Posted by Mel Ladewig on July 17, 2007 at 11:06 AM
Last weekend at Mohawk Lakes I took this image. A problem that I had as a result of my choice to shoot ultrawide was that my shadow was consistently a problem. Getting here at sunrise wasn't an option, though I do realize that it would have negated my problems and probably resulted in a much better shot.
In this case, I really like this reflection but I haven't figured out how to resolve the tripod legs in the bottom left. I was able to clone out the head from the rocks in the water, but I can't figure out how to clone the legs out of the grass.
This is an open ended problem. I'm looking for ideas and to learn some new skills. Any type of editing is fine including cropping. I'm all ears for any tricks for positioning the tripod to keep it out of the frame. The tripod was at it's minimum height and I used the timer so that I could stay out of the frame. Please let me know if you need a larger file size for editing.
Thanks in advance,
Mel-
Posted by Doug Andrews on July 17, 2007 at 11:22 AM
I'd be interested to read some of the responses as well. I have some nice shots of Maroon Lake and the Bells that unfortunately have my tripod shadow in them too.
Posted by Jesse Speer on July 17, 2007 at 11:53 AM
I don't think there's anything you can really do about the tripod shadow in this case - unless you really, really want to spend some serious time transplanting rock and grass. But a quick crop can salvage the image, and might even enhance the best part of the image (IMO) - the shadow/light play in the right half of the photo. And since you were open to editing suggestions, here's what I'm talking about. Just my take ...
As far as composing in the field, I deal with this frustration by trying a tighter comp or just moving on. Not much you can do when the sun pops up behind you at a frustrating angle.
On this one, I'd crop out the grass entirely and also crop off a small portion of the top to make a panoramic out of it. IMO, the grass isn't that interesting in this image and seems to be a distraction. Nice reflection!
Mel, I'd like to take a shot at this tonight. I've always kept my shadow out of the image, so I don't have a similar one to work on. Would you mind sending me a larger version of this to my email? You can send it to aeroman@comcast.net. I promise to delete it off my hard drive when I'm done.
This is a fairly straightforward retouching job; I'd suggest copying some of the grass from the middle onto a new layer, moving it over the offending area, and using a layer mask to blend it in.
If it looks like it's too obvious a copy, try scaling/distorting/flipping or otherwise transforming the retouched layer so it looks more natural and random. Or copy several separate pieces and blend them together. You have plenty of "good grass" to remove the tripod shadows, it will just take some careful work on your mask(s).
Posted by Brett Deacon on July 17, 2007 at 4:35 PM
Hi Mel. I agree with everything that has been said thus far and have one thing to add. Not sure what camera you use, but a view camera has a unique solution to this problem. Assuming your lens has a wide enough image circle and your camera has shift movements, you can compose the shot with your tripod shadow visible and then shift the back or front standard to include the desired scene with your shadow no longer in the frame. For the attached image, you could have setup up perhaps 5 feet left of where you did here and used a shift movement until your desired composition appeared, sans your shadow. Of course, the wider the lens, the more difficult (or impossible) this becomes.
If your PS skills are highly honed and/or you have a lot of patience, Nat's approach sounds doable. I would be concerned that unless the cloning/copying was exceptionally good, that printing the image might reveal evidence of the touchup. But for web presentation, I don't think it'd be a problem.
When faced with this in the field, assuming I have the real-estate to work with, I'll simply back up and use a tighter comp and/or tilt the camera up to keep the foreground elements where I want them in the frame. That may mean sacrificing a little of whatever else is near the edges of the frame. That can be a problem in certain shots, but in this shot I don't think anything critical would have been "cropped" out by backing up and zooming in just a little.
Mel sent me a copy of this, and I worked the image for about an hour. Almost no cloning was done. Most adjustments were made with selections, creating layers and creating layer masks of varying adjustments. It looks decent, at least to me. I think with additional cloning of the right tripod leg's shadow, it might just be undiscernable. I think the grasses look pretty good and didn't require any cloning. If people really like how this looks, I'll go into more detail on how I did it. Thanks to Mel for letting me experiment with his image. These skills may come in handy for me someday if I really need to save an image.
