IntroductionWelcome| 00:05 | Hi, I'm Deke McClelland.
| | 00:05 | Hello and welcome to Photoshop CS5 One-on-One:
| | 00:09 | Advanced, the second installment in my
cradle-to-grave everything you need to
| | 00:14 | know series on Adobe Photoshop.
| | 00:16 | Now that you have the fundamentals
under your belt, it's time for Photoshop to
| | 00:21 | shine and your skills to blossom along with it.
| | 00:24 | We start with the Levels and Curves
commands which allow you to bring out every
| | 00:28 | last drop of luminance in your image.
| | 00:31 | Then it's onto the Sharpen filters
which discover and emphasize edges to make
| | 00:35 | your details come alive.
| | 00:37 | Later I'll show you how to mix the
perfect black-and-white photograph, so that
| | 00:42 | even lackluster shots resonate
with previously undiscovered beauty.
| | 00:46 | I'll show you how to mix images with
text and vector shapes in ways no other
| | 00:51 | program can match and we'll explore the
vast hallways of Camera RAW to develop
| | 00:56 | your high bit depth digital
photographs into lustrous masterworks.
| | 01:01 | If those sound like awfully big promises,
they are which is why it takes me more
| | 01:06 | than 200 movies and 40 brand-new
projects to get through at all.
| | 01:11 | This is no tips and tricks course.
| | 01:13 | This is Photoshop's enormous power
beckoning to you with you knowing what it all
| | 01:18 | means at every turn.
| | 01:20 | It's all right there, waiting for you
to use it like you invented it yourself.
| | 01:25 | These first few movies are set up, so
that you and I are on the same page namely
| | 01:30 | custom keyboard shortcuts
and recommended color settings.
| | 01:34 | If you already performed these steps
back in the Fundamentals course, you can
| | 01:38 | skip to Chapter 13 and enjoy
part two of the avatar project.
| | 01:42 | Otherwise, follow my short
instructions here and fine-tune Photoshop's engine
| | 01:47 | for optimal performance.
| | 01:49 | In any case, consider me your humble
servant as I take the task of teaching you
| | 01:54 | extremely seriously.
| | 01:56 | Thank you for being here.
| | 01:58 | Brace yourself to learn.
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| Making Photoshop your default image editor| 00:00 | Okay gang, the first thing that we
have to do is establish Photoshop as the
| | 00:04 | default application for opening JPEG
files, TIF files and PSD files because
| | 00:09 | those are the kinds of files that I'll
be providing to you over the course of
| | 00:12 | this series and these are the kinds of
files you'll run into on a regular basis.
| | 00:17 | Now this turns out to be our biggest
tech-support question where Photoshop is
| | 00:21 | concerned at lynda.com is how do I open
my files in the first place because what
| | 00:27 | people want to do is they want to find
the files that I'm giving you and just
| | 00:31 | double-click on a file at the desktop
level and that means it could open with
| | 00:35 | whatever is the default
application for that file type.
| | 00:38 | Not something I can control on my side.
| | 00:41 | It's something you have to change on your side.
| | 00:43 | You can see, here I've
just opened the JPEG file.
| | 00:45 | It opens up inside Windows Photo Viewer.
| | 00:48 | That's not going to do me any good
where learning Photoshop is concerned.
| | 00:52 | So I need to close out of that.
| | 00:53 | This tends to be a bigger issue on the
PC than it is on the Mac, but I'll tell
| | 00:57 | you how to change it on both platforms,
so that you and I are on the same page.
| | 01:02 | Now if you're a premium member or
you have access to the DVD then you've
| | 01:06 | presumably copied over my Exercise Files
folder to your Desktop or some other location.
| | 01:12 | I want you to go into another
folder that's inside that folder.
| | 01:15 | It's called 00_setup and you
will see three files called Welcome.
| | 01:19 | Now they happen to be Welcome.
jpg, Welcome.psd and Welcome.tif.
| | 01:24 | Problem is I have my extensions
turned Off as by default on both platforms.
| | 01:30 | So here's how you turn it On on the PC,
at least under Windows 7, you go up
| | 01:33 | to the Organize menu and you choose this
command right there Folder and search options.
| | 01:38 | However, if you're working on an older
version of Windows and you can't find
| | 01:41 | that command then just press the Alt key.
| | 01:44 | It's going to force the
display of the menu right there.
| | 01:48 | So press Alt, go to the tools
menu and choose Folder Options.
| | 01:53 | Then you'll switch over to the View tab.
| | 01:56 | You'll dropdown to this check box
right there, Hide extensions for known file
| | 02:00 | types, turn it Off and click OK.
| | 02:03 | Now you can see we've got Welcome.jpg,
Welcome.psd and Welcome.tif.
| | 02:07 | All right, on the Mac, it's a little different.
| | 02:10 | Let me show you how it works.
| | 02:11 | I'll go ahead and switch over to Photoshop.
| | 02:14 | You go to your Finder level which is
the Desktop level of your Mac, at the top
| | 02:18 | of the screen, the second menu always
from the left, right next to the Apple,
| | 02:21 | is the Finder menu.
| | 02:22 | You go to the Finder menu and
you choose the Preferences command.
| | 02:25 | You can also press Command+, if
you like, and then I want you to click
| | 02:30 | on this gear right here.
| | 02:32 | It takes you to the Advanced tab, so
that's the fourth tab inside of this
| | 02:35 | dialog-box, and then turn On this check
box, Show all file name extensions, and
| | 02:40 | then you'll be good to go.
| | 02:41 | All right, now let's go ahead and
minimize Photoshop, so that we can see the
| | 02:46 | contents of the folder once again.
| | 02:48 | Now for each one of these files, the
JPEG file, the PSD file and the TIF file,
| | 02:52 | you're going to need to
perform the following operations.
| | 02:55 | So three times in a row, I'll explain it
on the PC and I'll explain it on the Mac.
| | 03:00 | On the PC, right-click on the file,
so I right-clicked on the JPEG file,
| | 03:04 | that's what you do on a Mac as well, you right-
click on that file in order to bring up a menu.
| | 03:09 | On a PC, you're going to
choose the Open with command.
| | 03:12 | On the Mac, you're going to choose the Get
Info command, and I'll explain that in a moment.
| | 03:16 | So you choose the Open with command, then
you come down here and Choose default program.
| | 03:21 | So go ahead and click on that command.
| | 03:23 | And then you should see Photoshop
in a list of Recommended Programs.
| | 03:27 | That's ideal, then you click on it,
then you make sure that Always use selected
| | 03:31 | program to open this kind of file
is turned On and then you click OK.
| | 03:36 | If you can't find Photoshop in the list
of Recommended Programs, see this little
| | 03:40 | down pointing arrowhead to the
right of the word Other Programs.
| | 03:43 | Go ahead and click on it in
order to see those other programs.
| | 03:46 | By default, they are hidden which is
insanity in my opinion, but there it is.
| | 03:51 | You have to click that little guy to see him.
| | 03:53 | And then you should see Photoshop here.
| | 03:55 | If you still don't see Photoshop,
you're going to have to click on the Browse
| | 03:58 | button and actually find it
manually on your hard drive.
| | 04:01 | Hopefully, you don't have the resort to
that because that's just a pain in the neck.
| | 04:05 | But anyway, there is Adobe
Photoshop CS5, excellent, click OK.
| | 04:10 | Now it'll go ahead and open up in Photoshop.
| | 04:13 | I'll go ahead and press Ctrl++
or Command++ to zoom-in on it.
| | 04:16 | This is the welcome screen for this series.
| | 04:18 | I want you to see here that the
series is divided into three parts.
| | 04:22 | Part 1, Fundamentals, Part 2 is
Advanced and Part 3 is Mastery.
| | 04:27 | So there are three levels
of courses in the series.
| | 04:30 | I use these little ski icons, you know
the green slope and the blue slope and
| | 04:34 | black diamond slope that
may or may not help you.
| | 04:36 | I'm told by non-skiers, it
doesn't help at all, but I like to ski.
| | 04:40 | Anyway, whether you ski or not, if you're
working on a Mac, you right-click on that JPEG file.
| | 04:45 | You choose the Get Info command.
| | 04:47 | You can also click on a file
and press Command+I if you want.
| | 04:51 | That's going to take you to the Get
Info dialog-box right there, this narrow
| | 04:56 | strip that's going to come up.
| | 04:58 | You want to dropdown to this area Open with.
| | 05:00 | You want to go ahead and
set it to Adobe Photoshop CS5.
| | 05:04 | You should see that in your menu list.
| | 05:06 | Otherwise, you might have to go hunting
around in your applications folder for it.
| | 05:10 | Once you select it then you click on
the Change All button and that will change
| | 05:14 | all of that specific variety of file types.
| | 05:17 | In the case, I'm looking at the Welcome.tif
file, but you'd want to do it to
| | 05:21 | Welcome.jpg and Welcome.psd as well.
| | 05:24 | If you don't have my files
incidentally, you can do it to your own files.
| | 05:27 | You can find any old JPEG file, any
old TIF file and any old PSD file and go
| | 05:32 | through these same steps.
| | 05:33 | All right, I'm going to go ahead
and minimize Photoshop once again.
| | 05:37 | Let's go ahead and perform those same
steps on the Welcome.tif file, so I'll
| | 05:41 | go ahead and right-click on it, choose
Open with, Choose default program right there.
| | 05:46 | That's going to bring up my Recommended
Programs which include Photoshop CS5. Excellent!
| | 05:51 | If I can't find it, I click on this down-
pointing arrowhead to the right of Other Programs.
| | 05:54 | Once I'm done, I make sure the check
box is On and I click OK and it's going to
| | 05:59 | once again open up inside of Photoshop.
| | 06:02 | Now here's the one that's a little confusing.
| | 06:04 | I'll go ahead and minimize the application.
| | 06:07 | Go to the PSD file, right-click on it.
| | 06:09 | Choose Open with right there and Choose
default program in order to open up this dialog-box.
| | 06:15 | Once again, you Macintosh people
would right-click in the file, choose Get
| | 06:18 | Info, go that route.
| | 06:21 | I'd find Photoshop CS5.
| | 06:23 | I seem to have a couple of versions
to choose from here, either will do me
| | 06:26 | just fine or I'd have to click on this little
down-pointing arrowhead to find the application.
| | 06:30 | Make sure the check box is turned On. Click OK.
| | 06:33 | Here's the confusing part, as you're
going to get an error message, you are
| | 06:36 | definitely going to get this error
message unless you just happen to have the
| | 06:39 | same fonts I do and what it's telling
you is that some text layers contain
| | 06:44 | fonts that are missing.
| | 06:45 | The great thing about
Photoshop is it doesn't matter.
| | 06:48 | Unless you're going to edit
that text, you don't care.
| | 06:51 | For purposes of viewing it, Photoshop can
view fonts you don't even have. It's amazing.
| | 06:56 | So you click OK, you go ahead and zoom in,
and notice here in the layers menu, I
| | 07:01 | see all these little Ts.
| | 07:02 | Those are the live text layers that
have these little cautionary icons next to
| | 07:06 | them, little yield signs.
| | 07:07 | That's telling me that Photoshop can't
find the font for that layer and yet look
| | 07:12 | at the text inside the image, it looks perfect.
| | 07:14 | And that's because Photoshop doesn't
need the font in order to preview the
| | 07:19 | text on-screen unless you go in there
and edit the number of pixels in the
| | 07:22 | image or edit the type.
| | 07:24 | It's like the only program
that's capable of doing that.
| | 07:27 | It's just remarkable.
| | 07:28 | Anyway, now you have Photoshop set up
as your default image editing application
| | 07:33 | for JPEGs, TIFs, and PSDs, and we
should be able to run through the process of
| | 07:39 | at least opening files without any problems.
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| Installing the dekeKeys keyboard shortcuts| 00:00 | In this exercise, I'm going to have you
load up some custom keyboard shortcuts
| | 00:04 | that I've created for you.
| | 00:06 | These shortcuts are known as dekeKeys.
| | 00:08 | I've been providing them for years
and years, now only I changed them, I
| | 00:12 | modified them quite a bit for
CS5 and my rationale is this.
| | 00:16 | First of all, I want you and I to be
on the same page, so we should have the
| | 00:20 | same keyboard shortcuts as we work
through this series, but also if you become
| | 00:24 | more experienced inside of Photoshop, I
want you to be able to move through the
| | 00:28 | program very fluidly without having to
hunt for a lot of different commands.
| | 00:32 | In that way, you can expand your
creative energies on the task at hand.
| | 00:37 | Now the reason I modified the keyboard
shortcuts this time around, I used to be
| | 00:42 | pretty careful about not stepping on
any keyboard shortcuts that Adobe had
| | 00:46 | already assigned inside of Photoshop.
| | 00:48 | This time I decided to pick a few
keyboard shortcuts that I don't think are very
| | 00:53 | useful that Adobe has
preassigned and assigned them elsewhere.
| | 00:56 | So I've actually done some juggling of
the keyboard shortcuts into great effect
| | 01:01 | I think, as I'll explain to you.
| | 01:03 | You can always send them back though if you
disagree with me later, so it's very easy to do.
| | 01:08 | So here's what I want you to do.
| | 01:09 | If you're looking at your Exercise
Files folder, go into the 00_setup folder,
| | 01:14 | there in, you will find a
subfolder called dekeKeys PsCS5 1on1.
| | 01:18 | Go ahead and double-click on
it and you'll see three files;
| | 01:21 | two HTML files, we'll come
back to those and this .kys file.
| | 01:25 | This is the one that we're going
to open up inside of Photoshop.
| | 01:27 | It's called dekeKeys PsCS5 1on1.kys.
| | 01:31 | It is the keyboard shortcuts file.
| | 01:33 | Now if you can see Photoshop in the
background with a gray application frame
| | 01:37 | covering up everything, then
you can just do a drag and drop.
| | 01:41 | But it only works this way on the Mac
if you have the application frame turned
| | 01:44 | On under the Window menu.
| | 01:46 | But anyway, here's what you do.
| | 01:47 | You grab the keyboard shortcuts
and you just drop them in there.
| | 01:50 | So just do a drag and drop and
that'll keep the keyboard shortcuts over.
| | 01:54 | Another way to work is to just double-
click on the file, but if you double-click
| | 01:58 | on the file, it could open in Premiere,
if you have that application installed.
| | 02:03 | So it's probably not a good
idea to just double-click.
| | 02:05 | Better, just to make sure it opens up
inside of Photoshop is to right-click on
| | 02:10 | the file, and then choose the Open with command.
| | 02:13 | You may see a list of applications and
you could just choose Photoshop or if
| | 02:17 | it brings up a dialog-box try to find
Photoshop in here, it's very easy for me to find.
| | 02:21 | It's my one and only recommended program.
| | 02:24 | You might have to click this down pointing
arrowhead to see other programs whatever.
| | 02:27 | Then you will just go ahead and click
OK after you specified that Photoshop
| | 02:32 | gets to open the file.
| | 02:33 | Now you might get a warning
at this point that says, hey!
| | 02:36 | Do you want to save the changes to
your previous keyboard shortcuts?
| | 02:39 | And then you would say, yes, and
update your changes, so that you don't lose
| | 02:43 | anything while you open up mine.
| | 02:45 | However, if you've never changed a
keyboard shortcut before you won't see
| | 02:48 | anything, it's as if Photoshop just
totally ignored you, but you can confirm
| | 02:52 | that something happened by going over to the
File menu and check out this Place command.
| | 02:56 | It's dimmed, but you should see a
keyboard shortcut of Ctrl+Shift+Alt+D. I read
| | 03:02 | the shortcuts in the opposite order
that they appear in your menus, forgive me
| | 03:05 | for that, but Adobe is wrong.
| | 03:07 | It's basically what it comes down
to everybody out there, says Ctrl or
| | 03:11 | Command first, Shift second, Alt or
Option third, but anyway, that's the
| | 03:15 | standard convention.
| | 03:16 | But they appear backwards here, that's okay.
| | 03:18 | So it's Ctrl+Shift+Alt+D or
Command+Shift+Option+D on the Mac.
| | 03:21 | As long as you see that keyboard
shortcut, you've loaded dekeKeys.
| | 03:25 | Now we need to go ahead and
name the keyboard shortcuts.
| | 03:28 | So go up to the Edit menu and choose
the Keyboard Shortcuts command which
| | 03:32 | has its own shortcuts.
| | 03:33 | This is assigned by Adobe, Ctrl+Shift+Alt+K
or Command+Shift+Option+K on the Mac.
| | 03:39 | By the way, when you're pressing
keyboard shortcuts, you press all those keys at
| | 03:42 | the same time, but you go ahead and
press the Modifier keys typically first, so
| | 03:46 | you'd mash your fist down there on Ctrl
+Shift+Alt and then hit K to bring up
| | 03:51 | keyboard shortcuts or Command+Shift+
Option then K on the Mac, but you basically
| | 03:55 | want to have all keys down simultaneously.
| | 03:57 | Then notice up here inside the
Keyboard Shortcuts dialog-box that we have
| | 04:00 | set, set to Photoshop Defaults,
or it may say, your keyboard
| | 04:06 | shortcuts modified.
| | 04:07 | Whatever it says, you want to click
on this little floppy disk icon, the
| | 04:11 | small one which does the Save As,
and that's going to bring up this
| | 04:16 | dialog-box right here.
| | 04:17 | By default, Photoshop is going to put
you inside of a Keyboard Shortcuts folder
| | 04:21 | that's nested several folders deep
inside of your system. That's great.
| | 04:26 | That's where you want it.
| | 04:27 | Now, let's go ahead and name this guy.
| | 04:30 | I'm going to rename this file
dekeKeys, but you can do as you want.
| | 04:33 | You can call it anything you want, PsCS5
1on1, and there it is, and we're good to go.
| | 04:40 | Click Save and now you can see that
that's the name of your set, and you can
| | 04:44 | take a look at your keyboard shortcuts,
you can riff on them, you can change
| | 04:47 | them, you can do whatever you like.
| | 04:49 | You can even come over here and click
on the Summarize button which will go
| | 04:53 | ahead and save out an HTML file that
lists all your keyboard shortcuts if you
| | 04:58 | like, but you don't have to, because
I've already gone and done it for you and
| | 05:01 | I've done something a
little better incidentally.
| | 05:03 | So click OK in order to accept those changes.
| | 05:06 | Now if we switch back to that folder,
you'll see those two HTML documents, one
| | 05:11 | ends in Mac and the other ends in Windows.
| | 05:13 | So we've got the Macintosh keyboard
shortcuts in one file and the Windows
| | 05:17 | shortcuts in another file.
| | 05:19 | I've already opened those up
inside of my web Browser right here.
| | 05:23 | That brings up in my case Firefox and
I'm looking at the contents of both of
| | 05:27 | these HTML documents.
| | 05:28 | So right now, what I have opened in
front of me is the Macintosh keystrokes and
| | 05:33 | the other file right there
is the Windows keystroke.
| | 05:35 | So when you first open the file, you'll
see that it says dekeKeys for Photoshop CS5.
| | 05:39 | All keyboard shortcuts
are listed in the document.
| | 05:42 | My revised keyboard shortcuts are in red.
| | 05:45 | If you scroll-down, you'll see that
the first revised keyboard shortcut is
| | 05:48 | indeed Ctrl+Shift+Alt+D or
Command+Shift+Option+D for the Place command.
| | 05:53 | Now, something I want you to see,
those of you who are a little bit familiar
| | 05:56 | with Photoshop know a thing or two
about the program that one of the things
| | 06:00 | I'm really proud of here is that I
have given the main adjustment layers
| | 06:04 | keyboard shortcuts.
| | 06:05 | So not only can you press Ctrl+L or
Command+L on the Mac to bring up the Static
| | 06:10 | Levels command or Ctrl or Command+M
for Curves or Ctrl or Command+U for
| | 06:14 | Hue/Saturation, longtime old-school
keyboard shortcuts, but if you just throw
| | 06:19 | Shift into the mix now, you'll
create an adjustment layer as well.
| | 06:24 | Now that does mean I stole the
keyboard shortcut from another command.
| | 06:28 | So if we were to go back to Photoshop
and I went to the Image menu, you'd see
| | 06:32 | that Auto Tone no longer has a
keyboard shortcut of Ctrl+Shift+L or
| | 06:37 | Command+Shift+L on the Mac.
| | 06:39 | Now I don't think it
deserves a keyboard shortcut.
| | 06:41 | I don't know when the last time
I actually use that command once.
| | 06:44 | I teach it a lot, but I don't use it on a
regular basis and I doubt you will either.
| | 06:50 | It's an interesting
learning tool, that's about it.
| | 06:52 | Now if you disagree, if you use that
command all the time and you miss that
| | 06:56 | keyboard shortcut, you can always
reassign it by going to the Edit menu,
| | 07:00 | choosing the Keyboard Shortcuts command,
then you will just have to twirl-open
| | 07:04 | the Image menu by clicking on the
triangle just to the left of the word Image.
| | 07:08 | You're going to have to go
down the list quite a bit.
| | 07:10 | You have to get beyond the color adjustments.
| | 07:12 | You'll see Auto Tone right there.
| | 07:14 | Click in its shortcut and you
could reestablish Ctrl+Shift+L or
| | 07:18 | Command+Shift+L on the Mac.
| | 07:19 | Now it's going to tell you that that's
already in use for New Adjustment layer > Levels.
| | 07:24 | However, if you just go ahead and
accept this modification by clicking on the
| | 07:28 | Accept button then you'll override my
keyboard shortcut, totally up to you.
| | 07:32 | The other thing you can do is, you can
go back to Photoshop Defaults if you like.
| | 07:37 | You can just switch back to the way
Photoshop was when it was first installed.
| | 07:40 | This is telling me, hey!
| | 07:42 | Do you want to save your changes
because I've just made a change there to
| | 07:45 | the Auto Tone command?
| | 07:46 | And I'm going to say no, but you could
say yes or anything you want to at that
| | 07:50 | point and that's going to reestablish
all of your keyboard shortcuts once again.
| | 07:54 | I'm going to cancel out because I'm happy with
the dekeKeys, I find them to be very helpful.
| | 08:00 | In the next exercise, just for
Macintosh people, I'm going to show you Mac
| | 08:04 | folks how to change some system-level
keyboard shortcuts so that they don't
| | 08:08 | conflict with Photoshop.
