A few small retouching tweaks in Exposure can do wonders for portraits. We made this video to show you how to remove imperfections, balance tones, and smooth skin texture.

Photo: Frank Salas

Transcript

Retouching Presets

Exposure has portrait retouching presets that apply several retouching effects in separate layers all at once. They free you from having to start from scratch for each image you retouch, which saves you time. After one of these multiple-layer presets are applied to your image, you can then use Exposure’s selection tools to control the application of each layer’s effects.

The Touch Up preset covers the retouching basics. It includes a layer for softening skin, one for enhancing the iris, and one for whitening teeth.

The next option is Touch Up + Background, which includes the three basic touch up layers and an additional layer that blurs and darkens the background which helps you easily draw attention to your subject.

The last option is the Touch Up + Red Eye preset. It includes the basic three touch up layers, and a layer with an effect that removes red eye.

Shiny spots

Bright highlights on skin is usually not wanted as it can result in a loss of detail. A few simple adjustments can recover it. For large areas of skin that are bright and shiny, create a mask using the color constraints for the main skin tone. This process is similar to how you would control skin smoothing effects. Refine the Luminance constraints to select only on the brighter values within the skin selection mask.

With the mask in place, make adjustments to the Highlights and Whites sliders to recover hidden details. Highlights will target lighter values, and Whites defines the true white in the image. These adjustments may only make gentile, and delicate changes to the photo, but they are just as important as stronger effects. Press the backslash key to visualize the effects and to dial-in the look.

Uneven tones

There are many reasons for uneven skin tones in portraits. Skin can show blotches when people are too hot, cold, if they have dry skin, or even if they are uncomfortable. When the unevenness of skin tones are distracting, reduce their impact with the HSL controls on the Color panel.

The process of fixing blotches is the same as when correcting bright spots. Create a layer to correct the skin tone’s color. To make the coloring easier to see, temporarily raise the Saturation slider on the Basic panel to give it more color while you make the selection. Use the color constraints to create a layer mask of the red spots with the hue eyedropper. Then, make adjustments to narrow the mask to the appropriate areas. And now set the Saturation back to normal.

Open the Color panel and use the Hue targeted adjustment tool. Click and drag to change yellow to reds. If the subject is flushed, consider reducing the saturation in specific tones.

Touch ups

Small distracting elements, like skin blemishes, are easily removed with the Spot Heal tool. When the Spot Heal panel is open, the Spot Heal brush cursor will appear when you hover over the image preview. Spot healing enables you to quickly remove distracting elements from your images.

Zoom in to an area in the photo where you want to make adjustments. Then, refine the brush to fully cover the feature you want to remove. For small blemishes, simply click to remove them. Exposure will intelligently choose a source area for the repair. You can easily reposition it if you’d rather select from a different area.

You can create as many regions as you want to touch up your photo. To heal larger areas, simply click and drag. You can always relocate the region Exposure chooses. Notice the hand icon, which indicates that the cursor is over a region you can move. To delete a region, right-click and select Delete from the menu, or you can select a region and press Backspace or Delete on the keyboard. Additionally, from the right-click menu you can set show outlines to Auto or Always. If my image is too crowded with all the displayed borders, I can switch to only Active, or to Never.

You can customize the appearance of spot healing regions by adjusting the Size, Feather, and Opacity sliders. Feathering adjusts how the healed area fades out around the edges. Opacity sets the transparency of the blend. Lower settings show more of the original area while higher settings completely cover it. Notice there are two sets of heal region controls. The top set of sliders control the active spot, and the bottom set of sliders control your next brush.

Each brush has two modes: Heal, which is mostly used for portrait retouching, and Clone, which is useful for areas with strong patterns like grass or trees. I’ll use it here to replace one of the crooked tassels on her cowl.

The post Retouching Portraits appeared first on Exposure Software.

Converting masking selections into polygons enables you to quickly create detailed, adjustable selection boundaries in Exposure.

Photo: Michael Gillman

Transcript

Converting Selections

The polygon tool is a great option for any selections you make, because it can easily be refined at any time. Other tools are faster in certain scenarios, such as selecting an object with a complex outline. However, the other tools don’t have the same level of refinement Polygons do once the selection is made. Converting the selection into a Polygon essentially gives you the best of both worlds.

Marker Selections

An example workflow is when the subject has a detailed outline with defined boundaries. Use a Border marker to tell Exposure where to search for edges of the object, and then place an Add Marker on the object. Place more Add markers, or Exclude markers to refine the selection boundaries like usual.

With the selection complete, select the Actions menu and choose Convert to Polygon. Notice all of the markers you used to create the selection have been merged into one detailed polygon. It can be refined by moving or removing points, changing the edge options, and more.

Polygon Selections

Selections made with the Polygon tool can also benefit from being converted into a Polygon. If you use the Polygon tool in freehand mode, by holding Alt, this does not place points along the edge. If you want to go back and adjust the freehand line, you can add points along the line and move them, or a much faster way is to convert the whole thing into another Polygon. This adds loads of vertices that you can control to make sure the selection is just right.

Lasso Selections

The Lasso tool converts into a polygon when you create the selection. You may also need to add markers to clean up edges where the lasso selected too much or too little. Once the selection is refined, you can convert that into a Polygon. This will condense all of the active selection tools into a single Polygon that’s easy to revisit and adjust if needed.

As you can see, converting selections into Polygons is a great way to take command over masking in Exposure.

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The Lasso selection tool enables you to easily make detailed selections. Simply sketch a lasso around an object in the scene and Exposure will select it for you.

Photo: Andrea Livieri

Transcript

The selection tools are flexible enough to use however you’d like, but the first tool you use to create the initial selection will set up the workflow for adjusting it. Each of the selection tools do the same thing in a different way to give you control over various content.

Making Lasso Selections

The Lasso selection tool is perfect for objects that are clearly defined. Simply use the Lasso to trace around the object in the photo and Exposure will generate a selection for you. The shape you draw tells Exposure where to look for the edges of the object you wish to select. The selection that the Lasso tool creates is a detailed, adjustable polygon.

Refining selections

The Sensitivity slider adjusts how Exposure generates the lasso selection. Higher amounts of sensitivity make Exposure look for harder, more defined edges when it creates the selection. Low sensitivity will include more detail and less variation in the selection edge.

If you want to remake the lasso you made, press the Clear button. On the other side of the panel, press Commit to accept the selection on the screen. This converts the lasso selection into a polygon. In the panel, notice the  active selection boundary is labeled as an Include Polygon.

Refine the selection boundary with the border points. You can move points, or delete unneeded points easily to make the edges of the selection match even better with those in the image.

The thickness of the selection boundary can be adjusted because it is now a polygon. The Base Width slider controls the size of the area Exposure searches when locating the object’s edges. A narrower base width will give Exposure accurate data about the edge location, but it will take more time to position each point precisely.

For more control, select a point or several points along the edge and use the Relative Width slider to change each segment independently. You can easily change the relative width with the mouse wheel and the modifier key Shift. Simply hover over a point, or several selected points in the preview and then scroll to change the point width.

Using masks

The layer masks created with the Lasso tool enable you to easily control different zones within the photograph to apply editing adjustments. When using strong adjustments, like 2 or more stops of Exposure, the precision of the selection boundary becomes much more important. In this scenario, use the Edge Options controls to modify the selection.

The Expand slider will widen or shrink the selection boundary. The Matting slider makes edge-sensitive expansion. It pushes the mask out toward the border of the selection to blend away thin lines that may appear at the edges of the mask.

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The Border Marker selection tool enables you to make detailed selections effortlessly. Quickly sketch over an object in the scene and Exposure will select it for you.

Photo: Jeff Butterworth, Michael Gillman

Transcript

The selection tools are flexible enough to use however you’d like, but the first tool you use to create the initial selection will set up the workflow for adjusting it. Each of the selection tools do the same thing in a different way to give you control over various content.

Border Marker Selections

When selecting objects with defined edges, Border markers are a very effective way of creating a selection. They can quickly make masks with lots of detail with minimal effort.

Making selections

Click the Border marker tool and then brush over the entire object. When doing this, try to cover the whole thing. Then, add an Include marker to designate the object.

Depending on the object, you may need to add more markers to include everything. Markers can be a dot, or line, or you can freely brush within the object. And, you can always revisit markers in Exposure to make adjustments to them independently.

Refining selections

Markers can come in all shapes and sizes. For example, they can be very small when working with intricate selections. Tiny markers may select too much area, so you may need to fine-tune the placement work better with the object.

