Home · Register · Search · Software · Hosting · Software · Join Upload & Sell

	Moderated by: Fred Miranda
	Username   Password FM Forum Rules What are the criteria? FM Forums | Photo Critique | Join Upload & Sell   end    Clone this moon in.

ben egbert Offline • • • • Upload & Sell: On p.1 #1 · Clone this moon in. Travis asked about doing a well exposed moon in a night shot. I have one up at my website that he liked. It was a hard labor to fix the sky around the overexposed moon and I was never happy with it. But I bet some folks here could do it. Here is the two images SOOC one for the moon and one for the rest. I am posting 1024, larger would be better as this is not a such a hard job until you start getting to print size. But it might be good for technique. Edited on Dec 31, 2012 at 04:52 PM · View previous versions Dec 28, 2012 at 04:39 PM

ben egbert Offline • • • • Upload & Sell: On p.1 #2 · Clone this moon in. And here is my version Edited on Dec 31, 2012 at 04:51 PM · View previous versions Dec 28, 2012 at 04:45 PM

RustyBug Offline • • • • • Upload & Sell: On p.1 #3 · Clone this moon in. No adjustment made for S&P @ 1st one. I simply spot healed (or clone) the overexposed moon such that I had a moonless sky. Then put the properly exposed moon on the layer above with the mode set to lighter color. With the sky being "black" the only thing that will come through is the moon. Placement then is variable, and you could independently S&P each layer, as shown in the second one, with warmer moon and magenta water (for illustration purposes). Edited on Dec 28, 2012 at 05:40 PM · View previous versions Dec 28, 2012 at 05:11 PM

ben egbert Offline • • • • Upload & Sell: On p.1 #4 · Clone this moon in. Hi Kent. Great,tip on putting the dark sky moon into the shot. How did you heal the background? I worked on it for hours trying to eliminate all the flare which actually just about fills the 100% crops I showed. Yep I see it in yours too. Dec 28, 2012 at 05:23 PM

RustyBug Offline • • • • • Upload & Sell: On p.1 #5 · Clone this moon in. That's not really the moon flare you're seeing ... its just a byproduct of my quick/lazy effort at using the healing brush to let it render the moonless sky. I likely should have cloned instead or gone over it with some blur to smooth it out, etc. Dec 28, 2012 at 05:38 PM

Camperjim Offline • • • Upload & Sell: On p.1 #6 · Clone this moon in. Ben, here are the steps I would use. Spot heal or use the clone tool to remove the old moon and if desired the surrounding light areas. Go to the moon image, use the quick select tool to select the entire moon. Ctrl C to copy. Go to the landscape image and use Ctrl V to paste. The paste command will automatically create a new layer. Use the transform tool to move and resize the moon. Use brightness/contrast and/or saturation sliders to achieve a visual fit. Then merge the layers. The whole process should take about a minute. Dec 28, 2012 at 05:46 PM

ben egbert Offline • • • • Upload & Sell: On p.1 #7 · Clone this moon in. RustyBug wrote: That's not really the moon flare you're seeing ... its just a byproduct of my quick/lazy effort at using the healing brush to let it render the moonless sky. I likely should have cloned instead or gone over it with some blur to smooth it out, etc. If you look at my 100% crop of the long exposure, you will see the flare. It is hard to get it removed evenly as you and Jim suppose. First the area with flare is large. Second, the sky is not uniform so any clone/patch will show edges. I just did it over and here are the steps. First make a sky only layer. 1. Use the content aware fill to remove the moon. 2. Use the crop tool to select a large rectangular area to the left and use free transform to drag it to the center of the moon. 3. Do the same from the right. 4. Use the clone tool or content aware file to repair local areas. The fixed area has drag marks from the free transform. Maybe I should have used NR first. But here is what you do to make the sky more uniform. 1. Add noise. I added about 3%. 2. Use NR to fix it. I used Topaz heaviest noise. Kent's trick for putting the moon back in from the well exposed moon is slick and only takes a moment. I had a moon of the right size and location taken moments before so it did not require Jim's trick which is how I did it the first time around. But first I worked on it a bit. I ran a light nr then a slight sharpen. Then I just added it to the light image as a lighter color and it came in perfect. Here is my redo. But the hard work is fixing the sky on the light version. Just a clone does not cut it. Try for yourself on the 100% crops. Edited on Dec 31, 2012 at 04:51 PM · View previous versions Dec 28, 2012 at 06:15 PM

Camperjim Offline • • • Upload & Sell: On p.1 #8 · Clone this moon in. Ben, I am not sure I understand what you are doing but it does indeed sound like a nightmare. The original image has some flare around the moon. Is that what is causing you a problem? Again, I would hit the moon with the repair tool. That should be a 1 second fix. Some lightness in the sky around the moon should look natural. If not I would set the clone tool to say 25% and sweep the area to even it out. I don't understand your issue with noise in the sky. That could be easily fixed. You have no stars or other elements in the sky so you should be able to select the sky with a click or two, then contract say 8 pixels, feather about 5 pixels and blur about 2-4 pixels. Dec 28, 2012 at 06:35 PM