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| Remapping OS shortcuts| 00:00 | This exercise is exclusively for
Macintosh people, so if you are a Windows user
| | 00:04 | you can just go ahead and skip to the
next exercise, and we will begin work on
| | 00:08 | the color settings inside of Photoshop.
| | 00:10 | Here is the deal though for you
Macintosh people, over time Apple has sort of
| | 00:15 | usurped some keyboard shortcuts that
have long belonged to the Adobe family, and
| | 00:21 | you really can work inside the creative
suite without these conflicting keyboard
| | 00:25 | shortcuts getting in your way.
| | 00:26 | So I am going to tell you how to change
those keyboard shortcuts, so you don't
| | 00:29 | lose anything, you will still have
keyboard shortcuts if you need them, they
| | 00:32 | will just be different.
| | 00:33 | We are going to just be looking at some
screenshots here inside of Photoshop as
| | 00:36 | we walk our way through these options.
| | 00:38 | What you are going to do, is you are
going to go your Apple menu, doesn't matter
| | 00:42 | which application is in front.
| | 00:43 | Go to the Apple menu and choose
the System Preferences command.
| | 00:47 | That will bring up a dialog box with a
bunch of different icons in it, you want
| | 00:50 | to click on the one that says
Keyboard or it might say Keyboard and Mouse.
| | 00:54 | So it depends on which version of
OS X you have, but either Keyboard or
| | 00:58 | Keyboard and Mouse.
| | 01:00 | Then you should see this Keyboard tab
come up first, and if you dropdown you
| | 01:05 | will see this first check box, it's
named the strangest thing on earth, but it
| | 01:10 | says Use all F1, F2, etc.
| | 01:12 | keys, it means the function keys as
standard function keys, as opposed to having
| | 01:17 | them change the volume and the
brightness and that kind of stuff.
| | 01:21 | When this option is selected you press
the Function key now to use the special
| | 01:25 | features printed on each key.
| | 01:26 | I recommend you turn this check box on,
it is off by default, turn it on but
| | 01:31 | that does mean, if you want to
change the volume on your machine or the
| | 01:34 | brightness on your screen or any of
that stuff, you will have to press the
| | 01:37 | Function key along with the F
key that is F1, F2, F3, etcetera.
| | 01:43 | in order to make the function work, all right.
| | 01:46 | But you will be able to display
palettes inside of Photoshop just by pressing F
| | 01:50 | key, which is actually really great
thing, and which I am assuming as we work
| | 01:54 | away through the course.
| | 01:55 | The next thing you want to do, is you
want to remap a few keyboard shortcuts,
| | 02:00 | and to do that you are going to have to
click on the Keyboard shortcuts tab here
| | 02:04 | near the top of the dialog box.
| | 02:06 | It looks different in Leopard and earlier,
than it does in Snow Leopard and later.
| | 02:12 | So basically Leopard was OS 10.5
and then Snow Leopard is OS 10.6.
| | 02:18 | So if you have the most recent operating
system, then things are going to look a
| | 02:22 | little different than this.
| | 02:23 | But let's assume just for a
moment that you have an older operating
| | 02:26 | system, Leopard or earlier.
| | 02:28 | Then you will have to scroll down your list
until you get to this item right there, Dock.
| | 02:33 | Expose, and Dashboard.
| | 02:35 | And you will go ahead and twirl it open
by clicking on its triangle to twirl it
| | 02:38 | down so that you can expose this list of
items that have to do with the Dock. Expose.
| | 02:43 | and the Dashboard.
| | 02:44 | Then you would go to the keyboard
shortcut, which is this guy right there and
| | 02:48 | you double-click on it.
| | 02:49 | So by default, I believe it's
something like Command+Option+D and everything
| | 02:54 | shows up as little symbols.
| | 02:55 | There is the Command key symbol, there
is the Option key symbol incidentally,
| | 02:58 | this carrot means Control.
| | 03:00 | You don't have to type in the symbols
in order to change a keyboard shortcut,
| | 03:03 | you just press the keyboard combo on
your keyboard, so you should be able to now
| | 03:08 | press after double-clicking on whatever
this was before, Ctrl+D at the same time
| | 03:13 | and then you will get this keyboard shortcut.
| | 03:15 | If that doesn't work sometimes things
are conflicting and things get in the way.
| | 03:19 | You may find it helpful to close out of
System Preferences, bring it back up, go
| | 03:23 | back to this panel and try it again.
| | 03:25 | Sometimes that works, but in a rare
cases we can't get a keyboard shortcut to
| | 03:30 | work, it's because your Mac
thinks it's doing something else.
| | 03:33 | It's already occupied elsewhere.
| | 03:35 | Then dropdown here to All windows,
double-click on it and change it from F9,
| | 03:39 | which it is by default to Ctrl+F9, so
you press Ctrl and the F9 key at the
| | 03:43 | same time, and so on;
| | 03:45 | Ctrl+F10, Ctrl+F11, Ctrl+F12.
| | 03:48 | I made spaces, Ctrl+8, but I don't use it.
| | 03:51 | Spotlight, this thing really gets in
the way of navigating inside of Photoshop.
| | 03:57 | So it's basically Command+Spacebar by
default and that is an old and wonderfully
| | 04:03 | useful zooming technique across
all of the Adobe applications.
| | 04:07 | Even though the Spotlight thing does
look like a magnifying glass, which is
| | 04:10 | what the tools looks like inside of Photoshop,
Apple is the one who stole this keyboard shortcut.
| | 04:14 | So I say, give it back to Adobe, and
what that means is, in my case I am
| | 04:19 | recommending you press Command+Ctrl+F1
for the Spotlight search field and to
| | 04:25 | show the Spotlight window you'd add
Option, so Command+Ctrl+Option+F1.
| | 04:31 | Up to you what you reassign,
but that's what I suggest.
| | 04:33 | Now it works differently under Snow Leopard
as I was saying, not all of that different.
| | 04:38 | But here is what the
Keyboard Shortcuts panel looks like.
| | 04:40 | It's divided into a bunch of groups, like so.
| | 04:43 | So you first start by going to
Dashboard & Doc, and you set the Dock Hiding to
| | 04:48 | Ctrl+D, and it's the same thing, you
double-click on this item right there on
| | 04:53 | the keyboard shortcut incidentally, not
over here on the words, on the keyboard
| | 04:56 | shortcut, and type in a new one.
| | 04:58 | And for Dashboard I go with Ctrl+F12.
| | 05:02 | The next group is Expose & Spaces, so
you click here, you'd go ahead and twirl
| | 05:06 | open Expose if necessary, and you
change your keyboard shortcuts, Ctrl+F9,
| | 05:10 | Ctrl+F10 and Ctrl+F11.
| | 05:12 | The next group is Spotlight, you
dropdown to Spotlight here, the other ones
| | 05:17 | don't matter for our purposes, it's up to you.
| | 05:19 | I turn on Front Row, I really like the
function, but it has nothing to do with Photoshop.
| | 05:23 | Drop-down to Spotlight and then change
the Spotlight keyboard shortcut, it's the
| | 05:27 | same way I just directed a moment ago.
| | 05:28 | So you double-click, it's Command+Ctrl+F1
to show the Search field, it's
| | 05:33 | Command+Ctrl+Option+F1 to show the window
and then our next guy is Universal Access.
| | 05:40 | If it's turned on, you may have
Universal Access working, you may not.
| | 05:44 | If you do, you want to make sure
that zoom in and zoom out are not set to
| | 05:49 | anything that overlap
what's happening in Photoshop.
| | 05:52 | So what I recommend is for zoom out,
this would be Command+Ctrl+Option+minus
| | 05:58 | and for zooming in that would be
Command+Ctrl+Option+plus the equals key
| | 06:02 | being the same as the plus key on the keyboard.
| | 06:05 | Then finally, what I recommend totally
up to you on this one, as you switch down
| | 06:10 | to Application Shortcuts and you go
ahead and give yourself -- this has nothing
| | 06:14 | to do with Photoshop once again, but
you give yourself a keyboard shortcut as
| | 06:17 | long as you are here for System Preferences.
| | 06:20 | So that you can open up System
Preferences from the keyboard, because it's a
| | 06:24 | very useful thing to do.
| | 06:25 | And bear in mind System
Preferences is where we are right now.
| | 06:28 | What you do is, you click on this
little plus sign right there and that
| | 06:31 | will bring up this dialog box and then you
have to manually type in System Preferences.
| | 06:37 | Make sure you type it exactly right;
| | 06:39 | you have to type every letter
correctly and then either type..., so three
| | 06:43 | periods in a row, that's got to be there
or you can use an ellipses instead, and
| | 06:49 | that Option+Semicolon
| | 06:51 | what gets you the will
get you the ellipsis symbol.
| | 06:53 | So that's three dots in a row that is just one
character either one is going to work for you.
| | 06:57 | Then I made the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+F1.
| | 07:00 | Now I should say, I have
problems making this work at first.
| | 07:04 | I couldn't get Ctrl+F1 to take, and
so I had close out and tried again so
| | 07:08 | sometimes that stuff happens.
| | 07:09 | I didn't have the restart the
machine or anything, I just had to
| | 07:12 | re-launch System Preferences.
| | 07:13 | Also for some reason I couldn't
get it to work inside of Photoshop.
| | 07:17 | So Photoshop was open, I couldn't
get Ctrl+F1 to work, but if any other
| | 07:21 | application was in the foreground,
then the keyboard shortcut works fine.
| | 07:25 | So these things are a little weird but
the good news is by remapping them, you
| | 07:30 | won't have any conflicts with Photoshop
and you will be able to work away inside
| | 07:34 | Photoshop to great effect.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Installing the Best Workflow color settings| 00:00 | In this exercise I am going to show
you how to re-establish what I believe to
| | 00:03 | be the best color settings inside of
Photoshop and the other creative suite applications.
| | 00:08 | Now Color Settings is Photoshop and
Adobe's word really for color management
| | 00:13 | policies, inside the various programs.
| | 00:16 | They help ensure that you achieve
consistent prints, so that what you see
| | 00:21 | onscreen is more or less
what you get from your printer.
| | 00:24 | But even more important they help
establish consistent color onscreen between
| | 00:29 | the different
applications and on the web as well.
| | 00:33 | Now by default these Color
Settings are set up for consumers.
| | 00:37 | Basically, Adobe is using 'the' consumer
color space out there which is sRGB and
| | 00:44 | I believe we can do better than that.
| | 00:45 | We want to set Photoshop up for
working professionals and that's what we
| | 00:49 | are going to do here.
| | 00:50 | Now I have this file that I have
provided for you called Best Workflow CS5.csf
| | 00:56 | and it's available as usual inside
of that 00_setup folder right there.
| | 01:02 | There it is and you may see a prettier
icon associated with it, but whatever.
| | 01:06 | What we need to do is copy it to a
specific location on your hard drive.
| | 01:13 | Now these are the locations under Windows XP
right here, this is location; you go to your C:
| | 01:19 | drive\Documents and Settings\ your
username, which is your Login name,
| | 01:23 | Application Data, not AppData but
application data, Adobe\Color\Settings.
| | 01:28 | Each one of these is a separate folder,
separated by a backslash under Windows 7
| | 01:32 | and Vista, it's this path right there,
it's AppData this time, not Application
| | 01:37 | Data, roaming, blah, blah, blah.
| | 01:40 | However, here is the good news.
| | 01:42 | Under the PC this is a big pain in the neck.
| | 01:45 | I know that doesn't sound like good news,
and you have to turn on hidden files
| | 01:49 | and you have to have the folder options get
angry at you, and all sort of weird stuff.
| | 01:53 | Well, I have found a quicker way for you PC
users and having to dig around your Hard Drive.
| | 01:58 | You Macintosh users on the other hand, you
are going to have to dig around your Hard Drive.
| | 02:01 | The good news is that it's not
as hard on the Mac to dig around.
| | 02:05 | And I will come back to PC
people in a moment, so just sit tight.
| | 02:08 | So, on the Mac you go to the Finder
level, the desktop level of your computer.
| | 02:12 | You choose Go-->Home and then that
takes you to your User folder, which is
| | 02:17 | either your name or the Login name,
what have you, and you copy those color
| | 02:21 | settings, as we just saw a moment ago.
| | 02:23 | You copy that file to this folder right here.
| | 02:26 | So you have to go to the Library
folder and the Macintosh convention is to
| | 02:30 | divide folder names with
forward slashes by the way.
| | 02:32 | So you open up your Library folder, you
open the Application Support folder, you
| | 02:37 | open the Adobe folder, you open the
Color folder, there in you will find a
| | 02:41 | Settings folder, so each one
of these is a different folder.
| | 02:44 | This will probably be empty, there
will probably be nothing there, and then
| | 02:47 | though, you go ahead and take this file
and copy it to that folder, and then you
| | 02:53 | join me for the rest of this exercise.
| | 02:55 | If you are working on a PC, I want you
to just go to that file, right-click on
| | 02:59 | Best Workflow CS5.csf and
choose the Copy command.
| | 03:03 | So we will copy it and then we
will paste it into the right location.
| | 03:07 | All right, now go to Photoshop, everybody,
whether you are working on a Mac or a PC.
| | 03:11 | Go to Photoshop, go up to the Edit menu
and choose the Color Settings command,
| | 03:15 | or you have got a keyboard shortcut
Ctrl+Shift+K, Command+Shift+K on the Mac,
| | 03:20 | and that brings up this dialog box right here.
| | 03:22 | Now by default here in States our
settings are North American General Purpose 2,
| | 03:27 | if you are in another country
you may see something different.
| | 03:30 | But here is what I want you to do.
| | 03:31 | I want to click on the Load button, with
any luck if you are on the Mac, it will
| | 03:36 | take you to this Settings folder and
you will see Best Workflow CS5.csf just
| | 03:42 | sitting there, click on it, and
then click on the Load button.
| | 03:45 | That's all you should have to do on a Mac.
| | 03:47 | On the PC, check this out, inside this
folder which is currently empty, you will
| | 03:51 | right-click and you will choose Paste.
| | 03:53 | So you are just going to put the file in there.
| | 03:55 | Then once it's in there, like so, you
click on it, so Best Workflow CS5.csf and
| | 04:00 | you click Load, and Bob is
your uncle, you are ready to go.
| | 04:04 | You have got this darn thing loaded
and you can employ it here inside of
| | 04:08 | Photoshop as well as inside
the other Adobe applications.
| | 04:13 | Now, in the next exercise, I am
going to go ahead and walk you through
| | 04:16 | the options we changed.
| | 04:18 | So those of you who are still having
problems can just set things up manually
| | 04:21 | and save out your own settings, and
those of you who aren't having problems
| | 04:25 | know what in the world we did go, I
will go ahead and click OK and wait for you
| | 04:29 | to join me then.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| The color settings explained| 00:00 | In this exercise, I'm going to explain
the Color Settings that we've modified in
| | 00:04 | the previous exercise.
| | 00:06 | It will also be of use to anyone who
may have had problems installing Best
| | 00:10 | Workflow, so that you can
establish or Color Settings manually.
| | 00:14 | There is not that many options
that you need to change quite frankly.
| | 00:17 | But I want you to know what you've done.
| | 00:19 | So I am going to go out to the Edit
menu and I am going to choose a Color
| | 00:22 | Settings command, once again
here inside Photoshop, Ctrl+Shift+K,
| | 00:27 | Command+Shift+K on the Mac and let's go
ahead and switch back to North American
| | 00:31 | General Purpose 2, which are the
default settings here in the states, not sure
| | 00:35 | what they are elsewhere in the world.
| | 00:37 | Now as I was saying, by default
Photoshop is set up for consumers that's why
| | 00:42 | they have got the RGB space set to sRGB.
| | 00:45 | The great thing about sRGB is,
it's a consistent standard.
| | 00:50 | So a lot of different companies, HP and
Microsoft and Adobe and all these other
| | 00:55 | companies got involved in creating the
standard and basically sticking to the
| | 00:59 | standard as well, so that if you open an
RGB image like your digital photographs
| | 01:05 | inside of any old application, it
is assumed that it's an sRGB image.
| | 01:10 | And then when you print it to your
inkjet device, for example, then the printer
| | 01:13 | driver does the work automatically
and decides how to convert that sRGB
| | 01:17 | information into the inks that
that particular printer uses.
| | 01:22 | Problem is from an image-editing
perspective, it's a very small space.
| | 01:25 | It's based on a rinky-dink PC monitor.
| | 01:28 | Just like a little CRT tube, essentially,
and so it's a limited color space, and
| | 01:33 | that means you're not able to take
advantage of the rich array of colors that
| | 01:37 | Photoshop can show you.
| | 01:39 | So the first thing we do, is we
switch from RGB to Adobe RGB 1998;
| | 01:44 | that mean suddenly we
have a wider dynamic range.
| | 01:47 | We have a much bigger RGB playground
essentially in which to work, and it
| | 01:52 | doesn't hurt a darn thing, because
it's still a characterized space.
| | 01:56 | So it's a profiled space, so now your
printer would just convert from Adobe RGB
| | 02:02 | over to its particular group of inks,
and when you export an image for the web,
| | 02:07 | Photoshop will automatically convert
it to sRGB and I will tell you how that
| | 02:11 | works in another chapter.
| | 02:13 | So it's definitely the way to go,
where Photoshop is concerned.
| | 02:17 | CMYK, I didn't change that in my Best
Workflow Settings, you should know that,
| | 02:21 | but if you're working with the
commercial printer, then you would want to change
| | 02:25 | it, but you'd want to get a profile from them.
| | 02:27 | So you ask your commercial printer
from a profile, if they give you one,
| | 02:31 | then you choose this command right
there, Load CMYK, you'll load it on up
| | 02:35 | and then you're good to go.
| | 02:36 | Presumably as long as the
profile works accurately.
| | 02:39 | Next Color Management Policies, notice
everything is set to Preserve Embedded Profiles.
| | 02:44 | I am skipping Graying spot by the way,
you don't need to worry about those, but
| | 02:47 | for the Color Management Policies you
want everybody to be Preserve Embedded
| | 02:51 | Profiles, because that way you can
have an sRGB image open, and an Adobe RGB
| | 02:57 | image, and all kinds of different stuff,
and in fact, we're switching over to
| | 03:00 | Adobe RGB 1998, this Welcome.tif image
was originally created as an sRGB image,
| | 03:06 | and it will not change onscreen.
| | 03:08 | So Photoshop can respect multiple
profiles at the very same time, which is
| | 03:12 | excellent, just ideal.
| | 03:14 | Profile Mismatches, you don't want
those on, because Photoshop will be bugging
| | 03:18 | you all the time and it's not
information that you need to know.
| | 03:21 | So just turn off those check
boxes, then click on More Options.
| | 03:24 | Drop-down here, the Conversion Options,
notice the engine is the Adobe Color
| | 03:28 | Engine, that's great, because that's
cross-platform, otherwise you got to choose
| | 03:32 | a platform specific option, you don't want that.
| | 03:35 | But I believe the Intent is better
instead of working with Relative Colormetric,
| | 03:41 | which is perfectly reasonable for most
purposes, and if you're primarily doing
| | 03:46 | InDesign work or you are primarily doing
vector work inside of Illustrator, then
| | 03:50 | Relative Colormetric is probably your
best bet, but my assumption is that you're
| | 03:55 | doing most of your work inside of
continuous tone photographic images, in which
| | 04:00 | case Perceptual is the best bet,
because you are going to get less color
| | 04:04 | banding, your gradients are going to
look better anything where there is
| | 04:07 | continuous colors is going to look better.
| | 04:10 | Some colors are going to change,
Photoshop is going to have to change colors
| | 04:14 | sometimes in order to make those
perceived color transitions work out, but it's
| | 04:19 | typically the best way to go.
| | 04:20 | So anyway, I switch over to Perceptual
and then lately I've gotten in the habit
| | 04:24 | of turning off this check box,
Use Dither on 8-bit/channel images.
| | 04:29 | The idea is if you're converting an
image say from Adobe RGB to sRGB, and
| | 04:34 | you are having to rewrite all of the
colors inside of the image, do you try
| | 04:38 | to represent colors that are outside
the gamut, using a dither, that is, by
| | 04:43 | jumbling a bunch of other colors together
or do you just represent it with a flat.
| | 04:47 | Take one flat color and represent it with
a different nearest equivalent flat color.
| | 04:52 | And what I've found is it's better to
go with the flat colors for my work,
| | 04:57 | because anytime you have anything
resembling a vector object or type or anything
| | 05:01 | along those lines, it ends up getting
dithered if you turn this check box on.
| | 05:06 | So I would rather have it off.
| | 05:07 | I haven't run into any problems doing
that, that's the way I like to work and
| | 05:10 | that's it, then you would go up here,
you would click on Save and you would go
| | 05:15 | ahead and save out your
Settings as Best Workflow CS5.
| | 05:18 | Now after that point, by the way,
let's say, I go ahead and save over my file
| | 05:24 | and I'll click Save, and it says, do you
want to save, I will say, sure, I will click OK.
| | 05:27 | Then I'm asked for some comments.
| | 05:30 | Now I've gone ahead and created for you
this item right here inside the 00_setup
| | 05:36 | folder, I've created this thing called
Best Workflow Description.txt, and it's
| | 05:42 | just a text-only document.
| | 05:43 | Then if I go ahead and open that up,
say a Notepad here on the PC, then it
| | 05:48 | appears as one long continuous line.
| | 05:50 | So you have to go to Format and choose
Word Wrap, it says, you wouldn't want that?
| | 05:54 | Why wouldn't you not want it to wrap?
| | 05:55 | Anyway, then you'll go ahead and
select your text like so, and copy it, by
| | 06:01 | choosing the Copy command right there,
or pressing Ctrl+C, Command+C on the Mac,
| | 06:06 | switch back to Photoshop.
| | 06:08 | I will go here, select this text and
press Ctrl+V or Command+V on the Mac for
| | 06:12 | paste, because you don't really have
a command at this point to work from.
| | 06:16 | Basically what this text says is
these are settings that I recommend in my
| | 06:20 | Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign
CS4 One-on-One series for Deke Press,
| | 06:24 | O'Reilly Media and lynda.com.
| | 06:26 | So there are books and videos to ensure
consistent color and printing across all
| | 06:30 | three applications and more actually.
| | 06:33 | So I'll click OK in order to re-create
that file, and then I'll click OK in
| | 06:37 | order to accept my Color Settings, and
that's what's going on just in case you
| | 06:41 | wanted to know, just so that you know
exactly what's happening, every step of
| | 06:46 | the way inside the series.
| | 06:47 | In the next exercise we are going to
establish consistent settings across all of
| | 06:50 | the Creative Suite
applications in the Adobe Bridge.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Loading the CS5 color settings in Bridge| 00:00 | Now that you've loaded my Best Workflow
CS5 Color Settings or created your own,
| | 00:05 | those of you who own one of the many
versions of the Creative Suite can go ahead
| | 00:09 | and load these Color Settings across
all the Creative Suite Applications.
| | 00:13 | However, you have to own the
Creative Suite for this exercise to work.
| | 00:18 | If you own Photoshop by itself,
then this exercise is not applicable.
| | 00:22 | You can go ahead and skip it and
let me briefly explain what I mean.
| | 00:26 | I'm going to go ahead and switch to
this browser, and I'm looking at the
| | 00:29 | Adobe web site, and we can see that
there is quite a few different variations
| | 00:33 | of Creative Suite 5.
| | 00:35 | There is Design Standard and Design
Premium, there is web Standard and web
| | 00:39 | Premium, there is the Production
Versions and there's the Master Collection.
| | 00:44 | So you have to own one of those
many versions of the Creative Suite for
| | 00:49 | this movie to work.
| | 00:50 | Again, if you own Photoshop by itself,
then you are going to end up getting an
| | 00:53 | error message, in which case this
exercise is not necessary for you. All right.
| | 00:57 | So I am going to switch back to
Photoshop here, and then I'll go up to the
| | 01:02 | upper-left corner of the interface,
and you'll see this orange bridge icon.
| | 01:06 | I want you to go ahead and click on
Launch Bridge in order to switch to the Bridge.
| | 01:11 | Now, if it wasn't already running, as it was
for me, it might take a few moments to launch.
| | 01:16 | Then once you see the Bridge Application,
which allows you to preview images and
| | 01:20 | other assets, I happen to have the
Bridge trained on the contents of the
| | 01:24 | 00_setup folder, but that doesn't
matter for purposes of this exercise.
| | 01:29 | Next, what you'll do is you'll go to the
Edit menu and choose the Creative Suite
| | 01:33 | Color Settings command.
| | 01:34 | Now, no matter what, you'll
be able to see this command.
| | 01:37 | That's what's so misleading about this feature.
| | 01:41 | However, there's a chance
that the command won't work.
| | 01:43 | So if you choose Creative Suite Color
Settings and you get an error message,
| | 01:47 | that means either you only own
Photoshop, so you purchased Photoshop
| | 01:51 | independently, or for some reason, the
Bridge thinks you only own Photoshop.
| | 01:56 | It doesn't think you own the entire
Creative Suite, which may require that you
| | 01:59 | reinstall the software.
| | 02:01 | I hate to be bearer of bad news,
but that's the way it works.
| | 02:05 | The good news is, most of
you should have no problems.
| | 02:08 | So if you own one of those versions of
the Creative Suite, you should be able to
| | 02:11 | choose this command and then bring up
the Suite Color Settings dialog box.
| | 02:16 | Now, by default, you'll see North
American General Purpose 2 selected, at least
| | 02:21 | that's what you see here in the States.
| | 02:23 | Hopefully, you'll see my new Best
Workflow CS5 option available to you.
| | 02:28 | Go ahead and click on it in order to select it.
| | 02:31 | If you don't see that option, then turn
on this check box called Show Expanded
| | 02:35 | List of Color Settings Files, go ahead
and turn that on, and you will see an
| | 02:39 | expanded list of options available to you.
| | 02:42 | Somewhere in that list you should
see Best Workflow CS5, once you see it,
| | 02:47 | click on it to make it active, and
then click on the Apply button, and that's
| | 02:51 | all there is to it.
| | 02:53 | Now you synchronize your Color Settings
across Photoshop, Illustrator, and all
| | 02:57 | the other Creative Suite Application.
| | 02:59 | All right, that's all there is to it.
| | 03:01 | Now you and I are on the same page
and you can begin work on Chapter 1.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
13. What Photoshop Can Do, Pt. 2: The EyesWhat you can do with Photoshop| 00:00 | In the last 20 years, I've watched
computer graphics programs transform from fun
| | 00:05 | and interesting trinkets to powerhouse
applications that let you perform feats
| | 00:10 | of magic that you would never even
think to attempt in the pre-digital age.
| | 00:14 | I mean, honestly, when I was a kid,
this was a while back, superheroes did
| | 00:20 | amazing things on the printed page,
but they looked completely lame onscreen.
| | 00:25 | Now whatever you may think of the movies
themselves, the screen heroes have no end of power.
| | 00:30 | Various production studios have
different proprietary tools at their disposal,
| | 00:35 | stuff that you and I couldn't buy if
we wanted to, but they all use at some
| | 00:39 | point in their workflows Photoshop.
| | 00:42 | Bear in mind that Photoshop owes its
origin in part to the movie business.
| | 00:46 | The visual effects supervisor of 'Star
Wars' and 'Pirates of the Caribbean', his
| | 00:51 | brother, Thomas Knoll, wrote Photoshop.
| | 00:54 | That same guy, John Knoll, also
supervised the effects for the biggest
| | 00:58 | blockbuster ever, 'Avatar'.
| | 01:01 | See, Photoshop can turn
reality into super reality.
| | 01:05 | What we know and love develops
into what we know and love more.
| | 01:09 | So in these next movies, I continue the
project that I started back in Chapter 1
| | 01:13 | of the Fundamentals course;
| | 01:15 | the conversion of an
everyday human being into an Avatar.
| | 01:19 | Now, the movie has had its day, popular
culture is so fleeting, but the power of
| | 01:24 | the effects remains as vibrant as ever.
| | 01:26 | In this chapter, we'll create eyes,
big beautiful eyes, largely out of
| | 01:32 | nothing, and the eyes have depth and beauty and
soul and everything else you expect from eyes.
| | 01:38 | Yes, this is what Photoshop can do,
but more importantly, this is what you
| | 01:43 | can do with Photoshop.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| The mission-critical eyes| 00:00 | All right, friends, here we are back
inside the 'Avatar' composition, and as you
| | 00:04 | may recall, we're starting with this
base photograph of an everyday average
| | 00:08 | human girl captured here on earth, by
Jason Stead to the Fotolia Image Library.
