The International Luxury Hotel Association (ILHA) invites the global luxury hospitality community to gather at its annual INSPIRE conferences, the leading global B2B events for luxury hospitality leaders. Now in its 16th year, INSPIRE will host two dynamic gatherings in 2024: Prague, November 12–13 at the Congress Centre of the Czech National Bank, and Las Vegas, December 10–11 at Resorts World Las Vegas.
Halos are those unsightly white (or dark) outlines around high-contrast edges that may result from heavy-handed processing or in scenes in which dark objects like trees are set against a bright sky. These image-killing artifacts can also be caused by improper HDR processing, over-sharpening, masking mistakes, or the excessive use of Photoshop’s Clarity and Texture tools.
Here’s how Australian landscape photographer Steve Arnold describes the four-minute tutorial below: “In this video I’ll show you the fastest, easiest, most-effective way to eliminate halos, and I’ll demonstrate a technique that prevents them from happening 99% of the time.”
Arnold pulls up an image with exaggerated halos that are easy to discern. He begins the rehabilitation process by adding a new layer, making sure that it’s atop other layers that were used for previous adjustments. Then he explains how to switch the Blend mode to either Darken or Lighten depending upon whether you’re dealing with a regular bright halo or what he refers to as an “anti-halo.”
Next grab the Clone Stamp tool with a Hardness value of 0 and choose a brush size that’s approximately 2-3 times the width of the halo. Be sure to select the Current and Below option in the dropdown menu.
The magic begins by sampling a spot in the sky that’s adjacent to the halo, using the keyboard shortcut that Arnold reveals. Now it’s a simple matter to run the Clone Stamp tool all the way along the halo and watch it disappear without cloning over the edges.
But what about the anti-halos mentioned above? These artifacts look like as a dark fringe along the inside of a dark object. The process here is similar to that describe above for regular bright halos, except that the Blending mode must be set to Lighten rather than Darken. And instead of sampling the sky, sample the inside of the object close to the offensive edge. Then, just like last time, clone away.
The key consideration is understanding how to prevent halos from appearing in the first place, and that’s what you’ll learn how to do in the second half of this straightforward lesson. And if you want to get the job done as fast as possible, download Arnold’s free Photoshop plugin with a link in the description beneath the video.
With a digital camera, it doesn’t cost a cent to press the shutter. And, as is often the case with a free and unlimited resource, our prehistoric hunter-gatherer genes take over and the memory card soon overflows with thousands of photos. The joy and excitement of taking pictures is then replaced by the tedious task of sorting and culling on the computer. But as I’ll show you, Nikon DSLRs and mirrorless cameras have a number of tools that make this situation a little easier.
In today’s article, I’ll be reviewing the Leofoto Ranger LS-325C Carbon Fiber Compact Tripod. I chose this tripod carefully to balance my needs, and now I’ve used it for nearly a year in various conditions. How has it held up?
