Photoshop: leave no trace

Example: keep it real

Award-winning travel photographer, Marina Spironetti, had got just the photo she wanted. Unfortunately, it was in two different frames. Tim Baggaley was recruited to combine them.

There were two aspects to this job; a sky needed putting in and an irrigation pool and a rucksack needed touching out. The sky came from another of Marina’s photos from the same shoot, thus reducing the risk of differing colour balances giving the game away. Gentle feathering always helps hide joins and in this case, placing the clouds low on the horizon makes what is actually Photoshop feathering and layer blending, look like atmospheric haziness.

The rucksack and the irrigation pool were both concealed with patches using samples from within the photo. When retouching this way, tweak and alter the content of each repeated patch to avoid obvious patterns appearing.

The completed montage was given a gentle colour wash with Photoshop’s photo filter tool to blend everything together. Now we have a blue sky, we can tweak up the brightness and saturation – just a tad – without it looking fake because the original photo had enough highlight and shadow in it.

Example: making fantasy real

An obviously fake photo can still be very convincing if it is Photoshopped correctly. Peter Mason shot and composed this montage of Andy Saunders’ Ford X2000 for Custom Car magazine.

In planning this montage, lighting was crucial. The ‘alien landscape’ background photo was one I had taken of the volcano in Tenerife and I’d chosen this before shooting the car. Consequently, I knew how I needed the light to fall on the car. I photographed it in a wide, empty, car park so as to minimise the reflections in the bodywork which would have been tricky to touch out.

To generate a convincing shadow, I referred to un-retouched photos taken in the same sort of lighting conditions, to see how shadows really look. The hard edges and deep darkness are characteristic of strong, direct sunlight. Equally, I didn’t work too hard to create a shadow that matches the shape of the car. On that lumpy rock and grass, a wandering blob makes sense to our eyes. Don’t work in isolation on the photo creating what you think makes sense, have plenty of real-life photos on your desk as references.

Example: turn back time

Photoshop can be used to great effect to reverse the effects of wear and tear on old photos. Tim Baggaley restored this photo for Nursing Standard magazine.

The starting point was not the original photo with a piece of masking tape on it, but a digital scan of the old photo. The original was quite underexposed and or faded with time, except around two nurses on the right. Two particular retouches were needed on this job. First, the lighting needed to be balanced and second, the tape needed touching out. The nurse second from the right served as the baseline for a more natural range of light and shadow, which I then applied to the whole photo. I isolated and separated the two nurses on the right and then adjusted the remainder of the photo to match.

Touching out the masking tape meant sampling and patching. The danger is that the patches give themselves away with obvious repetition of content. Look very closely at the blonde woman’s hair and you might be able to see a touch of mirrored repetition. I think, though, this is subtle enough you can see it only if it is pointed out.

The brickwork and building under the tape mark were reconstructed using patches sampled from other parts of the photo. As well as guarding against obvious repetition, I also needed to be sure the geometry of the bricks and mortar I patched-in place made sense.

Example: go forth and multiply

The client wanted more bums on seats but could not provide them for the shoot. In post-production, Richard Baggaley was called upon to perform a miracle…

When photoshoots involve real people in real situations, it can be difficult to get the photo the client has in mind. So it was on this shoot, there simply weren’t as many people in the congregation as the client had imagined.

Obviously, I’d got to copy and paste some people into the empty seats. Because all the photos in this shoot featured the same people in the same places, I could not sample from other photos – all the content would come from the original.

The figures have the same orientation and stances, so in this respect, it was not too tricky. Because I was also using quite large patches, there was less risk of the localised ‘patterning’ which gives away so many Photoshop retouches. Nonetheless, I did spend a lot of time tweaking hairstyles and details of clothing and positioning, to reduce the danger of producing any obvious clones.

It is always the case when retouching that because you know what work you have done, it is obvious to you and so you think, to any observer. This isn’t true. I did not worry about actually putting people in the empty seats to the front and right of the aisle, I cloned in complete pews. In reality, even the people in this photo might not notice that there are now pews where there used to be seats. In Photoshop, reality needs to be convincing, but not necessarily true.

When you have Photoshop and too much time on their hands