| | 00:14 | And over the course of 22 layers, we're
building up this fantastic composition
| | 00:18 | of this Na'vi creature from another world.
| | 00:21 | And we're now poised to create the
eyes, more specifically the irises and
| | 00:25 | the pupils right here.
| | 00:27 | We don't have much to
work with in the first place.
| | 00:29 | If I Alt+Click or Option+Click on this
eyeball to turn off all the other layers,
| | 00:33 | you can see that her original irises
are quite small, we only have half irises
| | 00:38 | to work with really, because
they're cut off by the eye at top here.
| | 00:42 | And the pupils are dinky, presumably
because this is a bright day and the
| | 00:46 | sunlight is coming into our eyes.
| | 00:49 | But our 'Avatar' creature
is not built that way at all.
| | 00:52 | The Na'vi have huge eyes, as you can
see, these big old, sort of greenish,
| | 00:57 | golden eyes with these ginormous pupils here,
and all this reflection activity going on.
| | 01:04 | So we're going to have to do a fair
amount of work and we've got to do a good
| | 01:07 | job, because eyes are mission critical.
| | 01:10 | We recognize each other by our eyes.
| | 01:12 | Eyes are the windows into the soul.
| | 01:14 | And they've done a fair number of
studies where viewers are viewing an image,
| | 01:18 | and they can track where
the viewers are looking.
| | 01:20 | And we spent most of our time, where
portrait shots are concerned, looking at the eyes.
| | 01:25 | So we've got to get them exactly right,
and we don't have much to work with
| | 01:29 | in the first place.
| | 01:30 | So this is going to be a
fairly complicated project.
| | 01:33 | We're starting at this point here.
| | 01:35 | I've gone ahead and saved out my
progress as Blue skin brown hair.psd.
| | 01:39 | And it contains all the layers we've
made so far, that is the two liquefied
| | 01:44 | layers, one for the eyes, it's called
liquify eyes, but it's really for the
| | 01:47 | mouth and the nose as
well and the cheekbone here.
| | 01:50 | And then we have another for the brow
& the nose, that's covering up those
| | 01:54 | eyes, you may recall.
| | 01:55 | This is what things look like
without that brow & nose layer.
| | 01:58 | This is what they look like
with that brow & nose layer.
| | 02:01 | So very important that aspect
right there, the bridge of the nose.
| | 02:04 | And then we have all these layers
inside the blue folder, these grouped layers,
| | 02:10 | that are ultimately coloring her skin
blue without affecting her hair at all,
| | 02:14 | leaving her hair nice and brown,
those beautiful braids. All right.
| | 02:18 | So I'm going to go ahead
and twirl that close again.
| | 02:21 | If you twirl open this group called eye
layers, you'll find just about all the
| | 02:26 | layers that we're going to use.
| | 02:28 | And you could just start
turning them on if you want to.
| | 02:30 | For example, here is my irises, right
there, those are the irises that I'm
| | 02:35 | going to start work from.
| | 02:36 | But you may wonder how in the world I
got them in the first place, and that's
| | 02:39 | something that I'm going to show
you, beginning in the next exercise.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Copy Merged and Paste in Place| 00:00 | All right, I'm still looking at
the Blue skin brown hair.psd file.
| | 00:03 | All I've done is twirl open this group
called eyes layers, and then I went ahead
| | 00:08 | and turned on the irises layer down here.
| | 00:11 | Now, the question becomes, not why does
it looks so gorgeous, because so far it
| | 00:15 | looks terrible, but rather,
how did I get this far?
| | 00:17 | How did I make this irises layer?
| | 00:19 | Well, I went ahead and selected the
old irises, not the original irises, just
| | 00:24 | the old ones that haven't been
colored yet, but we're liquefied.
| | 00:28 | Then I copied them and I scaled them to size.
| | 00:31 | And I'll show you how that works.
| | 00:32 | I'm going to start things off by
turning off the irises layer, and then I'm
| | 00:35 | going to click on brow &
nose and make that layer active.
| | 00:39 | And I'm going to turn off
the blue group right there.
| | 00:42 | And the easiest way to select these
irises, I want perfect circles, so I'm going
| | 00:46 | to use the Ellipse tool.
| | 00:47 | So I'll click and hold on the
Rectangular Marquee tool and choose the Elliptical
| | 00:51 | Marquee tool, or I can press the M key.
| | 00:54 | And then I'm going to drag around this
iris while I press the Shift key, so I
| | 00:58 | get a perfect circle.
| | 00:59 | Notice that I'm also pressing the
Spacebar, so I can move this guy around, and
| | 01:04 | align it perfectly with that old iris.
| | 01:07 | Now, I want to select as much iris as
possible, because it needs to get really
| | 01:11 | super big, so the less
scaling I can do the better.
| | 01:15 | However, I don't want to go too far outside.
| | 01:17 | I don't want to get any of this darker
area here that could end up turning a
| | 01:23 | different color once I start editing it.
| | 01:26 | Anyway, this selection is good, now
I'm going to add this other iris to the
| | 01:29 | selection, by pressing and holding the
Shift key and then dragging, and that
| | 01:33 | allows me to add one selection to another.
| | 01:36 | I want to make sure it's
a perfect circle though.
| | 01:39 | You can see that I can make it some
elliptical form if I want to right now,
| | 01:42 | because it's unconstrained.
| | 01:43 | I'd have to release the Shift key,
while I still have my mouse button down.
| | 01:47 | And then I press and hold the Shift
key again, and now I'll keep the Shift
| | 01:50 | key down until after I release the
mouse button, so that I'm getting a
| | 01:54 | perfect circle out of it.
| | 01:56 | And now I'm using the Spacebar, I still
have the Shift key down, I've got both
| | 01:59 | Shift and Spacebar down, so that I can
align this ellipse with the iris and then
| | 02:03 | I'll make it bigger so that I
select as much of this iris as possible.
| | 02:07 | And this is about as much as I want right there.
| | 02:09 | So I now have the two irises selected.
| | 02:12 | Now how do I go about copying them?
| | 02:15 | Most likely, in the case of this image,
everything is right there in the liquify
| | 02:18 | eyes layer, because we're masking away
the brow & nose layer around the eyes.
| | 02:23 | I don't think we're getting any of that.
| | 02:25 | However, we might have a little bit of
this edge at the nose that's included in
| | 02:29 | this brow & nose layer.
| | 02:31 | And what I really want to do is
copy what I'm seeing onscreen.
| | 02:35 | And anytime you want to copy the effect
of all visible layers working together,
| | 02:40 | then you go up to the Edit menu and
you choose Copy Merged or you can press
| | 02:44 | Ctrl+Shift+C, Command+Shift+C on the Mac.
| | 02:48 | Now then, I'm going to click on the
irises layer, now that I have those
| | 02:51 | irises in the clipboard.
| | 02:53 | I'm going to click on the old irises
layer right there, and I'm going to go up
| | 02:57 | to the Edit menu and I'm going to
choose the Paste command, which will paste
| | 03:01 | the irises directly into the selection
outline, so everything will be perfectly aligned.
| | 03:06 | And you can do that just by
pressing Ctrl+V or Command+V on the Mac.
| | 03:09 | But let's say that I don't have
that selection outline anymore.
| | 03:13 | I'll just click off the selections, disappears.
| | 03:15 | If I were to press Ctrl+V now, or
Command+V on the Mac, the irises would just
| | 03:20 | appear any old place.
| | 03:21 | They'll actually be
centered inside of the composition.
| | 03:24 | I'm going to undo that.
| | 03:25 | If you want to align them with the point
at which they were copied, you go up to
| | 03:30 | the Edit menu and choose Paste Special,
and then you choose this new command
| | 03:33 | inside Photoshop CS5, Paste In Place,
which has a keyboard shortcut of
| | 03:37 | Ctrl+Shift+V or Command+Shift+V on the
Mac, and that goes ahead and paste the
| | 03:41 | irises exactly where they belong.
| | 03:44 | Now, at this point I want to scale
the irises, of course, make them bigger.
| | 03:48 | And I want to scale them so they
match the old irises layer down here.
| | 03:52 | So I'll turn that old layer on for a moment.
| | 03:55 | Now, when I first created this layer,
obviously I just eyeball things.
| | 03:59 | However, because I've got my old
eyeballs to work from, we might as well
| | 04:02 | exactly match them.
| | 04:03 | Now, I'm going to click on
this irises layer for a moment.
| | 04:06 | Just so that I can see the difference
between the old irises and the new irises,
| | 04:09 | I'm going to fill the old ones with white.
| | 04:12 | And white happens to be my background color.
| | 04:14 | So I can fill one opaque area, I can
replace the opaque pixels in any given
| | 04:19 | layer, in the active layer, with a
new color by pressing the Shift key
| | 04:24 | along with Backspace.
| | 04:25 | And in order to get the
background color, you add Ctrl.
| | 04:29 | So it's Ctrl+Shift+Backspace here on
the PC, it's Command+Shift+Delete on the
| | 04:34 | Mac, to fill just those opaque
pixels with the background color.
| | 04:38 | All right, that will just
give us something to align to.
| | 04:40 | Now I'm going to switch back to this
new irises layer, let's go ahead and call
| | 04:43 | it new irises in fact.
| | 04:46 | And I'm going to scale each
one of the irises independently.
| | 04:49 | So I'll switch from the Elliptical
Marquee tool to the Rectangular Marquee tool.
| | 04:52 | And the reason I'm doing that is
because I'm no longer concerned about the
| | 04:56 | shape, I already have the shape of the
iris defined as a perfect circle, now I'm
| | 04:59 | just concerned about selecting general areas.
| | 05:02 | I'm going to make a big selection like
that to include that entire iris there.
| | 05:06 | Then I'm going to go up to the
Edit menu and I'm going to choose the
| | 05:09 | Free Transform command.
| | 05:10 | You can also press Ctrl+T
or Command+T on the Mac.
| | 05:14 | Then I'm going to go ahead and scale this iris.
| | 05:17 | Now, I want to make sure to scale it
proportionally, so I'm going to press the
| | 05:21 | Shift key as I drag a corner handle, like so.
| | 05:24 | And then I'll Shift+Drag this corner
handle as well, maybe scoot things over a
| | 05:28 | little bit, until I get this guy aligned.
| | 05:30 | I'm actually nudging it from the
keyboard now by pressing the Arrow keys.
| | 05:33 | Let's go ahead and move that little
origin point right there, that target, to
| | 05:36 | what appears to be the center of the iris.
| | 05:38 | And now, in order to scale, not only
proportionally, but with respect to that
| | 05:42 | center point, I'm going to press the
Shift+Alt keys, like so, as I drag this
| | 05:47 | corner handle, that Shift+Option on the
Mac, and then I'll move it out until it
| | 05:51 | appears to more or less exactly match.
| | 05:54 | That looks like a good match to me.
| | 05:56 | And then I'll press the Enter key here
on the PC or the Return key on the Mac in
| | 06:00 | order to accept that transformation.
| | 06:02 | Let's go ahead and do the same thing
with this iris, go ahead and select a
| | 06:05 | general area, go up to the Edit menu
and choose the Free Transform command.
| | 06:10 | That's Ctrl+T, Command+T on the Mac.
| | 06:12 | Go ahead and begin scaling this by
pressing the Shift key of course, as I'm
| | 06:17 | dragging the corner handles, nudge it
into a better place, so that it appears to
| | 06:21 | be more or less centered.
| | 06:22 | Get this target to the center,
like so, and then Shift+Alt+Drag or
| | 06:27 | Shift+Option+Drag on the Mac in order
to match one to the other, scaling with
| | 06:32 | respect of course to that target
point there, that transformation origin.
| | 06:36 | And then I'll press the Enter key in
order to accept the modification, click off
| | 06:39 | in order to deselect, and we now
have two big old irises to work with.
| | 06:45 | In the next exercise, we're going to
begin to refine these irises so they look
| | 06:49 | more at home inside the composition.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Sharpening details to match| 00:00 | I have gone ahead and saved my progress
as Big New irises.psd, so called because
| | 00:05 | we've taken these irises, we've copy-merged
them from the original liquefied
| | 00:10 | portions of the image, then pasted them
into place, and enlarged them using the
| | 00:15 | Free Transform Command.
| | 00:16 | Now, we have to try to do a little bit
of detail matching, by which I mean, we
| | 00:21 | need to take these very softly focused
eyes at this point, not that they were
| | 00:25 | shot soft in the first place, but
rather we have made them soft by applying the
| | 00:29 | Liquefy Command, which did a lot of
damage actually, and of course by scaling
| | 00:34 | them with a Free Transform Command.
| | 00:36 | Now, we don't have to get too twisted
up about exactly how sharp we make these
| | 00:41 | eyes, because the detail inside
the image vacillates a little.
| | 00:44 | For example, this cheek right here,
you can see the pores really crisply.
| | 00:50 | So it's rendered quite nicely.
| | 00:52 | Whereas the detail across her brow
is obviously very stretched by the
| | 00:56 | application of Liquify.
| | 00:58 | So what I'm saying is, most of this
stuff is going to get covered up, as soon as
| | 01:02 | we start adding all those blue layers
right there, and as soon as we add the war
| | 01:06 | paint in particular.
| | 01:07 | We're not going to notice the
stretching nearly as much as we do now.
| | 01:11 | And we're going to hide some of the
light focus of the eyes too, using a
| | 01:17 | sequence of layers and
some layer effects and so on.
| | 01:20 | However we do want things to
be better than they are now.
| | 01:23 | So I'm going to turn off the blue
group, and I'm going to make sure the new
| | 01:26 | irises layer is selected, and I'm going
to sharpen the detail by going up to the
| | 01:29 | Filter menu, choosing Sharpen, and
choosing Smart Sharpen, and that loads up the
| | 01:35 | Smart Sharpen dialog box.
| | 01:36 | Now, notice, neither of the irises
is fully inside the preview area.
| | 01:40 | So I'm going to drag this left iris over
and I'm going to click this Plus button
| | 01:44 | in order to zoom in on the detail.
| | 01:46 | Now, notice, thanks to Liquify and
Free Transform, the detail inside this
| | 01:50 | iris is very murky.
| | 01:52 | And what's interesting in addition to
the fact that we can see the silhouette
| | 01:56 | of one or two people, one of which I
presume to be the photographer, this you
| | 02:02 | might mistake for the camera, but this area
right there is actually the squished pupil.
| | 02:07 | So that's how far we went with the
Liquify Filter, we really made a mess of things.
| | 02:12 | However, even though we don't have
really all that great detail to work with in
| | 02:14 | the first place, we can make it look better.
| | 02:17 | So I'm going to raise this amount
value quite high, to 300%, so that we're
| | 02:21 | applying a lot of sharpening to this image.
| | 02:24 | And then I'm going to set Remove from
Gaussian Blur to Lens Blur, in order to
| | 02:30 | tighten up those edges a little bit.
| | 02:32 | And then I'm going to increase the Radius value.
| | 02:34 | Now, here what's Smart Sharpen does,
it goes ahead and draws halos on
| | 02:38 | either side of an edge.
| | 02:39 | An edge is an area of rapid luminance
transition, where you go from bright
| | 02:43 | to dark very quickly.
| | 02:45 | And then, Smart Sharpen exaggerates
the darkness of the dark side of the edge
| | 02:50 | and the lightness of the light side of
the edge by tracing dark and light halos,
| | 02:54 | and the thickness of those halos
is determined by the Radius value.
| | 02:59 | So what that means to us is that we
need the halos to be at least as thick
| | 03:02 | as the murky detail.
| | 03:04 | So I'm going to have to raise this
Radius value to about 2 pixels, should work
| | 03:08 | out well for us, and we end
up getting this result here.
| | 03:11 | Now, if you want to see it before and
after, you click and hold on the Preview.
| | 03:15 | That shows you before.
| | 03:16 | And then as soon as you release,
you'll see the after view, like so.
| | 03:20 | So you can see that we've got some
sharper detail inside of this iris.
| | 03:24 | It's not necessarily great detail,
we're going to be covering a lot of it up,
| | 03:27 | but it will serve as a good base.
| | 03:30 | Now I'll click OK in order to apply the
filter, and you can see that the iris on
| | 03:34 | the left here is quite sharp, while
the one on the right is quite soft.
| | 03:39 | So we still have that natural captured
focus working for us inside of this image.
| | 03:45 | Now, the next step is to go ahead and
mask these big old irises inside of the eyes.
| | 03:51 | And you can do that very simply, if you
want to, by grabbing this layer mask in
| | 03:55 | front of irises and just dragging it
and dropping it onto your new irises, if
| | 04:00 | you're working along with me.
| | 04:01 | And then I would go ahead and turn
off the old white irises right there.
| | 04:06 | But the problem is that
your irises might not match up.
| | 04:10 | For example, in my case, my new irises
are a little bigger than my old irises
| | 04:14 | and they're not fitting
the layer mask exactly right.
| | 04:17 | Besides, it's really incumbent upon me
to show you how I created this layer mask.
| | 04:21 | So what I'm going to do is press Ctrl+
Z or Command+Z on the Mac to undo the
| | 04:26 | movement of that layer mask.
| | 04:27 | I'm going to turn off the irises layer
and I'm going to create this layer mask
| | 04:31 | in real-time, in the next exercise.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Masking eyes| 00:00 | I'm still working inside
that image, Big New irises.psd.
| | 00:03 | I've sharpened the irises using the
Smart Sharpen Filter, and now we're going to
| | 00:07 | mask them into the eyes.
| | 00:09 | I'm going to start by turning this new
irises layer off, and then I'm going to
| | 00:14 | switchover to my
Elliptical Marquee tool once again.
| | 00:17 | And I could do that by pressing the M
key of course, and I'm going to begin to
| | 00:20 | trace around the eyes inside of the image.
| | 00:23 | Now, I'm using the Spacebar to align
the Selection Outline with the eye, and I
| | 00:28 | am entirely interested in just
matching pieces of the eye at a time.
| | 00:32 | Because obviously the eye is not a big
circle or a big ellipse or anything like
| | 00:37 | that, it's made of curved arcs however,
and we can match those curved arcs using
| | 00:42 | a series of Elliptical Marquee.
| | 00:44 | So I'll go ahead and trace this first one,
and I'm going to Spacebar+drag over a
| | 00:49 | little bit, so I'm
centering that eye a little better.
| | 00:51 | And then I'm going to press and hold
the Shift and Alt keys at the same time.
| | 00:54 | This would be Shift and Option on the Mac,
and I'm going to draw an Intersecting
| | 00:58 | Marquee like this and press the Spacebar
in order to move it into place, until I
| | 01:03 | get it more or less right.
| | 01:05 | We don't have to get the exact shape of
the eye down, but you should approximate
| | 01:09 | it pretty nicely if
you're working along with me.
| | 01:11 | And notice, as soon as I release, that I
go ahead and just keep the intersecting
| | 01:15 | area of those two ellipses.
| | 01:17 | Now I'm going to Spacebar+drag down a
little bit and I'm going to press the
| | 01:21 | Shift and Alt keys once again, Shift and
Option on the Mac, and drag around this
| | 01:26 | area, again, using my Spacebar
when necessary for alignment purposes.
| | 01:31 | And I'm going to try to match that
lower left edge of the eyelid there, and
| | 01:37 | that looks pretty good.
| | 01:38 | And then one or two more drags should do me.
| | 01:40 | I'll go ahead and press Shift and Alt
or Shift and Option on the Mac, move this
| | 01:44 | over to this location.
| | 01:46 | So you can see I'm trying to
be pretty careful about this.
| | 01:48 | That is about right there, and then
I'll release and then finally, Shift and
| | 01:53 | Alt, Shift and Option on the Mac, drag,
and actually I want this to be quite a
| | 01:58 | bit smaller than this, in order to
cut out that fleshy part of the eye.
| | 02:01 | Even though this is well beyond the iris,
but I just want to take care and make
| | 02:05 | sure that we've selected the eye properly.
| | 02:07 | Now then, I'm going to go ahead and
turn that into a layer mask by turning on
| | 02:12 | the new irises layer.
| | 02:14 | And then I'll dropdown to the Add
layer mask icon, here at the bottom of the
| | 02:17 | Layers panel, and click on it, and there we go.
| | 02:21 | Now I've gone ahead and masked in this iris.
| | 02:23 | You can see I've masked away the
other iris, because I haven't drawn an eye
| | 02:28 | around it, and that area is currently black.
| | 02:30 | So we just have this little white area
around the left hand eye, her right of
| | 02:35 | course, and I'm seeing that by Alt+clicking
or Option+clicking on that layer
| | 02:39 | mask Thumbnail here inside the Layers panel.
| | 02:41 | All right, I'll Alt+click or Option+click
once again to come back out.
| | 02:45 | Now, at this point you might need to do a
little bit of refinement, I know, I certainly do.
| | 02:50 | And you can do some of the work if you
want to by just selecting a general area,
| | 02:54 | for example, with the
Rectangular Marquee tool like this.
| | 02:58 | If I want to increase the size of this
mask, which I do, I want to stretch it
| | 03:02 | down a little, because I cut in too much and
I'm exposing a white area of that eye there.
| | 03:07 | Then the best approach to take is to
transform a copy of this selection.
| | 03:12 | For example, I can go up to the Edit menu
and I can choose a Free Transform command.
| | 03:16 | But then, if I do that and I expose an
area in the background, if I make this
| | 03:21 | selection smaller than it is right now,
I will expose an area of white, because
| | 03:25 | white is my background color, and that
will show parts of the iris potentially.
| | 03:29 | I don't want that to happen.
| | 03:31 | So what we want to do instead is to
transform a copy of the selection, and you
| | 03:36 | do that by adding Option or Alt to
this keyboard shortcut, so it would be
| | 03:41 | Ctrl+Alt+T on a PC or
Command+Option+T on the Mac.
| | 03:44 | So I'm going to Escape out of there,
and I'm just going to press that keyboard
| | 03:48 | shortcut, Ctrl+Alt+T,
Command+Option+T on the Mac.
| | 03:51 | It's not going to look any
different, it's just going to protect you.
| | 03:54 | And now I'm going to drag this down
slightly, like so, in order to stretch that mask.
| | 03:59 | Notice I'm just stretching the mask.
| | 04:01 | See that, that guy is staying in the
exact same position there in that reflection.
| | 04:06 | So I'm just moving the mask down.
| | 04:08 | And then if I feel like I need to
stretch it up a little bit as well, I can
| | 04:12 | drag this top handle, like so, up ever so
slightly, and that's going to do me I think.
| | 04:17 | I'll press the Enter key or the Return
key on the Mac to accept that modification.
| | 04:20 | Now, let's go ahead and do the other
eye as quickly as we can, so that I can
| | 04:25 | show you how we achieve better
transitions here, inside of the eyes.
| | 04:29 | But first, I've got to select this area.
| | 04:30 | So I'm going to grab the Elliptical
Marquee tool once again and I'm going to
| | 04:34 | drag around the top
portion of the eye like that.
| | 04:37 | And then I'm going to
press the Shift and Alt keys.
| | 04:40 | I'm using the Spacebar for alignment,
move this edge down about there,
| | 04:44 | looks pretty good to me.
| | 04:45 | Shift+Alt again, Shift+Option on the Mac in
order to get this bottom edge of the eye , like so.
| | 04:51 | Actually, I want it to be
a little bigger like that.
| | 04:54 | And then I'm going to
press Shift and Alt once again.
| | 04:57 | I keep pressing Shift and Alt or Shift and
Option on the Mac, and drag along that edge.
| | 05:02 | And then Shift+Alt once or twice more,
this will work I think right about there,
| | 05:08 | and then another Shift+Alt+drag
right at that location.
| | 05:11 | You can see that it's just Shift+
Alt+dragging over and over again.
| | 05:14 | Some eyes are easier than this, but
thanks to the fact that we've gone ahead and
| | 05:17 | liquefied this eye, we've made a fair
amount of work for ourselves in this
| | 05:21 | Shift+Alt+drag department.
| | 05:23 | There is another one, Shift+Option+drag
on the Mac of course.
| | 05:26 | And then finally, I need to take the
nose out of the equation, and that might
| | 05:30 | have to be a pretty
large marquee, like about so.
| | 05:36 | Oh, I just invoked a little
bit of an Auto Scroll there.
| | 05:39 | This looks pretty good,
actually, let's make it even bigger.
| | 05:43 | This will look better I think. All right.
| | 05:44 | So that looks pretty darn good right there.
| | 05:46 | I think that's enough Shift+Alt+drags,
Shift+Option+drags for now.
| | 05:50 | And the layer mask is still selected,
you can see that by the highlighted layer
| | 05:53 | mask thumbnail here inside the layers Palette.
| | 05:55 | So white is my background color.
| | 05:58 | All I need to do is press the
Backspace key or the Delete key on the Mac in
| | 06:02 | order to fill that selected area with white.
| | 06:05 | Now, couple of other things that I want to do.
| | 06:07 | Notice at this point that we might want to
stretch this mask down a little bit as well.
| | 06:12 | So I'll press the M key to switch
over to the Rectangle Marquee tool right
| | 06:15 | there, and then I'll select this area , like so.
| | 06:18 | I'll press Ctrl+Alt+T, Command+Option+T
on the Mac to make sure that I'm scaling
| | 06:23 | a copy, so that I don't
expose any areas of white.
