Getting rid of harsh shadows

[mugge]

This image is straight out of the camera and there is this harsh shadow. I have tried feathering and curves on the shadow itself but my efforts have been terrible. Is it possible?

PB100424 by Ole Hansen, on Flickr

[Manfred M]

The best way is to avoid getting them in the shot by managing the light. If you don't want harsh shadows make sure they are not there in the first place. Understanding light quality is one of the most important concepts that photographers need to master.

I assume that these shadows are caused by natural light. The easiest way would be to avoid these shadows would be to shoot on an overcast day or to use a diffuser to cut the harsh light. Once you have it in an image, you can reduce it, but not eliminate it in post. If you have the skills and several hours to spare, you could try rebuilding the areas that have the hard shadows in post.

[William W]

This image is straight out of the camera and there is this harsh shadow. I have tried feathering and curves on the shadow itself but my efforts have been terrible.

and

The best way is to avoid getting them in the shot by managing the light. If you don't want harsh shadows make sure they are not there in the first place. Understanding light quality is one of the most important concepts that photographers needs to master. I assume that these shadows are caused by natural light. The easiest way would be to avoid these shadows would be to shoot on an overcast day or to use a diffuser to cut the harsh light.

Agree with Manfred 100%. If you don’t want hard shadows in the final image, then light the scene so there are none.

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. . . Is it possible?. . . [to remove the hard shadows]

Yes it is.

If you have the skills and several hours to space, you could try rebuilding the areas that have the hard shadows in post.

As Manfred mentioned, and as the only method that I know works, is rebuilding the image in the areas where there are unwanted elements, in this case the hard shadows.

This is a time consuming and delicate process.

As an example here is your shot and I began on the shadow cast by the blade of the scissors, about half way up the blade, firstly eliminating the shadow and then a second layer rebuilding the textured pattern of the wooden desk, I was pretty rough, just to show the example, and that took about 20 minutes working in an area of about 5x5 pixels - the more intricate parts, such as the handles of the scissors would take longer:



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Another example here below, is an AB where several sections of the image have been rebuilt, some to remove unwanted elements and some to put elements in where there were none to begin with:

The final image rebuild took about 40 (screen) hours, plus or minus a bit:



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Another idea that you might consider is to make the image Monochrome – in this case you can nuance the (individual) colour conversion to the Grey Tone Scale. For my taste the worst shadow is on the typewriter, I nuanced the Yellow Blue and Cyan channels to adjust that Shadow and to give the false impression that there was a light a Camera Right. I also employed a slight Yellow Tint, which I thought gave an "old world effect":



WW

“House on the Corner” Images © AJ Group Pty Ltd Aust 1996~2019 WMW 1965~1996

[mugge]

I did not have high hopes that it could be done. I will however try all of what has been suggested - I have all the time in the world. I will succeed

[rpcrowe]

Obviously, like Manfred and others mentioned, the best way to deal with harsh shadows is to prevent (if you have control of the lighting) or avoid them (when you don't have control of the lighting). Fill flash is a great way to control harsh shadows in outdoor portraits.

There are however, times when you don't have control of the lighting and cannot avoid the shadows. The Adobe Camera Raw shadow slider can do a fair job of globally lifting shadows while the NIK Viveza II shadow slider combined with control point technology can do a pretty decent job of lifting shadows in local parts of your image...

This shot of a parade is harshly side lit. The side facing away from me is in a deep shadow. Just increasing brightness globally would blow out the background and the side of the flag bearer facing the sun. Fill flash would be of no use because the shadows are at the side opposite from me. In fact fill flash, in this case, would compound the shadow problem...



I used the NIK Viveza II shadows slider combined with control points on the shadow sides of the two leading girls' dresses...



Sometimes when lifting shadows you also need to play around with the contrast and saturation sliders also... Nice thing about the control point selection is that you can locally work with shadows, contrast, saturation, color temperature and even brightness... The girl's yellow dress was not impacted because the control point did not chose it...

[William W]

Thanks Richard, that's interesting and useful info and program for lifting the shadow area detail - especially the second girl's dress (the red with blue pattern) is impressive.

I am ignorant of that NIK program -

Could it be used to remove the hard shadows the girls are throwing onto the roadway - or is it limited to enhancing the shadow detail?

One thought that I have is that the NIK program could be useful to enhance the shadow detail (as a first step) and that might make it easier to rebuild that area of hard shadow to remove it completely ???

Thanks,

WW

[rpcrowe]

Bill wrote: "I am ignorant of that NIK program"

I was introduced to the NIK Software Collection many years ago when the company (at that time it was located in San Diego) invited my camera club to a tour of their software programs. At that time it was quite expensive and each of the programs within the NIK collection was sold individually. They also had two editions of their plug-ins, one for Photoshop and a less expensive and less capable edition for Lightroom. However, either edition was too expensive for me to buy.

Google then purchased the NIK Software Suite and offered it at what I thought was a reasonable price and I purchased it... Later on, Google offered the NIK Software free of charge and here is where many of today's users obtained their copy. Then Google no longer supported the NIK program and sold it to DXO who is now offering it at a reasonable price. https://nikcollection.dxo.com/
I upgraded my NIK to the DXO program because I was having problems images from my Sony A6400 and Google no longer supported the NIK...

