High pass clouds

This tutorial will show how to use the high pass filter to make clouds look more dramatic. The first four steps are the same as my high pass sharpening tutorial so I will start from that point and if you need to see the first part you can reference the previous post. The photo I am using this time is one that my roommate Anthony took for a photo project for class, I chose it because it will work well for this edit.

1. Unlike in the high pass sharpening edit we do not want the radius to be small. For this edit you will want the radius to be more than 200 pixels.



2. Change the layer's blending mode, multiply works well for this edit.



3. Add a layer mask and brush out everything except the clouds. Note: A trick to remember while masking is white reveals, black conceals.



4. You will notice some objects have a type of halo around them from the high amount of high pass so to fix this duplicate the background layer and burn in the highlights around your objects against the clouds.




5. Since the basketball goal is white, when I went to burn the halo in I also burnt the goal. To correct this add a layer mask to the middle layer (the one you just burnt on not the high pass layer) and mask the burnt goal out. Since the goal had a straight edge around it I used the polygonal lasso to select it then modified my selection by going to select, modify, feather. Only feather the selection a small amount, usually less than 5 pixels. Once you've modified your selection, brush it in with black on your layer mask.





6. This step is not necessary for all edits but it might come in handy. I still wanted more definition to my clouds so I duplicated the high pass layer, cleared the mask I had on it, changed the blending mode to hard light, then re-masked it in by eye preference.




To finish this edit off I added a levels layer mask and a brightness/contrast layer mask. Like the last tutorial I have included a before and after of the photo so you can see the difference. I hope you found this helpful!

High pass sharpening

This process is useful for cleanly sharpening an image. I especially like using this whenever I have a high iso grainy image and don't want to blown the grain out of proportion with an unsharp mask or if I just want a clean high res image. The photo I am using in this tutorial is on my other blog and there will be a link to it at the bottom of this post.

1. Open your image in photoshop and make sure to have the layer you want to sharpen selected.



2. Duplicate your layer by right clicking it or with hotkey [ apple + j ].



3. Desaturate the duplicate layer through image, adjustments, desaturate or hotkey [ shift + apple + u ].



4. While still on your desaturated layer click the high pass filter.



5. Keep the radius small, typically less than 10 pixels. You just want the filter to keep the outlines in the image.





6. Change the top layer's blending mode. I find soft light or overlay to be the best for this kind of edit.



7. At this point you can mask out any areas that look too sharp and can reduce the opacity of your duplicate layer to your eye's preference. There are more details on how to do this in the next post I have about high pass clouds.



Once you are done merge your layers or flatten your image and save it. Below I have put a before and after so you can see the difference high pass sharpening makes. I hope you found this tutorial useful and easy to comprehend!



Tree top tilt shot:
http://binterart.blogspot.com/2010/06/tree-top-tilt-shot.html