Jeff_ Posted August 17, 2019 Share Posted August 17, 2019 Hi there, I have a photo that I'm editing and have been stumped for a few days trying to figure out the best way to select and brighten a few parts. My goal is to lift the brightness of the shadowed portions of the support cables (photo below) so all cables are at a consistent level of white. When I try to use the smart brush or any other selection tools I get a very harsh/aliased line, and when I increase the exposure it doesn't look realistic. Any idea how I might be able to accomplish this selection and what type of filter or adjustment to use to brighten? Eventually I'll be converting to black and white or something similar so the shadowed areas need to be the same value as the rest of the cable or they just disappear into the black. Thanks for any guidance you can provide Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Graymare Posted August 17, 2019 Share Posted August 17, 2019 Add a layer above your picture. Set it to Screen or Overlay. Add a Mask to this layer. With an appropriately sized brush, mask just the cable sections that are too dark. You may need to blur/smudge the areas that softly gradient out. Click on one end of the cable, and shift-click on the other to draw straight lines with the Brush tool. Back on the normal layer set on Screen/Overlay, use a white brush to blend out the shadows. Go back and refine the mask as needed. Alternately you can adjust a copy of that image so the dark cables are the correct brightness and reverse-mask them onto the original, however it looks like some of the areas are quite variable in darkness so I'd feel the former method would yield a more controlled end result in less time. Jeff_ 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
firstdefence Posted August 17, 2019 Share Posted August 17, 2019 Another method would be to simply use the pen tool to draw white lines, add a small gaussian blur fx and adjust the stroke to match the cable thickness. You could also add a bit of noise to the stroke when setting the white. Ulysses and Jeff_ 1 1 Quote iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9 (Please refrain from licking the screen while using this forum) Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff_ Posted August 20, 2019 Author Share Posted August 20, 2019 Thank you both! Two great solutions, much appreciated. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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