[MulaPhoto]

Image Enhancement – Paint with Light

This is a method of adjusting the brightness or darkening parts of an image without affecting the overall total brightness/ or darkness of an image

If you look at the example, the original is at the top and the texture of the guy’s clothing is indistinct, I do not want to brighten the background or the faces.

Using PWL you can very selectively make changes to any image to give the feel that you require, it also works with B&W images.

There is no reason why this method should not be adaptable to Corel Paint (Paint Shop Pro) and it certainly will work with GIMP or GIMPSHOP.

I use Adobe CS2 and here is my method.

Open image

Ctrl+J to duplicate the background layer, this way you are using non destructable methods.

Ctrl+Shift+N This brings up New Layer box

Enter the following
Name - PWL
Color – Grey
Mode – Soft light
Do not tick – use previous layer to create Clipping Mask or Fill with soft-light-neutral color (50%)

Click OK

You will now see in the layers palette a new blank layer

Press D to reset foreground and background colors to Black and white

Select a Paintbrush, I usually use a soft brush
Set the following
Size as required usually up to 200
Mode – Normal
Opacity – 2 to 15%, Its best to start with about 5%
Flow – 100%

Now if you start with the foreground color as Black and make sure you have the New Layer PWL selected and paint on the light areas of the image, at portion of the image will darken,
To select theWhite as the foreground color, Press X
Now when you paint on a dark portion of the image you will see it lighten.
You can experiment with opacity settings and brush sizes.
When you are finished, you can now make a New Visible layer by Holding the ALT key down, and going to the little arrow above Opacity in the layers palette, then croll down to Merge Visible, click this item, then release the ALT Key on the Keyboard.

Give this a try, it works for me

I would really appreciate any feedback or comments on this technique
John

[slejhamer]

Yes, painting on a 50% gray layer set to soft-light can be a very useful technique. I used something very similar to bring out the midtones along the trees in this image:

http://www.pbase.com/image/93013458

[matthew]

The wonderful thing about Photoshop is that there's at least three different ways to do anything. I've been using a similar technique as a dodge/burn method as well. I create a layer with the mode set to "overlay" and check the box that says "fill with overlay neutral 50% grey". Otherwise your instructions look the same, but are written far better than I would.

I also find that painting with white brightens the image more than painting with black darkens it. I often have to cut the opacity in half when I switch to white.

[Irma]

I haven't tried this technique. I will give it a try.
Most of my problems specially in bw pictures are the mid tones. In some cases I lose luminance, hence detail.
Thanks for sharing your technique, very well explainded ...

[Zig]

Likewise, I'm slapping my forehead wondering why I haven't worked out that I can do this. I've been bumbling about doing "straight" dodge and burn on different layers and think I've become quite conservative and unadventurous(I still think, erroneously, as digital being an analogue of film...consequently imagining I'm in a darkroom like in the good/bad old days!) Sometimes it just beats me how some of you guys get the time to find all this stuff out

[Zig]

btw...slej: I like that hdr...those edges suggest to me this is Photomatix???