| | 06:26 | Drag that down a little bit, nudge it up.
| | 06:28 | Again, I'm just affecting the layer
mask, the iris itself is remaining
| | 06:33 | right there in place.
| | 06:34 | Press the Enter key in order to finish off
that transformation, the Return key on the Mac.
| | 06:39 | Then in order to achieve some smoother
transitions, notice that we have these
| | 06:44 | tiny little implied corners,
here and there inside the mask.
| | 06:48 | I want to shave those off by
going up to the Filter menu.
| | 06:51 | So your layer mask should still be selected.
| | 06:53 | Go up to the Filter menu, choose Noise,
and choose Median, or if you loaded
| | 06:58 | dekeKeys, you can press Shift+F8.
| | 07:00 | And the Median command goes ahead and
rounds off corners by averaging pixels
| | 07:04 | inside of the layer mask.
| | 07:06 | And I'm going to take this Radius value
up to two pixels, and then I'm going to
| | 07:10 | click OK in order accept that modification.
| | 07:13 | Now, you may not be able to see
what's happened here when you're looking at
| | 07:16 | the irises, but if I click down here,
let's say, the center, that portion of
| | 07:21 | the mask inside the Preview area, this is
before, if I click and hold, and this is after.
| | 07:27 | So it has a slight effect, it's just ever so
slightly rounding off some of these transitions.
| | 07:32 | You could go farther with this, you
could take it up to like four pixels or
| | 07:35 | something along those lines.
| | 07:37 | The only thing you have to watch for if
you go that high is that you may start
| | 07:40 | exposing little areas
inside the white of the eye.
| | 07:44 | Actually though, I think this looks
pretty, so I'll take it to 4, click OK.
| | 07:48 | And then I also want to soften the
edges just a little bit, and I'm going to do
| | 07:52 | that by going to the Filter menu,
choosing Blur, and choosing Gaussian Blur;
| | 07:56 | Shift+F7, if you loaded dekeKeys.
| | 07:59 | And that's going to blur those edges.
| | 08:01 | Right now I'm blurring to the tune of 2 pixels.
| | 08:04 | I think that's a little much.
| | 08:05 | I'm going to take it down to 1 pixel.
| | 08:06 | I just want a little bit of softness. Click OK.
| | 08:10 | Now, if you find that you still have
tiny little areas like, let's zoom in on
| | 08:14 | this right-hand either, if you find
you have little areas that are exposed of
| | 08:18 | the whites of the eyes, you can fill
those in by taking advantage of a tool
| | 08:23 | that's available here in the Blur tool slot.
| | 08:25 | Click and hold and choose the Smudge tool.
| | 08:28 | And then, I'll increases the size of
my cursor, and I'm going to take it
| | 08:32 | up let's say to about something like 40
pixels should do me, Hardness of 0% is fine.
| | 08:39 | And then I'm going to click and drag
down just a little bit in order to smear
| | 08:44 | that mask down, and I might smear
it up too, to the cover up that area.
| | 08:49 | You don't want to do too much
smeary, just tiny, tiny little drags.
| | 08:53 | I'll take this down as well,
just a little bit more.
| | 08:55 | Let's see how things look over here.
| | 08:57 | They actually look pretty darn good.
| | 08:59 | Other little tiny blemishes, we're
going to fill in with layer Effects.
| | 09:02 | So you don't have to make it exactly right.
| | 09:04 | You just have to get it approximately
right, which my mask is, it looks pretty
| | 09:08 | darn good, so I'll go ahead and zoom out.
| | 09:09 | Those are the scary big irises fit
inside of her eyes like super big
| | 09:15 | painful contact lenses.
| | 09:17 | In the next exercise, we'll begin to
turn these blobs into credible eyeballs.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with clipping-mask layers| 00:00 | I have saved my progress as Masked eyes.psd.
| | 00:03 | And so far we've done a terrific job
of copying and scaling these irises and
| | 00:07 | masking them inside the eyes.
| | 00:10 | However, it all looks
pretty painful at this point.
| | 00:13 | And we don't want it to look like she
has got these strange shells in her eyes.
| | 00:18 | We want the real Na'vi eyes, these
beautiful, glowing, all-knowing peaceful eyes
| | 00:24 | of the wonderfully superior Na'vi people.
| | 00:27 | I'll switch back here, to the Masked eyes image.
| | 00:30 | What we're going to do is build up a
series of layers, all of which are very
| | 00:33 | simple to create, but they blend
together to create more volumetric eyes that
| | 00:38 | look like they are more at home and
more at peace inside the creature.
| | 00:42 | So I am going to scroll down my layers
and I am going to turn on the blue group
| | 00:45 | here, so that we have a
better sense of where we're going.
| | 00:48 | Then I'll scroll back up so that we can see
these layers inside of the eye layers folder.
| | 00:53 | And I am going to turn on this layer
right here, overlays, and I am going to
| | 00:57 | click on it to make it active.
| | 00:58 | Now, could not be a sloppier layer as you can
see, could not have been easier to create either.
| | 01:02 | I just went up to the Layers panel menu.
| | 01:05 | I choose the New layer command or pressed
Ctrl+Shift and Command+Shift down on the Mac.
| | 01:09 | Called it whatever it was I wanted
to call it and then painted it on it.
| | 01:12 | And I painted on this
layer using the Brush tool.
| | 01:16 | So I'll go ahead and select the Brush tool.
| | 01:18 | Notice I have already made my
foreground color white, you can see that I am
| | 01:21 | painting in white here.
| | 01:23 | I have got a very soft brush at work,
so it's pretty big, size of a 150
| | 01:28 | pixels, Hardness of 0%.
| | 01:29 | The specific settings don't matter
that much, I probably changed them half a
| | 01:32 | dozen times as I was working.
| | 01:35 | I might have painted it at 100% Opacity,
sometimes, other times I reduce the Opacity value.
| | 01:41 | You see that Opacity value
right there in the Options bar.
| | 01:44 | You can reduce it to anything you like,
and you can do that, by the way, from
| | 01:48 | the keyboard when it's not active,
just by pressing a number key.
| | 01:51 | So if I pressed 5, I'd get 50% Opacity.
| | 01:54 | Paint away at this low Opacity value.
| | 01:57 | And then, to create these holes, I just
painted with the Eraser tool, which you
| | 02:01 | get by pressing the E key.
| | 02:03 | Now, in an earlier Avatar exercise I was
telling you, don't erase pixels because
| | 02:07 | that's a destructive modification, you
want to use a layer mask instead, which
| | 02:11 | is true, unless you just have
a trash layer, like this one.
| | 02:15 | Because you can always paint things
back in if you want to any old time.
| | 02:18 | So it's not like you need to go to all
the discipline of layer masking a layer
| | 02:22 | that looks like this.
| | 02:24 | But notice, I can go
ahead and enlarge my cursor.
| | 02:27 | So I'll change that size value
to something like 50, whatever.
| | 02:30 | Reduce the Hardness down to 0%,
and then paint away in order to erase
| | 02:35 | portions of this layer. Then what I did?
| | 02:39 | And this is a more critical thing
that makes this layer work for us.
| | 02:42 | I changed the Blend mode from Normal to Overlay.
| | 02:45 | When you paint with white on an
overlay layer, you end up getting an effect
| | 02:50 | that's a lot like dodging, with the Dodge tool.
| | 02:52 | It's not the same thing, but it's very similar.
| | 02:55 | And so we end up creating a layer
of brightening, as you can see here.
| | 02:58 | So this is without that
layer, this is with that layer.
| | 03:01 | Now, you may say, hey Deke!
| | 03:03 | This layer looks terrible buddy,
because you've got this big stripe down this
| | 03:07 | poor Na'vi's nose now, and we've got this
white powder puff on the bridge of the nose.
| | 03:13 | What's going on?
| | 03:14 | Well, we want to isolate our changes to
just inside of the iris, and you do that
| | 03:18 | by creating what's called a Clipping Mask.
| | 03:20 | So currently, the overlays layer is active.
| | 03:23 | I am now going to go up to the layer
menu and I am going to choose Create
| | 03:27 | Clipping Mask, or I could try out
that keyboard shortcut cut, Ctrl+Alt+G,
| | 03:30 | Command+Option+G. And that will go
ahead, as you can see here, it will indent
| | 03:35 | that overlays layer, we have
got a little arrow to show that.
| | 03:38 | We are only seeing the contents of
the overlays layer inside of the masked
| | 03:42 | eyeballs, inside of the new irises layer.
| | 03:45 | Outside, we are not seeing anything,
so everything matches perfectly.
| | 03:48 | Now I am going to turn on the Pupil
Eliminator, and the Pupil Eliminator does
| | 03:53 | just what it sounds like it does.
| | 03:56 | It's there just to
eliminate those pupils right there.
| | 04:00 | I just wanted to downplay them a little bit.
| | 04:02 | And all I did, this is just
terrible work, quite frankly.
| | 04:06 | It just shows you what kind of murder
you can get away with inside of Photoshop.
| | 04:09 | I grab the Brush tool, I set it to white.
| | 04:11 | I dabbed at the pupils a couple of
times using different kinds of brushes, as
| | 04:17 | you can see here, with a very low Opacity value;
| | 04:19 | I think I was at something like 20%
Opacity or something along those lines.
| | 04:24 | And then all I do, I am not even going
to change the Blend mode on this guy, I
| | 04:28 | am just going to go ahead and
add it to the Clipping Mask.
| | 04:30 | And I can do that, not only by choosing
that command from the layer menu that we
| | 04:33 | saw a moment ago, Create Clipping Mask,
I can also, if I like, I can press and
| | 04:38 | hold the Alt Key or the Option key,
and I can click on this horizontal line.
| | 04:42 | And notice what happens, if I Alt+Click
here on a PC or Option+Click on a Mac,
| | 04:45 | it goes ahead and indents Pupil
Eliminator along with overlays and puts it
| | 04:49 | inside of the irises.
| | 04:51 | Now, it's not a perfect match, you can
see that I am not absolutely perfectly
| | 04:55 | getting rid of the irises.
| | 04:56 | This is without that layer,
this is with that layer.
| | 05:00 | But it does a pretty good job of
downplaying, sort of diffusing those pupils,
| | 05:06 | as well as getting rid of this weird, sort of
melanomic spot that's on the iris down here.
| | 05:12 | At least, that's the way it looks now that
I have increased the size of the darn thing.
| | 05:15 | All right, we need to add shadows to
the iris, and that's done also, quite
| | 05:20 | effectively, as you can
see, by a blob of a layer.
| | 05:22 | I am going to go ahead and turn it
on and it looks like this, I just
| | 05:25 | painted with green.
| | 05:27 | Why did I paint with green?
| | 05:28 | Complimentary color to the orange
that's going on inside the irises
| | 05:32 | currently, that way we are going to
get a nicely mixed shadow, but we need to
| | 05:37 | change the Blend mode.
| | 05:38 | And I am going to change that Blend mode
by going up to the Blend mode popup menu
| | 05:41 | here and choosing Multiply , like so.
| | 05:45 | And that will burn in those shadows
into those irises, and of course into the
| | 05:50 | flesh at this point. All right!
| | 05:52 | Now, I am going to turn on more
shadows, and you might say, hey Deke!
| | 05:55 | Don't you want to clip that? Yes, I do.
| | 05:56 | We'll come back to it in a moment.
| | 05:58 | I am going to turn on More Shadows, go
ahead and click on it to make it active.
| | 06:02 | Actually, let's turn off Shadows for a
second, so that you can see, this is a
| | 06:05 | low Opacity layer of that same green.
| | 06:08 | And when I say low Opacity, I mean I
painted it with a low Opacity value, using
| | 06:12 | the Brush tool once again.
| | 06:14 | And I am going to change the Blend mode
associated with that layer to Multiply
| | 06:17 | as well, so that we are
burning that one in. All right!
| | 06:20 | Now I am going to switch back to the
Rectangular Marquee tool, just so that I
| | 06:24 | have my cross cursor.
| | 06:25 | And I am going to turn on both of
these layers, and I am going to select them
| | 06:28 | both by clicking on one,
Shift+clicking on the other.
| | 06:31 | You can add more than one layer to a
Clipping Mask at a time by selecting them
| | 06:36 | and then going up to the layer menu and
choosing that command, Create Clipping
| | 06:40 | Mask, and that's going to
add those guys to the mix.
| | 06:43 | Now, there is one more Clip layer
that I want to add to the stack.
| | 06:47 | You can see though that things are
going pretty good at this point in time, not
| | 06:50 | perfect, but they are looking pretty darn good.
| | 06:52 | We'll refine things using some layer
effects in a future exercise, but for now,
| | 06:57 | I just want to lighten up the eyes,
and I am going to do that by clicking on
| | 07:01 | More Shadows to make it active.
| | 07:02 | I am going to bring up my Adjustments
panel, which you can also get by pressing
| | 07:06 | the F10 key, if you loaded dekeKeys.
| | 07:09 | And I am going to press the Alt key or
the Option key on the Mac and click on
| | 07:12 | the second button on the top
row, which is the Levels button.
| | 07:16 | Brings up the New layer dialog box of
course, since I Alt or Option clicked.
| | 07:19 | And I'll call this new layer lighten.
| | 07:21 | And then, I am going to turn on
this check box, Use Previous layer to
| | 07:24 | Create Clipping Mask.
| | 07:25 | So that will add this Adjustment
layer to the Clipping Mask stack.
| | 07:28 | And I'll click OK in order
to accept that New layer.
| | 07:31 | You may recall I was telling you
that Adjustment layers affect all layers
| | 07:34 | below them by default.
| | 07:36 | However, if you include them in a
Clipping Mask, they only affect the layers
| | 07:40 | insides that Clipping Mask. All right!
| | 07:42 | I am going to go ahead and increase this
first value, the black value, to 20, so
| | 07:47 | anything with the luminance
level of 20 or darker becomes black.
| | 07:50 | And then I'm going to tab over to
the white value, so I press the Tab key
| | 07:54 | twice, and I am going to press Shift+Down Arrow
three times in a row, to reduce that value to 225.
| | 08:00 | So I am saying anything with the luminance
level of 225 or a lighter will become white.
| | 08:05 | And now let's lighten up the Midtones
here by pressing Shift+Tab in order to
| | 08:10 | step back to that gamma value,
that's that middle value right there.
| | 08:14 | I'll press Shift+Up Arrow three times
in a row in order to raise that value to
| | 08:19 | 1.3, which is going to brighten the
mid level colors inside the image.
| | 08:25 | And then I'll hide the Adjustments panel.
| | 08:27 | And this is the difference this layer makes;
| | 08:28 | this is before and this is after.
| | 08:31 | So just brightens things up a little,
but does a heck of a job of making these
| | 08:35 | irises look more volumetric.
| | 08:37 | I'll go ahead and turn off
all of these Clipped layers.
| | 08:39 | This is the way these irises looked at
the beginning of the exercise and this is
| | 08:45 | the way they look now, thanks to a
little bit of painting on new layers and a
| | 08:50 | little bit of work with Blend modes,
specifically Overlay for the Dodging effect
| | 08:54 | and Multiply for the Shadows, and then
of course a Clipped Adjustment layer to
| | 08:58 | brighten the whole thing.
| | 08:59 | We still have some work to do.
| | 09:00 | We are going to apply some layer
Effects in the very next exercise.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Shading with layer effects| 00:00 | I've saved my progress as Clipped
irises.psd, so called because the irises
| | 00:05 | comprise a series of layers that are all
blended together using a Clipping Mask.
| | 00:10 | Now, I am going to scroll down the list a
little bit here to this layer, darker whites.
| | 00:15 | Incidentally, I don't really need this
irises layer anymore, these are the old irises.
| | 00:19 | I am going to get rid of them by
clicking on the layer and pressing the
| | 00:22 | Backspace key or the Delete key on
the Mac, that just throws the layer
| | 00:26 | away, very easy to do.
| | 00:28 | Now I am going to go to darker whites,
because notice that the whites of the
| | 00:30 | eyes are hyper illuminated behind the irises.
| | 00:33 | So I need to darken them up, and I
did that using this darker whites layer.
| | 00:38 | So again, I went ahead and created a new layer.
| | 00:41 | This time, by the way, I used the Lasso
tool, actually the Polygonal Lasso tool
| | 00:46 | in order to draw a selection outline
inside of the black area of the eye.
| | 00:52 | So in other words, right
where she has got that mascara.
| | 00:56 | Then I went ahead and used a few commands.
| | 00:58 | Actually, I'll go ahead and draw a shape
right here, so I can show you what I did.
| | 01:02 | I used a couple of commands under the
Select menu, then under the Modify submenu.
| | 01:07 | I first employed the Smooth command,
which rounds off the corner, so it does to
| | 01:12 | a selection outline what the Median
Filter does to a layer mask, goes ahead and
| | 01:17 | rounds off those corners.
| | 01:18 | And then, I follow it up with Feather,
which softens the outlines, it blurs
| | 01:22 | them, and that's analogous to what
Gaussian Blur does to a layer mask.
| | 01:27 | Anyway, I'll go ahead and Escape out of
there and press Ctrl+D, Command+D on the
| | 01:31 | Mac in order to deselect that region.
| | 01:33 | Then I went and grabbed my Brush tool,
I got a shade of gray, painted inside of
| | 01:39 | those selection outlines, and that's
how I arrived at this layer. All right!
| | 01:43 | But to really make it work for us, we'll
switch back to the Rectangular Marquee tool.
| | 01:47 | I am going to go up here to the Blend
mode pop-up menu and choose the Multiply
| | 01:51 | command in order to burn
that darkness into the eyes.
| | 01:55 | We now have much more credible colors
for the whites of the eyes, because it
| | 01:59 | looks like they're in shadow,
which is great, exactly what I want.
| | 02:03 | Now, the irises still needs some work here.
| | 02:05 | So I am going to click on that new
irises layer, and what we need to do is shade
| | 02:09 | the irises some more, again, so they
feel more at home inside of these eyes.
| | 02:14 | That's an ongoing process, you have to
keep working it, until it starts looking
| | 02:18 | the way you want it to.
| | 02:20 | At this point, having these many clip
layers here, I am now going switchover to
| | 02:25 | layer Effects, because using layer
Effects you can add things like Drop Shadows
| | 02:30 | and Glows and so on.
| | 02:31 | What I want is an Inner Glow effect.
| | 02:34 | So I am going to go down to this little FX
icon, and I'm going to choose Inner Glow.
| | 02:39 | This may seem like a strange idea,
especially given that it produces a horrible
| | 02:45 | effect right off the bat there.
| | 02:47 | But that's because I don't want
a Glow, I want an Inner Shadow.
| | 02:50 | So I could go up to Inner Shadow
of course, but that gives you a
| | 02:53 | directional shadow effect.
| | 02:54 | I want an omnidirectional effect, in
other words, that's tracing evenly around
| | 02:59 | the entire perimeter of the layer.
| | 03:01 | So I am going to go with Inner Glow,
and I'm going to change the color.
| | 03:04 | I'll click on that color swatch.
| | 03:06 | I could move my cursor outside the
dialog box, in which case I get an
| | 03:09 | Eyedropper, and I could click
somewhere in order to load that color.
| | 03:14 | You will see the loaded color here
in this new swatch, here inside the
| | 03:19 | Color Picker dialog box.
| | 03:21 | But I am just going to dial in a color that
came up with an advanced 40 for the Hue value;
| | 03:25 | H is Hue.
| | 03:26 | S is Saturation, I'll take that up to
60, and then B is Brightness, and I am
| | 03:31 | going to take that
Brightness value down to 20 , like so.
| | 03:35 | This will be our Inner Glow
color, so quite dark. Click OK;
| | 03:39 | it doesn't look like anything right now,
because we need to multiply it into
| | 03:42 | place by changing the Blend
mode from Screen to Multiply.
| | 03:45 | So whenever you're doing
shadows, you want to Multiply.
| | 03:48 | You might go with something like
Linear Burn on the rare occasion.
| | 03:51 | Whenever you're doing Glows, you try
Screen, and then if you want more of a
| | 03:55 | glowy effect, you go to Linear Dodge,
it's pretty much the way it's organized.
| | 03:59 | Anyway, I am going to choose Multiply,
and then I am going to increase the Size
| | 04:02 | value quite dramatically.
| | 04:04 | I am going to take that
up to 35 pixels , like so.
| | 04:07 | You can now see that Inner Glow
effect at work inside of the iris.
| | 04:11 | This is what the iris looks like
without the effect, this is what it looks
| | 04:15 | like with the effect.
| | 04:16 | So it looks much better now.
| | 04:17 | Now, I think we've gone too far, so
I am going to take that Opacity value
| | 04:21 | right there, down to 35%.
| | 04:23 | So we have just a little bit of that Inner
Glow at work or really that Inner Shadow.
| | 04:28 | That's not enough of course, so let's
heap on a little more shadow in the form
| | 04:32 | this time of an Inner Shadow.
| | 04:34 | So if I click on Inner Shadow, I am
going to add an Inner Shadow effect.
| | 04:37 | I can even drag it around, notice that,
I can drag that effect directly inside
| | 04:41 | the image window if I want.
| | 04:44 | Quite amazingly, I almost dragged it
to exactly the angle I'm looking for.
| | 04:48 | I am going to take that angle
value actually down to -18 degrees.
| | 04:54 | You know what, I actually probably
messed everything, up because I have Use
| | 04:58 | Global Light turned on, and that's
going to be a big mistake for me.
| | 05:01 | So what I am going to do, I am going
to go ahead and press the Alt key or
| | 05:04 | the Option key on the Mac and click
on the Reset button right there, in
| | 05:08 | order to restore the original settings,
that means I wiped out my previous
| | 05:11 | work, but that's okay.
| | 05:13 | That's better than making a
mess of the Global Light Source.
| | 05:16 | Because if I changed the Global Light
Source from 70 degrees to something else, I am
| | 05:19 | going to mess up some layer Effects
that are at work on other layers, and I
| | 05:22 | don't want that to happen.
| | 05:24 | So let's go back to Inner Glow.
| | 05:26 | I apologize, going to reestablish things,
but sometimes you make mistakes, the
| | 05:29 | best of us make mistakes in Photoshop.
| | 05:32 | All you've got to do is take care of them.
| | 05:33 | So 40, 60, 20 for H, S, and B. Click OK in
order to change that value. 35% for Opacity.
| | 05:40 | I believe I was using the Multiply Blend
mode, and I took the Size value up to 35.
| | 05:45 | So easy to reestablish those settings.
| | 05:47 | Now I'll go Inner Shadow, and before I
make a mess of things, I'll turn off Use
| | 05:51 | Global Light, now I can do whatever I
want without messing up other layers.
| | 05:55 | I will change this value to -18 degrees
because that's what I recall working for me.
| | 06:00 | I'm also going to change my Inner Shadow color;
| | 06:03 | you can see that it's already
set to Multiply, so that's fine.
| | 06:06 | But I am going to change the color to 45 for
Hue, 50 for Saturation, and 30 for Brightness.
| | 06:12 | This is all based on trial and error on my
part and lifting colors using this Eyedropper.
| | 06:17 | Click OK.
| | 06:18 | I am going to change my Distance value
to 19 pixels, and I am going to increase
| | 06:23 | the Size to 35 pixels.
| | 06:25 | And now what's happening, you can see, is
the shadow is coming from this direction.
| | 06:29 | So there's the shadow as cast by a
light that's over here, as indicated by
| | 06:34 | this Angle value, -18 degrees.
| | 06:36 | So it goes this direction, that is the
light sources over here casting a shadow
| | 06:40 | that direction, against the light.
| | 06:43 | And because I think I've gone too far
with this modification, I'm going to take
| | 06:47 | the Opacity value down to 45%.
| | 06:50 | Now, finally, where this exercise is
concerned, I want to cast a little bit of a
| | 06:54 | shadow behind the irises.
| | 06:56 | Now, it's not like the irises
naturally cast shadows, but there should be a
| | 07:01 | little bit of darkness around them.
| | 07:02 | So I am going to go ahead and turn on
Outer Glow for this purpose. Click on it.
| | 07:07 | Again, we are getting a glowy effect, which
is not what I want, I want a shading effect.
| | 07:11 | So I'm going to dial in a dark color,
though this time quite a different value.
| | 07:15 | I am going to go with a sort of a sea
green at a 190 degrees for the Hue value, 20% for
| | 07:21 | the Saturation value, and 40 for
that Brightness value right there.
| | 07:26 | You can see we get this kind
of dark turquoise. Click OK.
| | 07:30 | Change the Blend mode from Screen to, as
always for the shading effects, Multiply.
| | 07:36 | I'm going to take the Opacity value
down slightly to 70% and then I am going to
| | 07:41 | increase that Size value to 16 pixels.
| | 07:44 | And now we can see, take a look at my
iris out there in the Image window, this
| | 07:49 | is what the iris looks like without
that bit of Outer Glow there, this is what
| | 07:53 | it looks like with the Outer Glow.
| | 07:55 | It helps to create a more integrated eye effect.
| | 07:57 | And I'll click OK in order
accept that modification.
| | 08:00 | Now, we are not done.
| | 08:02 | I went ahead and added
three layer Effects so far.
| | 08:05 | There are still two more that I
want to add, and we will do so in the
| | 08:08 | next exercise.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Color and highlight effects| 00:00 | I am still working inside the Clipped
irises.psd file, I have added a handful of
| | 00:05 | layer effects as you saw
in the previous exercise.
