Travel Photography - PS How-To: Remove haze from your photos

It's a common problem when shooting outdoors - whether it's caused by air pollution or humidity - you end up with the distant objects in your picture looking rather hazy. Your average snapshot of the Grand Canyon will have this issue. So, how do you deal with this?

1) When you're taking the picture - if the sun is ~90º to what you're shooting, a polarizing filter can help cut some of the glare, but if the sun is either in front of you (in the frame or around the periphery), or behind (over your shoulder), the polarizer will not be as effective.

2) In Photoshop:

a) Duplicate your image onto a new layer (Ctrl/Cmd+J)
b) Open up Unsharp Mask on the new layer. What you need is a small Amount (typically 40-60%), large radius (typically 30-50 pixels), and Threshold from 0-4.
c) Tune these parameters to your liking - toggle the Preview checkbox on and off to see the effect. Any time you work with sharpening, you want to be either at 50 or 100% zoom (depending on image size)
d) Add a Layer Mask to the sharpened layer - fill it with black, and then paint in with white where you want the effect using a soft-edged brush. Generally, you don't want to apply this to the whole image, or else the non-hazy things in your picture will look oversharpened
e) Tweak the overall strength of the effect using the Opacity slider for the sharpening layer

EDIT - here's a sample of how this effect looks, using a shot I took a couple years ago:

1) Before (this shot was taken with a polarizer, which is why you can easily see the reef under the water:
http://ben-johnson.org/ftupload/before-1858.jpg

2) After:
http://ben-johnson.org/ftupload/after-1858.jpg
The effect doesn't club you over the head, but it definitely adds some more pop to the image.

3) During:
http://ben-johnson.org/ftupload/during-1858.jpg
The USM was applied at 50%, 50 pixel radius, 0 threshold. Also, note how the mask prevents the effect from being shown in the foreground. The mask took all of 20 seconds to paint in.

If you look over in the 3rd FT Photo Contest section, the photo of Delicate Arch in the first post uses this technique. There, I confined it to the mountains in the background, so that the arch didn't look oversharpened.

Coming soon: before/during/after sample pictures, and maybe a PS action to automate this a little.

Wow!

I feel like someone's moved www.photography-on-the.net to flyertalk. POTN is for canon photographers in particular but regardless of which, there is a shed load of help from there with postprocessing.

Anyway - thanks for this.

/E

I figured I'd post a few photoshop tips to cover some of the common challenges people have with taking their travel shots from good to great. Haze reduction is probably one of the more useful tips I've picked up, and it should be do-able whether you've got a full version of Photoshop or a recent version of Elements.

I'm going to stick to tips/tricks that are more targeted at travel photography (land/cityscapes) - I don't think we need threads on glamour retouching here.

I'm going to stick to tips/tricks that are more targeted at travel photography (land/cityscapes) - I don't think we need threads on glamour retouching here.

hehe - true. Guess you know the site ;-)
/E

I've always used 10,50,0 as a starting point for general contrast bump with USM. The 10 can go up to 20 based on the image.

I have 10,50,0 then 200,0.3,0 as an action for quick and dirty clean-up, with the 200 ranging from 0-400 based on the image (actually, I've moved to using Smart Sharpen, but I don't recall those settings - these USM numbers are burned in my brain).

I'm hoping that as soon as CS3 arrives, which, iirc, allows non-destructive sharpening filters, the whole bag of tricks around sharpening can go away. Two-pass, three-pass, layered, masked, etc., sharpening is quite a hassle...


Extend your right hand and point your thumb at the sun. Rotate your wrist around 360 degrees - shooting in this direction shows where a CP will have the most impact. That's how I always remember the orientation.


I'm experiencing deja-vu also, although my regular hang-out is dpreview (gear) and PhotoSig (content)

...
Extend your right hand and point your thumb at the sun. Rotate your wrist around 360 degrees - shooting in this direction shows where a CP will have the most impact. That's how I always remember the orientation.


:eek:

You can do that? :)

Thanks! I'm heading to Namibia in next month and I appreciate any photo tips relating to outdoor photography!

:eek:

You can do that? :)

Photographers commonly call this the Linda Blair Technique. :)

Photographers commonly call this the Linda Blair Technique. :)

:D :D

I knew this avocation would be expensive but I had not appreciated the physical requirements. :)

Photographers commonly call this the Linda Blair Technique. :)

I just fell out of bed reading that.

