PS one-button "defogging" function, a simple trick, restore photos 10 times definition.

Hello, everyone, I am a senior, sharing super practical PS retouching tips.

In the last issue, I introduced the interface of camera Raw filter (ACR for short) and its advantages. ACR is an integrated suite tool, which can solve most post-photo color matching work in one stop. Next, I used two cases to illustrate the idea of using ACR "basic" panel to accurately adjust the brightness of photos.

The "basic" panel in ACR can be said to be the core adjustment interface. In this panel, you can adjust the overall tone, tone and some sharpness of the photo. Most of the photo processing operations are also realized in this panel.

1, ACR basic panel

For the adjustment of parameters in the basic panel, first adjust the tone parameters such as exposure, black and white, highlight and shadow, then adjust the sharpness parameters, and then adjust the white balance and saturation parameters.

In other words, the adjustment of the photo should be to adjust the tone first, and then adjust the tone, because the adjustment of the tone will have a greater impact on the tone.

Case 1

1. Refer to the histogram and adjust the exposure.

Open a photo in Raw format (all case materials have been shared in the first issue).

First of all, it can be seen from the histogram that the overall proportion of the histogram is to the left, which means that the overall photo is a little dark, so it is necessary to slightly increase the "exposure" value, so that the overall proportion of the histogram is located in the middle of the histogram, so that the overall brightness of the picture is much more reasonable.

2, adjust the light and shade

In the previous step, adjust the Exposure to make the overall brightness of the photo reasonable, and then define the darkest and brightest positions of the photo through the Black and White options.

As can be seen from the histogram of the original image, the rightmost pixel does not reach the rightmost of the histogram, indicating that the brightest pixel in the photo is not bright enough. Similarly, the leftmost pixel of the histogram does not reach the leftmost pixel of the histogram, indicating that the darkest part of the photo is not black enough.

The ideal state is that the darkest part of the photo just reaches the left end of the histogram and the brightest part just reaches the right end of the histogram.

Therefore, you can adjust the "white" slider to improve the brightness of the brightest pixel in the photo, so that it just reaches the right end of the histogram, and so can the adjustment of the dark part.

Step 3 enhance the sense of hierarchy

By observing the photo, we can see that although the whole photo and the brightest and darkest positions have been adjusted, the brighter clouds and backlit mountains in the sky still can't distinguish the layers well.

The best way is to adjust the "highlight" and "shadow", reduce the "highlight" value, and restore some brightness that is invisible to the naked eye.

Also increase the Shadow value to highlight invisible layers.

In all post-processing of photos, the above is the standard retouching method. As long as the meaning of various parameters is clear, the tone of different photos can be optimized very accurately.

4. Strengthen the sense of hierarchy and improve the clarity.

This step is a supplement to tone and gradation adjustment, that is to say, after adjusting the parameters such as white, black, highlight and shadow, the photo still looks unsatisfactory, and the tone and gradation are not clear enough.

You can enhance the tone level of the photo by improving the contrast, so that the photo looks more beautiful.

Then increase the "sharpness" value, so that the edge contour in the photo will be strengthened, the photo will appear clearer and the lines will be more obvious.

After adjusting the values of "Contrast" and "Clarity", the outline of the scene will be strengthened, which will have a new impact on some original white/black photos, and other parameters will be fine-tuned frequently to make the photos look more ideal and harmonious as a whole.

5, hue saturation adjustment

At the bottom of the Basic panel, there are Natural Saturation and Saturation parameters. After the above adjustment, if the color sense of the photo is not beautiful enough, you can adjust the values of "Natural Saturation" and "Saturation" parameters respectively.

Among them, "natural saturation" is only used to adjust the colors with high or low saturation in photos.

Increase the value of "Natural Saturation", colors such as blue with low saturation will become more intense, while the saturation of colors with high saturation will generally not change.

On the contrary, if the value of "Natural Saturation" is lowered, colors with high original saturation, such as blue, will become lower, while the saturation of colors with low original saturation will generally not change.

The Saturation parameter is different. Once the parameter value changes, the purity of all colors in the photo will change.

In most scenery photos, the saturation of the whole picture is usually slightly reduced to ensure that the color will not be greatly improved, and then the natural saturation is greatly improved to ensure that the colors with weak color sense can be bright.

In this case, the blue saturation of the photo is too strong, so to reduce the blue saturation, to avoid color distortion, first increase the "saturation" value a little. Then greatly reduce the "natural saturation" value.

After the above simple adjustments, the overall tone and color of this photo are basically optimized.

There is also a very useful function in the foundation board, which is "defogging". Next, take a photo as an example to introduce its function.

Case 2, defogging function

Open a photo taken in foggy days, the transparency of the picture is not enough, and the whole looks a bit dull.

It can improve the parameter value of "defogging" and make the photos transparent, with obvious contrast and stronger color sense.

After removing the mist from the photo, the photo looks a little distorted, and then use other parameters of the basic panel to optimize the tone and color of the photo so that the photo looks undistorted.

For most photos with high fog, using the "defogging" function can save many complicated adjustment processes and improve the efficiency of retouching.