| | 00:07 | I am going to add two more, one is the
Color Overlay effect which helps us to
| | 00:12 | replace the colors inside the eyes a
little bit, and then the other is Satin,
| | 00:17 | which is not an effect you use very
often but it's going to come in handy here,
| | 00:20 | I am just going to apply a light helping,
this is subtle helping of Satin to the
| | 00:25 | eyes in order to add some full reflectivity.
| | 00:29 | All right, so my new irises layer is
still selected here inside the layers
| | 00:32 | Palette, I am going to dropdown to the
?x icon, and this time I am going to
| | 00:36 | choose Color Overlay and I was
telling you that the Na'vi have the sort of
| | 00:41 | greenish golden eyes and so we need to
dial-in a greenish golden color here and
| | 00:47 | I am going to click on this red
color and switch it out with something
| | 00:51 | different, and in this case the color
that I came up with has a Hue value of 75
| | 00:55 | degrees, a Saturation value of 30% and
a Brightness of 100%, I guess that was
| | 01:01 | already dialed in, looks like this,
so this pale green color, click OK.
| | 01:06 | Notice here inside Photoshop CS5 if
you like your new color so much that you
| | 01:09 | want to use it all the time, you can
click on Make Default so that's always your
| | 01:13 | default color when you
create a new Color Overlay layer;
| | 01:16 | kind of neat if you are doing
repetitive work inside the program.
| | 01:20 | Then I am going to change my Blend
mode from Normal to Color, because I just
| | 01:24 | want to color the eyes, and that's too
much we are really going hog-wild with
| | 01:29 | replacing the color in both
of these irises as you can see.
| | 01:32 | So I am going to take my Opacity
value down to 60%, like so, and that
| | 01:39 | looks pretty good to me.
| | 01:40 | Now then for this wacky Satin effect,
we will just preview it on one eye.
| | 01:45 | I will go ahead and click on Satin to
turn it On, and by default we have got
| | 01:49 | black as our Satin color.
| | 01:51 | I am going to go ahead and click on
that color and let's replace it with white,
| | 01:56 | just by clicking in this upper-left
corner of the color field and I will click
| | 02:00 | OK to accept that modification.
| | 02:02 | Then I am going to raise the Opacity
value to 100% so we can really see it and I
| | 02:06 | am going to change to Blend mode to
the hyperlight mode inside of Photoshop
| | 02:10 | which is Linear Dodge (Add), so we
will go ahead and choose that mode.
| | 02:14 | Now let's change the Contour from what
it currently is that Gaussian contour to
| | 02:19 | this guy right there Ring - Double.
| | 02:21 | So go ahead and click on it and then we get
this double ring effect which is just insane.
| | 02:26 | Now notice I can drag inside of the
Image window in order to create different
| | 02:31 | effects, and that will give you
different angle and distance values.
| | 02:34 | If you take a look at the layer style
dialog box you can see the Angle and
| | 02:38 | Distance values changing on-the-fly.
| | 02:41 | The values that I ended up coming up
with just again through trial-and-error are
| | 02:45 | 176 for the Angle value, and then let
me get my Cursor out of the way there, 17
| | 02:52 | for the Distance value and then 76 for
the Size value, like so, and then we get
| | 02:58 | that lovely Satin effect and you
may look at that and say, my gosh!
| | 03:03 | we have a crazy hypnotized Na'vi now,
that's terrible, but what I am going to do
| | 03:08 | is take that Opacity
value down to 8%, that's all.
| | 03:13 | Just a little bit of Satin going on and
now let me show you the difference, this
| | 03:16 | is without Satin, this is with Satin.
| | 03:19 | So very subtle application of the Satin
layer effect here inside Photoshop and
| | 03:25 | click OK in order to accept that modification.
| | 03:29 | Now at this point, we need to add the
pupils and we most certainly will, but
| | 03:34 | before we do I sort of feel like we
need to do a little refinement to the mask,
| | 03:38 | because the iris is cutting
into the edge of the eye here.
| | 03:42 | Now that I have added all these
different effects and now that we see how the
| | 03:46 | finished irises blend with the rest of
the image it's obvious that I need to
| | 03:50 | refine this layer mask a little bit,
and I am going to refine this mask and
| | 03:55 | the knockout layer actually in a way
that will produce more pleasing effects
| | 03:59 | in the next exercise.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Refining layer masks| 00:00 | I have saved my progress as All iris
layer FX.psd, so-called because I have
| | 00:05 | applied all five of my layer
effects to the new irises layer.
| | 00:08 | Now I need to refine the layer mask
that's associated with this layer so that I
| | 00:12 | don't have the irises cutting in to
this black flesh right here, and that's
| | 00:18 | somebody you typically have
to do inside of Photoshop.
| | 00:20 | You will create a layer mask, you will
employ it, you will make changes to other
| | 00:24 | layers and then it will dawn on you that
your layer mask needs to be enhanced in
| | 00:28 | some way or other to keep up with the changes.
| | 00:31 | So I am going to click on this layer
mask icon to make it active, that's very
| | 00:35 | important because if you started painting
on the irises you will mess everything up.
| | 00:39 | So click on the layer mask thumbnail,
it will become highlighted, you will see
| | 00:42 | a double-box effect.
| | 00:44 | Then I want you to get the Brush tool if
you are working along with me, click on
| | 00:48 | it, and the size I am
going to work with is this.
| | 00:50 | I have set the Size to 50 pixels and the
Hardness to 75%, otherwise we are using
| | 00:55 | a Round Brush, Opacity is set to 100%,
and you can restore the Opacity just by
| | 01:00 | pressing the 0 key on the keyboard.
| | 01:02 | Then I want you to make sure that the
foreground color is set to Black as it is for me.
| | 01:07 | Now I could begin painting inside of
this mask, like so, but it's kind of
| | 01:13 | hard to control my modifications, and notice
as I do, I want you to see a couple of things.
| | 01:17 | Not only do I begin virtually erasing
the irises, obviously I can always bring
| | 01:22 | them back by painting with White, but I
also change the parameter of the layer
| | 01:26 | which ends up affecting all the layer
effects because inner shadow, the two
| | 01:30 | glows, and the Satin effect
are all Parameter effects;
| | 01:33 | that is they trace around the edge, and
Color Overlay fills the interior of layer.
| | 01:38 | So they all get affected, they all update
right there live on-the-fly, it's great.
| | 01:42 | However, what I have done is not great
it's basically because I don't have any
| | 01:47 | constraints going on.
| | 01:48 | I am not able to limit my
modification so I am just painting free-form.
| | 01:52 | If I was painting with the tablet
that might be okay I still probably won't
| | 01:55 | work this way though.
| | 01:56 | I am going to press Ctrl+Z, Command+Z
on the Mac to undo that modification, and
| | 02:00 | here is what I am going to do, I am
going to click here, like so, I just clicked
| | 02:04 | and I am going to Shift+Click right about there.
| | 02:07 | It went too far with it, but what that
does is it goes ahead and connects the
| | 02:11 | Click and Shift+Click points
with a straight line of paint.
| | 02:14 | Now I did carve off too much so I will try
to get in click here and Shift+Click there.
| | 02:19 | so I will just try to make small
modifications, click here, Shift+Click here, so
| | 02:23 | you can see I am just kind
of scalping little areas.
| | 02:25 | Click, Shift+Click and same over in
this area, and finally I will do it right
| | 02:30 | about there in order to trim that
part of the iris in a little bit.
| | 02:35 | Let's do it at the top of the iris too,
click and Shift+Click, like so, to carve
| | 02:39 | off that top, may be click
and Shift+Click a little more.
| | 02:42 | You don't want to end up with any
corners so you want to take it easy and
| | 02:45 | you probably want to apply a lot of clicks
and Shift+Clicks in order to get this done.
| | 02:50 | Anyway, that looks pretty good for that eye.
| | 02:51 | I am pretty happy with that, maybe
a couple of clicks at the top here.
| | 02:55 | Now I need to do the right-hand eye,
her left by clicking at this location and
| | 03:00 | Shift+Clicking right there.
| | 03:02 | Click here looks like it will work
pretty well, Shift+Click , like so.
| | 03:05 | Click and Shift+Click and on and on like that.
| | 03:09 | Then up at the top click and Shift+Click
once than maybe twice in order to carve
| | 03:15 | off the top there a little bit.
| | 03:17 | Then against nose click and Shift+Click,
might be necessary, but now that I look
| | 03:23 | at it, it looks like I bid in too much,
so forget about it, it's fine as is, and
| | 03:27 | that's the irises for you,
they look great to me.
| | 03:30 | Now there is another part of this image
that needs a little bit of refinement,
| | 03:33 | and this is the kind of thing you
discover as you work through an image that
| | 03:37 | changes you made a long,
long time ago don't quite work.
| | 03:40 | I am going to zoom out a click here and
I am going to press the M key to switch
| | 03:44 | back to my Rectangular Marquee tool,
Spacebar+Drag down to the bottom of the
| | 03:49 | image, let's go ahead and zoom back in
actually, and check this out, this little
| | 03:53 | ratty edge that's on her arm, in case
you are not sure of the context here, this
| | 03:59 | is her shoulder, and it's a function of
what's happening in the blue group here.
| | 04:04 | So I am going to twirl it open, and it's all
part of this blueness mask right down there.
| | 04:09 | You can see that if I turn this
layer Off then that bad edge goes away.
| | 04:13 | If I turn it back On it comes back,
so it must be a function of the mask.
| | 04:18 | So what I am going to do is click on
the mask to select it, that layer mask
| | 04:21 | thumbnail right there, and then I am
going to grab my standard Lasso tool, which
| | 04:25 | I can get by pressing the L key, and I
am going to drag around this area because
| | 04:30 | this is the ratty area that I don't like,
and in fact I might add a little bit,
| | 04:34 | I am Shift+Dragging up and into this
area little bit as well, so I have got this
| | 04:38 | whole region selected.
| | 04:40 | And just to make sure that we have
smooth transitions between whatever it is I
| | 04:44 | do to this selection and the area around
it I am going to feather this selection
| | 04:48 | by going to the Select menu, choosing
Modify and choosing the Feather command,
| | 04:53 | and I will go ahead and apply a
Feather value of let's say 4 pixels.
| | 04:57 | Just something to generalize this
selection, click OK, that doesn't do anything
| | 05:01 | to the selected area, it just
affects the selection outline.
| | 05:04 | Now let's go up to the Filter menu,
choose Blur and choose Gaussian Blur,
| | 05:09 | Shift+F7 if you loaded dekeKeys, and I
am going to enter a Blur value, 4 pixels,
| | 05:14 | and notice that that blurs that badness away.
| | 05:18 | Not it makes a kind of mess of the
mask as you can see here inside the
| | 05:21 | Preview, who cares.
| | 05:23 | What we care about is what it does to the image.
| | 05:25 | As long as it makes the image
better then it supports the composition.
| | 05:29 | So I will click OK in order to apply
that modification, Ctrl+D or Command +D
| | 05:33 | on the Mac in order to deselect the
image, and now let's zoom out and you can
| | 05:36 | see that that shoulder looks much
better than it did before and the irises
| | 05:41 | look quite good as well.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Fabricating the highlights in the pupils| 00:00 | I've saved my progress as far as
Nicely refined masks.psd and everything
| | 00:04 | looks hunky-dory except we're missing an obvious
ingredient in these eyes and that's the pupils.
| | 00:11 | If you take a look at the Final Na'vi
here, we've got these big ginormous pupils
| | 00:15 | because they live in this misty gloomy
world I guess and their eyes need a lot
| | 00:20 | of light in order to cast
an image onto the retina.
| | 00:23 | So, let's switch back to nicely
refined masks and as opposed to using the
| | 00:28 | original girl's original pupils which
are of no use to us because they were so
| | 00:33 | tiny and they're all squished now anyway.
| | 00:36 | I just went ahead and drew a couple of
black circles and I did that by the way
| | 00:41 | I'll go ahead and turn on that
new pupils layer so you can see it.
| | 00:44 | I'll click on the new pupils layer to
make it active and all I did, this one's
| | 00:49 | definitely not rocket science, I chose
the Elliptical Marquee tool, I went ahead
| | 00:53 | and drew a circle, so I'm pressing the
Shift key in order to constrain the shape
| | 00:57 | of that ellipse, I press the dekeKeys,
deke is in default to make my foreground
| | 01:03 | color black and then I pressed Alt+Backspace
or Option+Delete to fill that
| | 01:08 | selection with black.
| | 01:09 | End of story, that's all I did, which is
why they don't look like much quite frankly.
| | 01:14 | I'll undo the third eye there by
pressing Ctrl+Z or Command+Z on a Mac and I'll
| | 01:19 | click off in order to deselect the image.
| | 01:21 | We don't have any integration going on at
this point time between the pupils and the eyes.
| | 01:27 | So, I'm going to zoom in so that we
can take in the pupils in glorious detail
| | 01:32 | here, and what I'm going to do is
take advantage of luminance blending.
| | 01:36 | So, with the new pupils layer selected,
I'm going to go up to the Layers panel
| | 01:40 | menu and I'm going to choose Blending
Options or you can press Ctrl+Shift+O, if
| | 01:45 | you loaded D keys, Command+Shift+O on
the Mac, and that brings up the big old
| | 01:49 | layer Style dialog box.
| | 01:51 | As we have before I'm going to take
advantage of this Underlying layers slider
| | 01:55 | bar and what I want to do is I want
to let the highlights underneath the
| | 01:59 | pupils show through.
| | 02:01 | So that means I would drag this white
slider triangle over to the left and you
| | 02:05 | can see if I drag it over to something
like 185, I'm revealing an awful lot of
| | 02:10 | highlights in this location here
covering up an awful lot of pupil.
| | 02:15 | However, I'm also getting some very jagged
transitions and this just looks terrible.
| | 02:19 | So, I want to move these halves of
the triangle apart from each other, I'll
| | 02:23 | press the Alt key or the Option key on
the Mac and drag off the right half of
| | 02:28 | this triangle to the right until I get to 240.
| | 02:32 | So, what this is saying is from a
luminance level of zero which is black up to
| | 02:37 | 185 which is quite light, we are
seeing pupil and that's associated with the
| | 02:43 | underlying stuff by the way.
| | 02:44 | So, we're seeing pupil over the darkest
stuff in the iris, and then, at 240 and
| | 02:50 | higher, the pupil becomes absolutely
transparent and 255 is white by the way, so
| | 02:55 | just this little area is
making the pupil transparent.
| | 02:59 | Then over the course of this entire
transitional area from 185 to 240, the
| | 03:03 | opacity of the pupils is slowly drifting off.
| | 03:07 | So, that's all we need to do there,
click OK, you can see that it has a great
| | 03:11 | effect on both pupils.
| | 03:12 | This is before and this is after.
| | 03:15 | Now, I think the pupils are too sharp.
| | 03:18 | At this point, they don't look all
that integrated into the iris after all,
| | 03:22 | there are to be a little drop-off
where the irises are dropping away
| | 03:26 | essentially to reveal the inside of
the eye, and we're going to achieve the
| | 03:31 | effect of a soft drop-off using
another layer effect and it's going to be a
| | 03:35 | familiar one actually.
| | 03:37 | I'm going to go ahead and click on
the fx icon and choose Outer Glow and
| | 03:42 | that's going to add a glow around the
pupil, a kind of corona and that's not
| | 03:45 | what we want at all.
| | 03:46 | So, I'm going to go and change the
color once again by clicking on that color
| | 03:50 | swatch, change it to that same
color we used earlier, 190, 20 and 40.
| | 03:56 | So 190 for Hue, 20 for
Saturation, 40 for Brightness, click OK.
| | 04:00 | I'm going to take the Opacity down a
little to 70% and more importantly at this
| | 04:06 | point I don't want the Glow, I want a Shadow.
| | 04:08 | So, I'm going to change the Blend
mode from Screen to Multiply, and we'll
| | 04:13 | get this effect here.
| | 04:14 | Now that's not enough of a glow, so
I'm going to raise the Size value to 14
| | 04:18 | pixels and I'm also going to take up
the Spread value which is going to fill up
| | 04:23 | the Size space a little more.
| | 04:25 | Tighten it up so it's not
quite so blurry, like so.
| | 04:28 | So just taking it up to 4% does the trick.
| | 04:31 | So 4 and 14 right there Technique
leave that set to Softer, we got this dark
| | 04:35 | turquoise Multiply 70% Opacity done,
click OK in order to accept that affect and
| | 04:42 | that's not quite enough of a
highlight in my opinion off these eyes.
| | 04:49 | I want a little more of a white burst going on.
| | 04:52 | So, what I'm going to do is I am
going to use the Color Range command in
| | 04:55 | order to select these highlights and
then I'll fill that area with white and
| | 05:00 | apply a blend mode.
| | 05:02 | So here it goes, first of all, I'm
going to switch over to the Rectangular
| | 05:04 | Marquee tool and you can do that by
pressing the M key and then I'm going to
| | 05:08 | draw a fairly tight selection around
these irises like so, I'm using the
| | 05:13 | Spacebar to align a little bit.
| | 05:14 | I want a little bit of extra
edge but not much like that.
| | 05:18 | That will constrain the Color Range command.
| | 05:21 | So Color Range will automatically
select inside of my current selection.
| | 05:25 | I'll go up to the Select menu and
choose Color Range or press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+O
| | 05:29 | or Command+Shift+Option+O on the Mac if
you loaded D keys, and then, I'm going
| | 05:34 | to switch my Selection Preview to None,
so I can see the image itself, I'll
| | 05:38 | click inside of that central highlight
and I might Shift+click as well inside of
| | 05:44 | the other highlight area or Shift+drag
across it like that, you can raise the
| | 05:48 | Fuzziness value if you want to, I'm
just going to take it up to about 60
| | 05:53 | actually works quite nicely. That's it;
| | 05:56 | click OK in order to accept
that selection as you see it there.
| | 06:01 | Now, I'm going to create a new layer,
actually I'm going to tuck up the layer
| | 06:04 | effects on pupils, and with new pupils
selected I'm going to press Ctrl+Shift+N
| | 06:09 | or Command+Shift+N on the Mac, in order
to create a new layer and I'm going to
| | 06:14 | go ahead and name this one highlights
and I'll click OK, and then I'm going to
| | 06:19 | fill this highlights layer, currently,
it doesn't have anything on it right now.
| | 06:22 | I'm going to fill it with white.
| | 06:24 | So, I'll press the dekeKeys in order
to establish my default foreground and
| | 06:27 | background colors, so the background
color's white and I'll press Ctrl+Backspace
| | 06:31 | or Command+Delete on a Mac to fill the
selection with white as we see it now.
| | 06:36 | Now I'll press Ctrl+D, Command+D on the
Mac to deselect the image and just for
| | 06:41 | larfs I'm going to change that blend
mode to the lightest blend mode there is
| | 06:46 | which is Linear Dodge, which will give
us the brightest possible highlights.
| | 06:50 | Now, that's not going to change
anything right off the bat with white, but it
| | 06:54 | will ensure that our next
step stays nice and bright.
| | 06:57 | I'm going to go up to the Filter menu
and choose Blur and then choose Gaussian
| | 07:01 | Blur, or press Shift+F7 if you
loaded D keys and I'm going to blur these
| | 07:07 | highlights to the tune of I
think about 2 pixels should do it.
| | 07:11 | That looks pretty darn good actually and at
I'll click OK in order accept that modification.
| | 07:15 | And now we have the pupils.
| | 07:18 | This is how the image looked without
the pupils, by the way with just these
| | 07:22 | strange glowing irises, and now we have
pupils which make these orbs look like a
| | 07:27 | real actual Na'vi eyes, just like in real life.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using a merged copy to sharpen| 00:00 | All right, at this point, the
eyes in general look pretty great.
| | 00:03 | I'd say they're 99% credible and I've
gone ahead and saved my progress by the
| | 00:08 | way, just in case you're
curious is Complete with pupils.psd.
| | 00:13 | My only concern at this point is
that the irises look a little soft by
| | 00:18 | comparison to the pores and the flesh
around them, especially when you look at
| | 00:23 | this wonderful series of creases under
this left-hand eye compared with the sort
| | 00:29 | of murky detail inside the iris,
might be nice to sharpen things up.
| | 00:34 | Now, there's a couple of different
ways that you can sharpen the product of a
| | 00:38 | lot of different layers working together.
| | 00:40 | One is to combine all of those layers
into a Smart Object and then apply a Smart
| | 00:45 | Filter, but it's really not worth it
for what we've done here to combine this
| | 00:50 | many layers, there'll be a ton of layers
here into a single Smart Object, and it
| | 00:55 | might start slowing us down.
| | 00:57 | Later I'll employ Smart Object for the
dragonfly effect, that'll be our final
| | 01:01 | step, but right now I
prefer to use another technique.
| | 01:04 | So, here's what I'm going to do.
| | 01:06 | I'm going to dropdown to the bottom of
the layers palette and I'm going to turn
| | 01:10 | off all the layers starting with darker whites.
| | 01:13 | So, I'm just going to
drag down on those eyeballs.
| | 01:16 | That'll turn all those layers off
because I just want to be able to see only the
| | 01:21 | things I'm going to sharpen and nothing else.
| | 01:24 | And then, I'm going to twirl open
new irises here by clicking on its down
| | 01:29 | pointing arrowhead and I'm going to turn
off the one Outer effect which is Outer
| | 01:33 | Glow, the other effects are inside the irises.
| | 01:36 | All right, now I'm going to take
everything that we're seeing and I'll make sure
| | 01:40 | that one of my visible
layers is on and highlights is on.
| | 01:43 | I'm going to take everything that I'm
seeing right now and I'm going to merge it
| | 01:47 | to a new layer and this is just a
wacky technique in Photoshop that has no
| | 01:51 | command associated with it.
| | 01:53 | If you go up to the layer menu, you
have commands like Merge Down and Merge
| | 01:57 | Visible and notice Merge Visible is
Ctrl+Shift+E or Command+Shift+E on a Mac.
| | 02:02 | If you want to Merge Visible and
merge it all to a copy, so you're copying
| | 02:07 | at the same time you add Alt to the
mix or Option on the Mac and so that
| | 02:11 | means Ctrl+Shift+Alt+E or Command+Shift+Option+E
on the Mac and that's what we're going to do.
| | 02:17 | So, match your fist down, Ctrl+Shift+Alt,
Command+Shift+Option on the Mac E, for
| | 02:22 | the merge makes a new layer called layer 1.
| | 02:25 | That contains once again these irises
and it might look different if you're
| | 02:29 | working along with me and you zoomed
out to something like 50%, things may look
| | 02:33 | a little different because the layer
effects may end up rendering differently at
| | 02:39 | different zoom levels, but it is
essentially the same bunch of pixels.
| | 02:42 | So, this is what we saw before and
this is what we're seeing after, we're
| | 02:47 | thickening up those edges because
we're doubling the effect of the edges but
| | 02:49 | that'll go away in just a moment.
| | 02:51 | Go ahead and call this new layer
sharpening or something along those lines
| | 02:55 | because it is going to
serve as a sharpening effect.
| | 02:59 | Now, I'm going to scroll down my list
and turn all my layers back on, starting
| | 03:04 | with darker whites and going back down,
and now I'll go back up to sharpening
| | 03:09 | and I'm going to apply kind of a
crazy filter inside of Photoshop, one that
| | 03:14 | doesn't seem to have any purpose whatsoever.
| | 03:16 | You go up to the Filter menu, you
choose Other and you choose High Pass and I
| | 03:22 | find it to be so useful, I've given it
a keyboard shortcut of Shift+F10 if you
| | 03:26 | loaded D keys, and yet, it
produces the ugliest effect conceivable.
| | 03:31 | It turns the irises totally gray,
gray as slate I tell you, but, it only
| | 03:37 | turns the non-edges gray.
| | 03:39 | So, areas of fast transition, rapid,
luminance transition inside the image will
| | 03:44 | try to hang on for your dare life with a
halo of dark on the dark side and light
| | 03:49 | on the light side, which hopefully
sounds like sharpening inside of Photoshop
| | 03:54 | because that's essentially what it is.
| | 03:55 | All we have to do is merge away
the grays and it's going to look like
| | 03:59 | a sharpening effect.
| | 04:01 | So, a Radius of 2 is probably good for
what we're trying to accomplish here.
| | 04:06 | So I'll leave it set to 2, you might
have to change your value to 2, click OK in
| | 04:10 | order to accept this incredibly ugly effect.
| | 04:13 | Then in order to drop out the grays,
turn the dark areas in the shadows and the
| | 04:17 | light areas in the glows.
| | 04:19 | You go onto the Blend mode pop-up
menu and you choose one of these contrast
| | 04:24 | modes right here, specifically
those between Overlay and Linear Light.
| | 04:29 | The other two are going
to produce weird effects.
| | 04:31 | Probably for our
purposes here Overlay is enough.
| | 04:34 | If it's not enough, you would jump up
to Hard Light and if that wasn't enough
| | 04:37 | you would typically go to Linear Light.
| | 04:39 | Linear Light is going to be our most
extreme effect and that's taking it too
| | 04:42 | far as you can see.
| | 04:44 | So, I'm going to drop it down to
Overlay and we're going to get a nice amount
| | 04:48 | of sharpening there.
| | 04:49 | This is without that layer
of sharpening, this is with.
| | 04:53 | Now, it might not be the kind of thing
that's going to show up all that well on
| | 04:56 | print or when we zoom out from the
image, however, when we're zoomed in like
| | 05:00 | this, we're going to see that the
details inside the iris better match, not
| | 05:04 | exactly match but better match the
details of these creases underneath the eyes
| | 05:09 | and the pores on the cheek and so on.
| | 05:12 | Anyway folks, this is our effect so far,
I'll go ahead and zoom out so we can
| | 05:16 | take it in, of course we're not done.
| | 05:18 | We have more to do.
| | 05:20 | If I switch over to the Final Na'vi image,
you can see that we still need to add
| | 05:24 | the warpaint as well as the background
foliage and the firefly and we will be
| | 05:30 | doing exactly that in future exercises.
