Teach_Yourself_Photoshop_Elements_2

PHOTO CLINIC

Now try this...

How Alex can enhance his

airshow image in Elements

Select the hawk

Select the central plane with the Quick

Selection tool. Zoom in to make an

accurate selection, and where there’s not

enough contrast for the tool to work,

switch to the Selection Brush. When you

are happy with the selection press Cmd/

Ctrl+J to float the plane to a new layer.

Clone the smoke

Select the Move tool, and reposition the

plane as shown. Add a new layer below

the plane layer, and clone out the plane

with the Clone Stamp tool, Alt-clicking

to sample suitable areas of sky and

smoke. To extend the smoke trail to the

repositioned plane, sample pixels from

both the original trail and similarly

coloured trail of the bottom plane.

Brightness and colour

Add a Brightness/Contrast adjustment

layer, and set both sliders to around 60.

Finally, add a Hue/Saturation

adjustment layer, and set Saturation to

20 to boost the colours.

STEP BY STEP

PHOTO CRITIQUE

03

The sky is very
under-exposed,
and needs a boost in

Elements to rebalance it

Alex says “I visited the East Fortune Airshow in East

Lothian in July to try out my new Canon EF 70-300

f/4-5.6L IS USM lens, its zoom range extended by

my crop-factor 650D. I’d re-read the Masterclass

on photographing aircraft from the September 2012

issue of PhotoPlus for some tips, and it was a really

enjoyable day. However, it was hard work trying to

keep up with the fast jets. I was a little envious of the

photographers who had more advanced cameras with

faster burst rates – it seemed to me that more frames

per second and lots of luck were the keys to capturing

the perfect shot! I was also a bit disappointed when

I got home to find that a lot of my shots looked

too dark. I’d tried keeping my ISO at 100-200, but

I think the camera was foxed by the clouds, despite

me using spot metering. I’d appreciate any advice on

how I can capture brighter shots with more detail.”

We say “A very good effort, Alex. The planes are nice

and sharp – you can clearly make out the ‘Force’ of

Royal Air Force on some of the aircraft. The image

is a little dark, but it’s clear to see this was a dull

and overcast day – so you were never going to get

bright and sunny images! Any camera will also

under-expose shots with lots of ‘bright’ sky in the

frame to avoid over-exposure, but spot metering a

small moving target is tricky; using Centre-weighted

Average would’ve been better as the brighter planes

are mostly in the centre of your frame. But we can

easily lighten the shot in Photoshop Elements.

There’s isn’t much wrong with your camera settings

• f/7.1 is a good aperture for shooting aircraft, but
  ideally your shutter speed should have been a bit
  faster than 1/800 sec; you could easily have upped
  your ISO to 200/400 to get a faster shutter speed of
  1/1600 sec. I’ve brightened up the image in Elements,
  and boosted the contrast; however, my biggest issue
  is with the plane at the rear – it’s slightly lost against
  the red smoke of the plane above, and it detracts from
  the formation.”

Canon EOS 650D

Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM

Aperture f/7.1

Shutter speed 1/800 sec

Red Arrows

BY ALEX MCDONALD

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