The NIK software contains many modules from Dfine (noise reduction) through Silver Effex Pro (monochrome conversion). One of my favorite modules is Viveza-2 which I use on almost all of my images.

The NIK program allows very simple selections of local parts of your images or a general selection. The U-Point Technology is great for selections...

Here is a lot of YouTube info on NIK...

https://www.youtube.com/results?sear...y=nik+software

[Shadowman]

Thanks Richard, that's interesting and useful info and program for lifting the shadow area detail - especially the second girl's dress (the red with blue pattern) is impressive.

I am ignorant of that NIK program -

Could it be used to remove the hard shadows the girls are throwing onto the roadway - or is it limited to enhancing the shadow detail?

One thought that I have is that the NIK program could be useful to enhance the shadow detail (as a first step) and that might make it easier to rebuild that area of hard shadow to remove it completely ???

Thanks,

WW

There is a shadow adjustment slider which you can also use control points so that only that portion of the image is altered.

[johngunkler]

This image is straight out of the camera and there is this harsh shadow. I have tried feathering and curves on the shadow itself but my efforts have been terrible. Is it possible?

PB100424 by Ole Hansen, on Flickr

Try using the "context aware" tools in photos hop or the object removal tool in InPixio.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[joebranko]

Great educational thread!

[Manfred M]

If one re-reads Ole's question, he did not ask about "reducing" the harsh but rather "getting rid of harsh shadows".

Reducing them is easy, as many have pointed out. My usual approach is a combination of using the "Shadows" slider in Lightroom / ACR and dodging. The problem with that technique (as demonstrated by the postings subsequent to what Bill and I wrote) is that none of them "get rid" of them. The hard lines remain, even though the overall density of the shadows has been reduced.

The only way to eliminate them easily is to modify the lighting during the shoot, which is relatively simple in still life situations like the still life shot shown here. Waiting for good lighting conditions or modifying the light using a scrim (diffusing cloth) are both easy to do.

Once the picture has been taken, I (and Bill) see no alternative to a rebuild, especially with a complex situation like the table and typewriter. That will take many hours of painstaking work with classic tools like the clone tool, with a bit of burning and dodging to help things along. For simple shapes and surfaces more modern tools; the "Content Aware" functions and the "Patch Tool" can work to speed up work flow tremendously. The biggest issue with this image is that all but one of the typewriter keys are in shadow, so we have issues with hue, saturation and luminosity that need to be fixed. The work table surface will be a lot of work, as well as the hard shadows of the items lying there.

In this case, a retake will be the solution that will work best. Retakes have always been something we have done in photography, starting in the film days when we did not have sophisticated retouching tools. Sometimes those forgotten "ancient techniques" need to be remembered and used. Doing it in post when the workload is measured in hours and days is not going to be a practical solution.

[mugge]

This has been very informative. I have tried the lot before asking if it was possible to eliminate shadows not just reducing it. I find it remarkable that it is so difficult to solve given the technology available today. Why is it so difficult to solve given that there would be instances where it would be beneficial, say in science?
Cheers Ole

[rpcrowe]

Here is another thought...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5U1ENuZIg8

[Manfred M]

This has been very informative. I have tried the lot before asking if it was possible to eliminate shadows not just reducing it. I find it remarkable that it is so difficult to solve given the technology available today. Why is it so difficult to solve given that there would be instances where it would be beneficial, say in science?
Cheers Ole

Ole - One needs to manipulate the hue, saturation and lightness, effectively on a pixel by pixel basis. That is the easy part, the tricky part is knowing the values to assign. That is effectively what one is doing when rebuilding an image the way that Bill and I suggested, although we are looking at doing so for small number of pixels. Automating that would be a real challenge.

Cameras record what is there. That is generally what we expect them to do.

[William W]

If one re-reads Ole's question, he did not ask about "reducing" the harsh but rather "getting rid of harsh shadows" [etc] . . . Once the picture has been taken, I (and Bill) see no alternative to a rebuild, especially with a complex situation like the table and typewriter. [etc].

Yes, for the record: Manfred, in his entire comment of Post #11, has concisely represented my point of view, also.

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This has been very informative. I have tried the lot before asking if it was possible to eliminate shadows not just reducing it. I find it remarkable that it is so difficult to solve given the technology available today. Why is it so difficult to solve given that there would be instances where it would be beneficial, say in science? . . .

As part of my day to day work, I am called upon to forensically interrogate images and report on same.

My scope of image types is quite narrow and the objectives of my reports are specific, yet I have gained a broad insight into what could be generally termed “Image Enhancement Technology”. From my broad understanding and experience, I think I am equipped to address this question at the least by providing an all encompassing general answer.

The problem that you describe is the “removal” of the hard shadows.

In a nutshell the “removal” of hard shadows is not necessary for scientific, medical or law enforcement imaging; image interrogation; or image enhancement.

Apropos ‘shadows in an image’ and ‘shadow areas of an image’ what is important is the ‘enhancement of the details contained within those areas’, and you don't need to "remove" the shadow to get those details.

WW