I’m photographing some powdered cosmetics with flecks of colored glitter in it. (red, green, blue, purple, yellow, etc.) The color of the glitter shows fine to the eye — but naturally, to get an overall correct exposure, the colored glitter gets blown to white, obliterating the color. Compounding the problem is the fact that the powder is white. (if the powder was dark, this would be much easier)
Nothing I’ve tried looks quite right – photographically or in Photoshop. Different lighting, reflectors, blending modes, advanced blending modes, nothing. I even went so far as to vastly underexpose by 3 stops (which makes the glitter look great) and then removing the black using Advanced blending – nope. The closest I can get is by using a color layer and then manually painting in the various bits of color around the blown highlights but it still doesn’t look right – I have to darken the white powder (turning it an ugly grey), for the glitter to show at all – and I’m afraid the color STILL gets lost. (It’s not bad but I’d like better.)
Any suggestions to get colored glitter to look like colored glitter against a white(ish) background? Here’s my best effort so far:
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Your version is better, in that the colors are more saturated, but like everything else I’ve tried, it still doesn’t give a "glitter" feel. I’m sure it has to do with the fact that a city skyline is much more dramatic at night than the daytime, but dangit – you can see the glitter colors with your eye! There MUST be a way to reproduce it. (I’m hoping, anyway.)
Interesting idea about using the pola filters. I’ll give it a try and report back.
What about using a custom brush with scattering and such? Any suggestions there? (To make matters worse, none of my Photoshop books are available right now.)
A gray card should act as a density filter for the glitter and help cut the reflection’s intensity. You have to find the right position for it, above the jars.
simply pushing the saturation works well for the left one, but not for the right one… maybe using the clone stamp tool? Or using the hsb/hsl filter, create a saturation mask that you can use to clone only the "glitters"
Thanks guys. I really appreciate all the suggestions.
Ann – Yeah, I thought the polas would work too. What happens tho’, is that they seem to mostly affect the size of the reflections – instead of knocking back glare to allow the color to show, the (still hot), reflections gradually get smaller until there’s nothing left. Damn physics! 😉
Todie – I could use a gobo but I can achieve the same thing by simply reducing exposure. (Unless I want to try placing teeny gobos about 1/64th of an inch in size – these jars are about an inch in diameter.) 😉
Pierre – Sorry, I’ve been trying so many techniques and combinations, I can’t think. HSB/HSL filter? Can you explain how to create the sat mask?
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I’ve been experimenting with layer affects – making selections of the highlights with the magic wand @ low tolerance, then using Similar to select the rest (would a luminosity selection help? what’s the shortcut?), and using color overlay and outer glow layer effects – it sorta works.
What seems to be working the best is to underexpose and then pushing density in ACR. Doing this seems to hold the glitter effect much better than exposing correctly. Combine that with a color layer with brushed edges of the highlights and it’s getting there. The one on the right is proving more difficult though.
(For those that aren’t aware, I thought I’d throw a tip for creating painless screen-shots. Command+Control+Shift+F4 will give you a cursor that allows you to select the part of the screen you want. However, instead of creating a file, it only COPIES the selection to the clipboard. In Photoshop, create a new doc and it defaults to clipboard which is the exact size and resolution of the copied screen shot. Click OK, paste — and you’re done.
Phil, the hsb/hsl filter is available in the goodies folder of the Photoshop disk. You are supposed to run it once in RGB to HSB. Your channels will still read RGB, but they will be HSB. You can copy the second channel and play with levels to get a saturation mask…don’t forget to go back to RGB using the filter again with the porper settings…
^But anyways, using the clone tool in darken mode could already work to piant just the glitter without the basis of the make-up..
By exploiting the unsharp mask pushed to the extreme will produce pixels that look like glitter. 1) make a selection by layer via copy of the contents in the jars. 2) on the new layer use unsharp mask and push the numbers up high leaving the threshold low. 3) duplicate the new unsharp mask layer twice. 4) name one darken and the other one lighten. changing each of the new layers from normal to lighten and darken. Now turn off the original layer that you used unsharp mask on. 5) Play with the opacitys of the new layers to control the light and dark pixels.
Why don’t you try using one of the techniques that allows capture of a very great dynamic range using blending of multiple exposures? I’ve used such techniques very well to mimic the effect of a split neutral-density filter when shooting sunsets so that both the bright sky and the very much darker forground can be all correctly exposed.
Actually, the technique (contrast masking) is MUCH more comprehensive than a split filter as it allows control of exposure extremes wherever they occur in the image, not just sky vs foreground.
Here’s a pretty good method, and there are others:
What you want to do is either use heavy weight tracing vellum and have the lights at a 45º angle from the subject or rotate the lights and bounce them off the the ceiling an walls at the rooms corners bare bulb no reflectors.