AuntiPode Offline • • • • • Upload & Sell: On p.1 #9 · Clone this moon in. Moon removed from 100% example - using the patch tool: Dec 28, 2012 at 07:26 PM

ben egbert Offline • • • • Upload & Sell: On p.1 #10 · Clone this moon in. Hi Jim. The illumination is lighter near the moon and radiates to dark as it goes away from the moon. This is in addition to the flare itself. So any area you choose as a clone sample will not be the same illumination where you add the patch. This is not obvious so much until you start working it at 100%. The free transform tool is a good way to fill large areas. But it causes stretch marks if there is any non uniformity. I assume the non uniformity is noise. I did not run NR before I started using it and would have probably had better results had I done so. Adding noise and then running NR is just a trick I learned a year or so ago to make uneven sky's more uniform. It works pretty good and even had I used NR at the start, would probably still need it at the end. These low light shots are noisy, even at ISO100. But I have never seen your noise trick so I am going to try it. How do you contract? Never heard that term. Is it a resize? I had the sky selected as a first step. Edit: Jim, I tried your trick and found contract. Pretty subtle. Is this what you use for NR? Edited on Dec 28, 2012 at 08:23 PM · View previous versions Dec 28, 2012 at 07:29 PM

ben egbert Offline • • • • Upload & Sell: On p.1 #11 · Clone this moon in. AuntiPode wrote: Moon removed from 100% example - using the patch tool: Yes, very blotchy. How do you get it smooth now? But you did get more uniform illumination than I did. How did you use the patch tool? By that I mean selection size and where did you select? The add noise then run NR would probably fix the blotchy look. Dec 28, 2012 at 07:31 PM

ben egbert Offline • • • • Upload & Sell: On p.1 #12 · Clone this moon in. Here is a redo of the 100% crop to show what sort of uniformity I am looking for at 100%. This time I did the content aware but selected a much larger area. Then I ran NR, then I added 3% noise and ran NR again. Edited on Dec 31, 2012 at 04:51 PM · View previous versions Dec 28, 2012 at 07:47 PM

Camperjim Offline • • • Upload & Sell: On p.1 #13 · Clone this moon in. Ben, To contract a selection, use select-modify-contract and select the number of pixels. Again to smooth out the sky tones, you use the clone tool. Set a relatively large size, use a relatively low percent, select an area away from your problem area and then sweep the clone tool back and forth numerous times. You can select another area to clone from and repeat the sweaps. That should even out anything within a few seconds. Another option would be to select the sky, that should take only one or two clicks with the selection tool, then use blur-average. You may also need to contract and feather. You will then need to use the dodge tool set relatively low, say 10%, to lighten the sky selection towards the horizon. Again use a low selection and a large size and sweep numerous times so the effect is subtle and not detectable. Whenever you work on the sky, blurring is a good idea. Again, select, contract, feather and gaussian blur 2-4 pixels. If you make the right settings, the entire sky will blur but you will still have a clean sharp unblurred edge at the top of the mountains. Then when the sky is right, paste in the new moon. Personally I would leave the lightness in the sky around the moon and just get rid of the heavy glare just around the old moon. The diffuse lightness in the sky will help give the moon a natural appearance. It is easy to remove as I explained but much tougher to add that lightness back in if for example you were adding a moon to a sky that did not have a moon. Finally that noise and graininess you see in the sky is mostly a sign of being too much of a pixel peeper. The grain has to be pretty bad to show in a print since it will just disappear due to the printing process and dithering. Dec 28, 2012 at 08:42 PM

ben egbert Offline • • • • Upload & Sell: On p.1 #14 · Clone this moon in. Camperjim wrote: Ben, To contract a selection, use select-modify-contract and select the number of pixels. Again to smooth out the sky tones, you use the clone tool. Set a relatively large size, use a relatively low percent, select an area away from your problem area and then sweep the clone tool back and forth numerous times. You can select another area to clone from and repeat the sweaps. That should even out anything within a few seconds. Another option would be to select the sky, that should take only one or two clicks with the selection tool, then use blur-average. You may also need to contract and feather. You will then need to use the dodge tool set relatively low, say 10%, to lighten the sky selection towards the horizon. Again use a low selection and a large size and sweep numerous times so the effect is subtle and not detectable. Whenever you work on the sky, blurring is a good idea. Again, select, contract, feather and gaussian blur 2-4 pixels. If you make the right settings, the entire sky will blur but you will still have a clean sharp unblurred edge at the top of the mountains. Then when the sky is right, paste in the new moon. Personally I would leave the lightness in the sky around the moon and just get rid of the heavy glare just around the old moon. The diffuse lightness in the sky will help give the moon a natural appearance. It is easy to remove as I explained but much tougher to add that lightness back in if for example you were adding a moon to a sky that did not have a moon. Finally that noise and graininess you see in the sky is mostly a sign of being too much of a pixel peeper. The grain has to be pretty bad to show in a print since it will just disappear due to the printing process and dithering. Thanks. Jim, I learned a bunch in this thread. I still have no idea how to use the patch tool Karen mentioned. I tried it and not sure how to make a source selection. Its one tool I have never used. Yep, I am a pixel peeper. Dec 28, 2012 at 08:58 PM

Camperjim Offline • • • Upload & Sell: On p.1 #15 · Clone this moon in. I cannot help with the batch tool. I understand it is another of the amazing content aware tools. Unfortunately I am still using elements and there is no patch tool and only limited content aware tools. Dec 28, 2012 at 10:00 PM

ben egbert Offline • • • • Upload & Sell: On p.1 #16 · Clone this moon in. I wrote this up and put it into my blog. I would never have attempted the content aware fill had Karen not shown her example. I was just not selecting a large enough area. Kents trick of adding the entire moon image and using "color lightest" was unknown to me and a great tool to have. I was never happy with my older efforts and had given up on including cloned in moons in similar shots.Now I have new incentives. http://ben-egbert-photo.com/?page_id=1394 Dec 29, 2012 at 05:17 PM

	end FM Forums | Photo Critique | Join Upload & Sell end

You are not logged in. Login or Register

Username   Password    Lost your password?