Selections can be refined using a mixture of techniques. For example, using an Exclude polygon would likely be a better option for masking architectural photos with lots of straight lines.

Another way to improve the selection you’ve made is with the color constraints. You can specify the hue, saturation, and luminance values you wish to select in the image, and remove those you don’t want from the selection.

Using masks

For example, you can easily select the highlight values, or the shadow values of a specific object to apply separate edits. This would be a good way to either remove color casts or tints, or add your own creative toning to the photo.

Once a selection is made, it can easily be duplicated to save time. In the Layers panel, right-click, select Duplicate Layer, then make adjustments to the new layer. You can invert the selection to quickly apply a separate color tint that complements the first one.

When masking in Exposure, the mask preview options at the bottom of the panel can be used to change how you visualize the selection you are making. This is especially helpful for objects with hard edges, where you don’t want any haloing around the selection that can show effects where they aren’t wanted. Experiment with different modes, such as using transparency rather than a color overlay to see which mode works best. It’s a different way to visualize the selection without modifying the images’ tones.

The post Border Marker Selections appeared first on Exposure Software.

This video demonstrates methods of creating selection masks in Exposure. Masking objects in a scene is largely image dependent. There are several ways to combine the tools in Exposure when creating selection masks for different subjects.

Photo: Jeff Butterworth, Julian Berman

Transcript

The selection tools can be used however you’d like. The first tool you use to make a selection will dictate the workflow for refining it. You can use either the polygon or the markers for creating a mask, or for refining the mask. Each of them do the same thing, but in a different way to give you better control over different subjects.

Quick Polygon Selections

If you know exactly what subject you want to select, The Polygon Tool is great to use. It gives Exposure a lot of information about the object you wish to select. And it gives you precise control over what’s selected, including the ability to revisit the mask and make adjustments.

Making Selections

The Polygon tool is great for making freehand selections in addition to shapes composed of multiple straight lines. We demonstrate how to perform straight line polygon selections in the Masking Selection Tools video on our website. To draw the  polygon freehand, hold the Alt key while using the tool and trace a simple outline around an object.

To make the freehand process quicker, increase the Base Width. This gives you a larger brush tip, which makes tracing the outline much more simple. This technique works especially well for selections that don’t have a lot of intricate detail in the edges.

Refining Selections

Freehand elements can be mixed with line segments, too. The entire selection doesn’t have to be made using the same technique. After making the selection, there are a number of ways you can refine the shape.

Add more points, or move existing points to work better with the edges.

Change the thickness of the shape to make refinements. A narrow polygon edge will give Exposure precise information about the location of the selection edge but it will take more time to position them exactly. Make adjustments to the entire shape with the Base Width slider. Relative Width controls each point or each line segment individually.

Use Exclude polygons to trace areas you don’t want included. Again holding Alt to trace the boundary freehand.

Use Add markers to extend the selection boundaries

Use Exclude markers where the selection includes too much area. When placing markers, you can adjust the Base and Border width sliders at any time in your workflow. For clarity, you can turn the border width off while you create the marker, and then introduce it after.

Using Masks

With the mask refined, you can use it in lots of different ways. Invert the selection to control the background on a separate layer. This can be used to tone down the exposure a little bit, or add toning, or reduce saturation.

The same selection can also be modified with the color constraints to control separate areas within the object. In this example, they can be used to create separate layers with masks for clothing. With a dark blue tone, the pants are selected.

Then, simply duplicate the layer and update the color constraints to select the different pieces of wardrobe, including a layer for skin.

With these separate layers, you have absolute control over editing your images.

The post Quick Polygon Selections appeared first on Exposure Software.

Exposure uses a unified crop and transform panel to provide a straightforward way to compose photos. It provides simple controls for changing crop ratios, correcting perspectives, or adding film borders without covering too much of the image. Additionally, the visual overlay guides like the golden triangle or golden section give you helpful composition options. Learn how to use them in your workflow, in this video.

Photo: Patrick Shipstad

Transcript

Crop and Transform Edits

All of the controls for cropping, leveling, rotating, and making perspective corrections to images in Exposure are found within the crop panel. When the crop tool is selected, the panel with crop controls is shown, a creative guide is placed over the image and a Crop and Transform layer appears in the layers panel. You can made crop adjustments directly on the large image in the preview, or you can use the controls in the panel to make adjustments

Cropping Images

Cropping an image is a great way to direct the viewer’s eye to what’s most important. Apply a crop directly in the preview panel by dragging on the corners or sides of the photo.

There are several preset aspect ratios in Exposure, which make it simple to crop to specific proportions. Select from the list of Aspect Ratios, and then scale, rotate, or move the crop box.

You can create your own crop ratio presets, too. Either use the crop tool to draw a custom crop ratio, or select the Create Custom Aspect Ratio option in the menu. Custom presets are recorded so you can use the same ratio again in the future.

Rotating

Leveling unnaturally tilted horizons is an important step in making photos feel polished. Rotate your image directly in the preview panel by clicking and dragging outside the crop area. Use the level tool to indicate a line in the image that should be horizontal or vertical. Exposure will apply the rotation adjustments automatically.

You can also rotate the image with the slider. Move it to the right for clockwise rotation, and move it left to rotate counter-clockwise.

Perspective Correction

Photos where buildings appear to lean away from the camera exhibit optical distortion called keystoning. Adjust the Vertical slider to correct for the building leaning away from the camera. Use the Horizontal slider if the building leans to one side or the other.

Reposition the image within the current aspect ratio with the move and stretch sliders. You can drag to reposition the crop window with the mouse. The move sliders update as you make adjustments. You can edit them directly depending on image content. The stretch sliders elongate the image when the keystoning adjustments remove too much of the content.

Enable Constrain Crop to ensure that the entire cropped area contains pixels from the transformed image. When this is off, it’s possible to see the background color in parts of your image. Note that you can control the background fill color. This is useful when the updated image canvas is missing image data after the transform and cropping adjustments are applied.

Creative Guides

The Display options customize the guides that appear when you use the aspect ratio tools. Select from composition guides such as the Rule of Thirds, the Golden Ratio, the Golden Spiral, or more. For guides that aren’t horizontally and vertically symmetrical, additional controls appear such as flip, mirror, and stretch.

You can also set the Alignment guide to a grid, whose size you can control with the slider below. Selecting the Composition guide for the Alignment guide will display the composition guide you have selected for all of your crop, rotation, and transform edits.

Crop and Transform Layer

Transform adjustments are all applied in a separate layer, which gives you control over when it is applied. Exposure processes layers in order from bottom to top. Changing the placement of the crop step can be beneficial when using Exposure’s overlays. For example you can prevent image data from being covered up by a creative border. On the crop layer extend the edges of the image with the Stretch sliders.

The post Crop and Transform appeared first on Exposure Software.

This video demonstrates how to use the masking selection tools in Exposure. These tools flexibly work together to help you quickly generate layer masks that isolate a subject for editing adjustments.

Photo: Andrea Livieri

Transcript

Polygon Selections

The Polygon selection tool enables you to draw a quick border with a number of points that Exposure uses to make a high-quality selection. Click the Brush icon to open the panel, or click the layer mask thumbnail. Under Draw Mask, choose Selection. Click Include Polygon and then place a few points on the image to draw an approximate outline of the object. Exposure will intelligently locate the edges of what you outline. You can make adjustments to the points at any time. The mask will update as you make tweaks.

To remove an area from the selection use the Exclude Polygon tool. Just like designating areas that you want to include, this tool tells Exposure what not to include in the selection. 

For detailed edges or sweeping curves, you can hold the Alt/Option key to draw the polygon edge by hand. Release the key and then continue drawing points to close the shape.

Adding more points to the polygon will bring the lines tighter to the edges. This gives Exposure better information to analyze when it generates the selection boundaries. If the polygon includes areas you don’t want in the selection, you can add more points, or move points to refine the boundary.

Refining Polygons

The Base Width slider controls the width of the polygon Exposure uses to create the mask. Widen the base width to have Exposure scan a larger area for edges. A wider thickness enables you to make a simpler polygon, which is better for selecting objects in the scene with defined edges. If the object edges blend into the background, use a narrower base width and more precise polygon points.

Another refinement to consider is the width at each point in the polygon, which is modified with the Relative Width control. Select one or more points to adjust each of their widths. A thicker polygon makes it easy to cover all the edges of an object, but it might not find the edges as accurately. A thinner polygon makes you be more careful about following the edges when placing points, but it’ll do a better job.

Make additional tweaks to the edges of the polygon with the Edge Options. The Expand slider will either grow or shrink the polygon in all directions.

