Bringing out shadows

[Flehmen]

G'day all,

Wow, lots of stuff to read tonight... (How the heck do I keep up with it!!) Just been going through the November photo project and thought up a question for all of you!

Anyhow, my quesiton for everyone is this. How would you go about giving shadows more emphasis in a photo? Digitally, of course. :) What kinds of things would you do?

Flehmen

[madster]

Hey, Flehmen!

Like so many questions, it depends...
What software program? Photoshop? Use the Burn tool, or adjust the curves, or use the paintbrush or airbrush tool at a reduced opacity, or clone stamp from a darker shadowed area in the images....there are lots of different ways to accomplish things, it depends on your comfort level with various tools, and how persnickety you want to get, and how much time you want to spend on it...
Isolate the shadow you want to enhance with the magic wand or the lasso tool to make a selection. Use the Quick mask tool to fine tune the selection. Then use any of the ways I mentioned above to enhance your shadow within the selection.
Once done, use the eyedropper to get a color match, and stroke the selection with a feather edge of 4-5 pixels to soften it.

Now, if you're making a shadow from scratch, as opposed to enhancing a pre-existing shadow, that's another kettle of fish, and I suggest you do a search for Graphic shadow tutorials...

Hope this helps!

Madster

[jsr88]

Flehmen,
Like Maddy said, there are lots of ways to "kill a cat" when approaching any question dealing with graphic editing software. And what you do will depend more on the photo, itself, than any other single factor.

I always try to get my photo as close to what I'm looking for using the normal photo enhancement tools like Levels (my #1 tool!), contrast, curves, and possibly, but rarely, the gamma correction process.

When I have worked my way through those tools, I'll generally grab for the "retouch" tool in PSPv7 or a regular brush in PS7. Each program has it own way of getting to the same destination. :)

With my brushes in hand, I set my brush options so that the opacity of what I'm about to do isn't going to destroy my photo with the first stroke. For your situation, to deepen the shadows, I'd be using the "BURN" mode for my brush...if the brush options are set too distinctly (LARGE solid brush style, very hard edges, 100% opacity) OR if the cursor is moved by dragging (especially when combined with "hard" brush settings) you will end up with a DARK, HARD line across your work.

I like to work with a very SOFT brush (no hard edges), keeping the brush set VERY light in opacity. I usually work in "click, move, click" rather than "Click, drag" mouse or Pen sequence. And I usually use what would otherwise be a LARGE size brush. But the size depends on the area of the image I'm working with.

If you will give us a sample of what type photo you are working with, and tell us what software you are using we can better give you specific ideas of how to handle the problem.

(Nice to see you back with us again...I wonderered where you'd gone off to. ;) )

[madster]

ALWAYS WORK FROM A COPY!

And if you're not sure about the method you're using, make a copy of the layer you're working on, and turn the visibility of the main layer off.

That way, if you goof it up, you can go back to a "clean" layer and try again, and if you get fed up and need to just walk away for awhile, you can come back "fresh", AND, if you want to try a few different approaches, you can turn off one layer, and work on a duplicate.

Just remember to get rid of layers you no longer need when you save your final image.