Digital BW, The Print

At 03:21 PM 5/20/2003, mark sharfman wrote:
>I am still in the early stages of learning to use Photoshop to
>correct the mistakes I make with intial exposures.  I shoot a lot of
>figure studies in high mountain woods as I love the interplay of the
>intense light, shadow and form.  While I occasionally get what I
>think are great images, all too often, an image is degraded/destroyed
>by a hot spot where that portion of the image gets completely
>overexposed because of the F-stop range in the initial exposure.  I
>have tried various PS tools (burning, healing and cloning) as well as
>trying to isolate the section (via the magic wand etc.) and generally
>end up with a section that looks (at best) pretty funky.  Any
>references/resources on this kind of hard core retouching or other
>advice would be appreciated.

My advice is not to use Photoshop to "correct the mistakes [you] make with 
initial exposures." Hot spots and totally black shadow areas are generally 
unsalvageable--there is simply no information there to extract. The answer 
is to get the best exposure you can, bracketing if necessary, and then use 
Photoshop to clean up the image and prepare it for final printing--correct 
color balance, contrast, and similar adjustments. Photoshop tools can make 
some adjustments, such as dodging and burning, but it is limited by the 
information in the original image.

Another approach, if your subject is not moving (could be a problem with 
figure studies), is to take one exposure for the highlights and one for the 
shadows, then combine them in Photoshop. You will need a tripod, of course.

Stan

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Photography by Stan McQueen
http://www.smcqueen.com