The Matting slider makes edge-sensitive expansion when getting the perfect edge is crucial. It pushes the mask out toward the border of the selection to blend away thin lines that may appear at the edges of the mask.

Use markers to quickly make refinements to the selection. Include markers tell Exposure to include a specific area with the selection. Exclude markers tell Exposure to not select a specific area. Every marker you place can be moved and modified after it’s been placed on the image. 

Markers have an inner boundary and an outer boundary. The inner boundary is the Base Width, which is used to precisely the area you want to mark. The outer boundary is the area Exposure will search to find the edge of the object. Control the outer boundary with the Border Width slider.

Marker Selections

Markers are also useful without the polygon drawing tools. Because they can be used by themselves, they are another great way to select objects in Exposure. Use Include Markers to roughly select objects in the scene. Draw a marker so the base width boundary covers the majority of the object. Exposure will create a selection based on that.

Then, just like refining the polygon selection, use Exclude Markers if there are areas that need adjusting. Markers can be drawn in lines or just dots, depending on image content. Once they are made, adjust the Base Width and Border Width to refine the area.

Border Markers tell Exposure where to look for the edge of the object. If there are areas of the selection that need to extend to an edge, simply trace along it with a border marker, and Exposure will update with the new data.

The post Masking Selection Tools appeared first on Exposure Software.

Workspaces are custom arrangements of panels designed for a specific task in Exposure. They help you focus your attention by showing only the controls needed to perform the task. This video shows you how to switch between Exposure’s built-in workspaces, and how to create your own custom workspaces.

Photo: Alejandro Gutierrez

Transcript

Using Workspaces

Workspaces enable you to focus on a specific post-processing step by showing only the panels needed for that task. 

Exposure comes with several useful workspaces. The Culling workspace includes folder navigation and tools for assigning ratings, flags, and metadata to images. The Editing workspace includes presets and all of the editing panels in the right dock. The Retouching workspace displays brushing and masking controls to speed up working with fine details. And the Defaults workspace shows every panel in Exposure’s interface.

You can switch between workspaces quickly to get to the next post-processing task. Workspaces can be accessed through the navigation menu at the bottom of the screen. You can use this menu to change workspaces, or it can also be used to navigate to a specific panel in a workspace.

To switch between workspaces even quicker, use the keyboard shortcuts. CMD+Shift and the bracket keys [ or ] will jump to the next workspace. Windows users use CTRL+Shift and the bracket keys.

Creating Workspaces

It’s easy to create your own workspaces for activities such as client proofing, processing images in black and white, or whatever your workflow needs are. Workspaces can include any panel available in Exposure.

To create a new workspace, open the Preferences window. On the Workspaces tab, the left and right columns represent Exposure’s left and right docks. The box in the center lists the unassigned control panels, which are hidden in the workspace configuration.

Let’s create a workspace for client proofing, which will have minimal controls displayed. Drag and drop to change the order of the panels, move them to a different quadrant, or place them in the unassigned box. Also there are display options in this view for using multiple monitors. We’ll talk more about that later in the video.

Below the workspace panel are options for the top and bottom docks. Simply check the box to include that control in the workspace.

With options set, click the gear icon to save the workspace. Use an informative name, place it in a category, and include a helpful description. This is good practice to keep your workspaces organized.

Refining Workspaces

Certain adjustments to the main UI are remembered as part of the workspace. Workspaces track divider positions, whether panels are collapsed or open, and more. Exposure automatically saves these changes as they are made, and restores them when you switch to the workspace.

For example, you can change the size of the docks and Exposure will remember that.

With those adjustments made, navigate to another workspace, and then back to the Editing workspace. The workspace layout is just as we left it.

Controlling Docks

Hiding the docks is a great way to give more of the screen to your images. Hide a dock by clicking the arrow button at the edge of the screen. A hidden dock can be accessed by moving the cursor near the edge of the window. When the mouse moves off of the dock, it will hide itself again. Docks can be locked open with the arrow buttons at the edges of the screen.

Show and hide docks quickly with keyboard shortcuts. TAB toggles the visibility of all docks. Toggle individual docks with ⌘ or Ctrl, Shift, and the corresponding arrow key. The left dock can be closed with ⌘+Shift left arrow, or Ctrl+Shift+left arrow on Windows.

Multiple Monitors

Another workspace consideration is adding a second monitor for more room to work. This enables you to view images at full size on one screen, with the grid of thumbnails and all the editing tools on the other.

Activate the secondary display through the Window menu at the top of the screen. Notice the keyboard shortcuts listed in the menu.

The docks can be moved to the screen you prefer to work. Selecting options here will relocate the docks to the second screen.

The post Workspaces appeared first on Exposure Software.

Watch this video to learn the basics of using Exposure and about the important features for photo editing and organizing.

Photos: John Barclay

Transcript

You can also use Exposure as a creative editing plug-in for Photoshop or Lightroom. We have videos that show you how to get started with those programs on our website.

Copying images from a camera card is usually where the workflow begins. We’ll start there, and then we’ll get into organizing and culling or editing the shoot down to the top selects. When a camera card is placed in a card reader, Exposure will recognize it and open the Copy Images From Card dialog.

Organizing Photos

Notice the numbered sections along the top of the panel. In Step 1 you select where the images you want to copy are located. In Step 2 you review and select which images to copy. And in Step 3, you set where you want the images to be saved and you can set any other file handling options. Once complete, press OK.

To learn more about copying photos from your card, watch our tutorial video.

On the left of the screen, in the Folders panel, you can navigate to folders on your computer. Exposure doesn’t use a catalog, so this is the same folder organization as your hard drive. Select a folder to view its contents. If you have a lot of images, it’s useful to categorize them. Exposure has a number of tools to help you keep organized.

There are star ratings…color labels…and flags. You can use Exposure’s keyboard shortcuts to categorize. Exposure provides customizable keyboard shortcuts for editing and organizing tasks, which greatly speed up your work.

Exposure also has advanced categorization features like keywords, collections, and smart collections. Visit our website for tutorials about those and other organizing features.

Once you have categorized your images, you can set filters to change which images you see. For example you can show all images that have four or more stars.

Clear the filter by pressing Cmd+O (or Ctrl+O on Windows). And then filter by color label…or by flag. I can easily hide all images flagged as rejects. You can also sort your images in many different ways, such as by camera model, or star rating. If you don’t see the images you’re looking for, Exposure’s metadata search makes them easy to find. You can search by camera, lens, shutter speed, ISO, and many other criteria.

Editing Photos

To edit an image, double-click it to switch to a single image view.

Images in the same folder are available in the filmstrip view in the bottom dock. Click to select another image or use the arrow keys to move through them in sequence.

The Presets panel on the left dock is where to find Exposure’s library of creative looks. The presets are organized into folders. You will find color and black and white films, focus effects, faded films, and more.

For portraits the Color Films – Print – Low Contrast category is a great option. There are a number of subtle color effects in this category that will work great on portraits because they make skin look smooth and healthy. The small thumbnail images in the panel show what the effect looks like on the photo.

When the cursor is over each preset thumbnail, the large preview image in the center updates so you can see the effect at full size. Once you find a look you like, click to select it. With a preset selected, refine the effect with the sliders on the editing panels.

Making Adjustments

Note that all of Exposure’s editing controls are available all the time. Even when you are viewing thumbnails you can still edit photos. Start with the Basic panel, which has controls for fundamental adjustments like exposure and saturation. At the top of the panel are the automatic enhancements. 

Click Auto to apply intelligent adjustments. Use the menu button to select which auto enhancements to apply.

To compare the edits with the original image, hold down the backslash key.

Exposure features a brush tool and a spot heal tool, so you can quickly retouch your photos. These work especially well for making refinements to portraits.

Exposure also provides fast, non-destructive layering, so you can blend multiple presets, edits, LUTs, and special effects. 

Exposure’s histogram helps you avoid clipping in the shadows and highlights. You can make adjustments directly on the histogram to edit your image. You can drag, as well as reset shadows, exposure, and highlights.

Exposure’s presets are great for achieving more dramatic effects, too. There is a wide selection of black and white film emulation presets. Simply hover over options and select the one you like most. This preset enhances the detail in the sky and the foreground grass. 

If the preset is too strong, turn it down by adjusting the overall intensity slider. This controls how all of the effects are blended with the original image. For black and white images, Exposure can adjust the overall blend on either a black and white or a color base image.

To undo an edit, or to see a record of your creative adjustments, expand the History panel. You can see the exact values for each adjustment made to the image. Hover over each entry to see what the image looked like at that point in time. You can click a history entry to roll back to that state.

