PSP7 isolate and lighten one area of b&w photo?

[lizziemac]

The b&w photo which I'm working on is light at the bottom and dark at the top. Is it possible to adjust the lightness in only the top part (PSP7).

TIA

Lizzie

[soenda]

Yes, you can certainly do it, but how effective it looks afterward depends on a few things. Before I use any of these I ALWAYS duplicate the background layer and work on the dupe instead of the original. Here are things I would try:

1. First, check to be sure that you can't make adjustments to the whole picture that might solve the problem. There are a number of them in the drop down menu called "Adjust," under the sub-heading: "Brightness and Contrast."

My experience is that it's better to try to begin to deal with this before you convert to black and white, but more knowledgeable folks might not agree.

My favorite tools for addressing the problem of too dark/too bright are,in order of preference: "Adjust Levels," "Histogram Adjustment," and "Adjust high/mid/shadows." There's also an "Automatic Contrast Enhancement" that might be worth a shot, but I don't usually like the results.ed

I often begin by taking a look at the histogram adjustment because that shows me what's going on in the photo. Often in a situation like yours, you'll discover that there are too few pixels on the right side of the graph. By moving the slider on the right towards the middle, you get Paint Shop to add more highlights. Sometimes it works better to nudge the middle slider to the right. Then the lightness is added in the midtones, not the highlights. You might even find that moving the shadow slider to the left opens up the dark portions enough for you. Often I do a trial run at these adjustments in the Adjust Histogram graph to try them out, then go to "Adjust Levels" to actually make them. I have a feeling that there's a finer degree of control under "levels," so I just cancel out (exit without clicking okay) what I did in "Adjust Histogram" and redo it in levels.

If you can't find a way to deal with the too dark portion while fine tuning the whole photo, then you have to go to a way to lighten one portion. Which takes you to the options:

2. Brushes that directly lighten what they touch: the "dodge brush" and the "lighten/darken" brush. If possible, "Select" the area you want to lighten so you don't have to worry about slipping into the wrong places. You can adjust the shape, size and strength of the brushes. In Paint Shop 8 and 9, an adjustment bar appears at the top of the screen for setting these attributes. "Opacity" is the one that determines how much lightness gets added with each click of the brush. Better to start in the middle--- a setting of around 50---and work your way up to what feels right. I also prefer to keep the "Hardness" and "Step" pretty low so I can keep the brush under control. It means you have to make more clicks, but it protects the photo from your photo from getting gouged. If it's a whole big area you're working with, you might want a pretty big brush. If it's a complicated mesh---lots of trees with branches and leaves where you want sky tones to show through---you need smaller brushes. The "Line" shaped brushes are good for rectangular strokes, because the line converts into a rectangle when you increase its thickness.

Or,

3. Lighten the dark area with selections or layers. You select the area you want to change, then convert it either into its own layer or a selection. The plus side is that you don't have to worry about the rest of the photo while you're working with it. The down side can be getting it to look like it still belongs to the same picture when you're done. I find that the nature of the borders between what you want to change and the rest of the photo make a lot of difference here. The tricky part is the feathering, smoothing, etc. when you make your original selection. That's what will control how the border looks when you put the lightened piece back in.

Another big advantage to making the portion to be lightened its own layer is that you can blend it back in when you're done using lots of different blending methods: just a few are Lighten, Hue, Saturation, Hard Light, Overlay...I'm still at a point where I have to go through many of the choices to see what's going to work best. You also get to determine how much of the change is mixed in with the original photo by adjusting a percentage.

So: the easiest thing for you to do is try to coax out the dark portion with the adjustment tools that work on the whole picture. You can try doing it before or after the conversion from color to BW. Next come the brushes, and finally different approaches with selections or layers.

Good luck!

[lizziemac]

Soenda
Once again I have to thank you for the very informative info. I'm building up quite a folder of tutorials from you! It's good to have very detailed instructions, as most tutorials or books don't have room to go into such detail, and for a beginner like me who needs point by point guidance, your help is invaluable. I'll work my way through it. After lots of fiddling around with the freehand tool, the pink dress and headband are looking great.

Thanks again

Lizzie

[soenda]

You are most heartily welcome, Lizzie. It's good to be able to "pay it forward" when you've received as much help as I have. Plus, the best way to understand something is to try to explain it to someone else. A lot of time the questions people post here are beyond my level of PSP, since I'm a version 9-er, but so far yours have been the same things I've been grappling with myself.

I hope that if more experienced people see your questions, and they can improve on my suggestions that they'll pitch right in. I'm glad that you're hanging in there with figuring out how to get the most from PSP. Every time you figure something else out, the new skill is a great reward.

S.