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|
|
14. Levels and CurvesHighlights, shadows, and midtones| 00:01 | All right, that was fun, but it might
make Photoshop seem a bit complex, and
| | 00:06 | really, it's such a simple program.
| | 00:09 | Three things you need to know about it.
| | 00:11 | First, it sees every photograph,
no matter how colorful, as one
| | 00:15 | grayscale channel at a time.
| | 00:17 | Second, it lives and breathes luminance levels,
starting with black and ending with white.
| | 00:23 | And third, it likes transitions, edges
where dark turns to light in fairly short order.
| | 00:29 | That last item becomes
important in the next chapter.
| | 00:32 | For now, we care about the channel by
channel grayscale images and the luminance
| | 00:37 | levels from black to white.
| | 00:40 | There are three ranges of luminance levels;
| | 00:42 | highlights, which are the lightest ones,
shadows, which are the darkest ones,
| | 00:46 | and midtones, which are all the ones in between.
| | 00:50 | Photoshop gives you two
commands for addressing them;
| | 00:52 | Levels, which gives you independent
control over highlight, shadows, and
| | 00:56 | midtones, and Curves, which
gives you access to that and more.
| | 01:01 | They both operate on a channel by
channel basis, and together they let you take
| | 01:06 | a good image, looks fine,
and make it absolutely sizzle.
| | 01:10 | They are the left and
right ventricle of Photoshop.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Introducing the Auto commands| 00:00 | We're going to spend most of our time
in this chapter on just two functions.
| | 00:03 | Located under the Image menu, you go
to Adjustments and they're located right
| | 00:07 | there, Levels and Curves.
| | 00:08 | And they're both available as
Adjustment layers as well by the way, and we'll
| | 00:12 | see all that of course.
| | 00:13 | Now, these rank among Photoshop's most
essential capabilities, they are the two
| | 00:18 | most powerful color correction
features inside the software.
| | 00:22 | In many ways they duplicate each
other, they work differently, but their
| | 00:25 | goals are the same.
| | 00:26 | And what they do is this, they allow you
to correct the luminance of an image on
| | 00:30 | a channel by channel bases.
| | 00:32 | And the practical upshot of that is, you
can correct the brightness of an image,
| | 00:35 | you can correct its contrast, and you
can also compensate for color cast, all
| | 00:39 | from one dialog box, or panel, or what have you.
| | 00:43 | Now, as I say, they're both working
toward the same goal, so there's no reason
| | 00:47 | to use both of them on the same image.
| | 00:50 | You want to make a clear call, you're
either going to use Levels, because that's
| | 00:53 | all you need, it's the simpler of the
two commands, or you need more control and
| | 00:57 | you're going to switch up to
Curves, that's the way it works.
| | 01:00 | But they both include a
handful of duplicate options.
| | 01:03 | So I'll go ahead and choose the Levels
command to bring up the Levels dialog box.
| | 01:07 | And you can see right there that there
is an Auto button and an Options button,
| | 01:10 | both of these buttons appear
inside the Curves dialog box as well.
| | 01:14 | And if you click on Auto, and I'm going
to go ahead and do that, I'll click on
| | 01:17 | Auto here in order to apply one of
three flavors of automatic correction to
| | 01:23 | this selected layer.
| | 01:24 | And I'm currently working on the
control layer incidentally, inside this image
| | 01:28 | called Father of our money.psd.
| | 01:30 | You control which flavor of Auto you apply,
because notice, Auto just does its thing.
| | 01:35 | You change the flavor of Auto by
clicking on the Options button.
| | 01:39 | I'm going to Cancel out.
| | 01:40 | The reason I mention this is that, those
three Auto functions are also available
| | 01:45 | under the Image menu as independent commands.
| | 01:47 | We have Auto Tone right there as
well as Auto Contrast and Auto Color.
| | 01:51 | And you can think of them as being the
children of some kind of crazy marriage
| | 01:56 | between Levels and Curves, because they
are taking all the power of Levels and
| | 02:00 | Curves and applying them automatically
and without any further conversation.
| | 02:05 | Notice there is no ellipses, no
... after any one of these commands.
| | 02:09 | So you just choose a command
and it does its thing, like so.
| | 02:12 | And incidentally, Auto Tone produces
the exact same effect as just clicking on
| | 02:17 | the Auto button, without changing the
options inside either Levels or Curves.
| | 02:22 | Anyway, again, I'm going
to undo that modification.
| | 02:25 | I want you to understand where these
names are coming from, because Auto Tone,
| | 02:28 | Auto Contrast, Auto Color, fairly
cryptic and a little bit misleading as well.
| | 02:33 | The word Tone is synonymous
inside of Photoshop for luminance or
| | 02:37 | brightness, what have you.
| | 02:40 | So what Auto Tone is doing is its
correcting the luminance levels on a
| | 02:43 | channel by channel basis.
| | 02:45 | And as a result, not only do you change
the brightness and contrast of an image,
| | 02:49 | but you modify its color cast as well.
| | 02:52 | And notice that I'm saying modify
the color cast, I'm not saying correct,
| | 02:56 | because you typically replace one
color cast with its opposite color cast.
| | 03:00 | And we'll see how that work shortly.
| | 03:02 | Auto Contrast corrects the composite image.
| | 03:04 | It does not look at the image on a
channel by channel basis, and as a result it
| | 03:08 | does nothing to the color cast whatsoever.
| | 03:11 | And in fact, you only use the command
when the image does not have a color cast,
| | 03:14 | when you're happy with the colors.
| | 03:16 | And otherwise, it goes ahead and
changes the brightness, possibly enhances
| | 03:20 | the contrast as well.
| | 03:21 | And then this Auto Color command,
strictly speaking, has nothing to do with
| | 03:25 | color, what it does is that it
examines the channel by channel Histograms,
| | 03:29 | just as Auto Tone does.
| | 03:31 | So it examines the image on a channel
by channel basis, goes ahead and corrects
| | 03:35 | the brightness and contrast, and then
it seeks to neutralize the Highlight,
| | 03:38 | Shadows, and Midtones in an image,
with the goal of getting rid of any color
| | 03:43 | cast, and sometimes it's
successful, other times it's not.
| | 03:46 | Now, in order to really understand how
these commands work, so that you have
| | 03:50 | some way of predicting the outcome, I
don't want you to just sit there and
| | 03:53 | choose the commands willy-nilly and
hope for the best, we need to be able to
| | 03:57 | keep tabs on the Histogram for
the image that we're working on.
| | 04:01 | And to do that, I'm going to
bring up the Histogram panel.
| | 04:03 | And you get to the Histogram panel by
going to the Window menu and choosing the
| | 04:06 | Histogram command, or if you loaded
dekeKeys, my custom keyboard shortcuts, then
| | 04:11 | you can press Alt+F8 or Option+F8 on the Mac.
| | 04:14 | Now, a couple of other changes
I want to make to this panel.
| | 04:17 | I want to be able to see a larger
version of the Histogram, because right now we
| | 04:20 | can't see all 256 different luminance levels.
| | 04:24 | So in order to see the full 256 pixel
wide Histogram, you go to the panels
| | 04:29 | flyout menu and you choose Expanded View.
| | 04:32 | And that gives you a bigger Histogram.
| | 04:34 | You also see some technical statistics
down here at the bottom of the panel.
| | 04:38 | I want you to be able to see the
Channels and Colors, so make sure that this
| | 04:42 | Channel option is set to Colors , like so.
| | 04:44 | And that way you'll see each
of the independent Histograms;
| | 04:47 | one for the Red Channel, one for the
Green Channel, and one for the Blue
| | 04:50 | Channel, all at the same
time overlapping each other.
| | 04:54 | So we can see in this case, for example,
that the Blue Channel is darker than
| | 04:57 | the Red Channel, which is a little
bit darker than the Green Channel.
| | 05:00 | So the Green Channel has the most
highlights, and the Blue Channel has
| | 05:03 | the fewest highlights.
| | 05:05 | I also want to be able to keep
track of those Histograms independently.
| | 05:08 | So I'll go to the flyout menu again
and I'll choose the All Channels View.
| | 05:12 | As soon as I choose this command
though, I'm going to run into problems.
| | 05:15 | I'm going to get this error message,
that's essentially telling me it is now
| | 05:19 | impossible to view the Histogram
panel, because it's too darn big.
| | 05:24 | And so I'm presented with one
of three different solutions;
| | 05:26 | I can close the other panels in the dock first.
| | 05:28 | Well, they're already smooshed closed,
so that's not going to do any good.
| | 05:31 | The third suggestion is to increase
my monitor resolution, which is a great
| | 05:35 | idea, except I can't for the sake of this video.
| | 05:38 | And then the final option is to
move this panel out of the dock.
| | 05:41 | That's the one I'm going to do.
| | 05:42 | You could say, Don't show again to this
message, but then if you ever run into
| | 05:45 | it again, you're going to have no idea
what the problem is, you just won't be
| | 05:48 | able to see that panel.
| | 05:50 | So I would suggest you don't turn that check
box on, just go ahead and click on the OK button.
| | 05:55 | I'm going to drag the right side of this
title bar over and drop the panel so it
| | 06:00 | becomes a floating panel, like so,
then I'll double-click in this region in
| | 06:03 | order to expand the panel.
| | 06:05 | I'll double-click over here to expand
the Layers panel once again, because
| | 06:08 | it got smooshed close.
| | 06:10 | And then finally, I'm going to go
ahead and switch my view of each one of the
| | 06:15 | independent Histograms.
| | 06:16 | Because of the way the labels read,
notice Red, which is pretty high up, goes
| | 06:20 | with this Histogram right there, even
though it looks like Green is its label.
| | 06:25 | So because of the way the labels are
placed, I think they're misleading.
| | 06:28 | Let's remove the ambiguity by
going to the flyout menu and choosing
| | 06:31 | Show Channels in Color.
| | 06:32 | And then I know, there is the
Histogram for the Red Channel, there is the one
| | 06:35 | for the Green Channel, and there is
the one for the Blue Channel. All right!
| | 06:38 | So now we have this
whoppingly huge Histogram panel.
| | 06:41 | It will allow us to examine each one of
these images in all sorts of detail, as
| | 06:46 | we apply the various Auto commands.
| | 06:48 | Just one last problem, and that's
this little warning that keeps appearing.
| | 06:52 | Notice it's telling me that I need to
Click the Histogram for the uncached data,
| | 06:56 | which is to say, if you really want an
accurate Histogram, you need to click on
| | 07:00 | this warning in order to update the
Histogram, but notice that it happens every
| | 07:04 | single time I switch to a different layer.
| | 07:06 | So again, I have an inaccurate
Histogram, again I have to update it.
| | 07:10 | This is going to get really old,
really fast as we work through
| | 07:14 | this demonstration.
| | 07:15 | So I'm going to make a change, and
along the way I'm going to explain how cache
| | 07:18 | levels work inside of
Photoshop, in the next exercise.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adjusting Cache Level settings| 00:00 | In this exercise, I'm going to explain
how Cache Levels work inside of Photoshop.
| | 00:04 | I'll also tell you how and why you
might want to modify the number of Cache
| | 00:07 | Levels that Photoshop tracks
at any given moment in time.
| | 00:11 | Now this topic is somewhat academic.
| | 00:13 | I want to warn you about that in
advance, but it's of keen interest to any
| | 00:17 | student of Photoshop and I just have
to change the number of Cache Levels to
| | 00:21 | effectively demonstrate how the Auto
commands work inside of this Father of
| | 00:26 | our money.psd file.
| | 00:27 | Now notice right off the bat, that
I've gone ahead and move this ginormous
| | 00:31 | Histogram panel into the panel dock
over here in right-hand side of the screen.
| | 00:35 | I also saved out a new
workspace called Big Histograms.
| | 00:38 | So I still have my original workspace
One-on-One which I could switch to at any
| | 00:43 | time but notice if I do, if I switch
to One-on-One like so, it doesn't really
| | 00:48 | change things very much and that's
because Photoshop is constantly updating the
| | 00:53 | workspaces on the fly and this was the
last state of that One-on-One workspace.
| | 00:57 | So it seems as though I have
completely messed things up.
| | 01:00 | However, all I have to do is click on
this icon once again and choose Reset
| | 01:04 | One-on-One and then it goes back to
its familiar appearance without the
| | 01:08 | ginormous Histogram panel and even if
I bring up the Histogram panel, it will
| | 01:13 | come up small, which is great because that's
the way I created One-on-One in the first place.
| | 01:18 | Now if I want to switch back to the
Big Histogram panel, all I have to do is
| | 01:21 | click on Big Histograms and I created
that workspace incidentally by choosing
| | 01:26 | the New Workspace command.
| | 01:27 | All right, so having done
that here is a reminder.
| | 01:31 | Every time I switch to a different
layer or apply so much as a command to a
| | 01:35 | layer here inside of Photoshop, the
Histogram is going to get messed up and
| | 01:39 | it's going to have this little warning,
which tells me that it's working from
| | 01:42 | cached data which is to say, it's not
entirely accurate, it's taking a lower
| | 01:46 | resolution image into account.
| | 01:48 | I can see that the Cache Level is 3 and
unless it's 1, it's not quite accurate.
| | 01:51 | So the lower the number the better,
however 1 means accuracy, and the only way
| | 01:56 | to get a Cache Level of 1 is either
click this warning or click on this little
| | 02:01 | Refresh icon right there or you can
choose this command from the panels flyout
| | 02:05 | menu Uncached Refresh, either those will do it.
| | 02:08 | Now unfortunately,
Uncached Refresh doesn't stick.
| | 02:10 | It would be great if you had a way
just to choose a command and every time
| | 02:14 | Photoshop would go ahead and build
a Histogram from Cache Level one.
| | 02:18 | However, that's not an option.
| | 02:20 | What is an option is to change the
number of Cache Levels and you can do that
| | 02:24 | and here is where things
get little bit intricate.
| | 02:26 | You press Ctrl+K or Command+K on the
Mac to bring out the Preferences dialog
| | 02:31 | box and you switch over to
Performance right there and notice we have this
| | 02:35 | Cache Levels option.
| | 02:36 | Now when I hover over this area, this
History & Cache area that is to say,
| | 02:41 | you'll see a description of everything
that's going on in this region, down in
| | 02:45 | the Description field at
the bottom of the dialog box.
| | 02:48 | So I can't point to it because I am
busying hovering up here but if you look
| | 02:52 | down at the word Description, they
are at the bottom of the dialog box.
| | 02:55 | The third line is the beginning
of the discussion of Cache Levels.
| | 02:58 | And it says the Number of cached
levels of image data, meaning these are
| | 03:02 | varieties of the image that are
stored in memory by Photoshop.
| | 03:06 | It's used to improve the screen redrawn
Histogram speed and it makes a big huge
| | 03:10 | difference in that regard.
| | 03:11 | So it does definitely increase the speed
at which the Histograms are drawn, that
| | 03:15 | doesn't matter very much to us, but the
speed at which the screen is redrawn, it
| | 03:20 | matters a great deal.
| | 03:21 | So decreasing this Cache Levels value
can have a negative effect onscreen redraw
| | 03:26 | inside of Photoshop and then it goes
on to advice to choose more Cache Levels
| | 03:30 | meaning that you can take this
value as high as 8, incidentally.
| | 03:34 | So you would raise that value for
bigger documents with fewer layers and that's
| | 03:38 | the way that this area thinks in general.
| | 03:41 | You'll either have your standard
everyday average composition which is of medium
| | 03:45 | size with, let's say 20 or 30 layers
inside of it and that's what Photoshop is
| | 03:51 | designed to accommodate by default, or
if we raise this Cache Levels value, then
| | 03:56 | it's going to better accommodate big
huge photographs for example with just a
| | 04:00 | few layers which might better serve
the needs of digital photographers, for
| | 04:04 | example, especially if you're
stitching together enormous panoramas.
| | 04:08 | Then you might want to
raise that Cache Levels value.
| | 04:10 | The next sentence says choose fewer
Cache Levels that means lower the value for
| | 04:15 | smaller documents with many layers.
| | 04:17 | So you can take this value down
as low as 2 is what this little
| | 04:21 | warning recommends.
| | 04:22 | Doesn't like you to go any lower than
2 because then you're really sucking up
| | 04:25 | resources where Photoshop is concerned
and the program is going to slow down,
| | 04:29 | but this might better suit your needs
if you are a web designer for example,
| | 04:32 | if you're working on small images and you
have hundreds of layers inside that image.
| | 04:38 | This is the better way to go.
| | 04:40 | Then finally, it says changes will take
effect the next time you start Photoshop
| | 04:43 | which is indicative of most of the
options inside of this panel of the
| | 04:47 | Preferences dialog box.
| | 04:48 | In fact, there is really just one
exception History States, you can change a
| | 04:51 | number of History States on the
fly without restarting the program.
| | 04:54 | Bear in mind of course, that's just
because you take the number of History
| | 04:57 | States from 20 up to 40 and that's 40
per open image, you have to bear that in
| | 05:01 | mind, that's also asking Photoshop to
suck up a lot of resources there, but just
| | 05:05 | because you do that it doesn't mean you
somehow magically retrieve History State
| | 05:09 | 21 which is fallen off of the list.
| | 05:12 | Anyway, I am going to leave that value alone.
| | 05:14 | What I am going do is even though
Photoshop doesn't recommend it, I am going to
| | 05:18 | take the number of Cache Levels down to 1.
| | 05:20 | I don't recommend you do this either.
| | 05:23 | This is purely for demonstrational
purposes, a Cache Level of 1 that is.
| | 05:27 | So if you're teaching Photoshop in a
classroom environment, you might have
| | 05:31 | reason to do this, otherwise you don't.
| | 05:33 | Otherwise, if everything seems to be
responding just fine in Photoshop, leave
| | 05:37 | Cache Level set to 4, if you're
working on big huge images without that many
| | 05:42 | layers, why then take it up perhaps to
6 and then if you are a web designer and
| | 05:46 | you have fairly small images with the
hundred or more layers inside of them,
| | 05:50 | then you might take this values low as 2.
| | 05:53 | Anyway, as I say I am going
to lower the Cache Levels to 1.
| | 05:55 | I'm going to click OK and then I'm
going to restart the program, and I will go
| | 06:00 | ahead and do that without you and
then in the next exercise, I will have
| | 06:03 | restarted and will get down
to how the Auto commands work.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Reading a channel-by-channel histogram| 00:00 | All right, I've gone ahead and quit
Photoshop and restarted the program using a
| | 00:02 | Cache Level Setting of one, which
allows me to switch between layers and apply
| | 00:07 | other modifications without ever having
to redraw the histograms, either here is
| | 00:11 | that the Histogram panel or
elsewhere inside the program.
| | 00:14 | Now I'm not going to not to leave the Cache
Level at 1, that would be absolute madness.
| | 00:18 | It would completely undercut
Photoshop's ability to navigate inside of an image
| | 00:22 | and redraw the image onscreen.
| | 00:25 | Things would slow to a crawl very
quickly, I'm not willing to tolerate that.
| | 00:28 | So I'll eventually raise that Cache
Level's value back to it's default setting of 4.
| | 00:33 | In the meantime however, a setting of 1
is highly expedient for showing off the
| | 00:37 | different Auto Commands.
| | 00:38 | Here inside this image, it's
called Father for our money.psd.
| | 00:42 | And notice that it features a detail
from an old-style one dollar bill, repeated
| | 00:46 | four times on four different layers.
| | 00:48 | And the money has a certain
green color cast associated with it.
| | 00:52 | Now it's not a color caste
that was added by the scanner.
| | 00:55 | In this case, rather it's
native to the money of course.
| | 00:58 | But there is nothing like an old-style
greenback for demonstrating how the Auto
| | 01:02 | Commands work as you're about to see.
| | 01:04 | Now might look at this image and
think, Holy Smokes Deak! This is money.
| | 01:08 | Should we even be opening this, is this legal?
| | 01:11 | And the answer is yes.
| | 01:12 | Here in the States, money is
treated as a kind of shared resource.
| | 01:15 | And so you can actually scan money and
incorporate it into your art work as long
| | 01:20 | as you don't try to pass it off as
actual legal tender, because that would land
| | 01:24 | you in prison for counterfeiting and as
long as you stick to certain guidelines.
| | 01:28 | And if you want to learn about
those guidelines, you can go to
| | 01:30 | www.rulesforuse.org and
that will keep you in a clear.
| | 01:34 | Now, what few people know is that
Photoshop actually has currency detection
| | 01:38 | algorithms built into it.
| | 01:39 | So then it might actually refuse to
open or print modern bills, fives, tens,
| | 01:44 | twenties, that kind of thing as well as
Euros and other international currency.
| | 01:49 | And if you compare those bank notes to
each other, you'll see similar repeating
| | 01:53 | patterns and that's what Photoshop is detecting.
| | 01:56 | So this is in the international
conspiracy, designed to keep us from
| | 01:59 | counterfeiting money inside of
Photoshop and other applications.
| | 02:02 | For real, I'm very serious about this.
| | 02:04 | Now there are work arounds and I've set
this document up so that you can open
| | 02:07 | it without any problems, and of course
you're not going to be able to use this
| | 02:11 | document for counterfeiting purposes
because we jut have a bunch of money
| | 02:14 | fragments, and we never do see a full one, so we
have no idea how many dollars this is actually.
| | 02:21 | Anyway as I say, it's going to provide
us with an excellent demonstration of how
| | 02:24 | the Auto Commands work.
| | 02:25 | Now I'm going to go ahead and
switch to the auto tone layer.
| | 02:28 | Because the control layer, we're going to
leave that one alone for the sake of comparison.
| | 02:32 | I also want you to see what's going on
inside of the Histograms, and I want you
| | 02:37 | to be able to read the Histograms
on the Channel by Channel basis.
| | 02:40 | Then I want you to notice that the Source
option is currently set to Entire Image.
| | 02:44 | And if you look at each one of these
Histogram, you'll see a spike, a red spike
| | 02:48 | over here on the right hand side of the
Red Histogram, a green one of the Green
| | 02:51 | Histogram and a blue one on the Blue Histogram.
| | 02:54 | They are all on the far right side,
so that means we've got a lot of white
| | 02:57 | inside of this document.
| | 02:59 | Well, that's the white background
between the layers that we're seeing there.
| | 03:02 | We don't want to see that because
that's going to throw off our understanding
| | 03:05 | what's going on here.
| | 03:06 | So I'll switch the Source option from
Entire Image to Selected layer, so we're
| | 03:10 | seeing just one layer at a time.
| | 03:12 | Now let's get a sense of what's going on here.
| | 03:15 | You'll see that each one of the
Histograms looks pretty similar to the other
| | 03:18 | ones, that is to say, we have very
little in the way of dark shadow detail.
| | 03:23 | We have a spike of light shadows, a
bunch of mid-tones and then a big spike
| | 03:28 | of dark highlights.
| | 03:29 | And I see dark highlights because
there's nothing over here in the bright
| | 03:32 | highlight region, where the Red Channel
and especially the Blue Channel is concerned.
| | 03:36 | And the fact that the Histograms look
pretty similar, means that we have a more
| | 03:40 | or less monochromatic image
with some variations of course.
| | 03:43 | The image is a little bit greenish and we
do have this green serial number and seal.
| | 03:48 | But otherwise, it's a fairly
monochromatic, that is black-and-white composition.
| | 03:53 | Now, check out the Colors View of the
composite Histogram and make sure, Channel
| | 03:57 | is set the Colors right there.
| | 04:00 | And wherever you see gray, that means
the three Color Channels overlap each
| | 04:04 | other and we have something in
this region resembling neutrality.
| | 04:08 | And when I say an area is neutral,
that means that it's colorless.
| | 04:12 | However, check out these shadows here.
| | 04:14 | The darkest of the shadows show up
as magenta which is an overlap of the
| | 04:18 | Red Histogram and the Blue Histogram, and
as a result, we're seeing greenish Shadows.
| | 04:24 | Now that may seem counter intuitive
that, if blue and red are showing up, why
| | 04:29 | would the shadows be greenish.
| | 04:31 | Well, it's because green doesn't kick in
until we get to this gray region right there.
| | 04:36 | And whatever channel is brightest, is
what shows up at that luminance level
| | 04:40 | inside of the image.
| | 04:42 | So if you're shadows are brightest in
the Green Channel, then your shadows are
| | 04:45 | going to show up as green.
| | 04:47 | This also goes for the mid-tones and
there's not much of a story to tell you
| | 04:50 | there and for the highlights.
| | 04:52 | So, because our blue Highlights are
the darkest, our red highlights are in
| | 04:56 | between and our green highlights are
the brightest, the highlight show up as
| | 05:00 | green with a little contribution from red
which makes them appear a little bit yellowish.
| | 05:05 | The green serial number and seal
are also contributing to those green
| | 05:09 | highlights incidentally.