When you are finished editing an image, your edits are remembered, so there is no need to save. If you quit and come back, everything will be just as you left it.

You can export your image to use it with other applications, which is useful for preparing to send to a print service or sharing online. Exposure gives you many different options here, including image size, file type, and file name.

You can easily print photos directly from Exposure. The Exposure Organizing – Printing video demonstrates how to use features like integrated watermarks and printing grids of photos as contact sheets.

The post Getting Started appeared first on Exposure Software.

This video helps you understand how to copy images from a camera card using Exposure. You’ll see how to preview images on your camera cards, efficiently make image selections, edit metadata, apply creative presets, automatically save backups, and more.

Photos: William Innes Photography

Transcript

To get started, insert your camera card. Exposure will detect that it’s inserted and offers to start the copy process. If you have more than one card reader, Exposure can process multiple cards in the same step. Just insert them all at once and Exposure will detect them.

The Copy From Card dialog pops up with three sections.

Step 1: Select Source

The first step is to select the source. Exposure will automatically select SD cards when they are inserted. They can also be selected from a list of shortcuts, including the sources you have copied from previously. The card appears here because it was copied from before. You can also drag and drop any folders from Finder or Explorer to add them as a source location.

You can select multiple locations in the source tree, including subfolders. Press ⌘ on Mac or Ctrl in Windows to select them. Note the Delete After Copying option, which deletes the images from your source location or locations after they are copied to your destination.

Step 2: Review Images

WIth your source selected, move to step 2: reviewing and selecting images to copy.

Select Only New Files to automatically hide images on either card that have already been copied from the source folder. Collapse the Source and Destination panels by clicking the triangles. This expands the review grid of images to view it at full size. The keyboard shortcuts ⌘+Shift+left-or-right–arrow does the same action.

All of the images from the source locations are selected by default. They all can be copied and then culled and organized after they are on the computer, or, if you prefer, you can choose which ones to copy here in the grid.

Culling obvious throw away shots at this stage saves disk space and time. Uncheck all the photos and then use Exposure’s keyboard shortcuts to speed up the selection process by holding down the Shift key to select a contiguous group of photos across multiple rows or columns and pressing the Spacebar to check them.

With all the images selected from the first card, close the visual preview for that source location and select images from the second card. Hovering the mouse over an image displays detailed information including filename, camera, and lens data.

Toggle between viewing images in grid mode and in single image mode. This is helpful for reviewing images more closely to determine which photos to copy.

When in single view mode, you can zoom and pan on your image as needed. With all the images to copy selected, move onto step 3, setting the destination, renaming the files, and applying different types of metadata. Click the right-side triangle to expand the Destination and Options panel.

Step 3: Select Destination and Options

Selecting Standard Location as the destination option provides a list of five common locations. The default option is the Pictures folder. Within the Pictures folder, set an option to create a subfolder. And define the name of the subfolder with the Ask option and capture time. The Ask option causes Exposure to ask for custom text when the file copy is initiated.

This option streamlines working with any custom naming presets you save, because you don’t have to rename the custom text each time you apply the preset. Select the gear icon to save the designated folder locations as a destination preset. Presets speed up future photo copy operations.

You can make backup copies to an external hard drive. This creates backups of the images exactly as they come off the card, without any other processing. With these backups, you’ll always be able to recover the images in their original state.

Another file option is to convert RAW files to DNG. If Adobe Converter software is installed on the computer, Exposure will automatically convert images to this widely used format as they are copied.

Set the original file names for the copy, or customize the naming as done previously with the destination subfolder.

The final stage of the image copy is applying metadata to images. This is a great way to get organized right at the copy stage, and even to apply Exposure’s creative presets.

Use metadata presets you’ve saved for personal info. This can include adding a caption that describes the shoot.

Apply keywords and organize images into collections already in your library, or create new options. You can also apply one or more of Exposure’s creative presets during the copy. When you add multiple presets, each is added to a separate virtual copy of the image.

Exposure helpfully points out the total number of source files, files to be copied, and files to be deleted.

OK starts the copy process.

The Ask prompt set for the destination subfolder is now asking for a name for the folder.

The post Copying Photos from a Card appeared first on Exposure Software.

Exposure has hundreds of presets that span the entire history of photography. In this video we walk you through each category and point out some of our favorite looks.

Photos: Bernard Mesa, Andrea Livieri, David Mecey, John Barclay, Robert Coppa, Model: Elizabeth Krijnen from Devojka Models

Transcript

Exposure has hundreds of presets that span the entire history of photography. There are subtle modern films, vintage looks, many other effects. Presets are organized in categories, and most categories contain either color or black & white looks. Each preset is customizable using Exposure’s editing tools. Presets encompass beautiful finished looks, but you can also use them as great starting points for your edits. When you have a customized look dialed in, you can  save it as a new preset to use again and again.

Color Presets

The tabs at the top of the Preset panel help you focus on specific types of presets without distraction. I’ll click Color to remove Black & White films from view.

The first category we’ll look at is Print Films. These are mostly modern films that cause subtle changes to your photo.

The Print – Low Contrast category has low contrast versions of presets in the Print category. These are good for portraits. One of our favorites is Kodak Portra NC. It lowers contrast and saturation to make skin look smooth and healthy.

Presets in the Slide Films category are generally higher in contrast and saturation than print films. Try these for dramatic landscapes.

When several preset categories are open, the collapse all button at the top of the panel is helpful.The Color Focus category has a variety of blurring and sharpening effects. Use the glamour shot presets for adding soft focus to a portrait. There’s also a black & white focus category with similar looks.

The Bokeh category has focus effects from Exposure’s Bokeh panel. Use these to draw attention to your subject or do creative blurring. After applying one of these presets, open the Bokeh panel on the right to adjust the location of the focus region.

The Polaroid category contains a wide range of classic Polaroid films. Many of them give a nostalgic, faded look.

The Cinema category has reproductions of classic films and screen processes. The most useful are the Technicolor variations, which feature highly saturated colors.

The Vintage category contains retro looks. Autochrome is one of the first color film processes. It features colorful grain. This category also contains a number of early Kodachromes.

Color Infrared has several Infrared film variations. Color infrared turns foliage red and skies dark. Give them a try on a landscape for a surreal look.

The Faded presets emphasize a clean, faded look without overlays or heavy grain. The emphasis is on lifted blacks to add a hazy or dreamy effect. Some common themes are tone curve variation, split toning and color casts, as well as subtle sharpening or blur effects. There are 12 color and 6 black and white looks. Many include a vignette and all include a small amount of grain.

Bright presets provide light, low-contrast looks that are great for outdoor portraits and weddings. The emphasis in these presets light and airy, with no grain or blur. Several of these looks feature subtle sharpening, vignetting, or brightened highlights.

Lo-Fi contains more extreme presets. These are toy cameras and cheap lenses, so you’ll see vignettes, light leaks, and lens blur.

Lo-Fi (Cross Processed) contains effects with even more dramatic color changes.

Black and White Presets

Now let’s look at Exposure’s black & white presets. The Black & White Films category contains modern or recently discontinued films. There’s a wide variety of grain and contrast in the presets here.

There’s a low contrast version of each of these presets in the Low Contrast folder here. These are great for portraits.

In the Vintage category are older films and photography processes. You’ll find more noticeable effects such as heavy grain and split toning here. Some of the presets have adjustable overlay elements, such as dust, scratches, borders, and textures. For example, Exposure’s Platinum Print presets provide delicate, rich platinum tones that imbue your images with warm blacks and expanded mid-tone grays, and border overlays that simulate a matte brushed region that surrounds the image.

The Black & White infrared category has monochrome infrared looks. Some presets, like Kodak HIE have an ethereal glow around bright areas.

The Fuji Camera category has fifteen presets that emulate Fujfilm in-camera simulations. These include both color and black & white looks like Provia, Astia, Neopan 1600, Velvia, and more.

Finally, the Split Toning category contains color toned monochrome looks inspired by chemical darkroom processes. Try Platinum for a subtle classic look.

The post Applying Film Looks appeared first on Exposure Software.

We made this video to show you how to convert color images to stunning black and white photographs using Exposure. Watch the video and learn how to control the conversion process, prepare the color image for conversion, and which editing adjustments to make after the image is in black and white.

Photos: Kariann Photography

Transcript

When converting to black and white, study the original photo. Look at textures, lines, forms and the quality of light in different areas. Without color, these qualities often become even more important.

