Removing halos

[Ken Rennie]

Much better not to create them but.................

This image has been specially produced to show halos. I have oversharpened with a wide radius and darkened the blues in HSL. This produces a somewhat odd sky colour but it is a good example for my purposes. Many people use darkened blues when they produce monochrome images. Chromatic abberation can also produce halos and they can get much more noticeable when you use HSL.

The halos can be seen at this size but to make it easier here is the right hand side

fairly easy to see now and quite complex around the electricity pole. Although theie are no pine tress here they also produce complex halos.

This is a print screen view

Here is the solution
New layer set to darken
select a soft clone stamp
Alt click on an area of sky just above the land and draw along the skyline.
With the complex area around the electricity pole use a larger clone stamp, select an area of sky to the right or left of the pole ( watch out to avoid the cables)
now draw over the pole area.

This is the rhs after

 

[BarryHamilton]

Yep! Great technique, works beautifully. Thanks!!!

 

[Jeffrey]

Good thing, Ken. I've seen this before and used it. I don't know why you ned a new layer.

 

[Ken Rennie]

Good thing, Ken. I've seen this before and used it. I don't know why you ned a new layer.

Jeffrey if you don't make mistakes you don't need a new layer or if you spot your mistake you can use history to undo BUT if you don't notice your mistake for a while you need to undo right to the start. Using a blank layer you can just erase the mistake nd redo it. If you save the image with layers you can even undo the mistake after closing the image. New blank layers do not really increase image size and lastly by using a new layer you can decrease the opacity a little if needed or by using masks decrease the effect in parts you can even increase the effect by duplicating the layer although I have never had to do this. Using a new layer where it is easy to remove mistakes means that you can go very fast with large radius clone stamps. My way of doing this is similar to Jim Fox's although he duplicates his layer doubling the file size. I use this blank layer when cloning parts out or in as well. I hope this helps Ken

 

[JimFox]

Hey Ken, the reason I duplicate my layer is for safety in case I make a mistake. I actually do that For all of my editing, I always have an untouched base layer. Memory is cheap, so I don’t worry about file sizes.

And it’s just me, I typically have a backup for everything... backup cameras, headlamps, batteries, you name it, and I have a back up...

 

[Ken Rennie]

Yes Jim anything that stops you from changing the background "master" layer is a good idea.
I use Smart objects and you can't edit them without a warning coming up that you need to rasterize the layer.

To stop you altering the background layer and remove the need for a duplicate layer try this. The background layer on opening has a padlock but it is "by default" only partially locked but it is easy to fully lock it. On the background layer, click on the padlock- this removes it. Now go to layers and down to Layer tselect Lock Layers the select All. This then stops you from altering the background layer in any way or at least in any way that I have found (so far). Stop News you can resize it.

Like everything else we have found ways of working that are second nature and if it works, it is correct. Ken