you have the Shadows and Highlight
(Picture 2�7) sliders. As their name
indicates, they act on specific tones
that is, shadows and highlights
respectively, just as their counterparts
do in Lightroom.Selective Adjustments: So far, all
the adjustments we talked about
work globally, that is, over the entire
picture. These are generally more
than sufficient to handle most of the
situations. However, sometimes you
may want to adjust only specific (local)
areas. Commands for this purpose are
grouped as Selective Adjustments
(Picture 2�8). We will look at these in
this section.This command is somewhat similar to
the Adjustment Brush in Lightroom
with a major difference. In the case of
Adjustment Brush, you have to paint
the area over which you want to effect
the changes. You need not do that
due to the very smart ‘Control Point’
technology used here.So, what is this all about? First select
the Control Points (Picture
2 �8) by clicking on the small
circle. Your cursor will change
into a circle. Move this to the
point where you want to do a
local adjustment and click at
that point. You will now see
a tree like structure (Picture
3). The control point is shown
as a yellow circle and you can
drag it to any place you want.
To the right of it is a small
white dot. Dragging it will
alter the size of the circle over
which the local corrections
are being made. You can
make it as large or as small
as you want. There are some
sophisticated algorithms
behind the operation.
Because of these, the blending
of the alterations with the
surrounding area is taken
care of very well unless you
do some extreme changes.
You can place multiple control
points and the list will appear
in a panel below. You can
click any one of them and do
the needed changes. Selecting
a control point and hittingthe delete key will delete that control © Akshay Rao D
point. There are three branches called
Br, Co, St - each with a slider. These
correspond to Brightness, Contrast
and Structure. They function exactly as
their peers with the same names but
here the effect is felt only within the
circle. At the bottom of these sliders
you will find a small triangle. Clicking
on this will expand the tree and you
will now see some more sliders. These
are named AW, AB, FC and SC. These
refer to Amplify Whites, Amplify
Blacks, Fine Structure and Selective
Colorization. Their functions are as
follows:AW: Boosts highlightsAB: Makes shadows darkerFS: Increases the contrast of finely
detailed objectsSC: Brings back the original colourWhile these are useful, in most cases
you will not need them.Other commands available are: Colour
Filter: The Colour Filter (Picture 2�9)
command allows you to apply colour
filters to the image. To the uninitiated,
use of colour filters in monochrome
photography may seem strange. An
explanation of what a filter does will help
you understand why these filters are
useful.Any photographic filter essentially passes
the light of the colour of the filter and
blocks its complementary colour. Thus,
a red filter passes red (wavelengths
of light) and blocks blue which is its
complementary colour. A colour that is
passed is rendered lighter and a colour
that is blocked gets darker in the image.
So, if you use a red filter, the objects with
colour red will appear lighter and those
of blue (blue being complementary to
red) will be rendered darker. Thus, a
red filter will make the blue sky dark.
The stronger (deeper) the red colour
of filter, the darker will be the blue sky.
Orange and yellow filters also darken
the sky but less intensely. Consider this
example. If you have a red object against
a blue sky and both – the red as well as
the blue –are of the same tone, using
a red filter will render the red object
lighter and make it stand out against the
blue sky which will be rendered very
dark. Not using a filter may cause both
the subject and background to merge as
the tones are same although the colours
are different. The difference in colours
is not of consequence in monochromePicture 3: Control Point sliders.The Most Important Point!
You must start with a raw image.
This needs to be treated as a
never to be broken rule. And, if
your camera offers 14-bit raw use
that too. The reason is as follows.
JPEG images have only 8-bits per
channel whereas a raw file has
12-bits (or even 14-bits for more
advanced cameras). While 8-bits
offer only 256 levels, 12 and 14-bit
files offer 4,096 and 16,384 levels
respectively. What this means is
that you have more data available
to start with. Since monochrome
conversion needs a higher degree
of manipulation, especially for
contrast in post-processing, this will
prevent banding. Banding manifests
as visually undesirable stripes in
smooth areas like sky.LEARNING
Understanding Photography
104 http://www.smartphotography.in
Smart PhotographyJuly 2017