You can use one of Exposure’s customizable black and white film presets as a starting point for the conversion. In this video however, we’ll create a black and white conversion from scratch. You can learn about Exposure’s B&W presets in the Applying Film Looks video on our website.

Preparing for Conversion

As a first step, apply any basic adjustments to the original RAW. Conversion works best when the image has the correct exposure, white balance, and has strong colors and contrast. Also, apply noise reduction while the image is still in color.

Whenever you can, use a RAW image because it contains all of the unprocessed sensor data from the camera. This enables you to make more dramatic changes to the look of a RAW photo without noticing a loss in image quality.

A quick way to get started editing the photo is to use Exposure’s intelligent auto adjustments. Once applied, you can make additional tweaks on the Basic panel. The Histogram is a great way to see at a glance if the image is too bright, dark, or if there are any clipped tone values.

Converting to Black and White

Now I’m ready to convert the image to Black & White. In the Basic panel, the option is at the top. 
This change will keep all the adjustments that have been applied so far and it sets the image to the default color sensitivity settings in the Color panel.

With the image in black and white, adjusting clarity has a stronger impact. When working in black and white, the Hue, Saturation, and Luminance controls on the Color panel convert over to color sensitivity. Now, instead of adjusting color, you control the brightness for each of the color channels.

Default converts the photo to black and white with the following settings. There are several presets that you can use to emphasize red, blue, green tones, and more.

Exposure’s Targeted Adjustment tool enables you to brighten or darken specific colors in your entire photo by clicking and dragging a chosen location in the preview window. Selecting the tool and then clicking on the image enables you to boost the impact of those colors in the image. Moving the mouse upwards increases the color sliders to fine tune the corresponding tones.

The Tone Curve panel is where to make detailed adjustments to contrast, shadows, midtones, and highlights.
 Raising the shadows and lowering the midtones is a simple way to recover some detail in the shadow values without blowing out the sky.

Creative Touches

The Vignette panel enables you to focus the viewers attention to a location in your image by subtly darkening the areas around it. Exposure’s vignette panel gives you a lot of control over the appearance and placement of the effect. In addition to the panel tools, Exposure’s layering system can be used to control the placement of the vignette with more detail.

If the image benefits from creative sharpening, use the controls in the Focus panel. The Low Radius preset applies a moderate amount of sharpening, which can easily be customized to work with the shot.

Exposure’s grain is an integral part of bringing an organic, analog look to your image, and works great for black and white photography.
 Exposure’s grain tools enable you to separately control the strength of grain in the shadows, midtones, and highlights, which is essential for emulating grain in film looks. I’ll select the Regular Grain 50% preset and customize it to emphasize the grain in shadows, with a small amount of it in the midtones and highlights.

The IR panel enables you to emulate infrared film, which lends an ethereal look to black and white images, enhancing the contrast between deep blacks and pure whites. 
Applying Exposure’s IR-High Contrast preset emphasizes the contrast between the white clouds and the darker foreground very nicely. I’ll reduce the Color Contrast slider so that the shadows don’t get too deep.

And that’s it, a successful black and white conversion.

The post Black and White Editing appeared first on Exposure Software.

Basic photo edits can be just as important to the success of your images as choosing the right lens to shoot with. This video demonstrates how to perform basic edits to get the most out of your RAW images.

Photos: Bruce Cotton

Transcript

I am working with a RAW file. Straight out of the camera it looks great, but with a few simple adjustments it will really shine. The first thing to do when processing images is to apply corrective edits. Those are tweaks made to fix any issues in the photo.

Basic Adjustments

In the Basic panel, the first control to use is to select the mode–either color or B&W. This photo will stay color for this demo. The Black and White Editing video on our website demonstrates the process of converting images in Exposure.

Before making adjustments, use Exposure’s auto adjustment tools to quickly apply optimized edits to your images. In a single click, you can intelligently correct white balance, exposure, corrections to tones, and more. 

The menu enables you to customize automatic adjustments for your own editing style. Once you have them dialed in, your basic adjustments are faster than ever.

Cool down or warm up an image with the temp slider. This can add a little warmth to the skin in portraits.

Exposure has lots of keyboard shortcuts that speed up your workflow. For example, the E and R keys adjust the temperature. You can see a full list of Exposure’s keyboard shortcuts from the Help menu.

Presets to the left of the Temp slider provide a helpful selection of options that adjust white balance for various lighting conditions. Use the Tint slider to shift the tint toward red or green.

The white balance color picker automatically adjusts white balance. It sets a point in the image that will become the neutral color. A good place to choose is a white area, like teeth or eyes, or clothing. To compare your edits with your original image, simply hold down the backslash key.

Adjust the exposure slider to lighten or darken the image overall. Then, work your way from here down through the rest of the controls.

Add more contrast to give a photo more dimension and impact.

When adjusting the darker areas in this photo. It’s a good idea to adjust the shadows to recover or enhance shadow details first. Then, use the Blacks slider to make refinements to the darkest areas.

In case there’s clipping, where detail has been lost in the darkest part of the original RAW photo, set the Blacks slider to the point just before the detail is lost.

The tones in your images can also be adjusted in the Histogram. The histogram shows at a glance if there’s any clipping, or lost detail, in the selected image. If there are overexposed highlights, simply drag that region in the histogram to fix it. Notice that the corresponding slider in the Basic panel is adjusted. This helps make editing even easier.

Increasing the clarity amount will give the photo more presence.

Another great way to enhance images is to boost vibrance and saturation.

Vibrance controls the intensity of the more subtle or muted colors, without adjusting colors that are already strong. It’s a good choice when adjusting skin tones, so it works well on portraits.

To intensify all the colors in the photo, adjust the saturation slider. Notice the effects appear as the value is increased.

After making adjustments, you can compare the edits with the original image with the backslash key.

Crop & Rotate

Cropping and straightening is another important adjustment. The crop helps focus the attention on the subject. It can also remove distractions near the edge of the frame. Click the crop button on the toolbar. The image can be straightened with the Angle slider or by drawing a line in the image that should be horizontal or vertical using the straighten tool. Exposure will then rotate the image appropriately.

Sharpening & Noise Reduction

Next, check for blur and noise. It’s best to zoom in to 100% or 1:1, for an accurate view of how the adjustments will look on your photo. At no magnification, you can identify if there are corrections needed for softness or noise. Use the navigator panel to move to a place in the image with small details and hard edges where the sharpening effects or noise will be easy to see. This image could benefit from some gentile sharpening.

On the Sharpening panel, temporarily moving the Amount slider to maximum lets you easily see the results from changing the other controls. The Alt key is helpful when sharpening. Hold it down for a real-time visualization of your adjustments. Pressing Alt and adjusting the radius will display the sharpening area around each edge of the image.

Detail controls how much of the fine textures, like pores, wrinkles, or fine body hair on the skin are boosted; as well as grain at higher levels. The Masking slider controls how much contrast there needs to be between colors for them to be sharpened. A higher amount means only higher contrast areas will be sharpened.

Again, to compare your edits with the original version, hold the backslash key. Comparing the before and after makes it easy to see how the shot pops more than it did straight out of the camera.

One nice thing in Exposure is that any edits made in the Basic, Sharpening, and Noise Reduction panels remain unchanged when a preset is applied, so you can edit in these panels right at the start of your workflow if you want, without later losing them when you apply presets. Or, for more advanced control over the effects, you can use multiple layers.

The post Editing RAW Photos appeared first on Exposure Software.

Learn how to build-up thick, dense looks in Snap Art with canvas and paint texture

Photo: Michael Gillman

Transcript

Paint Thickness

First, we’ll demonstrate how to create paint thickness in the Oil Paint and Impasto styles. After launching Snap Art, open the Presets panel and apply an artistic look. The Paint Thickness slider is typically set at 50% or higher in these styles. This creates highlights on the brush strokes which is a building block to a textured look.

You can enhance the thick paint texture with adjustments on the Background panel. A different brush style can intensify texture for Oil Paint effects. All of the artistic styles in Snap Art have brush style options to choose from.

Canvas Texture

Selection of the artwork’s paper or canvas type can give the piece more rich depth. In Snap Art, every artistic style can be augmented with this surface texture.

Thicker paint usually works better on canvases with more roughness such as the Textured, Rough, or the Default presets. The fine details in canvas presets like cold or hot press paper are lost in the thick paint. Flatter styles, on the other hand, like watercolor or pen and ink work better on canvases with fine texture.

When adjusting the canvas zoom in to 1:1, so you can see the effects at actual size. The Thickness and Zoom sliders enable you to vary the canvas to fit the look and feel of the artwork. You can also change the color of the canvas for looks that don’t have full coverage.

