Problem with flattening/merging layers

mikearend

Hi All thanks in advance for any help you can give me!

I was experimenting with an image last night and had several layers involved including 1 curve to lighten the very center and a couple rectangular with differing levels....see the upper screen shot. When I tried to flatten the image or merger all the layers of convert to JPG I got what you see in the lower shot. I tried several approaches with no real luck to retain the look that I had in the uppper shot.
I have noticed this a few times in the past with edited portraits etc.

Using CS5/Windows

Thanks again,

Mike Confused

seaco · Posted: Fri May 18, 2012 7:16 am Post subject:

Sorry but I can't see what's wrong it appears to have merged all the layers to one background layer?

Ah! do you mean where it's lightened the whole image?

mikearend · Posted: Fri May 18, 2012 11:27 am Post subject:

Ya lightened, and desaturated and loss or color shift in the center area...in short went from snappy to crappy hahaha

thehermit · Posted: Fri May 18, 2012 3:23 pm Post subject:

When you merge are you using Ctrl+Shift+E?

The only thing I can think of is that in flattening you are letting one of your adjustment layers through somehow. Try the above, even turn the background layer off before merging, so you can compare the before and after. If all is well merge the two.

I tend to use shortcuts so this is a bit of a punt are you perhaps just merging and not merging visible, if going through a menu?

seaco · Posted: Fri May 18, 2012 4:40 pm Post subject:

I tried something similar and it didn't seem to happen so I'm not sure where your going wrong, it does seem as Hermit says one of the adjustment layers is affecting the whole image and not just the selection...

mikearend · Posted: Fri May 18, 2012 7:05 pm Post subject:

Thanks guys I'll try your suggestions

Mike

mikearend · Posted: Fri May 18, 2012 10:12 pm Post subject:

Hi guys

I tried every combination that I could think of....I seems to be some weird interaction of the levels and curve mask but mostly levels 2+3 I wish I could send this file for somebody to pick apart but it's 140M. Well if anybody wants a crack at the whole thing let me know. I may try some more stuff tomorrow....gotta get some sleep.

Thanks again!

Mike

Frank1263 · Posted: Sat May 19, 2012 4:42 am Post subject:

Try moving the levels1 adjustment layer below the levels3 adjustment layer i.e. immediately above the background copy layer. See what that does.

mikearend · Posted: Sat May 19, 2012 9:31 pm Post subject:

I reopened the original file and deleted all of the levels and curve layers....then flattened the background copy and the background. then built it back up from there...adding a layer then merging then adding another layer and merging. I was able to avoid the previous problem......I also noticed that in addition to the layers interacting the background and its duplicate layer seem to affect each other also. It was also a good image to watch the effect of converting to JPG at various sizes. the original was 65MB... JPEG max was 50MB and it looked ok down to about 27MB. After that the contrast and colors(colours for you seaco, haha) started to be degraded.
I will play around with some more images to get a better feel for the best path to take.

Thanks again,
Mike

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