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The First Stage of Post-Processing Part 3

by Mike McNamee

Post-Processing If you don't get it right in the field!
There are three things that need to be correct when capturing an image in the field: Focus, Exposure and Composition. You can never make an out-of-focus image in focus by post processing. So that absolutely needs to be right. You can recover, to a large degree, an incorrect exposure. Adobe Camera Raw is extremely powerful and will forgive a lot of sins from the field.

Regarding composition, there isn't normally a lot that you can do if you don't get it right. However, in some cases, such as the one I will demonstrate here, you can save the image. In this particular image, I just didn't frame the image very well. The main body of rocks is far too near the bottom of the frame. In addition the horizon is not level and there is a rock creeping in on the left side of the frame.

So let's start. I have made the appropriate changes in Adobe Camera Raw much as I laid out in my last article. I set the Whites and Blacks. Pulled back the highlights because the sky is very bright and changed the colour temperature, as this being a long exposure the image was very blue.

Now to post processing in Photoshop. Before I make any adjustments to specific areas of the image I will need to set about by dealing with the framing and composition issues.

Firstly I will need to straighten the horizon. This is very easy as within the crop tool there is a straighten tool. It looks like a spirit level. Click on this and place one end on the horizon and drag it the right, tracing where the current horizon is. When this done, hit Enter and a crop takes place. It is worth noting how much of the image is cropped when straightening.

In this case quite a lot. You should be mindful of framing your images in the field as if you have to straighten the image then you may well compromise anything that is close to the edge of the frame.

Even though the image has been straightened, you will see that the horizon is not a straight line because of the barrel distortion created by the 24mm lens that was used.

In order to make this straight we will have to call upon the very powerful transform tools. Indeed we are going to use this extensively to correct the image. Firstly, create a duplicate layer (CMD/CTRL J). Using the Marquee tool, select a small area that encompasses the horizon and then select EDIT/TRANSFORM/ WARP. By 'grabbing' the points on the grid presented you can move different parts of the selection up and down. This takes a bit of trial and error. The distortion on this lens is such that I had to select the middle section again and adjust this to get it right. Also note that the lens correction facility in ACR might have a pre-set correction, it depends upon the lens in question.

The next thing I want to tackle are the rocks appearing in the left-hand side of the frame. I can use the Healing Brush tool, but this can take a little time. I have found that making a selection with the lasso tool, with a small feather and then using EDIT/TRANSFORM/SCALE works very well. What I have done is to increase the size of the selection (eg SCALE) to the left so that I effectively drag the rocks off the canvas.

The next thing I want to do is to give a lot more space to the bottom of the image. The main rocks are not well placed and too dominant as they stand. Effectively I need to increase the size of the canvas. A quick way of doing this is to use the CROP tool and grab the bottom of the selection and drag it down, revealing the new addition to the canvas. Hit Enter to commit this change.

The next thing to do is to extend the image into this area of the canvas. Again I will use the Marquee tool and make a selection right across the bottom of the image. Next use EDIT/CONTENT AWARE SCALE and grabbing the bottom of the selection pull it down as far as necessary.

You can see that any features in the selection are stretched as well. So the rocks under the water now appear as lines in the area that has been stretched. Clearly this is not very good, so we will have to go in and using the Healing brush or Clone tools go over these areas to remove these effects.

[I could still see some very light lines in the water to the right of the main area I had just fixed; so I used the BLUR tool just to dampen these down. These were not visible in the reporduction - Ed]

I am still not satisfied with the overall composition. There isn't enough space between the main rocks and the left hand side of the frame. In much the same way I have extended the bottom part of the image, I am going to repeat this on the left-hand side of the image.

Now we have sorted out the overall composition of the image we can set about post processing the images. This won't take much work, although it did involve 13 Adjustment Layers. Simply reduce the brightness of the sky and bring a little more contrast to the main rocks. I used selections and curve adjustment layers to do this.

So there we have it. The finished image. It would have been better to have got this all correct when in the field. These sorts of techniques will only work, as in this image, if the edges of the canvas do not have too much detail in them. If we had trees or buildings adjacent to the frame then we would be stuck. As I mentioned in my first article 'Why Post Process', post processing informs our field craft. Next time I will take better care.

The images used in this feature were all shot in the Kintyre area of Scotland. Michael PIlkington and Paul Gallagher of Aspect2i were running a course up there as we went to press and so we hope to include some of the images in the next issue of Professional Imagemaker.



Updated 27/04/2026 16:44:22 Last Modified: Monday, 27 April 2026