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Arthur Morris
08-22-2008, 07:04 AM
Having learned pretty much everything that I know about Photoshop from friends it is rare that I discover something new on my own. (You can see my first post on Linear Burn here: http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php?t=17876 (http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php?t=17876)

To increase the density and detail in highlight areas, you can create a mask by using Select/Color Range/Highlights or Select/Color Range/Sampled Colors, or by creating a Quick Mask.

Once you have the area you want to work on on its own layer, select Linear Burn as the Blending Mode (rather than Multipy which many folks currently use for the same purpose). In most cases, you will need to reduce the opacity to taste. When using Liinear Burn, the whites looked really, really good with detail and without the dreaded muddy/grey look.

The optimized image is above.

Arthur Morris
08-22-2008, 07:11 AM
This is the image after the major clean-up work with Quick Masks, the Patch Tool, and the Clone Stamp but before the Linear Burn of the highlights.

Note that the whites in the optimized image in the pane above still look white!

You can learn the advancd Quick Masking on Robert O'Toole's APTATS CD. The complete BAA workflow is contained in the Digital Basics PDF. Details can be found on the home page.

Robert Amoruso
08-22-2008, 07:47 AM
That's cool, I just posted a landscape critique where I told someone to use linear burn. I selected highlights in that case using CTRL - ALT - ~ (tilde). Then I went back to the main forums menu and saw this.

Markus Jais
08-22-2008, 08:22 AM
Thanks a lot. This is very useful. I have many gannets shots from Helgoland which I have to process. The linear burn will be very useful here.

Markus