| | 05:10 | So that's what we have going on right now.
| | 05:12 | Now each of the Auto Commands, you
might think that they just applies some sort
| | 05:17 | of predefined settings and that's it.
| | 05:19 | In fact what they do, is they
evaluate the existing Histograms and
| | 05:23 | compensate accordingly, either on a
channel by channel basis, where Auto
| | 05:28 | Tone and Auto Color are concerned,
or a crossly entire composite image in
| | 05:33 | the case of Auto Contrast.
| | 05:34 | Now, something else to
note about these commands.
| | 05:37 | Because they're all under the Image menu,
they're all static commands, meaning
| | 05:40 | that they permanently change
the pixels inside of our layers.
| | 05:44 | If you wanted to apply any of these
commands temporarily, then you would either
| | 05:48 | add a Levels or Curves Adjustment layer
and then you'd click on the Auto button
| | 05:52 | in order to apply by default Auto Tone.
| | 05:55 | But you could Alt or Option+Click on
that Auto button, Alt+Click on the PC,
| | 05:59 | Option+Click on the Mac, in order to
switch over to one of the other Auto
| | 06:03 | Settings that is Auto Contrast or Auto
Color and I'll be showing you how that works.
| | 06:08 | All right so that's all
the background information.
| | 06:10 | In the next exercise, we're
really going to get down to it.
| | 06:13 | You'll see examples of Auto Tone, Auto
Contrast, and Auto Color, and I think
| | 06:18 | you'll have a sense of what's really going on.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| How the Auto commands work| 00:00 | In this exercise, we are going to see
and compare the effects of each of the
| | 00:03 | three Auto commands.
| | 00:04 | Notice that I have opened
Father of our money.psd.
| | 00:08 | I also have opened the Histogram panel
and I have Source set to Selected layer,
| | 00:12 | so that we are seeing the
histograms for a single layer at a time.
| | 00:15 | Now, we are going to start with the
Auto Tone, so I have selected the auto tone
| | 00:18 | layer here inside the Layers panel,
that's the top-right fragment of money
| | 00:21 | inside of the composition.
| | 00:23 | What the Auto Tone command does
incidentally, is it goes and reads the histogram
| | 00:27 | for each channel and modifies it independently.
| | 00:30 | It goes and stretches the histogram,
across the entire width of the graph here,
| | 00:35 | which enhances the contrast and absolutely
annihilates the Color Caste as we are about to see.
| | 00:42 | Now, the caste that's associated with
this money happens to be indigenous, in
| | 00:46 | other words, it wasn't added by the scanner.
| | 00:48 | However, Photoshop doesn't know that
and it goes ahead and gets rid of any
| | 00:51 | color caste it finds.
| | 00:53 | So go up to the Image menu and notice
if you loaded dekeKeys, you don't have
| | 00:57 | keyboard shortcuts for any of these commands.
| | 00:59 | I have actually stolen them and
assigned them to different features inside the
| | 01:02 | software, in part because those
shortcuts weren't all that memorable for these
| | 01:06 | commands in the first place, and also
because even though the Auto commands are
| | 01:10 | very useful learning tools, my guess
is that, you won't be using them often
| | 01:14 | enough to warrant shortcuts.
| | 01:16 | Anyway, I will go ahead and choose Auto
Tone, I want you to watch the image and
| | 01:19 | the histograms and I will go ahead and
zoom in on the top-right money there, and
| | 01:23 | notice I have the Navigator panel open,
I will go ahead and scoop my display
| | 01:27 | over, so that the money
is more or less centered.
| | 01:29 | So this is the Before view, greenish
highlights and greenish shadow detail as
| | 01:33 | well, and this is the After view,
neutral highlights that is colorless, and then
| | 01:39 | the shadows if anything
are a little bit reddish.
| | 01:42 | So what's going on there, we'll take a look at
what's happened to each one of the histograms.
| | 01:46 | It's been spread out across the
width of the entire graph here.
| | 01:50 | Also notice the Composite view.
| | 01:52 | The shadows are now a combination of red
and green overlapping each other, so we
| | 01:57 | have some cyan spikes going on there
and then the red shadow show up later.
| | 02:01 | So because the red shadow detail is
brighter, the shadows are showing up as red
| | 02:06 | here inside the image window.
| | 02:07 | And that's a thing about the Auto Tone command.
| | 02:09 | It has a habit, if anything of going
overboard we're removing the color caste's concern.
| | 02:15 | So as oppose to just neutralizing the
color caste, it often ends up sending the
| | 02:20 | color caste in the opposite direction.
| | 02:22 | So where we used to have a green caste
associate with this money, we now have a
| | 02:26 | little bit of a red caste going on.
| | 02:29 | So, that's the Auto Tone command,
let's go ahead and compare that to Auto
| | 02:32 | Contrast, I will click on the Auto
Contrast layer here inside the Layers panel,
| | 02:36 | up here in the Navigator panel, I will
click in the lower left region, so we
| | 02:39 | can see that layer.
| | 02:40 | Then I will go out to the Image menu
and choose the Auto Contrast command.
| | 02:44 | Now, very much like Auto Levels, it
goes ahead and pulls apart that histogram.
| | 02:49 | So it spreads the histogram to fill the
entire graph, but it does so, strictly
| | 02:54 | on a composite basis.
| | 02:55 | So it doesn't work channel by channel.
| | 02:57 | It looks at the composite histogram and
stretches it and the result is something
| | 03:02 | along these lines, where we get an
enhanced degree of contrast, so this is the
| | 03:06 | Before version of the money, low
contrast, this the After version, high
| | 03:10 | contrast, however we still have the
same color caste we had before, that is the
| | 03:16 | highlights remain green, the shadows
remain a little bit greenish and the money
| | 03:20 | remains green overall.
| | 03:22 | And of course where this money
concerned, that's appropriate.
| | 03:26 | So far, again where this image
is concerned this is the most
| | 03:29 | accurate correction.
| | 03:31 | All right, I am going to go ahead and
scroll to the right here, again inside the
| | 03:34 | Navigator panel and I will click on
Auto Color on the Auto Color layer to make
| | 03:39 | it active, since it's the remaining
layer inside of the composition, and then I
| | 03:42 | will go out to the Image menu,
and choose the Auto Color command.
| | 03:45 | Now what Auto Color is going to do, not
only is it going to stretch each one of
| | 03:49 | these histograms on the channel by
channel basis but it's going to weight the
| | 03:52 | histograms a little
differently than Auto Tone did.
| | 03:55 | It's going to seek to neutralize these
shadows, and it's also going to seek to
| | 03:59 | neutralize the highlights and then it's
going to trying to find what ought to be
| | 04:04 | a neutral color inside the mid-tones
and make that absolutely gray which is
| | 04:09 | something the other commands can't begin to do.
| | 04:11 | So I will go ahead and choose Auto
color and we get this effect here.
| | 04:15 | Now, take a look at the Shadow detail.
| | 04:16 | The three histograms overlap each other
with the shadows are concerned and as a
| | 04:21 | result our shadows are absolutely neutral now.
| | 04:24 | So this is the Before version of the
image, and this is the After version,
| | 04:28 | thanks to Auto Color.
| | 04:29 | We also have very neutral shadows,
more neutral than what we saw with Auto
| | 04:33 | Levels and we still have the obvious color
inside the image, that is to say the serial no.
| | 04:38 | is green, the seal is green and we
have some colorful threads going on in the
| | 04:43 | background and that is ultimately the
difference between these three commands.
| | 04:47 | I will go ahead and zoom out, so that
we can see them compared to each other.
| | 04:50 | Top left, we have the original
version of the image, that is to say low
| | 04:54 | contrast, green color caste.
| | 04:56 | Upper-right we have the Auto Levels
version, possibly the highest contrast of
| | 05:00 | the bunch and in opposite reddish color caste.
| | 05:04 | Down left, we have the Auto Contrast
version which delivers enhanced contrast,
| | 05:08 | but keeps the green color caste and
then down right, we have Auto Color, more
| | 05:12 | nuance contrast as you can see,
and the most neutrality of the bunch.
| | 05:17 | In the next exercise, I will show you
how these commands fair when applied to a
| | 05:20 | standard digital photograph.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Auto Tone, Auto Contrast, and Auto Color| 00:00 | I have gone ahead and saved my
changes as Auto money.psd found inside the
| | 00:04 | 14_levels_curves folder.
| | 00:05 | And I think the Auto commands are
fairly obvious in terms of their purpose
| | 00:08 | especially when applied to a low colored
graphical image like this money right here.
| | 00:13 | However, when we move on to more nuance
digital photographs which contain more
| | 00:17 | subtle luminance transitions and far
more colors, while then the Auto commands
| | 00:21 | become a little bit more difficult to predict.
| | 00:23 | So I am going to show you how they
behave with a couple of different digital
| | 00:27 | photographs, but I want you to know this,
the Auto commands do their best work
| | 00:31 | on two kinds of images, either images
that have color castes, and as you know
| | 00:37 | both the Auto Tone and the Auto Color
commands, will remove color caste from an
| | 00:41 | image but strictly speaking you don't
need a color caste, because if the colors
| | 00:45 | are okay, you can just go ahead and
apply the Auto Contrast command, what you
| | 00:49 | definitely need inside of an image,
what the Auto Commands are designed to do,
| | 00:54 | is correct low contrast images.
| | 00:57 | So, notice that I have got my control
layer selected inside of Auto money.psd
| | 01:01 | and you can see here, this is the
original version of the money and you can see
| | 01:05 | that we are missing shadow detail and
we are also missing a little highlight
| | 01:09 | detail and as a result the entire
histogram is squished, it doesn't take up the
| | 01:14 | entire horizontal space provided by
the graph and as a result what we have is
| | 01:19 | the low contrast image.
| | 01:20 | The Auto commands will go in and
stretch those histograms there by liberating
| | 01:24 | the contrast inside of an image.
| | 01:27 | Let me give you a couple of other examples here.
| | 01:28 | I have got this image called Washed out
and badly caste.psd, also found inside
| | 01:33 | that 14_levels_curves folder.
| | 01:35 | It comes to us from Photo CD which is a
group that works with the Fotolia Image
| | 01:39 | Library about which you can
learn more at fotolia.com/deke.
| | 01:42 | Now, when you look at this image, the
first thing you see a reddish color caste,
| | 01:48 | but it's not nearly as much of our
pronounce color caste as you might think,
| | 01:51 | because she naturally has ruddy skin
tones, and she also has red hairs and she
| | 01:55 | is wearing a red sweater, so she is
already naturally trending toward red.
| | 01:59 | Her biggest problem is that she lacks shadows.
| | 02:02 | So you can see here inside the
histogram panel, that all of our histograms are
| | 02:06 | bunched out up to the right, meaning
that we have got plenty of highlight detail
| | 02:09 | to work with here but we are missing
shadows, that's another kind of low
| | 02:13 | contrast image, because once again the
histogram is squished and it's relying on
| | 02:17 | the Auto commands to liberate it.
| | 02:19 | All right, I will switch to my last
image, which is La Pyramides.psd and this
| | 02:23 | is an image that I shot in the Saint-Remy
area of Southern France, and I will
| | 02:27 | go ahead and hide the Histogram panel
for a moment, so that you can see the
| | 02:30 | entire width of the image.
| | 02:31 | Notice it's got this really cool sundial
here that provides us with a little bit
| | 02:35 | of a puzzle in terms of it's numbering system.
| | 02:38 | Anyway, I will let you investigate
that on your own if you are interested.
| | 02:40 | I will bring back the Histogram panel
and notice this time that we're lacking
| | 02:44 | highlights, so all of our histograms
are bunched up to the left hand side,
| | 02:48 | plenty of shadows, well we could use
actually a little more shadow detail, but
| | 02:53 | we really need more highlights.
| | 02:55 | So once again the histogram is squished
needs to be liberated, that's the whole
| | 02:59 | purpose of the Auto commands.
| | 03:01 | So what I am going to do here inside
of this exercise, I am going to go ahead
| | 03:04 | and apply each one of the Auto
commands to both of these images and we will
| | 03:08 | just see what happens.
| | 03:09 | And then in the next exercise, I will
take the results of those various Auto
| | 03:13 | commands and I will merge them
together to create the ideal correction.
| | 03:17 | So let's switch back to Washed
out and badly caste.psd here.
| | 03:20 | And what I want you to notice about
this is how the shadows are arranged, such
| | 03:23 | as they are that is to say.
| | 03:24 | So notice that we start with the blue
mountain right here, and then the green
| | 03:29 | mountain overlaps, and then quite
a distance away, the red sets in.
| | 03:34 | So, as a result our shadows are
looking quite red, because red is a brightish
| | 03:38 | channel where the shadows are concerned,
and that's where the real color caste
| | 03:41 | is creeping into this image.
| | 03:43 | Notice also that we have only red
highlights, where the highlights are
| | 03:48 | concerned, the green and blue
channels are under represented.
| | 03:51 | All right so let's see how
the various commands fair.
| | 03:53 | I will go ahead and click on the Auto
Tone layer, turn it on as well, so that
| | 03:56 | we can see it, notice the image still
looks the same, because after all this is
| | 04:00 | just a copy of the background layer and
then I will go up to the Image menu and
| | 04:03 | choose the Auto Tone command which
is going to stretch each one of those
| | 04:07 | histograms outward.
| | 04:09 | Notice that the shadows continue to
be offset from each other, that's very
| | 04:10 | important, because we will how that
differs from Auto Color in just a moment.
| | 04:11 | Now, the command has done a brilliant
job of compensating for the color caste,
| | 04:12 | in fact it's probably gone
a little bit too far again.
| | 04:13 | So we have some bluishness inside the
skin, also we have tones of shadows now.
| | 04:15 | In fact I would say, this
image is a little bit too dark.
| | 04:16 | All right, let's switch over to auto
contrast, turn it on, now you would figure
| | 04:17 | Auto Contrast isn't going to work too
well with this image, because after all we
| | 04:19 | have this very pronounce red color
caste, but think again, go up to the Image
| | 04:43 | menu and choose Auto Contrast and it
actually looks halfway decent because the
| | 04:48 | fact of the matter is, the Color caste
isn't as pronounced as you might think.
| | 04:52 | All right, but probably so far we need
to blend between these two corrections
| | 04:56 | before we are going to
come up with the right result.
| | 04:58 | Anyway, I am going to click on Auto
Color this time, turn it on and then I will
| | 05:02 | go up to the Image menu, and I
will choose the Auto color command.
| | 05:05 | Now, normally this command stands the
best chance of succeeding, because it goes
| | 05:09 | in there and tries to neutralize
the highlights and the shadows and the
| | 05:12 | mid-tones and so on.
| | 05:13 | In the case of this image
though, it fairs quite poorly.
| | 05:16 | It makes the skin-tones bluer than ever
and we are actually starting to lose the
| | 05:20 | redness inside of sweater a little bit,
and the reason is notice what it did to
| | 05:24 | these masses of shadows right there.
| | 05:26 | It went ahead and tried to align them
with each other and that does strictly
| | 05:30 | speaking make for some neutral shadows,
but in doing so, it has moved a lot
| | 05:34 | of the other luminance levels around and
that's not ultimately suiting the image that well.
| | 05:39 | But as you will see in the next
exercise, I am going to actually employee all
| | 05:42 | three of these adjustments, in
order to create the ideal correction.
| | 05:46 | All right let's switch over
to La Pyramides.psd once again.
| | 05:49 | Click on auto tone, turn it on as well.
| | 05:52 | Go up to the Image menu, and choose the
Auto-tone command and we end up getting
| | 05:56 | this correction right there, which is a
little blanched a we are warming up the
| | 06:02 | image I think a little bit too much.
| | 06:03 | Notice it's getting a little bit
yellow here, once again all the command has
| | 06:07 | done is stretched each one of
those color channels independently.
| | 06:11 | So bear in mind every time you apply any
one of the Auto commands to a different
| | 06:15 | image, you are going to get a custom result.
| | 06:18 | All right, now I will switch over to
auto contrast, turn it on as well, and then
| | 06:22 | I will go out to the Image menu and I
will choose the Auto Contrast command,
| | 06:25 | which is pretty darn successful, and
not surprisingly given the fact that this
| | 06:30 | image doesn't have much of a
color caste in the first place.
| | 06:33 | All right, now let's switch over to Auto
Color, turn it on and then I will go up
| | 06:37 | to the Image menu and
choose the Auto Color command.
| | 06:40 | And this time, Auto Color fails
brilliantly, this is a terrible correction, in
| | 06:46 | fact this could be the Before image,
before we get around to correcting it, it
| | 06:49 | looks like it's been sitting in the
picture frame in direct light for the last
| | 06:52 | 20 years, and it's faded terribly.
| | 06:55 | So obviously Auto Color is
not the champ this time around.
| | 06:58 | In fact, nobody is quite doing
everything exactly right, which is why we
| | 07:02 | are going to go ahead and merge the
results of the Auto commands in the
| | 07:05 | next exercise.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Blending the Auto results| 00:00 | I have gone ahead and saved my
changes from the previous exercise.
| | 00:02 | First is Cute zombie.psd, because
after all, with all this bluishness in her
| | 00:07 | skin, she must be undead, and then
we also have Sundial adjustments.psd;
| | 00:12 | both are found inside the
14_levels_curves folder.
| | 00:16 | In this exercise, I am going to take
the results of the various Auto commands
| | 00:20 | and I am going to merge them together
to create the ideal color adjustment.
| | 00:24 | So we'll start off
inside the sundial image here.
| | 00:26 | I am going to turn off Auto Color,
because it's just a big disappointment.
| | 00:29 | There is not much we are going to do with that.
| | 00:31 | But we should be able to mix Auto
Contrast and Auto Tone together to create
| | 00:36 | something pretty useful.
| | 00:37 | So Auto Contrast is almost
all the way there by itself.
| | 00:42 | So I am going to put it in back of Auto
Tone, so that we can reduce the Opacity
| | 00:47 | of Auto Tone and reveal Auto
Contrast in the background.
| | 00:50 | Now we are seeing the yellowish Auto
Tone layer, and now I'm just going to press
| | 00:54 | the 2 key, and because one of my
selection tools is active, the Rectangular
| | 00:58 | Marquee in fact, that goes ahead
and reduces the Opacity value to 20%.
| | 01:02 | So we have 20% Auto Tone mixed with 80%
Auto Contrast in the background, and we
| | 01:08 | end up with a pretty reasonable correction here.
| | 01:10 | So I will go ahead and Alt+click or
Option+click on the eyeball in front of
| | 01:13 | the background layer;
| | 01:14 | that's the original image right there,
and if I Alt+click or Option+click again,
| | 01:19 | we will see that's the
corrected version of the image.
| | 01:22 | So the correction is
actually quite successful I think.
| | 01:25 | Now I will switch over to Cute zombie.
| | 01:27 | Again, I am going to turn off the Auto
Color layer, although we will come back
| | 01:30 | to that one in a moment.
| | 01:31 | I'll click on Auto Contrast, and I
want to create a 50-50 merge of this Auto
| | 01:35 | Contrast layer and the Auto Tone layer below it.
| | 01:38 | I am going to do that incidentally by
selecting the Auto Contrast layer and
| | 01:42 | pressing the 5 key in order to
change its Opacity value to 50%;
| | 01:47 | notice that ends up producing a
pretty nice correction right there.
| | 01:51 | But I would like to see if I can bring
out some of the saturation inside of her
| | 01:54 | irises and maybe a little
more inside of her hair as well.
| | 01:57 | So I am going to turn on that over-the-
top Auto Color layer right there, click
| | 02:01 | on it to make it active.
| | 02:03 | Then I'll go up to the Image menu,
choose Adjustments, and then choose
| | 02:06 | the Vibrance command.
| | 02:07 | I am going to increase
the Vibrance value to 100.
| | 02:10 | Let's just really go for it there, which
of course is ridiculous, as you can see;
| | 02:15 | that's okay.
| | 02:16 | Click the OK button in order
to accept that modification.
| | 02:19 | Now, I am going to reduce
the Opacity of this layer.
| | 02:22 | I am going to press the 3 key to
reduce the Opacity value to 30%.
| | 02:26 | Now, to see the contribution of the
layer, turn it off, and then go ahead and
| | 02:30 | turn it back on again.
| | 02:31 | You can see that the irises are
showing up pretty nicely, but so is the
| | 02:35 | bluishness in the skin.
| | 02:36 | So let's go ahead and
add a layer mask this time.
| | 02:38 | I will dropdown to the Add layer mask
icon down here at the bottom of the Layers
| | 02:42 | panel, click on it, and then I will
select the Brush tool from the toolbox, and
| | 02:47 | if I right-click, you will see that I
am working with the Size value of 150
| | 02:51 | pixels and my Hardness is set to 0%.
| | 02:54 | I might go ahead and take that
Hardness value up a little bit.
| | 02:56 | Let's take it up to 25%, let's say,
and then press the Enter key a couple of
| | 03:01 | times in order to hide that panel.
| | 03:02 | Make sure that black is your
foreground color, which it is in my case.
| | 03:06 | You might have to press the X key to make it so.
| | 03:08 | Then go ahead and paint inside of this
skin, and try to avoid the eyes if you
| | 03:14 | can, paint between them.
| | 03:15 | That's why I am going
with a 150 pixel brush there.
| | 03:18 | It just fits between her eyes.
| | 03:20 | I will go ahead and paint away the nose,
I will paint away a little bit of the
| | 03:24 | neck as well, into the ears,
over the forehead, and so on.
| | 03:28 | I might even paint a little bit over the hair.
| | 03:31 | We end up getting this color
adjustment right there, which I think is
| | 03:34 | pretty darn successful.
| | 03:35 | So to get a sense of what we have been
able to accomplish here, I will Alt+click
| | 03:39 | the eyeball in front of the background layer.
| | 03:40 | There is the original
washed out version of the image.
| | 03:44 | Very apparent now that she
didn't have nearly enough contrast.
| | 03:48 | I will Alt+click or Option+click again and
there is the corrected version of the image.
| | 03:52 | I might have gone a little too far
into the blue territory, but I am actually
| | 03:56 | pretty fond of this correction.
| | 03:57 | In the next exercise, we will move away
from the Auto commands and we will see
| | 04:01 | how to apply a custom correction using Levels.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Introducing the Levels command| 00:00 | In this exercise, I am going to
introduce you to the Levels command, and I'll
| | 00:03 | also show you how to apply all of the
Auto functions that we've seen so far:
| | 00:07 | Auto Tone, Auto Contrast, and Auto Color.
| | 00:10 | You can vary their behavior in a way
that effectively allows you to double
| | 00:14 | the number of automatic options available to
you, so instead of three, you'll now have six.
| | 00:20 | I'm working inside of a file called
Flat photoCD image.tif, that's found inside
| | 00:24 | the 14_levels_curves folder.
| | 00:26 | You can see that, yes, indeed, here
inside the Layers panel, I've gone ahead and
| | 00:30 | jettisoned the extra layers and
we are left with a base photograph.
| | 00:33 | I'll now go up to the Image menu, and
let's say we want to apply, for starters
| | 00:37 | here, a static
application of the Levels command.
| | 00:40 | I'll choose Adjustments, and then
I'll choose Levels, or I could press
| | 00:43 | Ctrl+L, Command+L on the Mac, brings
up a dialog box complete with a 256
| | 00:49 | pixel wide Histogram.
| | 00:50 | Now, I'll demonstrate how the options
around the Histogram work shortly, but
| | 00:54 | first, there is your Auto button.
| | 00:56 | If you click on the Auto button, either
inside of Levels or inside of Curves, by
| | 01:00 | default you'll apply Auto Tone, as you
can see out here in the Image window.
| | 01:05 | Now, you might wonder, why in
the world would you do that?
| | 01:07 | Why would you go to the trouble of
bringing up Levels or Curves and then click
| | 01:11 | on Auto when you could just
use the Auto Tone command?
| | 01:14 | Well, this way the automatic
adjustments serve as a jumping off point for
| | 01:18 | your own custom adjustment, and I'll show you
how to do exactly that in a future exercise.
| | 01:23 | But let's say instead, right now what
we want to do is we want to switch to one
| | 01:27 | of the other Auto functions, then
you would click on the Options button.
| | 01:31 | Notice that you're presented with
three Algorithms options, all of which have
| | 01:35 | fairly long names associated with them,
but actually they're just fancy names
| | 01:39 | for the commands that we've seen so far.
| | 01:41 | So notice right now, Enhanced
Per Channel Contrast is selected.
| | 01:44 | If I hover over it, I'll see a
description of that option followed by, in
| | 01:48 | parenthesis, (Auto Tone), that is
the Auto Tone command right there.
| | 01:52 | Then if I hover instead over the first
option, Enhanced Monochromatic Contrast,
| | 01:56 | I'll see a description, and then at
the end, in parenthesis, (Auto Contrast).
| | 02:01 | Then finally, if I hover over the
last option, Find Dark & Light Colors,
| | 02:05 | notice that it gives me a
description, blah, blah, blah, and then, in
| | 02:08 | parenthesis, (Auto Color).
| | 02:11 | If I select this option, notice that
it doesn't quite look like what we saw a
| | 02:15 | couple of exercises ago.
| | 02:17 | That's because the Auto Color command
is a combination of this radio button and
| | 02:22 | this check box right there,
Snap Neutral Midtones.
