Photoshop has built-in actions for a variety of functions that not many people that I know of actually use.
Not that I personally use those a lot, but, these built-in actions can save a huge amount of time if you need to do anything similar.
Before we look at the actions, there are a couple of points to keep in mind…
If you invoke Photoshop from Lightroom, you will get all kinds of errors and this is definitely a bug in the Lightroom-Photoshop workflow.
In case you get any errors while running these actions, just reset the settings for Photoshop by pressing CMD+OPT+SHIFT and then clicking on the PS icon to start PS. You will be prompted to reset the settings and just click okay on that.
Now that we are done with the issues, let us take a look at all the goodies we have already built into Photoshop.
Sometimes, when I already have made some edits in Photoshop and find that I missed out some small areas when using the auto-mask in Lightroom, it was a pain using a brush to fix it.
Turns out that Photoshop not only has an equivalent to the Lightroom auto-mask feature but, it is far more powerful in the way you can control how the auto-masking works.
So, without spending any more time on explaining this, let us open a raw file in Photoshop and see how this works…
Even after all these updates and features, the one thing that is still lacking in the Nik Collection, and some others as well, is the almost total lack of attention to the UI/UX and consistency of usage.
Let us look at the latest version of the Nik Collection, one by one, and see what I mean by this.
Inconsistent menus, zoom, pan, navigation, buttons and settings. No standard shortcuts apply where they could.
I have already shared how to create black backgrounds earlier, but, this one is going to be slightly different as we will also discuss a bit about the original exposure and which shots lend themselves well to a white background.
Do not confuse a white background with a high key image. High key images are those that are mostly light and white which is not true for just a white background image.
We will go through the process of making a white background in Lightroom, Photoshop (with and without Topaz Mask AI) as well as ON1 Photo Raw.
Yes, I have recently installed the trial version of Topaz Mask AI and so far, not very impressed as far as wildlife is concerned. Still learning more about it and experimenting…
This would also give us a reasonable comparison as to what one can do with each.
So…This is an image from my rooftop shooting today and this is what we will use in this session. Let’s start with this in Lightroom and then we will look at the same in Photoshop and finally in ON1.
First, the shot itself. As you can see from the base EXIF, this is overexposed specifically for a white background. I have avoided the wall behind the bird and it’s mostly the floor of the roof in the background. The angle of the shot is just over the bird to do this.
Similarly, when you have grey and/or overcast conditions, you can always look to overexpose a bit to create similar effects. Even low light conditions are good for this as long as the subject is close enough. In this case, the bird is just 6 meters away.
Now that we already have a dull background, let’s see how we can make this image pop a bit…
First, we apply my wildlife preset to this and tweak it a bit for a white background. Then, as with the black background, we use the adjustment brush and mask the background around the bird and then pull up all these sliders to make it white.
Do keep in mind that we can only do black or white in Lightroom, anything beyond that, you would have to look at some other application.
Okay, now, let’s remove the mask and try the same in Photoshop. First the select subject. Now, let’s try the Topaz Mask AI
Finally, let’s do the same in ON1 Photo Raw…We will use the local adjustments here with the perfect brush which is the equivalent of the auto-mask in Lightroom.
I had already uninstalled the Topaz Mask AI and the Topaz Studio 2 which I was considering to purchase as part of one of their packs. I am running MacOS Catalina 10.15.5 with all updates applied.
I had already searched around on the net and their own FAQs and forums and nothing helped. I had also downloaded the full installers, but, did not work.
I was about to log a ticket with and then I thought I would go through the apps to try and see if I could fix the issue manually.
Took me around 5 minutes to figure out and fix the issue. The solution is what I will share here.
I would recommend you download the full installers since that takes a lot lesser time to install than the online installers.
Once you start the installers, you might get an error message that the application is from the internet or unidentified developers. Not an issue, just right click on the installer application and click on “open” and then you will be prompted if you really want to run the app and you click on “open” again.
That will start up the installers. Once you have installed any of these products, you will not see them appear in Photoshop as most others do.
You will manually need to copy the plugins to the Photoshop plugin folder and then start up Photoshop to see them appear.
Make sure that Photoshop is not running
Go to the “Applications” folder (press CMD+SHIFT+A)
Go into the “Topaz Labs LCC” folder
Now, go into the application folder you want to add as a plugin
5. Right-click on the application file and select “Show Package Contents”
Go into the “Content” folder
Go into the “Resources” folder
8. Finally, go into the “PS_Plugins” folder
You can either copy the contents of this folder, or the folder itself for the next step
Go back into the “Applications” folder
Go into the “Adobe Photoshop 2020” folder
12. Go into the “Plug-ins” folder
Finally into the “Filters” folder
Paste the plugins or the plugin folder copied from step 9 here.
