Photoshop Varied Contrast
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- seed
What is the best way to improve an image where half the picture has overly light tones and the other half is too dark? Some are defined edges and some blend into the other side.
Would I have to make selections and do the different tones individually? Then what about the areas where it fades into the other extreme?
- pylon0
Levels or Curves adjustment layer with a gradated mask.
- Nairn0
Dick around with masked adjustment layers. If you've got a Wacom or such, you can 'paint' the right level of contrast via the mask.
It depends on the complexity of the gradient involved, but I'd faff around with Burn'n'Dodge and consider re-building the gradient from scratch.
- TheFatBaron0
Yep. And always use adjustment layers.
Also, if you need some more detailed selections than gradients will afford you, consider going into your channels pallet and hitting the "Load Channel as Selection" button on any of the individual channels (be sure to reselect RGB before you do more work).
- seed0
Great, thanks for the advice everyone.
- Sandder0
make 2 exposures with camera raw if possible, otherwise make 2 layers in the correct exposure with levels, the make an alpha mask for either part, so that you have a complete black/ white mask. (levels & paint) then select the alpha, go to the sky or background layer and option-click on new mask layer to create a mask that will only show sky or background for that layer. (opacity mask) If the border looks to hard/ contrasty, blur your masklayer.