In this video I have a look at how you can deal with the problem of Moiré in
your photography. Adorama TV presents Take and Make Great Photography with Gavin Hoey
I'm Gavin Hoey and you are watching AdoramaTV brought to you by Adorama, the camera
store that has everything for us photographers and today I'm in the studio and I being joined by Sam.
Do you want to come in? So Sam's going to be modeling for me today, and I'm just gonna
take a picture and show you a potential problem that you may come across.Ok lets take a
shot. At first glance it looks absolutely fine but closer inspection
and you'll see it as a problem.
The problem is known as a Moiré pattern, now in this video I'm gonna talk about what
causes it, how to check for it whilst your shooting and also how to remove it.
Moiré patterns appear whenever you combine two fine patterns, and in this case, it's the
man-made pattern on Sam's shirt combined with a very fine pattern of pixels on
the sensor of my camera. Now when you combine them together in just the
way, you will see a rainbowing or circular patent appear, and that's Moiré.
Now we never used to have this problem we had something in the cameras called
an anti-aliasing filter or low pass filter and it's one job was to remove
this problem and it did it by every so slightly blurring the picture and of
course we don't really want slightly blurry pictures so those sorts of
filters are slowly disappearing from modern digital cameras. Now it's not just
a portrait problem, it can happen with architectural photography and anything
with a fine pattern, nature and landscape where it's less common. With mother nature
it's generally man-made objects that have this effect. Now look over to the side for me,
and then back at the camera.
So, how do you know you're going to have a problem with Moiré patterns? Well
sometimes it's obvious just the clothes that someone's wearing is a giveaway.
Other times you not going to expect it and it's not easy to see it on the back
of the camera. To be sure it's there, it's always a good idea to take a test shot and then use the
zoom facility to review your images at 100% or more. That should really be a
good idea as to whether there's a problem or not. Of course if you access to a
computer actually putting your images on the computer,
well that will show you straight away. And if you can get to the problem first.
You can deal with it in camera to a certain degree, so once you know that
you're going to have a problem with Moiré, there's a few things you can do to
alleviate it, and I'm gonna look at three different solutions, the first solution
is pretty obvious, I could get Sam to wear a different shirt, that would solve the
problem.
Anything with a bigger pattern, or even no pattern whatsoever, and I wouldn't
have a problem anymore.
Downside is, that's not necessarily a solution, it could be a photo shoot where
this shirt is vital for the entire shoot. It could be an architectural shoot and
the Moiré is coming off of roof tiles from a house for example. That you couldn't
really change. So while
that's a solution, it's not always practical. The second solution is to
change the camera's settings, so I can do a couple of different things and I'm
going to start with the aperture. So I'm currently shooting at f5.6 lets
take a shot like that. Here we go Sam, great, one more, put your thumbs in your pocket for me.
So with f 5.6, there is plenty of problems with that shot, the Moiré pattern is there,
and very clear, what would happen if I choose f8? A stop difference.
Well, I can dial f8 into to my camera, just need to adjust the flash, that means it
needs to produce one more stop of light. I can do that on the remote, three clicks.
That's one stop extra light from the flash, that should balance up the exposure,
let's take the same shot, and f8, there's still a problem. I can still
clearly see the patern on the shirt that didn't work.
Ok let's try one more, let's try f11, so again I can dial in f11 on my
camera, increase the flash power to compensate by one more stop, and take the
same shot again.
