PS one-click "remove haze" function, restore photos with 10 times the clarity in one simple move

Hello everyone, I am a senior and I would like to share some super practical PS photo editing tips.

In the last issue, we introduced the interface of Camera Raw filter (ACR for short) and its advantages. ACR is an integrated suite of tools that can solve most of the post-production color grading of photos in one stop. Next, we will use two cases to explain the idea of ​​using the ACR "Basic" panel to accurately adjust the light and dark tones of photos.

The "Basic" panel in ACR can be said to be the core adjustment interface. In this panel, you can adjust the overall tone, tone and partial definition of the photo. Most operations for photo processing are also implemented in this panel.

1. ACR Basic Panel

For the adjustment of various parameters in the "Basic" panel, you must first adjust the tone parameters such as "Exposure", "Black and White", "Highlights" and "Shadows". Then adjust the "Sharpness" parameter, and then adjust the "White Balance" and "Saturation" parameters.

In other words, the adjustment of the photo should be to adjust the tone first and then the tone, because the adjustment of the tone will have a greater impact on the tone.

Case 1

1. Refer to the histogram and adjust the exposure

Open a photo in Raw format (all case materials have been shared in the first issue ).

First of all, it can be seen from the histogram that the overall proportion of the histogram is to the left, which means that the overall photo is a little darker, so the "exposure" value needs to be slightly increased. Let the overall proportion of the histogram be in the middle of the histogram, so that the overall light and dark of the picture will be much more reasonable.

2. Adjust the light and dark tone

In the previous step, after adjusting the "Exposure" to make the overall light and dark of the photo reasonable, next use the "Black" and "White" options to darken the photo. and the brightest position are defined.

It can be seen from the histogram of the original image that the rightmost pixel does not reach the rightmost side of the histogram, which means that the brightest pixel in the photo is not bright enough. Similarly, the leftmost pixel in the histogram does not reach the leftmost side of the histogram, which means that the darkest part of the photo is not dark enough.

The ideal state is that the darkest part of the photo just reaches the far left end of the histogram, and the brightest part just reaches the far right end of the histogram.

Therefore, you can adjust the "White" slider to increase the brightness of the brightest pixels in the photo so that it just reaches the right end of the histogram, and the same is true for the dark parts.

3. Enhance the sense of layering

Observing the photo, you can see that although the overall photo and the brightest and darkest positions have been adjusted, the brighter clouds in the sky and The backlit part of the mountain still cannot distinguish the layers well.

The best way is to adjust the "Highlight" and "Shadow", reduce the "Highlight" value, and recover some of the light and dark levels in the bright parts that are invisible to the naked eye.

Also increase the "Shadow" value to brighten the levels that are invisible to the naked eye.

In all photo post-processing, the above is the standard photo editing method. As long as you understand the meaning of various parameters, you can optimize the tone of different photos very accurately.

4. Strengthen the sense of layering and improve clarity

This step is a supplement to the adjustment of tone and layering. In other words, the "white" and "black" of the photo have been adjusted. After adjusting parameters such as highlights and shadows, the photo still looks unsatisfactory and the tones are not distinct enough.

You can enhance the tones of the photo by increasing the contrast to make the photo look more beautiful.

Then increase the "Sharpness" value to strengthen the edge contours in the photo. The photo will appear clearer and the lines will be more obvious.

Adjust "Contrast" and "Sharpness". After setting the value, the outline of the scene will be strengthened, which will have a new impact on some of the original white and black colors of the photo. It is often necessary to fine-tune other parameters to make the overall photo look more ideal and coordinated.

At the bottom of the "Basic" panel, there are "Natural Saturation" and "Saturation" parameters. After the above adjustments, if you feel that the color of the photo is not beautiful enough, then You can adjust the Vibrance and Saturation parameter values ​​separately.

Among them, "Natural Saturation" is only used to adjust the colors with higher or lower saturation in the photo.

By increasing the "Natural Saturation" value, colors such as blue with low saturation in the photo will become thicker, while colors with high saturation will generally not change in saturation. .

On the contrary, by lowering the "natural saturation" value, colors such as blue that are originally highly saturated in the photo will become lower, while colors that are originally less saturated will generally not be saturated. change.

The "saturation" parameter is different. Once the parameter value is changed, the purity of all colors in the photo will change.

In most landscape-themed photos, the saturation of the entire image is usually slightly reduced to ensure that there will be no major improvement in color, and then the natural saturation is greatly increased to ensure a sense of color. Weak colors can be made brighter.

In the case of this issue, the blue saturation of the photo is too strong, so the blue saturation needs to be reduced. To avoid color distortion, first slightly increase the "saturation" value. Then drastically reduce the "Natural Saturation" value.

After the above simple adjustments, the optimization of the overall tone and tone of this photo is basically completed.

There is also a very useful function in the basic panel, which is "remove haze". Next, we will also use a photo as an example to introduce its function.

Case 2, haze removal function

Open a photo taken in hazy weather. The transparency of the picture is not enough, and the overall look is a bit dull.

You can increase the "Remove Haze" parameter value to make the photo more transparent, with more obvious contrast and stronger color sense.

After removing haze from the photo, the picture looks a little distorted. Then use other parameters of the basic panel to optimize the tone and color of the picture so that the photo no longer looks distorted.

For most photos with relatively high haze, using the "Remove Haze" function can save you a lot of complicated adjustment processes and improve the efficiency of photo retouching.