Here is a similar problem I shot Thursday of a bathroom with highly reflective mosaic tile the reflection of the window lis quite prominent and the only real way of eliminating the reflection is to create an environment where the light is totally dominated by the a diffused non polarized light. This also allows me to capture the view out of the window without blacking out the windows.
The mirrors on both walls and the glass on the shower which is only seen in the mirror of course make it a bit difficult to accomplish this.
I would used flock background and flocked gray or black background material block out any background however you might wish to use film as this might require if using tungsten balanced lights or a long exposure (or try HMIs). If using strobe lighting it would probably require multiple exposures.
What works best though is tungsten lights and film. You can also try the Kino style fluorescent daylight balanced or tungsten balanced tubes. Though they are popular I think I truly dislike them.
Good luck! Not an easy chore! And if you are successful it will be thankless as well!
For me this would be quite easy as table top is my strongest talent but something I hate with a passion.
Here are the links to the scouting shot and the final shot!
Wade, As an amateur photographer I understand the difficulty of your shot but as a retoucher I’d add a bit of meat to the tiles and take some away from the window views. The good tiles in the scouting shot (though dark) have more dimension. I’d also darken the floor (just a touch) to restore some perspective.
I don’t see your reflection in the mirror–welcome to the clan of vampires : )
Well I would have to see what the client likes before I spend time doing anything as the client is an architect and that is an entirely different world if perspective. What you think might be correct and what they think are two very different ball games.
But mostly you are diverting from the purpose of posting the shot in order to toot your own horn about what you know about something you don’t know anything about. You should step back and think about the subject at hand. Not what you like or don’t like which may not be of any importance at all.
If I had it my way I would have done it available like and the hell with the view from the window.
That is what is wrong with the forum.
Phil has to eliminate that which is reflecting into glitter like with the shot I posted that means he needs to build and balance light environment. He has to eliminate background reflection which is being caused by the bounce of the subjects background which means he has to make his studio black and non reflective. He has to use very diffused light sources and he may simply have to use film as he will be diminishing the amount of available lumens.
And yes what I was saying is that you were talking like an amateur you should stop it.
Wow, there’s a lot of great tips on photography here, but I think Phil’s problem can be fixed with a Photoshop layer technique. I would use the underexposed image to make a top layer. Double-click the layer to open the layer options. At the bottom of the dialog, move the shadow slider of the "Underlying Layer" almost all the way to the right. This will confine the blend to the highlights of the blown-out glitter. Any color added to other highlights can be painted out on a layer mask.
If the dark edges of the glitter are showing through, try these steps. First, increase the dark image’s saturation (command-U). Then use Image>Adjust> Selective Color to delete the blacks and grays. If this weakens the color too much, increase the saturation again with another a hue/saturation adjustment.
David, The jars’ mouths are easy enough to select and I’d just use the masked dark shot with a grouped curve layer for the glitter. Blending is useful but the subject is so tiny, it may suffer from camera vibration.
Larry, that’s a good point about the size and softness of the highlights. In a case like this, would you ever be tempted to cheat a bit by increasing the size and sharpness of the highlights? This could be done either with a maximum filter on a mask made from the highlights or using a curve to to open up a soft mask. It’s hard to know how far one could go with changes like these because final output medium and size would need to be known.
Was that directed at me? If so, I beg to differ. There are several techniques that can be used other than the one I suggested. But the blending technique will most certainly "work."
And it is so simple. At its minimum, only two exposures are needed. One to capture the highlights. Another to capture the shadows. Then they are combined in PS as shown.
It can be done with two scanned slides, but a digital camera capture is ideal. It’s almost faster to do than to describe.
Todie you don’t really think I am going to spend time seriously retouching a low resolution scan just to post for someone to see. I haven’t even shown it to the client.
He has to make his studio black then he can control how he lights the glitter the glitter is facing in every different direction the light source will reflect off of it. He can better determine and control how and what he wants reflected in the glitter surfaces.
Right now he has far too many reflective surfaces influencing the subject. Do you get it now?
And you might think you know a lot but I don’t think you know so much.
And remember I showed you my retouching of the image of the project in Venice. Remember!?
But you once again point out the problem here on the forum the regular contributors are far to literal to be able to make any sensible communications.
Everything is so simplistic in how you do anything that it is hopeless.
Good luck Phil but I am certain you will have a create an environment that will give you the opportunity to control the lighting and reflectivity of your subject. Like it or not.
It’s hard to know how far one could go with changes like these because final output medium and size would need to be known.
That’s another problem I’m facing. Output is UNknown. At 100% on screen, my efforts look fairly decent. At 50 or 25%, the effects are vastly diminished. And of course, final output will be different as well.
