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A Sunset Between Storms
25 November 2024
You take life as it comes, if you have any sense at all. But that means more than enduring some brutal day in a difficult life. It also means taking a moment to enjoy some unexpected beauty. Last night's sunset was one such moment.
Sunset Between Storms. iPhone 15 Pro Max with back triple camera 15.66mm at f2.8, 1/483 second and ISO 50. Processed in Adobe Camera Raw.
Against our better judgement, we shot it with the iPhone 15 Pro Max. And we didn't tap into its ability to record Raw data, leaving it in HEIC mode. Two strikes.
EXPOSURE
But we did have the sense to lower the exposure to protect the highlights. The shadows in this familiar shot are always silhouettes.
We had two ulterior motives for capturing this sunset between storms.
The first was to text it to Joyce in rehab at a nursing home. She is missing all the sunsets from our picture window at the moment.
The second was to try Photoshop's new and improved Remove tool.
THE REMOVE TOOL
For years now, we've relied on the Healing Brush to remove the power lines that run across the bottom of this view. It does an excellent job against a quiet sky and ocean and even into the trees. But when the sky is cloudy, it can get confused.
By the time we reduce the image to the 500-pixel thumbnails you see here, it isn't noticeable, though.
There are more laborious techniques like actually selecting the dark cables and deleting them but the trees are dark, too, so that never worked for this view.
So we've been anxious to try the new Remove tool's
Find Distractionsoption to removeWires and Cables.The only trick was learning how to do it because, you know, in this Age of No Documentation, one is reduced to watching influencers on YouTube to find out how anything works.
But it isn't hard once you realize the little rectangles are actually buttons.
You start by selecting the Remove Tool where you might have had the Healing Brush selected. The menu changes to include what you see above. There's the
Find Distractionsbutton and the Mode options. We left Mode on Auto so it could use generative AI if it needed it. But you can also force it on or off.Then we simply had to click on
Wires and cables. In a few seconds our power lines were obliterated. Here's a 100 percent crop of the original image before our Camera Raw edits showing the change:
Faster than we ever obliterated them, too.
CONCLUSION
For urban photographers, who have long fought the good fight against utility power lines, the new Remove tool is an important innovation.
It's also a nice illustration of a positive use of artificial intelligence in imaging. More of that, please.
