are probably the most important tool that Lightroom users do not have access to.

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But we do. Lightroom has a curves tool, although it can't be as flexibly applied. The user has two choices: RGB or an individual color channel. There is of course no luminosity blend mode and no ability to apply it to selections.

The curves in Lightroom are quite limited I find.

An excellent piece of work Donald.

Good choice of hues, Donald, they suit the subject well.

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Originally Posted by Manfred M

Donald - the deeper I dive into certain aspects of photography, the more I have become convinced that curves are the most powerful tool in Photoshop,

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I agree, but would add - when used with 'Selections'.

It is that combination of tools that has made the difference in what I do and how I do it.

I can't remember how many selections and curve adjustments I made on this one, but having 20 - 25 curve adjustments is quite normal. It is so subtle and can be precisely focused to just a small part of the image. It is something I still an in awe of. It is wonderful. The thing to make sure of it that the Feather applied to each selection is appropriate the the size of the selection - large feather for large areas, etc.

And that is all I use, apart from the Healing Brush on Content Aware for Bunnies etc.

The other thing I have changed in the workflow is that I do not retain a TIF/PSD with all the adjustments layers. The work is done in RAW all the way through and is saved as a PSD at the end, once it is flattened. If I wanted to work on the file again, then I do so from scratch, starting with the original RAW file.

I do start work on the file in DxO PhotoLab. It automates the processes of Capture Sharpening and getting rid of any Chromatic Aberration + it's Noise tool is the best, I think, there is. I save that as a DNG. It is as a DNG that I then do all the work as described above. However, saving from DxO as a DNG renders a 8-bit image and not a 16-bit. That is potentially a down side. So, I am now pondering on whether the file from DxO should be saved as a PSD. There would be no loss on the image and I would have a 16-bit file.

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Originally Posted by Manfred M

I generally do not use SEP in my B&W work unless I get lazy and am in a real hurry to do something

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I keep using the word 'subtlety' in this exchange. And that is what it is about for me. I can get far more subtlety into the image working as I describe here, than I could with SEP. I don't see this as being more laborious as I never did use pre-sets in SEP and always worked the image with micro adjustments. But it is just not as subtle as using Selections and Curves.

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Originally Posted by FootLoose

Good choice of hues, Donald, they suit the subject well.

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The secret is to use hues that are opposite each other on a colour wheel.

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Originally Posted by billtils

Donald, you can do split toning in Silver Efex Pro using the color filter and finishing adjustments, any reason why you chose to do it in ACR?

Brian, you can also do it in Capture One v11 as described here.

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Just went and did some reading. Thanks

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Originally Posted by JBW

Just went and did some reading. Thanks

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And if this thread achieved nothing more than that for Brian and hopefully a few others, then it has served its purpose. Learning is everything.

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Originally Posted by Donald

I agree, but would add - when used with 'Selections'.

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Agreed - I thought that was covered when I mentioned using them in conjunction with layer masks. Layer masks is how the effect is implemented on specific areas of the image.

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Originally Posted by Donald

The other thing I have changed in the workflow is that I do not retain a TIF/PSD with all the adjustments layers. The work is done in RAW all the way through and is saved as a PSD at the end, once it is flattened. If I wanted to work on the file again, then I do so from scratch, starting with the original RAW file.

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I have had this argument with some long time, expert artists, especially ones with a strong darkroom background. It is an approach I strongly disagree with. There is little practical reason to do so, as adjustment layers take up very limited additional storage and storage is becoming cheaper all the time. I have yet to hear a convincing argument as to why one should do this. In your past working career, would you have thrown out all the background data in a case file? In my working career, it was always critical to have all the backup on how and why certain decisions where made and in some certain circumstances, I could face severe legal sanctions for not having backup for the technical decisions that were made.

Throwing out "final" data I have spent considerable time and effort on makes no sense whatsoever. I'm someone who even saves complex selections, just in case I find I have to go back and tweak something. If nothing else it provides me a record of how I approached a particular image I can return to in the future.

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Originally Posted by Donald

I can't remember how many selections and curve adjustments I made on this one, but having 20 - 25 curve adjustments is quite normal. It is so subtle and can be precisely focused to just a small part of the image.