That’s it. Repeat the process for all Topaz apps.
Now when you start Photoshop, you will see them appear as they should have to start with. These are simple to add in Lightroom, so, that should not be an issue.
I can only hope that Topaz fixes these installation issues soon…
DxO just released version 3 of their popular Nik Collection of plugins for Photoshop and Lightroom.
The plugin pack also contains stand-alone applications for all the 8 plugins and can, therefore, be used with any application that can export and import TIFF files.
There has been an issue for quite some time with the Collection that if you set your Lightroom presets to be stored with the Catalog, the plugins will not appear in Lightroom. You will have to manually add them, one-by-one.
ON1 seems to have no such issues and for some reason, picks up the applications automatically.
Let’s see what the new, non-destructive edit for Lightroom really means.
To be honest, not much. The idea is to export a TIFF file from LR to edit in the Nik Collection and the changes you make in the Collection, is retained and you can keep tweaking that for the TIFF file. The settings are saved back to the TIFF file and there is no “sidecar” file. This also implies that Nik will take a while to save the edited file every time.
The issue is since we already exported the raw file to a TIFF, we have already lost the raw data for any kind of recovery. This might not be a major issue in practice though. Once you have made all your basic adjustments in LR, then, Nik can be used to enhance and tweak the same bitmap/raster image over and over again.
You have to check the box to make sure the “non-destructive” part is saved. If you want to save space on the TIFF files, make sure that you select “ZIP” compression in the Nik Collection settings. Changing the setting here will work for all cases including ON1.
After the AF modes and areas, we now talk about the external flash and how to use it for macros.
Firstly, check and set your flash sync speed and make sure you never exceed the shutter speed specified here. You will start getting black on the bottom of the frame if you exceed the sync speed.
Second, check the flash mode on the camera. If it is set to red-eye, then make sure you change it to normal. Most flashes support the red-eye double flash and that can totally ruin a wildlife shot.
Keep in mind that not all camera bodies have a popup flash.
Let’s now look at the modes a flash would offer. In general, you would have an auto or TTL mode which works exactly like a popup flash and you can control the flash via the camera. There are master and slave modes which allow controlling either a single or multiple flash setup. Finally, there is a manual mode and that is the only mode we are interested in here.
Since we use a flash cord to connect the flash and the camera body, we only need to set the flash to manual mode along with the zoom and power we want.
In the wild, one would generally not get a chance to fiddle with the power and zoom of the flash and we will see how to get around that. Recall the inverse square law for light falloff we discussed earlier? Yes, that is how we control the power of the flash in the wild. Simply changing the distance of the flash to the subject will increase or decrease the power of the light on the subject. We would, in general, never need to change the power once we are set for that depending on the GN of the flash and the capability of our camera sensor.
This is an aspect you will have to experiment and find out for your setup based on the aperture you use. I will discuss what I generally use in a later video.
Let us now look at the zoom and power aspects of the flash and how they impact our macro shots.
First, the zoom.
The zoom on the flash tries to match the zoom or focal length of the lens to cover the FoV for that focal length. A 50mm zoom would cover a wider area than a zoom of 90mm. In the TTL (auto) mode, the flash would automatically set the zoom to match the focal length of the lens on the camera.
So, where would we change the zoom to be more or less than the actual FoV of the focal length?
Recall the example in an earlier video where I used a zoom of 50 on the flash instead of the 90mm focal length of the lens? This was to spread the light out a bit more so we could see more of the surface and the reflections the objects created on the surface. The other case would be where you are lucky enough to get a subject in a clear area and want more of the natural background to blend in the frame rather than holding the flash on top of the subject for a dark background. In this case, you would point the flash directly at the subject, but, do not want intense light on the subject itself and therefore you can reduce the zoom to spread the light more than required for the FoV.
Now, let us look at the flash power.
Almost all flashes will shoot at the full power based on their GN, down to around 1/128 of the full power. Generally, the increments would be in 1/3rds but, can differ for different flash units.
In general, we will never use the full power mode for macros. A higher power for the flash implies a longer duration of the flash and vice-versa for low power. Understanding this part is critical for macros. Using a low power not only allows the flash to recharge faster (generally under a second), but, more importantly, since the duration of the flash is so short, it helps in freezing the subject and eliminating any shake we might get when shooting at 1:1 or higher magnifications.