Posted by Mel Ladewig on July 18, 2007 at 10:42 AM
Thanks to everyone for your ideas.
Tony, Your idea was the same thing I originally was thinking.
Nat, I'm definitely on board with your idea and gave it a try. A problem came up for me though. The ultrawide distortion caused the lower left grass to have a different appearance than the grass in the center. Part was due to chromatic aberrations and part was due to the stretching in the corner.
Steve, I'd definitely be interested in some more detail about your approach. I like what I'm seeing so far.
Jesse, your thoughts are the reason I chose the ultrawide instead of a more traditional focal length. I wanted to get as much of the shadowed hill on the right in the frame along with its reflection.
There was nothing critical about this image. My wife and I hike here quite often so there will be plenty of chances to get such a shot again in the future. We were actually in a hurry to get somewhere else, so I didn't stop to play with many compositions. The thing I find most interesting in this lake is the erratics in the middle, so ultimately, I'll work a composition to focus on those. Might have to buy some waders.
Mel, here is the general method I used. Please excuse some of the nomenclature if I don't use the most appropriate PS terms, but I think it should be close enough. If you, or anyone else has trouble understanding me, let me know and I should be able to clarify. I'll also say this was an experiment for me as well and I'm sure this is not the only way to do this (I'm new to using curves, so I didn't use that method for adjustment as its still too new and unfamiliar to me).
1. I converted the image to a .tif (a .psd would work as well).
2. I copied the original image to another layer so I would always have a backup.
3. As CS3's new selection brush and the old magic wand was always selecting areas much larger than the shadow, I used a slightly soft edged eraser to erase the areas immediately around the shadow area. Once there was breathing space that was deleted around the shadow, I made a selection around the shadow and pasted it to a new layer.
4. I noticed that the shadow in the water is likely different than that on the grasses and the rock, I selected the portion of the shadow within the water, cut and then pasted that selection into yet another layer.
5. I then made three, masked adjustment layers to the two separate layers of the shadow (water and grass/rock).
6. The first masked adjustment layer was brightness/contrast. I adjusted it until it somewhat resembled the adjacent lighting visible in the background layer (base layer).
7. I then made a levels masked adjustment layer. I played with the limits as well as the highlight, midtone and highlight levels until it better resembled the adjacent lighting.
8. I then finished with a masked adjustment layer of hue/saturation. While I made some minor global RGB adjustments, most of the adjustments were made with specific color selections. I used the color picker to select a key color in the shadow area, and then adjusted hue, saturation and lightness until it better resembled the un-shaded areas.
9. I then went back and fine-tuned each adjustment layer until it looked pretty much identical.
10. I should not that the edits with the grasses/rock made the rock look very poor, so I deleted the rock area from the grasses and resigned myself to using the clone tool to handle the rock in shadow.
11. I merged the images down to create one layer (but still retaining the background as its own layer).
12. I used the clone tool to address the shadow on the rock by referencing the nearby rock as it had the same shape and size.
13. I then used limited use of the clone tool to extend the line of some grass blades that would be lit into what was the water shaded area.
I think this technique worked very well with the grasses, and is much better than cloning grasses from another area. As it turned out, the shadow in the water was more difficult to replicate the sunlit areas than the grasses. This is were more aggressive use of the clone tool would be beneficial. In any case, I think getting problem areas to better match the surroundings makes cloning more effective. This will give the option of using lower opacities for cloning.
Discussion
10 repliesIn this case, I really like this reflection but I haven't figured out how to resolve the tripod legs in the bottom left. I was able to clone out the head from the rocks in the water, but I can't figure out how to clone the legs out of the grass.
