Photography Tutorial 4: Patching Images – Colin Walton

For speed I would normally try to do all of the photo-manipulation in Lightroom, but here patching images needed Photoshop to combine the two images.

Uneven Lighting

With most interior design photography you have to manage with available light. It would be far too time-consuming to set up lighting for whole rooms – especially one as large as this one. So the shot was taken knowing I would have to lighten the left hand side of the image. I also took the same photograph with the room’s lights turned on, which made the room appear too yellow so the image wasn’t used.

Unwanted reflections

The biggest problem with this photograph was the bright reflection on the print to the right of the fireplace. This is pretty well impossible to fix in Lightroom, so here I used Photoshop to fix the problem by copying part of a second image as a patch.

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Photography Tutorials

Patching Images Step-by-Step

Patching Images - before photo-manipulation

Before

Patching Images - Using graduated filter on left hand side

1 Graduated Filter To Lighten The Left Side

The easiest job to do was to add a Graduated Filter to increase the exposure on the left hand side of the image. Here adjusting the exposure setting to +0.81, and brightening the shadows to a setting of 62.

The next jobs had to be done using Photoshop, so this Lightroom image is exported as a high resolution, 300dpi, JPEG image and re-opened in Photoshop.

Patching Images - before image, showing unwanted reflections

2 Assess What To Do Next

The reflection was far too distracting to leave as it was. The initial thought was to simply retouch the image, but with the large areas to change this simply wouldn’t be practical. Looking through other photographs from the shoot, I found a portrait-shaped one, shot straight on. This had only a small reflection at the top which looked much more natural.

The second shot was also opened in Photoshop.

Patching Images - Print selected from second photo and copied to new image

3 Copying From The Second Shot

Using Photoshop, I drew a path around the print using the pen tool to create an area to cut out the print from this extra shot.

Patching Images -dragging print from second photo

4 Dragging Patch Into The Image

With both images open, and the path selected, I dragged the layer onto the target image. Saving now means the document needs to be a photoshop psd file.

This patch layer of the print appears on the top of the whole room image. The patch of the print wasn’t the same proportions, nor the same size as the original. I used transform to scale and twist the print to make it match the original. Once the patch is roughly the same size I usually make the opacity 50% so that I can see through to the layer below. This makes it much easier to fine-tune the positioning. Once happy with the position I made the patch back to 100% opacity to cover the print.

5 Fine Tuning

The vase to the right of the print partially covers the bottom right of the print patch, so the final job was to add an adjustment layer to the new print patch, so that it was the same exposure as the original.

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Final image. More balanced exposure and the reflection has been removed from the print

Colin Walton at WaltonCreative.com