For example, the flash duration range on my Godox flash is 1/300 – 1/20000 of a second. Imagine the speed of the low power flash. This is also the reason why the shutter speed cannot be used to cut the flash light and only the aperture can.
Therefore, my recommendation would be to use the lowest flash power that allows you to shoot around the base ISO of your camera to get the best possible details in your macro shots.
Now that we have covered the flash part, let us look at a few examples…
In the Desktop Macro Photography video, I did not go fully into the camera auto-focus modes and what the general recommendations would be for different scenarios. This is what we will discuss here.
I have only Nikon bodies, so, I can only talk in those terms. Other brands would have equivalents of the modes that I will talk about here.
For this brief session, I would strongly recommend that you put on the macro lens on your camera body and pause the video, where needed, and try out the settings that we discuss here.
Depending on the camera body, the number of focus points and groups would differ, but, we are generally not really concerned with that since we will generally use only a single focus point for the Af-Area (S).
The AF-Mode, unlike for most other purposes, will also be single shot or AF-S instead of the more commonly used AF-C.
As I explained in an earlier video, Nikon users would have to go into the custom settings and make sure that AF-S is set to focus, which is the default. As a side note, I use focus priority for AF-C as well.
I am assuming that your camera is already set up for back button focus. This is a requirement and not optional in this case.
So, for the Nikons, you would use AF-S/S for macros and make sure the AF-S is set to focus priority.
What this setup does is that the camera will not release the shutter unless it has focus on something. You can keep the shutter button pressed and nothing will happen till there is some object that the camera thinks it has the focus locked on to.
Now for the exercise to check this out…
Rotate the focus ring on your lens to the minimum distance, i.e. at 1:1. For most macro lenses, the MWD would be around 10 cm, but, do check your lens’ specs for that.
It does not matter what the camera settings for the exposure are for this test. You can set the camera to full auto mode as well. We are not concerned with the exposure here.
Place an object, I will use the same sanitiser bottle we used in the earlier video, on your desktop and look at the object through the viewfinder of the camera while keeping the shutter release button pressed. The shutter will only release once you have the camera close enough to the object for the camera to acquire a focus lock on the object. This will not work if you do not have back button focus set up.
This is also referred to as a “focus trap” and can be used in other scenarios as well.
So…How does this experiment help?
Given the razor sharp DoF when shooting macros, the point of focus becomes critical.
For example, this is a snapshot from one of the many DoF calculators available online. Although lenses in real life are far more complex than this simple computation, but, this does give you an idea of the DoF when fully stopped down on this Tamron 90mm macro lens.
This is also the only way you can be sure that at least the camera “thinks” it has the subject in focus. This will almost always be correct unless your lens is front or back focussing. I will explain how to correct this issue in a later video.
Now, one might wonder if this is it! The ultimate settings for macro photography…
Not really, this is just the ideal scenario which may or may not happen in the wild or even your own desktop unless you have sufficient light for the camera to detect and lock focus. This is just the only way to go about getting the smaller subjects where you want to make sure you are shooting at a full 1:1 magnification. Using AF would generally lock at any distance over the MFD and you might not get 1:1.
For subjects larger than the sensor size or if you are looking for more of a composition close shot, the AF works fine most of the time in all such cases. In fact, for larger subjects, you can even switch back to AF-C/Any Focus-Area mode.
Okay, so, where would this fail or not be desirable?
One, of course, as we already discussed, for larger subjects, it does not matter what modes you use. The prime macro lens will give you a much better IQ than a zoom in all these cases.
The second is in low light scenarios. I don’t mean low light as in late evening or similar. What I mean is when shooting wildlife in the open, the subject might be in a location where the light and/or the contrast of the subject will not allow the camera to figure out if it has acquired focus. Even though you might see a sharp image in your viewfinder, the camera will refuse to release the shutter. In such cases, just change to a group focus or auto and shoot before the subject vanishes.
The third is if you get lucky and get a subject in the wild that is stationary for a few seconds even after the first shot with the flash. This is a perfect opportunity to try and get multiple shots and stack them later. This is generally referred to as focus stacking and we will see how this is done in a later video.
Of course, there are specific instances as well. For example, if you are shooting some object in a glass and want to focus on a specific point.
I hope this clarifies the focus mode and areas when shooting macros.
Nitin Chandra's Blog 