Combining focus
This easy Photoshop technique you
can try with or without a tripod,
though it’s better with one. I used the
50mm ƒ2.8 AF Macro lens on the 5D.
Keeping the composition the same,
take two identical photographs, one
focused on the foreground and one
on the distance. Try to make sure
there is a simple horizon and not too
much detail in between. Moorland,
grass, heather, water, sand, or
concrete are all good surfaces to
lead you from close-up to distance.
Identically exposed camera
Above: very close focus. Below:
JPEGs should be a very close match
infinity focus. Right: combined.
for colour and brightness. Select the
foreground of the close-up shot, miss-
ing out the top half (I used a square
selection, ending at the water level).
‘Feather’ this selection – for a full
size 6 megapixel image, you may need
200 or 250 pixel feathering. I used
100 pixels for this 9cm wide image.
Copy, and then paste this on to the
distant focus shot. Align the selection
using the right-hand arrow cursor
tool of the Photoshop palette (Move
tool). I set transparency to 90 per
cent and Blending to ‘Normal’ but
a fully opaque image is often OK.
Flatten the image, save, and print.
– DK
Correcting verticals
The smaller photo is a JPEG straight
out the 5D, taken with the 18-70mm
lens set at 18mm. Because of the
people walking in front of the
camera, it was grabbed quickly and
the composition is not very accurate.
A shot like this would be difficult
to correct on film. In the darkroom,
correction is possible, but hardly
anyone uses a darkroom now and a
hand made corrective print from a
laboratory would cost as developing
and printing several rolls of film.
With Photoshop Elements,
Photoshop and many other similar
programs it is easy to correct the
original. I made a conversion them exactly perpendicular and
from the raw .MRW file to double parallel, but to allow a very slight
the normal 5D image size – a 50 degree of convergence. If you do not,
megabyte file. This needs a power- the result looks artificial to the eye.
ful computer to handle. Working Because parts of the picture are
with a larger image means that stretched – the bottom left and top
once the correction is finished, you left corners are dragged out more
can reduce back to a normal size, than the right hand side – some areas
and quality will be maintained. are lost. I have cropped the shadow
The Lens Correction feature in off the bottom of the shot on purpose.
Adobe Photoshop CS2 was used for The final result is a sharp, good
this, dragging the corners of the quality picture with all the faults
image while viewing it on a grid of of the original corrected. Your
lines. Professional photographers digital SLR, with your image editing
who correct verticals using view program, can match a PC lens easily.
cameras are careful never to make – SK
17 photoworld
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