This is an open ended problem. I'm looking for ideas and to learn some new skills. Any type of editing is fine including cropping. I'm all ears for any tricks for positioning the tripod to keep it out of the frame. The tripod was at it's minimum height and I used the timer so that I could stay out of the frame. Please let me know if you need a larger file size for editing.
Thanks in advance,
Mel-
As far as composing in the field, I deal with this frustration by trying a tighter comp or just moving on. Not much you can do when the sun pops up behind you at a frustrating angle.
If it looks like it's too obvious a copy, try scaling/distorting/flipping or otherwise transforming the retouched layer so it looks more natural and random. Or copy several separate pieces and blend them together. You have plenty of "good grass"
When faced with this in the field, assuming I have the real-estate to work with, I'll simply back up and use a tighter comp and/or tilt the camera up to keep the foreground elements where I want them in the frame. That may mean sacrificing a little of whatever else is near the edges of the frame. That can be a problem in certain shots, but in this shot I don't think anything critical would have been "cropped" out by backing up and zooming in just a little.
Tony, Your idea was the same thing I originally was thinking.
Nat, I'm definitely on board with your idea and gave it a try. A problem came up for me though. The ultrawide distortion caused the lower left grass to have a different appearance than the grass in the center. Part was due to chromatic aberrations and part was due to the stretching in the corner.
Steve, I'd definitely be interested in some more detail about your approach. I like what I'm seeing so far.
Jesse, your thoughts are the reason I chose the ultrawide instead of a more traditional focal length. I wanted to get as much of the shadowed hill on the right in the frame along with its reflection.
There was nothing critical about this image. My wife and I hike here quite often so there will be plenty of chances to get such a shot again in the future. We were actually in a hurry to get somewhere else, so I didn't stop to play with many compositions. The thing I find most interesting in this lake is the erratics in the middle, so ultimately, I'll work a composition to focus on those. Might have to buy some waders.
1. I converted the image to a .tif (a .psd would work as well).
2. I copied the original image to another layer so I would always have a backup.
3. As CS3's new selection brush and the old magic wand was always selecting areas much larger than the shadow, I used a slightly soft edged eraser to erase the areas immediately around the shadow area. Once there was breathing space that was deleted around the shadow, I made a selection around the shadow and pasted it to a new layer.
4. I noticed that the shadow in the water is likely different than that on the grasses and the rock, I selected the portion of the shadow within the water, cut and then pasted that selection into yet another layer.
5. I then made three, masked adjustment layers to the two separate layers of the shadow (water and grass/rock).
6. The first masked adjustment layer was brightness/contrast. I adjusted it until it somewhat resembled the adjacent lighting visible in the background layer (base layer).
7. I then made a levels masked adjustment layer. I played with the limits as well as the highlight, midtone and highlight levels until it better resembled the adjacent lighting.
8. I then finished with a masked adjustment layer of hue/saturation. While I made some minor global RGB adjustments, most of the adjustments were made with specific color selections. I used the color picker to select a key color in the shadow area, and then adjusted hue, saturation and lightness until it better resembled the un-shaded areas.
9. I then went back and fine-tuned each adjustment layer until it looked pretty much identical.
10. I should not that the edits with the grasses/rock made the rock look very poor, so I deleted the rock area from the grasses and resigned myself to using the clone tool to handle the rock in shadow.
11. I merged the images down to create one layer (but still retaining the background as its own layer).
12. I used the clone tool to address the shadow on the rock by referencing the nearby rock as it had the same shape and size.
13. I then used limited use of the clone tool to extend the line of some grass blades that would be lit into what was the water shaded area.
I think this technique worked very well with the grasses, and is much better than cloning grasses from another area. As it turned out, the shadow in the water was more difficult to replicate the sunlit areas than the grasses. This is were more aggressive use of the clone tool would be beneficial. In any case, I think getting problem areas to better match the surroundings makes cloning more effective. This will give the option of using lower opacities for cloning.