Lighting Control

Snap Art’s lighting panel enables you to adjust the way light reveals the paint and canvas textures. The presets in the Lighting dropdown offer a variety of looks that can be applied with one click. Oil Paint artwork will appear more wet with a preset such as Specular, or Bright. Crayon, or Color Pencil artwork work better with the diffuse options.

Customize the behavior of the lighting with the controls below. To add shine or a waxy look use a high highlight brightness value with low highlight size. Larger sized highlights set at lower brightness levels make the look more diffuse.

Modifying the light direction and angle of light radically changes the appearance of the highlights. Extremely high angles will flood the image with the highlight color, very low angles will make the image dark. You can directly type the angle or use the up and down arrow keys to make small changes.

The color of the highlights will change the appearance of the texture. You can set the highlight color to blend with tones in the image for a subtle look, or you can use a new color to compliment the piece creatively.

The post Snap Art: Canvas and Paint Texture appeared first on Exposure Software.

Reducing digital noise is a crucial step in your post-production workflow. This video shows you how to reduce noise in RAW photos with Exposure’s new profile-guided noise reduction, and in JPEG and TIFF images using manual noise reduction.

Photos: Jeff Butterworth

Transcript

What is Noise?

Noise appears in every digital image. It looks like tiny colored pixels or specks in a photograph. It is more noticeable in photos taken in low light situations. Noise can distort the details of a photo and cause distracting coloring, so it’s something photographers try to avoid. There are several factors, such as the size of the camera sensor and the ISO setting that can affect the level of noise visible in a photo.

Automatic Noise Reduction

The Noise Reduction panel houses a powerful set of tools for eliminating noise. Exposure’s noise reduction system uses innovative noise-reduction profiles. Each unique profile is based on the camera sensor, the light sensitivity (ISO) setting, and estimated electronic noise. When processing RAW images, the Noise Reduction profile is selected automatically.

In addition to the noise reduction profile, you can tune the noise reduction for the conditions of each image. Strengthen the Color or Luminance noise reduction with independent controls. When making fine-tuning adjustments to noise reduction controls, zoom into a 100% or greater magnification level.

Luminance will minimize the appearance of brightness noise, which appears most noticeably in shadow areas. In high key or overexposed shots, reducing luminance noise isn’t necessary.

The Color slider will increase the removal of splotchy color fluctuations between pixels, which lends better to smooth color gradations like skies. Color noise reduction isn’t needed in photos or areas with lots of details or patterns.

The Smoothing slider targets larger blotches of color in the image to apply gentile blurring. Use this control sparingly as it can add softness.

In the lower section of the panel, there are controls for making detailed refinements to the noise reduction effect.

At low strength the Fix Hot Pixels control detects and removes bright color spots caused by defective pixels on the camera sensor. Set the Strength slider high and it will affect lower amplitude noise that wasn’t already removed with the NR algorithm.

Add Fine Texture can hide or mask certain varieties of image noise. It also counteracts the loss of fine detail that can happen with stronger noise reduction effects.

Manual Noise Reduction

Noise Reduction profiles only work with RAW images. The manual noise reduction option is for reducing noise in JPEG and TIFF images. Manual noise reduction also exists for backward compatibility. If you have used previous versions of Exposure to apply noise reduction, those settings will be applied with these Manual controls.

First the Brightness control will set the amount of monochrome noise to remove. Then use the Detail slider to refine the effect and preserve sharp edges.

Set the amount of color noise to remove with the Color slider. Make refinements with the Smooth slider to blur larger patches of noisy color.

The post Noise Reduction appeared first on Exposure Software.

The Advanced Color Editor builds on Exposure’s innovative 3D masking to make precise color modifications. You can select color regions in the image with simple controls, and then choose the new color to swap them with. This can be performed multiple times on a single photo.

Photos: Randy Kepple

Transcript

Advanced Color Editor

Select the Advanced Color Editor at the top of the Color panel. Define a color to replace with hue, saturation, and luminance dimensions. To define the hue, simply select a color in the image with the hue eyedropper, and then clean-up the selection range with the corresponding handles. Once the ‘Convert from color’ selections are defined on the left of the panel, set the ‘to color’ with the controls on the right.

For more details about using the controls on this panel for selecting color ranges, check out the Color Masking Deep Dive video on our website.

Refining Selections

The sliders refine the selection boundaries made with the eye droppers. The top, or inside set of handles on the sliders indicate the edge of the full value. The bottom, or outer set of handles control the feathering between the inner edge and the unmasked area. The further the inner and outer handles are apart, the more gradual the edge of the mask will be.

Detailed Adjustments

Mask visualization modes are helpful when adjusting the selection boundaries. View the current color selection with the Show Overlay checkbox. To make it easier to see the masked pixels, click the icon next to that checkbox and increase the mask opacity, or select a different view.

• Mask Only view is great for cleaning up the hue properties of the selection boundaries.
• When adjusting the saturation controls, use the Visualize Saturation mode.
• When setting the luminance range, Luminance Visualization mode is helpful.

For precise adjustments to each control, click the text field and enter a value manually. You can also use the up and down arrow keys to change the value. For a larger jump, use Shift and an arrow key. For a small jump, use Alt/Option and an arrow.

Multiple color replacements can be performed in a single step. Simply click the plus button and then set the criteria to select and replace the color. Any color replacement settings you make can be saved as a preset to reuse in future edits.

The post Advanced Color Editor appeared first on Exposure Software.

Efficient photo organization gets you through post-production quickly, so you can spend more time being creative. This tutorial demonstrates how to set up simple rules in Exposure that organize images automatically.

Photos: Hiram Trillo

Transcript

Destination Folders and Subfolders

Exposure can automatically create folders and organize images. This is useful when copying images from camera cards or when exporting finished photos. Enable this functionality by setting Destination preferences.

The Destination tools define where Exposure will save the images you’re working with. Direct Exposure to organize photos into folders by creating a few simple organization rules.

If images from a single project are being copied, you only need one main folder. For that, add a subfolder using the Project or Client name.

Photos from this project were captured over multiple days. Setting a subfolder that uses capture time will have Exposure file images into dated subfolders, automatically.

Ask Custom Text

Speed up organizing one step further by using the Ask custom text option. This streamlines naming folders and images, by prompting you for a name to use for folders and files when you copy images to your computer..

Use the Ask option when setting rules for new folders, such as the project name folder we just used. In the Destination section, change the Custom Text to the Ask option from the dropdown. ‘Prompt me when run’ will show in the dialog once it’s selected. This means that once the copy process begins, a dialog will appear where you enter text to use in that component of the folder name.

Automatic Naming

You can customize how Exposure formats the naming components it generates. This enables you to seamlessly use Exposure with your existing organization system. This capability is another way Exposure can save you time while ensuring that your photos are organized consistently.

The Destination options for this project use subfolders to organize images by date. The current formatting of the date uses a preset style from the menu. There are several built in options to choose from. You can also define a custom format with a simple expression.

As it is typed in, notice the preview of the filename to verify the expression is correct.

Type lowercase ‘yy’ to include the two digit year, include a dash to separate it from the two-digit month, capital ‘MM,’ another dash, the day ‘dd,’ hour ‘HH,’ and minute ‘mm.’ Click the question mark icon to see a reference guide for writing Capture Time expressions.

After setting rules for Destination, save them as a preset. That enables you to reuse the exact same settings again in the future.

The post Automatic Image Organization appeared first on Exposure Software.

The Exposure Bundle makes it easy to create beautiful artworks. Add creative effects from Snap Art and use adjustments in Exposure to control and enhance the look. We made this tutorial to demonstrate using Snap Art and Exposure together.

Photo: Molly Condit

Transcript

Photo Editing

Before applying effects with Snap Art, consider making adjustments to prepare the image to receive a painterly look. Editing the image in Exposure first can help the photo read more like a painting later. Here are a few ways to prepare photos for painterly effects.

Boost Clarity

Brush strokes in painterly looks will weaken edge detail, but clarity will keep them from blending together. Clarity enhances midtones of the image and adds sharpening, which emphasizes hard edges in the photo. For creative uses like illustrative looks, a much higher amount than normal can be used.

Increase Saturation

Bold, beautiful colors can look great in the final piece. Exposure gives you several options to control colors in the image. The Saturation slider boosts all the colors in the photo at once. The Vibrance slider is a little more sophisticated; it only boosts saturation in less saturated tones.

