Photos in Heavy Falling Snow

[Boatman]

Last week I won Mini-Comp # 908 with my entery, Lone Tee in Snowfall. Monochrome Mini Competition #908 The shot, which was taken in heavy falling snow has a couple of tricks in it that are worth sharing.

When I went out to take pictures that day, I used an umbrella to shield myself and the camera from the snow. This also helps to keep falling snow from being right in front of the lens, which is very noticable in the resulting photos. The umbrella is a bit awkward to handle - three hands would help - but I only have two.

Even with the umbrella, snowflakes close to the camera are going to cause blobs and smuggy spots in your images. The resolution for this is put your camera in multi-shot mode and take two to four images. You can use a tripod but this is not necessary if you can hold the camera reasonably steady. Do not braket. All the images should have the same exposure and focus.

Take the shots into Photoshop and open them all. Go to edit>automate>photomerge with the merge settings for auto, blend - off, and add open files. This will put all the images into one image with the individual images as layers. The bottom layer is the merged image. Turn that layer off. Now add a mask to each of the images excepting the merged layer and the layer above. Enlarge the image to 100% so that you can see the detail well. Using a soft, black brush of about 100 pixels at an opacity of about 80% and flow of 100%, start painting out all the visible snow blobs and fuzzy spots. If another blob shows up under the layer you are working in, just go down another layer and paint out the spot there as well. In most cases the blobs are easily painted out in one layer. This image has four layers and I did not need the forth. If you want to reverse a spot, simply type x and re-paint with a white brush, this will fill the area back in.

When you are done, merge the layers discarding the unused layers and you have a snowfall image with no blobby and fuzzy spots in the foreground.

[Manfred M]

Excellent suggestion workflow Homer. I use a similar approach when I want to eliminate people from a scene, but never thought of it as a technique to eliminate unwanted streaks of snow or rain.

I'll have to try in the next time I do some work during a snow squall.

[DanK]

I am really lousy at Photoshop, but could you accomplish this also by taking more shots and using median blend? If that works for this--I haven't tried it--it would avoid the need to paint out individual blobs.

[Boatman]

I am really lousy at Photoshop, but could you accomplish this also by taking more shots and using median blend? If that works for this--I haven't tried it--it would avoid the need to paint out individual blobs.

I've not tried it. Honestly, I'm not familiar with that tool. I suspect it might just totally blur out all the snow, which I don't think you'd want. You want to maintain the fine snow but remove the close-focus blobs.

As for Grump Driver's comment about using this technique for removing people, an article describing that is where I got the idea for trying this with snow.

[Manfred M]

That all being said, the potential downside of the technique is that it works relatively well with rigid subjects in the background, like buildings. Gusting winds and blowing snow and trees may not be quite as benign a subject to work with.

In a recent work; I only had a single objectional streak, and the content aware patch tool got rid of it in quick order...


Original image with streak:





Final image after post:

[DanK]

I've not tried it. Honestly, I'm not familiar with that tool. I suspect it might just totally blur out all the snow, which I don't think you'd want. You want to maintain the fine snow but remove the close-focus blobs.

Homer,

I see your point. I think you are right--median blending will get rid of anything that is not in the majority of shots, I think.

I'm still trying to understand your method, which I think will be very useful for me. I understand stacking the layers, not blending, and painting with black starting at the top. What I don't understand is why you need two layers at the bottom without masks, rather than just one. At some point, if you want to do further edits, you will have to do them to the whole set of layers anyway. Can you explain a little more? I am not very competent with PS, as I do the large majority of my editing in LR and Zerene, so I'd like to learn more from this.

Thanks.

Dan

[Manfred M]

Homer,

I see your point. I think you are right--median blending will get rid of anything that is not in the majority of shots, I think.

I'm still trying to understand your method, which I think will be very useful for me. I understand stacking the layers, not blending, and painting with black starting at the top. What I don't understand is why you need two layers at the bottom without masks, rather than just one. At some point, if you want to do further edits, you will have to do them to the whole set of layers anyway. Can you explain a little more? I am not very competent with PS, as I do the large majority of my editing in LR and Zerene, so I'd like to learn more from this.

Thanks.

Dan

Dan - Homer does state that he did not need the bottom image at all. He could have avoided the confusion by removing it from the image stack.

The second last layer, i.e. the bottom of the stack that he did use is the last image, so it will not be masked at all, as there is nothing below it to show through.

The technique is one that I use for removing unwanted, transient objects (mostly people) standing in front of buildings. I used it to build the following image (at least 5 hand-held shots) with 30 or 40 people in it. The problem with the technique is one doesn't exactly know how many shots one needs, so shooting and stacking more is far better than not having enough.



If you use Lightbox to view this image at full size, you can see that there are around 15 or so people still in the shot, but they are so small and far away, they are pretty well not visible unless you look right up close.

[DanK]

Manfred,

thanks

Dan

[Boatman]

Dan, Manfred's got it right. Just to make it more confusing, if you read my instructions carefully, I said to not check the "blend layers' box. But my layers show a blended layer on the bottom, that I did not use. I went back and looked at this again. When I re-did the process with no check on blend-layers I got four layers and no blend. Then I checked blend-layers and did it once more. This time it gave me the layers and the blended layers but painted in merges of the masks in the plain layers.

So how did I wind up with the screen shot that I posted? I don't know - one of the mysteries of Photoshop I suspect!

Manfred - nice shot!