So at f11, the problem looks like it's almost gone there's still a hint of it here and
there, but surprisingly, by changing the aperture I've managed to reduce if not
quite eliminate the Moiré effect, so what else can I do? Well I can also zoom
in, so I've gone for quite a wide shot at the moment but if I take a much closer,
more tight shot, the problem should just go completely, just look down over there
for me, bring your eyes back to me, and as you can see, on that shot there is no
problem whatsoever, by zooming in closer, I made the pattern on the shirt just a
little bit bigger, so it doesn't interfere with the pattern of pixels on
the sensor and solved the problem
instantly, but once again of course it may not be a solution, because maybe you
need a certain angle of view. of course is always a third option and that's to fix
it in post production both Photoshop and Lightroom have some tools to help you
reduce Moiré, and we are
going to have a look at those right now. There are of course plenty of different
ways of achieving the same result
inside of post-processing software. But the way I'm going to do, works with both
Lightroom and Photoshop Adobe Camera Raw which is what I will be using and it's
pretty effective too, lets have a look. So here we got Sam, and at first glance there
doesn't seem to be a problem here and that's because we're looking at a
high-resolution image on a low resolution screen. To really see the
problem you always have to double click on the Zoom tool or have a look at the
one-to-one view, and that's when you'll see for real,
the damage that the Moiré effect is having, and there's two problems here,
There is some weird stripes and circles that's a telltale sign, but also a
rainbow color that doesn't exist, this is a pure grey shirt, so two things I
need to deal with, the color in theory and I guess I can just take the
saturation away and that will fix the problem.
Except it doesn't, because I'm left with the stripes still and of course I might
not want a black and white image, so that's not really a solution at all. What I need is a
tool, and there is one that specifically removes Moireé, now you might think it's
going to be hidden away with the noise reduction and the sharpening, that would make
sense, but it's not, this is a local tool, so it's found underneath, either the
adjustment brush and if I come down here it is, Moiré reduction, or the graduated
filter. Moiré reduction, there it is, or the radial filter has it too, so those are the
three tools, at the time of recording that you'll find this effect on. Now I'm gonna
use the adjustment brush, it's the slowest, but more accurate way of working and
everything on the adjustment brush setting is zeroed out except Moiré
reduction that I'm going to put to around +50. Then what I'm going to do, is get a nice
big brush, and we'll just start painting over this part of the shirt. Up at the top here,
and hoping, crossing my fingers that it'll work, as nothing appears to happen
for a while, and then magic happens and it disappears more or less, There is always a
bit you missed, isn't that good. Now let me just tell you a couple of things before we get too
carried away.
First of all this is a slow process it will slow your computer down it will
take time be patient.
Secondly, it's not an out-and-out solution this is a software solution, it
has it's limitations and it can have some disastrous drawbacks. I'll look at those in
just a second so keep that in mind, but on the whole that looks pretty darn good
Ok, let's just move down to the the rest here and I'm going to paint over the rest
of his shirt and obviously the more time I spent here would give me better
results, because things like his sleeves, and everything else that needs to be
done. There are some areas where I've got that sort of patterning and it doesn't
matter how many times I go over it, it won't go, so keep that in mind not everything
is a perfect solution. Now, when I came up to the top
I can see there's a little kind of gray area on his neck here if I accidentally
painted bit harder around that area that's going to extend and become worse, the reason
I like to do this with a brush, is it gives me the control to paint the effect where
I want it to go, Now I mentioned earlier that I start with 50 as my control
here by popping out to a 100, you'd think that's going to be better but it
will have a more detrimental effect on areas where you have a crossover of
tones and patterns because it'll try and apply a Moiré reduction even where
there isn't any, and you end up with a sort of bleed effect, coming in on to
things like skin tones and hands and other things around the object of trying
to remove the problem area from. So the art with this is to take the Moiré
reduction down, and start with it fairly low, if you can get away with it, so down
here I can still see a hint of something, it may or may not come over on the video
in that area there. I probably need to go up to sort of mid thirties before
that goes, probably even sort of 40 before it is gone to a level where I'm happy. Now I'm still left
with a slight gray halo
around the neck area here so I'm going to jump from the add to the erase, I'm going
erase that back using a nice neat small brush, again I need to be patient because
this won't happen live, when I let go, I have to wait for that to render out again
faster computers may make that happen even quicker from my little computer here.
Well I just wait a few seconds, and there we are. So there we go, there is the Moiré fix.
Let's have a little look at before and after, side-by-side and I'll think you can agree that
whilst it's not absolutely perfect, that is acceptable.
Good enough and I don't think anybody would notice a problem was there at all.
Well if you enjoyed this video and you want to see more from myself and the
other amazing presented here at AdoromaTV you know what you've got to
click on the subscribe button. I'm Gavin Hoey thanks for watching.
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