For more control, use the HSL sliders in the Color panel. Boosting the saturation only in the midtones increases color contrast with the dark shadows, which can make the painterly effect appear motley. Rich, saturated dark tones are a great way to show texture, but a highly textured look doesn’t work with every image.

Add a Vignette

Vignettes are a way to help focus the attention on the subject, regardless of the type of style of artwork you’re creating. There are vignette controls in Snap Art for the painterly look, but adding a vignette now gives you additional creative options.

Use a vignette to add a smooth, subtle darkening to the image and draw attention to the subject, or use a white vignette to redefine the edge of the painting by introducing negative space. 

Exposure has several unique controls for creating detailed vignettes with an organic feel.

With your image prepared, right click and choose Edit Copy In Snap Art. This will make a copy of the image that includes any adjustments applied in Exposure and then open it in Snap Art.

Painterly Effects in Snap Art

In Snap Art, the presets can be used to apply a finished look, or they can be used as a starting point for your own effects, just like in Exposure. On the left dock, open the folders to browse the presets for each style. Oil paint is a traditional media for portraiture, which will help the effect appear more realistic. The thumbnails in the panel show what the effects will look like on the image. Resize the dock for a larger view.

With a preset selected, use the controls on the right dock to customize the painterly look for each image. First, make adjustments for the appearance of the background in the shot, temporarily ignoring the subject and small details. Use a larger brush size for more abstract strokes. Lengthen the stroke length to smooth the backdrop and emphasize the brushing. Set the color variation low as to not introduce distracting color elements.

Then, use Detail Masking to build up depth and emphasize areas with more detail. Portraits are a great example because you want to focus on the subject’s face. Select one of the Detail Masking presets to adjust the painterly effects. Set the Mask Tool parameters and then brush a mask on the face. With the mask applied, adjust the controls to customize the look in that area.

Additional Detail Masking areas can be used, each with their own set of controls. Add a new area for regions with even more detail, like the eyes or nose.

Effects you apply in Snap Art can be saved as presets, including any detail masking. Simply click the Plus button on the Folders panel to create a new Snap Art preset. This enables you to use this same look again in the future. Click Save and Snap Art will render the image and return to Exposure.

Final Adjustments

Make further adjustments in Exposure to finalize the piece. Look for unwanted tones, especially in grey hues. Darker areas that contain saturated pixels can be emphasized with painterly effects. This image has subtle red and pink coloring in the background. Reduce the appearance of the red saturation with the HSL controls.

Adding contrast can enhance the feel of thick paint and brush strokes. It can also add emphasis to important details, like the highlights on the face and paws.

As a final step, make adjustments to emphasize the eyes in portraits. There are several methods to draw more attention to the eyes. In Exposure, use a new layer to apply an adjustment to the eyes. On the Brush panel, use the Enhance Iris preset and brush over them. The mask created with your brush strokes will designate where the effects apply.

The post Using Exposure and Snap Art appeared first on Exposure Software.

Exposure makes it easy to share and edit photos collaboratively with another person. The catalog-free workflow enables you to flexibly work on the same images from multiple computers. We made this video to demonstrate how.

Photo: Alejandro Gutierrez

Transcript

Exposure uses a catalog-free workflow. This means you simply point Exposure to a folder on your computer with images and immediately begin working. There’s no need to import images into a catalog in order to edit them. The Folders panel uses the same structure as your computer hard drive, so there’s no learning curve to find photos like when working with a catalog.

Cloud Location

Synchronizing data using a cloud service is a convenient way to seamlessly transfer resources from one computer to another. Dropbox is an example of a tool that uses the cloud to coordinate files automatically. With Dropbox installed on your computer, simply bookmark your Dropbox folder for quick access.

In the Folder panel, create a new folder within the Dropbox share from the r-click menu. Images and edits placed in this folder will automatically synchronize. All of the photos, flags, labels, stars, and edits will be available from each computer with that folder.

Network Location

You can use a folder on a network to store and edit photos with others on a team. It’s the same no-import process.

Quickly access folder locations on your computer is by setting bookmarks. Add a new bookmark to directly access image folders in a single click. Press the plus button on the Folders panel to add a new bookmark, or click Add a Folder/Drive then navigate to the folder of images you wish to edit. For quick access, use the keyboard shortcut ⌘+B on the Mac, and Ctrl+B on Windows.

The edits in Exposure are contained in small sidecar files within each folder of images, which simplifies data transfers and backups. When working on shared file locations with others, the speed of the connection will impact the responsiveness of reading files. Whenever possible, use a wired connection for extra speed.

Removable Drive

Removable drives can also be used for collaboration. The same workflow applies for archiving photos.

Exposure will not automatically add drives to the Folders panel unless they have been bookmarked previously. When a new removable drive like a USB thumb drive is attached to your computer, click Add a Folder/Drive and select the drive to access its contents. You can browse all the images on the drive using the view subfolder option.

To move images and edits to or from the folder, simply drag and drop the folder of images to make a copy. Or right-click and use copy and then paste. Once the copy process is initiated, you can begin working on files. There’s no need to wait until it’s complete to organize or edit images. That’s one of the major benefits of Exposure’s catalog-free workflow.

The post Collaborative Photo Editing appeared first on Exposure Software.

A light and airy look is a popular editing style for all types of photography. The effects make images that are very bright, overexposed, have subtle contrast, and softer colors.

Photo: Eric Cox Photography

Transcript

Generally, a light and airy image is very bright, even overexposed, with slightly lower contrast in the bright tones and softer colors.

It is a popular creative effect for all kinds of photography. Light and airy effects work well when applied to photos lit with even light, such as shooting when it’s overcast, in open shade, or at golden hour.

Applying Light and Airy Looks

There are six variations of Light and Airy creative presets available in Exposure. On the left dock, open the Presets panel. The Light and Airy family of presets are in the Bright folder. Each of them subdue colors and increase contrast in the image in different ways.

The differences between the Light and Airy presets is subtle. The photo you’re working on may not display much change when you preview each look. For more information about the preset, hover the mouse over the preset thumbnail. The hover help window spells out more details for each of the presets. You can turn hover help on and off in Exposure’s preferences.

Creating Light and Airy effects

A light and airy look can be built from the ground-up for more control, or they can be customized to work with specific photos. Here is a basic recipe.

A soft film quality is generally present in light and airy looks. That is easily achieved by assigning one of Exposure’s color film presets. Use one of the portrait presets such as Kodak Portra or Fuji Pro. These film emulation presets include the film’s grain. For a crisp, clean look, consider lowering the strength to make it more subtle or turn the grain off.

Slight overexposure is a common quality for light and airy looks. On the Basic panel, raise the Exposure slider to brighten for the photo. Use the keyboard shortcuts to make it quick. Press F to raise Exposure. Use Alt/Option+F for finer control over increasing exposure.

Another popular light and airy characteristic is softened contrast in the brighter tones of the image. A simple way to adjust them is with the Whites and Highlights sliders on this panel. Raise the Highlights slider slightly and lower the Whites slider to soften the contrast.

Light and airy looks normally have boosted contrast in the middle and dark tones. Use the controls on the Tone Curve panel to make these adjustments. Lower the Shadows slider and raise the Midtones. Optionally, you can adjust the Contrast slider to give the entire look a little more punch.

Contrast adjustments like these can make colors in the midtones and shadows appear overly saturated. The Color panel’s HSL controls make quick work of correcting this. Reduce the impact of the shadows and midtones colors with the saturation sliders.

To complete the look, introduce a subtle color tone. At the top of the Color panel use the Color Filter to give the photo a warmer or cooler look.

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Evaluating the exposure of digital images is simple with the histogram. It enables you to determine proper exposure at a glance, ensuring that none of the image’s pixel data is compromised or missing, and to make the appropriate adjustments.

Photo: Robert Whelan

Transcript

What is the Histogram

The histogram is a visual representation of the tonal levels in an image. It plots the strength of tones of particular brightnesses in a photograph. The tones range from black on the left of the histogram to white on the right. This is useful for monitoring levels during editing because it updates in real-time as you make adjustments.

Interpreting the Histogram

The histogram is separated into zones that correspond to the controls on the Basic panel. On the left are the darker tones in the photo, the shadows and the very darkest values are blacks. To the right are the bright tones, the highlights and the whites which are the brightest. The Exposure slider controls the tones in the middle of the histogram, which is the largest selection of tones.

The histogram might look like a hill or ridge with several peaks, this indicates that the image has mostly midtones and no areas with blown-out highlights or blocked up shadows.

The histogram might look flat in the middle with high peaks at both edges, this indicates that the image has high contrast, and that there may be areas of the image with clipped values.