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^

/E

I've always used 10,50,0 as a starting point for general contrast bump with USM. The 10 can go up to 20 based on the image.

I have 10,50,0 then 200,0.3,0 as an action for quick and dirty clean-up, with the 200 ranging from 0-400 based on the image (actually, I've moved to using Smart Sharpen, but I don't recall those settings - these USM numbers are burned in my brain).

I'm hoping that as soon as CS3 arrives, which, iirc, allows non-destructive sharpening filters, the whole bag of tricks around sharpening can go away. Two-pass, three-pass, layered, masked, etc., sharpening is quite a hassle...


Everyone's got their own optimum. There's no one right answer to retouching images. If it looks good, it is good - that's my philosophy. :)

You're right, CS3 does allow the use of non-destructive filters, and you can still apply a mask to your non-destructive filters. I'm downloading the release version of CS3 as I type.

I use Photokit Sharpener for most of my sharpening work (especially if it's going to be printed big for my living room wall - I'm of the personal opinion that my photos turn out better with a multi-pass sharpening system. PKS does it all using layer sets as well, so it's non-destructive too - just takes up more space. However, for web stuff, I just hit it with a quick Smart Sharpen and get done with it.

I think for general use, a single-pass sharpening (at the end) is good enough for 90% of my shots. But for that last 10%, some additional work can take it from "nice" to "wow".

Wow!

I feel like someone's moved www.photography-on-the.net to flyertalk. POTN is for canon photographers in particular but regardless of which, there is a shed load of help from there with postprocessing.
http://luminous-landscape.com/ has some great photoshop tutorials (http://luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/, for example, http://luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/contrast_masking.shtml). And we shouldn't forget www.dpreview.com/forums.

Added the pictures above now.

Often what appears to be haze is lack of contrast, evidenced by a histogram that's nowhere near the left edge. Stretching the histogram to touch the edges cures the problem.

Often what appears to be haze is lack of contrast, evidenced by a histogram that's nowhere near the left edge. Stretching the histogram to touch the edges cures the problem.

True. Over at Luminous Landscape, this technique is referred to as "Local Contrast Enhancement".

bdjohns1,
As a novice of digital photography (but with plenty of experience in film photography), I truly appreciate your tutorial examples. You have helped me in solving some of my landscape images already. I use an older version of Photoshop and recent version of Photoshop Elements.
From the 2 examples that you illustrated (Before & After). I couldn't help but notice the improvement for skies, shoreline and sandy beaches and portion of the water scene. However, I also noticed that the 2 standing pillars (the main objects of the picture) and the surrounding water (shown as white waves) lost much of the details. I wonder if this was due to too much sharpening or was it due to lightening the image too much. Please note that this is NOT a criticism. Personally I like it to be somewhere between the 1st (before) and 2 (after). I wonder how can I achieve that? By selecting those portions of the image and give it a new layer; then apply "multiply"? Any thought?
Thank you for sharing

bdjohns1,

From the 2 examples that you illustrated (Before & After). I couldn't help but notice the improvement for skies, shoreline and sandy beaches and portion of the water scene. However, I also noticed that the 2 standing pillars (the main objects of the picture) and the surrounding water (shown as white waves) lost much of the details. I wonder if this was due to too much sharpening or was it due to lightening the image too much. Please note that this is NOT a criticism. Personally I like it to be somewhere between the 1st (before) and 2 (after). I wonder how can I achieve that? By selecting those portions of the image and give it a new layer; then apply "multiply"? Any thought?


Even easier - since I did this with a layer mask, all you'd have to do is paint back over the layer mask with some black on the pillars, or some gray if you want the effect to just be more subtle.

It works. Just learn another trick. Thanks.

Sorry to bump up the "oldest" thread in here, but there's some new news on this front:

This technique has been integrated into the just-released version 4.1 of Adobe Camera Raw (and the coming-soon version 1.1 of Lightroom). It's being called the "Clarity" slider, and it's got some intelligence about how it sharpens, so you don't have to go through mask construction like I did in the example at the top of this thread. Also, very handy if you want to try to get your images "right" in a non-destructive fashion and more conducive to batch processing.

There's a lengthy writeup of the new ACR 4.1 features over at PhotoshopNews. (http://photoshopnews.com/2007/05/31/about-camera-raw-41/)

One more reason to go from CS2 -> CS3 if you haven't yet.