Wade – Your comments are entertaining as always, and they’re appreciated, but the issue you faced in the bathroom isn’t even close to my problem. I WANT the reflections. If I needed to simply eliminate them, I would never have made this post because I would have finished in about 10 minutes. Shooting with film isn’t going to help – nor is using vellum, fluorescent or bounced light. Rest assured my fully equipped, 1200 sq. ft. photography studio gives me an "environment to control the lighting".
No matter WHAT type of lighting is used (soft, hard, side, back, bounce), the colored highlights (which I WANT), will be blown to white with a correct exposure. It’s not an issue of lighting – it’s an issue of trying to get COLORED highlights to show on a WHITE background (the powder), and make it look as it does to the eye. As I said earlier, if the powder was dark, (or the glitter was void of color), this would be a piece of cake.
For me this would be quite easy …
Uh-huh …
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Thanks everyone for the additional suggestions. I’ve devised a recipe that will work, even though it’s a bit of a compromise. It’s now crunch time and I have to get this project finished – I’ll report back when it’s put to bed.
Did you try a second, underexposed image as a layer blended to color, masking out everything but the powder and sprinkles surfaces? You must have and I just missed it in the thread.
Yes, I did Ramón. I’ve tried all I think of – different exposures, different combinations of advanced blending modes, hue/sat adjustments, etc – as well as many of the suggestions here. I’m beginning to think this is one of those situations where it’s simply not possible to capture what you can see with the eye.
Try to imagine the color intensity of the sparkles in this image <http://shock.spymac.net/Untitled-2.jpg> – EXCEPT in a properly exposed environment. That’s what it looks like to the eye. If only captures could make compensations like the brain can.
Forgive me for having the nerve to be this presumptuous, but I just ran the new Shadow/Highlight adjustment on the low resolution image you just posted, and I ended up with an image that leaves me wondering whether you could end up with a great image for blending as a new layer if you start out with your high res original.
You are correct I made a mistake, I would clarify my suggestion further but that would be the same mistake repeated again which is a mistake I don’t intend to repeat here at the Forum.
Don’t worry about being presumptous – the S/H adjustment was something I hadn’t thought about! 🙂
I can get a good image to blend – the problem is that when I blend (with a correctly exposed capture), the color purity of the sparkles get lost. The powder these sparkles reside in should be in the 220 – 240 range and at that brightness level, bye-bye color.
I’m probably making this hard on myself by trying to capture what I can actually see. I can get it decent but nowhere near what’s in front of my eyes. I think the client is going to have to make a choice – accurate brightness of the powder or sparkles that have decent color.
Flaming Pear has a filter called ‘Glitterato’ that will do what you want Phil. <http://www.flamingpear.com/glitterato.html> You can remove the background colours and have as much sparkle as you want.
Very nice work. Rendering the RAW image at different "gammas" works to some extent. But there is just so much information even in the RAW file.
But making several differennt exposures gives a dynamic range that is limited only by the exposure range you select. A shot with a dynamic range of 14 stops is easy.
A visual consideration to think about in addition to all the detailed and valuable technical info in this thread, is to consider that glitter or any light affect only looks intuitively "correct" by being brighter than the surrounding color. When we see glitter shining on a white surface we notice it because it’s actually a brighter light than the surrounding reflective field. If the brightest white you have available is the white of the paper, then in order to get the glitter to appear to sparkle it really needs to be paper-white against a darker ground. (Maintaining a hint of color in the edges of the sparkle will also work as long as its value is still brighter than the field it sets within.)
If you truly need to keep the appearance of glitter, the "white" ground needs to be darker. I would set up the shot with a cast shadow across part of the display. The shadowed area would show off the glitter effect, while the brightly lit section would accurately show the color of the powder as white.
The glitter can be thought of as a colored (gelled) light source. And regardless of film or digital, a colored light source isn’t going to show up with purity against a bright environment. There’s no way to succesfully do it photographically – or with manipulation. It’s just a fact of reproduction. All my previous whining about "trying to capture what I can see" can be boiled down to the fact that we (humans) can see a MUCH larger dynamic range than can ever be captured. We aren’t limited by 255 – 255 – 255.
Cast shadows is a good idea but unfortunately, it’s not an option here. I have to match a existing layout. Heck, I wouldn’t even have to shoot the shadows. I could PAINT in some shadowing using one of the darker exposures or a Curves adjustment.
"Cast shadows is a good idea but unfortunately, it’s not an option here. I have to match a existing layout"
But it seems like it IS an option you have. If most of the layout retains its bright white values (to match other associated images), and you allow or create a cast shadow to fall over the powder with its glitter, the eye will still "accept" that the white areas in shadow are as white as the non-shadowed areas.
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