If the image selected has more of a certain color, that color will be more prevalent in the histogram.

Histogram controls

Each zone of the histogram can be directly selected to control the images’ tones. Simply click and drag each zone in the histogram and the corresponding slider will be adjusted on the Basic panel.

If the levels in the photo are dark or bright enough that detail is close to being lost, a clipping warning is displayed. Arrow icons appear at the top corners of the histogram to indicate shadow or highlight clipping. Click the arrow in the histogram to highlight the clipped tones with a bright color overlay. Toggle the clipping warning on and off with F8 for the highlights and F7 for the shadows. The clipping threshold can be adjusted per your preference with the menu at the top of the panel.

For detailed color information about the image, hover the cursor over the image to display the amounts of red, green and blue for the sample area. The numbers will appear beneath the histogram.

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Infrared film photography creates images with a beautiful, dreamlike feel. There are several unique characteristics for this type of look. This video demonstrates how to apply black and white infrared effects and how to strengthen their ethereal qualities.

Photo: Sharon Covert

Transcript

Converting colors

When converting a color photo to black and white, first apply adjustments to the image with the controls on the Basic panel. This can include setting the white balance, adjusting the exposure, highlights, or clarity to bring the photo to a neutral point. Infrared film is often used for shooting landscapes, but it can do creative things to portraits like this.

A simple way to convert to a monochrome Infrared look is with Exposure’s library of analog film emulation presets. There are several black and white Infrared presets. Some simulate the look of real Infrared film, such as Kodak HIE, Ilford SFX, and Konica 750.

Converting the colors to monochrome values can be performed by hand for more control. Adjustments made on the Color panel dial-in the brightness of each color tone with great precision. Learn more about controlling the conversion of color photos in the Black and White editing video on our website.

Enhancing ethereal qualities

There are several unique aspects of creating an ethereal look. One of those specific to Infrared film is a blooming effect called halation. Halation is a glow that occurs around the bright values in analog Infrared film. In Exposure, this effect can be controlled with the sliders on the IR panel. The Halation Opacity controls the amount of blooming visible and Halation Spread sets the distance the bloom travels.

Another aspect of black and white infrared film is a dreamlike appearance known as the wood effect. It’s mainly caused by foliage strongly reflecting light, causing the distinctive glow. Analog Infrared film records radiant heat from objects, so the sky and ocean usually appear dark because they don’t radiate much heat, but greens from foliage appear bright. Use the Color Contrast slider to simulate this.

A strong atmospheric quality like fog, haze, or clouds can emphasize an ethereal mood. Exposure’s overlays panel works great for this. Light effects and textures can be applied, adjusted, and inverted with the tools in the panel. This includes setting a location to protect from the applied effect. Check out our Overlays video to learn more about working with overlays.

Adding a gentile softness can give a photo a dream-like feel. It’s simple to with the controls on the Focus panel. Select a blur preset from the panel dropdown, or adjust the sliders. The Lens Warp control removes blurring from the center of the image, leaving it at the edges.

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The gradient tools enable you to blend the adjustments or presets you apply to your photos with smooth, adjustable fades. This tutorial demonstrates how to use gradients for creating uniform blends between editing corrections, designating where edits are applied, and more.

Photo: Scott Stulberg

Transcript

Controlling edits

Layers and layer masks provide lots of creative control over editing adjustments. Masks designate where the edits on the layer are applied to your photo. The gradient shapes define a mask and provide adjustable handles for smooth transitions.

Gradients can easily be integrated with other forms of masking. In addition to a gradient shape, you can use the Brush tool to paint areas of the mask by hand. Or you can add a gradient to a selection you’ve already made. And you can use the color constraint controls to generate masks based on the colors in your photo. There are several videos on our website that demonstrate using the various tools for creating masks in Exposure.

Gradient Shapes

The gradients in Exposure come in three varieties. The first shape, Radial, works in many different scenarios, such as drawing attention to the subject in portraits. It can also be used creatively for fine art images, landscapes, macro shots, and more. 

Click and drag within the region to move it. Use the handles to stretch, rotate, and resize. Drag the dotted circle to adjust the transition.

Remove the selected shape with delete.

Planar gradients come in two varieties, planar and half planar. Planar gradients affect the image in both directions from the center line. This shape works well in images with strong linear components, like landscapes, or architectural photos.

Half planar gradients affect the image in only one direction. The half-planar shape is a great solution for darkening an overexposed sky, or selectively adding contrast on a horizon.

Move the region by dragging. Control the angle of the shape with the solid line.

The movable dotted lines indicate where the effect fades completely out.

Controls

Note the Active dropdown in the Add Gradient section. This is where you can select from each gradient applied to the image. When using multiple shapes on the same layer, press Collapse to shrink the region controls. Expand collapse regions by clicking the handle.

Each gradient shape added has its own Opacity control. Adjustments made to the gradient opacity control are reflected in the mask thumbnail. Notice how the second region appears grey rather than black.

Check the Erase box, or press Invert to reverse the mask boundaries.

Remove unwanted gradient shapes with Delete.

Toggle Show Mask to visualize the masked area on the large preview image in the middle of the screen. Note the red highlight.

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When editing photos, often you’ll have two or more similar looks to compare. Audition mode was built for precisely this purpose. This video demonstrates how to compare presets side-by-side, including how to discard, replace, and view other options.

Photos: Barbara MacFerrin

Transcript

Audition Mode

Enter Audition mode with the spotlight button on the top dock. Audition mode will display cells for comparing presets. The number of cells can be changed with the layout options at the top of the panel. View two images side-by-side, or as many as six presets in a 2X3 grid.

The comparison views are especially helpful for evaluating similar presets with subtle differences.

None of the presets selected with Audition mode active will affect the image until the Apply button is clicked. Then, the preset in the selected cell is applied to the photo and Audition mode is disabled. At any time, the Escape key will cancel Audition mode and return to the grid view without applying a preset.

Comparing Looks

With Audition mode activated, selecting a preset will display it in an available cell as it is selected. If one is not available, the oldest auditioned preset will be replaced. Auditioned presets can be placed in the cells with drag-and-drop.

Note that the presets selected to audition are highlighted in the Presets panel. And, for reference, the names of the applied presets are listed on each of the cells. This is especially helpful when comparing similar looks from the same preset family like Fuji Pro or Kodachrome.

Select Discard to remove the preset from the cell, or drag another preset to that cell to replace it. Until Apply is selected, none of the presets auditioned will affect the image. To exit Audition mode, either select a preset to apply, or press Escape to cancel and return to the grid view.

Editing Adjustments

It’s fine to make adjustments to the image using the editing panel while Audition mode is enabled. The changes you make will be displayed in the audition cells along with the auditioned presets.

Editing adjustments are not part of preset Auditioning, so they will be retained after Audition mode is closed. This includes cancelling to leave Audition mode.

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Spot color is an editing technique where the image is black and white, with some color elements left behind. It’s a powerful method of directing the viewer’s attention. This video demonstrates creating and controlling selective color effects in Exposure.

Photo: Andrea Livieri

Transcript

Spot color, selective color, or semi black and white processing is a technique that converts a color photo to black and white with a selected area retaining its original coloring. This strongly draws the viewer’s attention. When some areas of the image are desaturated, the colored elements become the primary focus. It can be very effective for the right photo.

Desaturating colors

The first step in the process is to remove or reduce the color from the image. Converting the image to black and white can be performed with one of Exposure’s black and white film presets. Another option is to use the Saturation slider, or for more control over individual colors, use the HSL controls on the Color panel to reduce the saturation of specific colors or to remove unwanted color casts.

On the Basic panel, the options at the top are an important aspect of this technique. Selecting Black and White will mix the applied effects with a desaturated version of the photo. For a spot color effect, select the Color option.

Controlling adjustments

Designate the area to expose the original colors of the image with the Brush tool. Use the Eraser brush to remove the monochrome effect.

When defining the brush, use mouse wheel and keyboard combinations to make quick adjustments. The mouse wheel adjusts the size of the brush. Shift and the mouse wheel adjusts the feather amount. ⌘ or Ctrl and the mouse wheel adjusts Flow. For a spot color technique, the flow amount is usually high.

Clean up over brushing by holding the Alt or Option key, or by selecting the A or B brush.

The color constraints controls can be used to generate detailed masks based on the colors in the image. Check out our 3D Color Masking Deep Dive video to learn more about using them.

The tension these methods create between color and monochrome can be intriguing, but the effect can be just as powerful when applied with a subtle hand. After the masking is complete, experiment with the effect by reducing the layer opacity.

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