Thanks for the heads-up. I have 700+ shots from a weekend workshop in Moab and was dreading the "Export to CS3, sharpen, save back in Lightroom" process - assuming the LR1.1 will soon follow. We had a session on LR and most of the "wish list' items appear to be covered here.

Thanks for the heads-up. I have 700+ shots from a weekend workshop in Moab and was dreading the "Export to CS3, sharpen, save back in Lightroom" process - assuming the LR1.1 will soon follow. We had a session on LR and most of the "wish list' items appear to be covered here.

I'd love to see what you got in the Moab area, since I was just there back in April.

I haven't tried it myself (mainly because I only manage my raws and processed non-web shots in Lightroom), but there's supposedly a way you can run a PS action combined with the auto-import feature in LR (via converting the action to a droplet) - http://lightroom-news.com/2007/04/04/applying-photokit-sharpener-on-export/. Having this available would be nice though. Like the original article I linked to though, this is more intended for capture sharpening than output sharpening.

Personally, for web output, here's what I do:

1) Within my hierarchy of tags in LR, I have a group called "Project Tags" (where a project represents a vacation, particular day of shooting, etc). I apply that tag to the selects from the trip (since Bridge CS3 doesn't recognize the little flag from LR). It's just a unique tag above and beyond the usual categorizations - like "ut07select".
2) I select all files tagged as "ut07select" over in Bridge
3) I run the Image Processor script - I don't use the resize option, as the action I call handles that. The action does the following:
a) resize to 800x600
b) apply watermark (using the action I posted in a separate thread)
c) apply output sharpening suitable for a 800x image on the web
d) save to a "pending uploads" folder

From there, it goes to Flickr and/or the gallery on my personal webpage.

Another haze technique involves conversion to LAB and using curves to steepen the a and b channels. If that sounds like gibberish, don't panic, it's not that hard. There is a great book called "Photoshop LAB Color" by Dan Margulis, and there is a sample chapter available that specifically deals with haze, and it shows a dramatic sample of the results produced by the technique.

Sample of haze reduction:
http://www.peachpit.com/content/images/chap3_0321356780/elementLinks/sequoia_a_only.jpg

And this is the sample chapter with the explanation:

http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.asp?p=606588&rl=1

Yep, I use that technique too - as DM notes in his book, it's great for pics of the US Southwest with all the red rock. I use it enough that I have a hotkey action to go to LAB, slope the ab channels, and go back to RGB.

That's the great thing about Photoshop - there are a lot of equally valid paths to getting similar results.

Is the LAB technique to go into LAB mode, then in curves make the L curve steeper, then play with A and B to taste? The sample chapter depends on chapter 1, which is not posted.

I've got the book, and the technique he uses in this image is to drastically steepen the L channel, and then tweak the ab channels to suit.

I was thinking of a different technique for color saturation, which is just done by resloping the ab channels identically.

I was thinking of a different technique for color saturation, which is just done by resloping the ab channels identically.Here's a tutorial I saw that includes this technique: http://microstockpix.com/tuts/masks4/masks4.html

I'd love to see what you got in the Moab area, since I was just there back in April.
I'm still working on some PP options, but I've loaded a few to share - http://richs.smugmug.com/gallery/2947986#161646717

I haven't tried it myself (mainly because I only manage my raws and processed non-web shots in Lightroom), but there's supposedly a way you can run a PS action combined with the auto-import feature in LR (via converting the action to a droplet)

Hmmm, I'll need to try this. I've been using sharpening droplets but most in the "after Export" option so I would end up with sharpened images in a folder. If there's a way to automatically import them back into LR that may solve a bit of my problems. Or I could just wait for LR 1.1.... Thanks for the tip.

I'm still working on some PP options, but I've loaded a few to share - http://richs.smugmug.com/gallery/2947986#161646717

Hmmm, I'll need to try this. I've been using sharpening droplets but most in the "after Export" option so I would end up with sharpened images in a folder. If there's a way to automatically import them back into LR that may solve a bit of my problems. Or I could just wait for LR 1.1.... Thanks for the tip.

Amazing work on those Moab shots. The morning I went up to Mesa Arch, the glow was pretty mediocre, but you just nailed it - you got the picture I wanted to take. ^ ^