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I find that I do not just use curve adjustment layers, but use the same technique to apply local sharpening, local (de-) saturation, noise, blur, etc. Not every effect can be achieved through curves adjustment layers.

The other great revelation I had is that in advanced work, everything is about local, rather than global adjustments.

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Originally Posted by Donald

The thing to make sure of it that the Feather applied to each selection is appropriate the the size of the selection - large feather for large areas, etc.

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Sometimes I use a pure feather, and you are bang on when you write about the appropriate size of a feather. These days I will sometimes expand or contract my selection and then use a feather to counter the change I made in the selection.

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Originally Posted by Manfred M

I have had this argument with some long time, expert artists, especially ones with a strong darkroom background. It is an approach I strongly disagree with. There is little practical reason to do so, as adjustment layers take up very limited additional storage and storage is becoming cheaper all the time. I have yet to hear a convincing argument as to why one should do this. In your past working career, would you have thrown out all the background data in a case file? In my working career, it was always critical to have all the backup on how and why certain decisions where made and in some certain circumstances, I could face severe legal sanctions for not having backup for the technical decisions that were made.

Throwing out "final" data I have spent considerable time and effort on makes no sense whatsoever. I'm someone who even saves complex selections, just in case I find I have to go back and tweak something. If nothing else it provides me a record of how I approached a particular image I can return to in the future.

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What I am doing is creating an artistic image, not something that, as you rightly allude to, requires the process to be available to others to check if all was done correctly.

If I want to think about making an image again from the raw file, then my mood will be different, I will likely want to say something else than I said the first time I completed the image. I don't want my mood and intention this time to be thwarted by what went before.

Today I have created a piece of work that I am happy with. It is now finished. Tomorrow I may create a piece of work that will be different. If I am baking a cake tomorrow, I will not seek to undo what I did with the ingredients today and use them. I will start off with fresh ingredients.

That as best as I can explain it.

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Agreed - I thought that was covered when I mentioned using them in conjunction with layer masks. Layer masks is how the effect is implemented on specific areas of the image.

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Apologies, you did.

For my own work, I agree with Manfred. I agree, sometimes one wants to go back to square one, and in that case, all one needs is the raw file. However, I am very rarely confident that I am really "done" with an image. I often notice something days later or even weeks later that I missed while working on it, or someone else will point out for me something I didn't think of. That often happens here: I will post an image, and a few people will point out edits I should consider. To change that one thing, or those few things, I want to go back to my editing record, find the right place, and make the change. That's impossible once the image has been flattened. Keeping the unflattened image doesn't preclude starting over, but it leaves the option of NOT starting over. I don't see the value in discarding that flexibility.

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The work is done in RAW all the way through

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Not that it matters, but I don't think so. If you have selections in photoshop, you aren't working on a raw file. The ACR filters are parametric editing tools, but if I am not mistaken, once you open the image in photoshop, not in camera raw, you have a raster file, even though you haven't yet saved it. Or do I have this wrong?

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Originally Posted by DanK

If you have selections in photoshop, you aren't working on a raw file. The ACR filters are parametric editing tools, but if I am not mistaken, once you open the image in photoshop, not in camera raw, you have a raster file, even though you haven't yet saved it. Or do I have this wrong?

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Don't know, Dan. I don't understand what parametric editing tools are or raster files.

All that I know is that is remains a DNG file until I save it at the end of all the actions I have made.

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Originally Posted by Donald

Don't know, Dan. I don't understand what parametric editing tools are or raster files.

All that I know is that is remains a DNG file until I save it at the end of all the actions I have made.

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A parametric editing tool is what you have when you use ACR, Lightroom, DxO PhotoLab, Phase One Capture One, etc. Here the original pixels are untouched and the edits are about parameters that are applied to the image data. The base file never changes, whether it is a DNG or a camera raw file. This means you can go back and tweak the white balance and don't have to worry about colour space.

Photoshop (as well as Gimp, Serif Afinity, Corel Paintshop Pro, etc.) are pixel based editors where the data in the file is rasterized, i.e. turned into pixels, which in turn are edited. Photoshop uses the DNG or camera raw file to build this image data that is used internally and it has values like the white balance / colour temperature, colour space, etc, "baked in". Files are generally saved as Photoshop document (PSD) or Tagged Image Format File, which conserve the data structure including layers.