| | 02:24 | Notice if I hover over it, it tells me
how that option works and then at the
| | 02:28 | end, in parenthesis, (Auto Color).
| | 02:31 | So the idea is this, if you just
select the radio button, then you're
| | 02:35 | essentially neutralizing the Shadow
and Highlight detail inside the image.
| | 02:39 | If you want to also neutralize the
Midtones, then you have to add the check box.
| | 02:43 | Notice if I turn on the check box now,
we get a slightly different effect, it's
| | 02:46 | a little bit bluer this time around.
| | 02:48 | So already we've seen how you
have an Auto Color function with and
| | 02:52 | without Neutral Midtones.
| | 02:53 | So in other words, we have two different
variations on Auto Color, but by virtue
| | 02:58 | of the check box, you now have two
variations on all of the functions.
| | 03:01 | So I can combine Snap Neutral Midtones,
for example, I'll go ahead and turn it
| | 03:05 | off for a moment, but I could go ahead
and select Enhance Monochromatic Contrast
| | 03:09 | in order to apply the Auto Contrast
function, and then I could turn on Snap
| | 03:13 | Neutral Midtones to add a little
bit of Auto Color flavor to it.
| | 03:17 | Right now, we are seeing an automatic
function, that is otherwise unavailable to
| | 03:21 | us in the Image menu.
| | 03:23 | Now let's dropdown to the next group of options.
| | 03:25 | Not quite so useful, but you may
find yourself taking advantage of them
| | 03:28 | every once in a while.
| | 03:29 | You can specify the color of Shadows and
Highlights, which are currently black and white.
| | 03:34 | So in other words, let's say you don't
want the darkest color inside of your
| | 03:37 | image to be black, because maybe your
commercial printer has told you that you
| | 03:42 | should lighten it up just a little bit
in order to preserve the Shadow detail
| | 03:45 | inside of your image.
| | 03:46 | Then you would go ahead and click on
the swatch and enter some slightly lighter
| | 03:50 | values, like I could enter 2 for R
and then 2 for G and then 3 for B, if I
| | 03:56 | wanted it to be something other than
exactly neutral, if I wanted to have some
| | 04:00 | additional blue inside of those shadows.
| | 04:02 | And then I would click OK in
order to accept that modification.
| | 04:06 | Now, in my case actually, given the
way that things are running, I'd probably
| | 04:10 | want to go ahead and raise the red
value a little bit and take the blue value
| | 04:13 | down in order to make the Shadows a
little ruddier, and then I would click OK.
| | 04:18 | You could do something
similar with this Highlights option.
| | 04:20 | You could make the brightest color
something a little darker than white, if you
| | 04:24 | wanted to make sure to preserve those
Highlights when you print the image.
| | 04:27 | Again, this would be a decision
you make after consulting with your
| | 04:29 | commercial printer.
| | 04:30 | Also notice, we have these Clip options.
| | 04:32 | So what's happening here, if you take a
look at the Histogram, we are clipping
| | 04:36 | the very darkest luminance levels to
black over here in the left-hand side of
| | 04:40 | the Histogram, and we clipping the
very lightest luminance levels to white.
| | 04:43 | Now, you can determine how many of those
luminance levels are getting clipped by
| | 04:47 | changing these values.
| | 04:48 | By default, Photoshop goes ahead and clips .1%
of the luminance levels across the image.
| | 04:54 | So a very small quantity of
the luminance levels get clipped.
| | 04:58 | But if you decide your Shadows aren't dark
enough, you could raise this value if you want to.
| | 05:01 | You can take it as high as 9.9%.
| | 05:03 | I don't recommend you do that, but
you can experiment with it if you like.
| | 05:07 | What I am going to do in the case of
this image is, I think I'm going to set the
| | 05:11 | Midtones to something other than neutral gray.
| | 05:13 | So I'll click on that gray swatch to
bring up the Color Picker once again.
| | 05:17 | I'm going to change the Hue value, I
think, to something like 35 degrees, so that we
| | 05:22 | have something of an orange flavor here.
| | 05:25 | Then I'll tab to the Saturation value
and I'll use my Up Arrow key in order to
| | 05:29 | raise that value incrementally, and
ultimately, I am going to take it up to 5%.
| | 05:34 | So that just slightly warms
up those Midtones a little bit.
| | 05:38 | And then I'll go ahead and click OK.
| | 05:40 | Now, the final option
allows you to save your defaults.
| | 05:43 | So in other words, if you save these
settings, these become the default settings
| | 05:47 | for the Auto button.
| | 05:48 | And in the future, clicking Auto will
go ahead and apply Auto Contrast, along
| | 05:54 | with Snapping the Neutral Midtones, and
you are going to have slightly lighter
| | 05:57 | Shadows and your Midtones are
going to be a little bit orange.
| | 06:01 | Now, that's not something that
I want to do on a regular basis.
| | 06:04 | In fact, I am just going to go ahead
and Cancel out of here, because the better
| | 06:07 | way to apply the Levels
command is as an Adjustment layer.
| | 06:11 | I want you to see what the
differences are there in the very next exercise.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using Levels as an adjustment layer| 00:00 | In this exercise, I am going to show you
how to apply Levels as an Adjustment layer.
| | 00:04 | We'll see that there are a few
differences when you're working inside the
| | 00:06 | Adjustments panel as opposed
to inside the Levels dialog box.
| | 00:11 | But even though it's a little more
challenging to work this way, it's worth the effort.
| | 00:15 | Because an Adjustment layer, as
you may recall from Chapter 7, in the
| | 00:18 | Fundamentals portions of the
series, an Adjustment layer keeps your
| | 00:22 | modifications editable.
| | 00:23 | I'm still working inside Flat
photoCD image.tif, found inside the
| | 00:27 | 14_levels_curves folder.
| | 00:30 | In order to create an Adjustment layer,
I need to bring up the Adjustments panel.
| | 00:34 | I want to keep the Adjustments panel
over here in the right-hand stack this time
| | 00:37 | around, because we don't have a lot of layers.
| | 00:39 | So if I scrunch the Layers panel, no big deal.
| | 00:41 | So I am going to go ahead and grab this
collection of icons right there, and I
| | 00:45 | am going to move it just above
layers, like so, drop it into place.
| | 00:49 | So there is the Adjustments panel.
| | 00:51 | To create a Levels adjustment, you go
ahead and click on that second icon on the
| | 00:55 | first row, or if you want to name the
layer as you create it, then Alt+click or
| | 00:59 | Option+clicking that icon
brings up the New layer dialog box.
| | 01:03 | Now then, if you consider that all
too much work and you loaded my dekeKeys
| | 01:07 | shortcuts, why then, I have given you
this great keyboard short, in my opinion,
| | 01:11 | I find it to be great anyway, that does
everything that we've seen so far in one keystroke.
| | 01:15 | So I am going to go ahead and Cancel out
of this dialog box and I'll collapse my
| | 01:20 | Adjustments panel as well.
| | 01:21 | So here I am working inside the image.
| | 01:23 | All I need to do, if you loaded
dekeKeys, you press Ctrl+Shift+L or
| | 01:27 | Command+Shift+L on the Mac.
| | 01:30 | Now, were it not for dekeKeys, Ctrl+
Shift+L or Command+Shift+L is assigned to
| | 01:33 | the Auto Tone command.
| | 01:35 | This, I think, you're going to use more often.
| | 01:38 | Anyway, I'll go ahead and name my layer,
instead of calling it Levels 1 like
| | 01:41 | that, I am just going to name it levels,
because it's going to be my only levels adjustment.
| | 01:45 | I'll click OK in order to create the
New layer, and now we're working inside
| | 01:49 | the Adjustments panel.
| | 01:50 | Now, I want you to be seeing this
big huge Adjustments panel here.
| | 01:53 | If you're not, if you're seeing a
small Histogram, then click on this little
| | 01:57 | folder icon down here in the
lower left corner of the panel.
| | 02:00 | That makes the Histogram 256 pixels
wide, so we can see every one of the 256
| | 02:06 | luminous variations inside of a standard
eight bit per channel image. All right!
| | 02:10 | Now notice right here that
we've got the Auto button.
| | 02:14 | If you click on it, not surprisingly, you
go ahead and apply Auto Tone by default.
| | 02:19 | If you want to apply some other flavor
of Auto adjustment, then you press the
| | 02:23 | Alt key or the Option key on the Mac and
then you click on Auto, and that brings
| | 02:28 | up that dialog box that we
saw in a previous exercise.
| | 02:31 | I could switch over to Enhance
Monochromatic Contrast, I could turn on Snap
| | 02:35 | Neutral Midtones, and I could
adjust my other settings as well.
| | 02:38 | And then I'd go ahead and click OK
and now I have applied those setting
| | 02:42 | temporarily using a Levels Adjustment layer.
| | 02:46 | Now if I want to back off those settings,
all I have to do is reduce the Opacity value.
| | 02:51 | Because I have a Selection tool active,
for example, I could just press the 7
| | 02:54 | key to reduce the Opacity value to 70%.
| | 02:58 | Then we get a blend of this automatic
levels adjustment along, with the original
| | 03:03 | uncorrected version of the image.
| | 03:04 | All right, so far so good, in the next
exercise, we'll take a look at how to
| | 03:08 | apply a custom modification
to the composite Histogram.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying custom Levels adjustments| 00:00 | In this exercise, I'll show you how
to apply a custom levels adjustment to
| | 00:03 | the composite image.
| | 00:04 | Then in later exercises, we'll see how
to adjust each channel independently.
| | 00:09 | I'm working inside an image called
Blended sundials.psd, found inside the
| | 00:13 | 14_levels_curves folder.
| | 00:15 | This is that image that that I shot in
San Remy, complete with the three layers
| | 00:19 | of Auto adjustment that I blended
together to create what was supposedly the
| | 00:25 | ideal color correction.
| | 00:26 | We're actually going to do
better than that this time around.
| | 00:29 | So what I'd like you to do is click on
the bottom Auto layer, Shift+click on the
| | 00:32 | top one, and let's go ahead and combine
them into a group by going to the Layers
| | 00:36 | panel flyout menu and
choosing New Group from layers.
| | 00:40 | I'm going to call them the auto
adjustments, like so, and then click OK.
| | 00:45 | Then I'm going to turn that group off.
| | 00:48 | So what we're doing is we're
returning to the original dim photograph.
| | 00:51 | Now I'll go ahead and click on the
Background layer to make it active.
| | 00:54 | The easiest way to create a new
Adjustment layer is, if you loaded my dekeKeys,
| | 00:58 | just press Ctrl+Shift+L or
Command+Shift+L on the Mac.
| | 01:01 | But for those of you who declined to
load dekeKeys or couldn't load it for
| | 01:06 | whatever reason, let me show you how
to create that keyboard shortcut on your
| | 01:09 | own, because I think you
will find it incredibly useful.
| | 01:13 | Go up to the Edit menu and
choose the Keyboard Shortcuts command.
| | 01:17 | Then your Set would probably be
something like Photoshop Defaults or something
| | 01:21 | else that you've created.
| | 01:22 | Next, go ahead and change your
Shortcuts For option to panel menus.
| | 01:25 | That's the simplest way to work.
| | 01:27 | Twirl open the Adjustments item right
there and scroll your way down until you
| | 01:31 | see these items, Levels and Curves and so on.
| | 01:35 | What I recommend for Levels is Ctrl+Shift+L,
Command+Shift+L on the Mac.
| | 01:39 | Now, you'll get a warning that says, this
is already in use for Image > Auto Tone.
| | 01:45 | What I would suggest you do is say,
who cares, click on the Accept button and
| | 01:49 | you've changed that keyboard
shortcut, because after all a customizable
| | 01:52 | adjustment layer is much more
valuable to you than the Auto Tone command.
| | 01:57 | Then go ahead and click on Curves, if
you want to follow my advice here, and
| | 02:00 | press Ctrl+Shift+M, Command+Shift+M on
the Mac, because Ctrl+M or Command+M is
| | 02:05 | the standard keyboard shortcut for the
Curves command, adding Shift will get you
| | 02:08 | the Adjustment layer.
| | 02:10 | Then let's scroll down a little farther here.
| | 02:12 | I'll take it down so that
we can see Hue/Saturation.
| | 02:15 | What I recommend for this command,
and it's also going to provoke an alert
| | 02:18 | message, is Ctrl+Shift+U or Command+Shift+U,
because Ctrl+U or Command+U is
| | 02:22 | Hue/Saturation, Add Shift
for the Adjustment layer.
| | 02:25 | That's going to remove that
shortcut from the Desaturate command.
| | 02:29 | Again, big deal, when you need that
command, because it is a static adjustment,
| | 02:33 | you can go ahead and choose it manually.
| | 02:35 | Then finally, for Black & White here, I
recommend yet another keyboard shortcut.
| | 02:40 | This time press Ctrl+Shift+B or Command+Shift+B
on the Mac, and you'll be warned
| | 02:44 | that you're going to swipe this keyboard
shortcut from the Auto Color command. Yea!
| | 02:48 | That sounds great to me.
| | 02:49 | I'll go ahead and click on the Accept button.
| | 02:52 | Then you would go ahead and click on
the little floppy disk in order to save
| | 02:55 | your custom keyboard shortcuts.
| | 02:57 | Anyway, I'm just going to Cancel out,
because I've already selected dekeKeys in the past.
| | 03:01 | Now, I'll press Ctrl+Shift+L,
Command+Shift+L on the Mac.
| | 03:05 | That reveals the Adjustments panel.
| | 03:07 | It goes ahead and clicks automatically
for me on the Levels icon, and it brings
| | 03:10 | up the New layer dialog box, which I'm
going to call custom levels , like so.
| | 03:15 | Then I'll click OK in
order to create the New layer.
| | 03:18 | Now notice what we have here.
| | 03:19 | We've got the big old Histogram, which
stretches, as you may recall from our
| | 03:24 | discussion of the Histogram back in
Chapter 7, of the Fundamentals portion of
| | 03:27 | this series, it stretches from black
over here in the far left side, to white,
| | 03:33 | over here in the far right side.
| | 03:35 | So your Shadows are in this general
region, your Highlights are over in this
| | 03:39 | general region, and your
Midtones are in between.
| | 03:42 | Now, notice we also have
three slider triangles here;
| | 03:45 | one for the black point, one for the
white point, and one for the so-called
| | 03:49 | gamma value in between.
| | 03:51 | We'll investigate what gamma means in
the next exercise, but for now we're going
| | 03:55 | to adjust these black and white points.
| | 03:57 | Now, if you take this black point
over to the right, what you're doing, and
| | 04:02 | notice that value is tracked
numerically inside this first field, what that
| | 04:06 | does is it says, any luminance level
from this point to the left is going to be
| | 04:10 | clipped to black and the rest of the
Histogram is going to be stretched out in between.
| | 04:16 | So in my case I'm saying, any luminance
value of 46 or lower, and remember that
| | 04:20 | 0 is black, 255 is white, anything
with a luminance level of 46 or lower is
| | 04:25 | going to be clipped to black.
| | 04:27 | Well, in our case we really don't want
to clip anything to black, because we
| | 04:30 | already had good Shadows, as
witnessed by this Histogram here.
| | 04:33 | It already touches the
left hand side of the graph.
| | 04:37 | So we must be in pretty good shape.
| | 04:39 | Now, I could go ahead and clip just a
few of those Shadows, if we wanted to
| | 04:42 | punch the Shadow detail inside the image,
but our Shadows are currently a little
| | 04:47 | bit overly dark, because of this
bright light source and also this shallow
| | 04:50 | awning that's casting a very dark shadow.
| | 04:52 | So I would go ahead and leave
the black point value set to 0.
| | 04:56 | The adjustment that this image
really needs is a white point adjustment.
| | 05:00 | So notice that this Histogram there
ends right at about this location.
| | 05:05 | Well, that's where the white point ought to be.
| | 05:07 | So go ahead and drag that white point
over to the end of the mountain range
| | 05:12 | is what I'd suggest.
| | 05:14 | I recommend you even take it in a
little farther, so just a little bit into the
| | 05:19 | foot of that mountain right there.
| | 05:22 | I'm looking for a value, if
you're following along with me, of 194.
| | 05:25 | So in that case, I'm saying anything
with the luminance level of 194 or brighter
| | 05:30 | becomes white inside of this image.
| | 05:33 | What I just applied, by the way, is
identical to an Auto Contrast adjustment.
| | 05:38 | This is what Auto Contrast would do.
| | 05:40 | It would go ahead and yank the
black point over to the beginning of the
| | 05:43 | Histogram and then yank the white
point over to the end of the Histogram,
| | 05:47 | and that's all it does.
| | 05:48 | It doesn't do anything else.
| | 05:50 | So what we're seeing here is our own
handcrafted Auto Contrast adjustment, which
| | 05:54 | may seem like a colossal waste of time,
because we could have just chosen the
| | 05:58 | Auto Contrast command.
| | 06:00 | Well, in the next exercise, you'll see
how it's an ideal starting point as we
| | 06:03 | further modify the brightness of
the image using the gamma value.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding the gamma value| 00:00 | I've saved my progress as Composite B&W points.psd,
so called because we've
| | 00:04 | modified the black and white
points for the composite image.
| | 00:08 | It's found inside the 14_levels_curves folder.
| | 00:10 | In this exercise, we're going to take
a look at the Gamma Value, which allows
| | 00:14 | us to adjust the Midtones in the image,
while keeping the black and white points fixed.
| | 00:19 | It's an essential option inside this
dialog box and very useful as well.
| | 00:23 | Now, I should tell you that I've
reset a couple of preferences here.
| | 00:26 | First of all, I went ahead and
reestablished a Cache Levels value of 4, so
| | 00:31 | that you and I are on the same page,
assuming that you never changed your Cache Levels.
| | 00:36 | And then I've also reset my workspace
to One-On-One, in order to tidy up my
| | 00:39 | screen a little bit.
| | 00:40 | I actually did that, to be
honest, a couple of exercises ago.
| | 00:44 | Now, notice over here, as a result of
the new Cache Level's value, over here on
| | 00:48 | the left side of the Adjustments
panel, you'll see this warning, which is
| | 00:51 | telling you that your
Histogram is not entirely accurate.
| | 00:54 | Now, I happen to know that I'm working
from Cache Level 3 from investigating the
| | 00:59 | Histogram panel, but that really doesn't matter.
| | 01:02 | All we're concerned about is that this
Histogram is inaccurate, we'd like to
| | 01:06 | see an accurate one.
| | 01:07 | So go ahead and click on this icon
in order to update the Histogram.
| | 01:11 | The other thing to note about this
graph is it's the before Histogram, that is,
| | 01:15 | the one that's associated with
the original underlying layer.
| | 01:18 | If you want to see the after
Histogram, the corrected one, then you need
| | 01:22 | to bring up the Histogram panel, which I'll
do by clicking on this icon in the panel Strip.
| | 01:27 | Now, because I reset to One-On-One,
I've got a dinky Histogram once again.
| | 01:30 | I'll go ahead and enlarge it by going to
the flyout menu, choosing Expanded View.
| | 01:35 | Very important that your Source is set
to Entire Image incidentally, so that
| | 01:40 | you're seeing the composite version
of the Adjustment layer, along with the
| | 01:44 | original image, switching to
Selected layer would be meaningless.
| | 01:48 | Also notice that I'm seeing the
channel by channel Histograms layered on top
| | 01:51 | of each other, whereas inside the
Levels dialog box, you always see a
| | 01:55 | composite Histogram.
| | 01:57 | In order to switch to the Composite
View, so that you're comparing apples to
| | 02:00 | apples here, change Channel to RGB, and
then of course because Cache Level is 3,
| | 02:06 | go ahead and update that Histogram
so that you can see the real thing.
| | 02:09 | Now, notice that we have a bunch of
vertical stripes inside of the Histogram.
| | 02:13 | For example, if I click on one of
these points, it's telling me that that's a
| | 02:17 | level of 32, notice the Level
value down here below the Histogram.
| | 02:22 | I'll go back to that point and
there it is, the stripe at Level 32.
| | 02:26 | And what that's telling is, is there
are no pixels associated with a luminance
| | 02:30 | level of 132 inside of this image.
| | 02:32 | There are all kinds of pixels at 131
and they're a bunch of pixels at 133 as
| | 02:37 | well, but we lost them all at 132.
| | 02:40 | And that's what happens when
you apply a Levels Adjustment.
| | 02:42 | You're moving the luminance levels to
new locations, and so you're getting to
| | 02:46 | get gaps in between.
| | 02:47 | That's probably not something you ever
need to worry about, unless you really
| | 02:50 | start overworking the image, that's
when you may start to notice banding.
| | 02:54 | But the point I'm really try to make
here is that, even though we're working
| | 02:57 | with an Adjustment layer, that's happening.
| | 03:00 | So we like to say that Adjustment
layers are nondestructive, while in fact,
| | 03:04 | they're really just editable.
| | 03:06 | Once you apply them, they're just as
destructive as Static Adjustments inside of Photoshop.
| | 03:10 | So you're still going to get the same
results if you apply these values inside
| | 03:15 | the Levels dialog box or
here in the Adjustments panel.
| | 03:18 | Anyway, let's go ahead and hide the Histogram.
| | 03:20 | What I'm noticing now is that my image
is awfully bright, and what I'd like to
| | 03:25 | do is tone down this big area of wall.
| | 03:27 | Now, this area clearly falls into the Midtones.
| | 03:31 | We've got a few Highlights going on, a
few Shadows as well, where these lines
| | 03:35 | are concerned, and of course the
Shadows inside the shutters here, but most of
| | 03:38 | the other detail is Midtones.
| | 03:41 | And you can modify Midtones by
using either this gray slider or this
| | 03:45 | numerical value below it.
| | 03:46 | Now, this is known as the
Gamma Value, incidentally.
| | 03:49 | Now, the real purpose of the Gamma
Value is to tweak the response of either a
| | 03:54 | digital camera or your computer monitor
or something along those lines, so that
| | 03:59 | an image better matches the scene as
you would have actually seen it, because
| | 04:03 | your hardware and your eyes
perceive the world in different ways.
| | 04:07 | And the Gamma Value here inside
the Levels panel works the same way.
| | 04:10 | Now, you can actually drag this
gray slider one direction or the other.
| | 04:14 | If you drag it to the left, you're
going to lighten the Midtones in the image.
| | 04:18 | Notice that the black value remains locked down.
| | 04:21 | So you're not sacrificing your
ultra dark colors inside the image.
| | 04:24 | The white value remains locked down as
well, so you preserve your Highlights.
| | 04:29 | Now, if you go too far with this adjustment,
the whole scene is going to appear washed out.
| | 04:34 | And also, by the way, you really need
to be aware of this phenomenon, when you
| | 04:37 | overbrighten an image, you're going to
bring out a lot of noise inside of your
| | 04:41 | Shadows, so you really want
to avoid that at all cost.
| | 04:45 | Anyway, I'm going to go ahead and
zoom back out here, and center my image
| | 04:49 | a little bit as well.
| | 04:50 | So notice now that my Gamma Value set to 2.00,
that's the adjustment that I've made so far.
| | 04:55 | Compare that with the
default Gamma Value of 1.00.
| | 04:59 | Notice that, it's not that
middle gray value of 128, it's this
| | 05:03 | entirely different creature.
| | 05:04 | And what it is, in case
you're curious, it's an exponent.
| | 05:07 | So in my case right now, I'm squaring the
brightness of the colors inside the image.
| | 05:12 | Where I'd reset this to a value of 1,
then I would be sending the colors to the
| | 05:16 | first power, which of
course does nothing to them.
| | 05:19 | Anyway, values above 1 are going to
brighten the Midtones, values below 1 are
| | 05:24 | going to darken those Midtones , like so.
| | 05:26 | And I also want you to see what's
happening to the Histogram as we work, so I'll
| | 05:30 | bring that Histogram panel back up.
| | 05:31 | Let's go ahead and reset this
guy to 1, and press the Tab key.
| | 05:35 | So that's the Histogram
we saw just a moment ago.
| | 05:37 | I'll go ahead and update it, just
so that it's a little smoother here.
| | 05:40 | And then if I brighten the Gamma Value,
notice that I'm stretching the Shadows
| | 05:44 | like crazy, so they're hanging on for
dear life over here, because they are
| | 05:48 | anchored down at the black point, but
that's why we're getting all this noise,
| | 05:52 | because we're exaggerating the level of
noise that was already there inside the Shadows.
| | 05:57 | And then we're squishing the Histogram
over to the right hand side, and all of
| | 06:00 | those black spikes right there are areas
in which we are mashing a ton of pixels
| | 06:05 | onto a certain luminance level.
| | 06:07 | So for example, at Level 163, you
can see that below the Histogram in the
| | 06:11 | stats area, inside the panel, at a
luminous level of 163, I've got an awful
| | 06:16 | lot of pixels going now.
| | 06:18 | But of course we're applying an over
the top Gamma Adjustment at this point.
| | 06:21 | If I move the Gamma Value over to the
right, and again, this is an exaggerated
| | 06:26 | adjustment, now the Highlights
are hanging on for dear life.
| | 06:29 | They are anchored down at 194, and then
they're getting stretched out like crazy
| | 06:34 | over this area, so lots of gaps.
| | 06:36 | And then over toward the left hand
side of the Histogram, lots of spikes.
| | 06:41 | Anyway, the value that I think works
really well for this image is 0.9, and so
| | 06:45 | that's what I'm going to set it to.
| | 06:47 | And incidentally, when you're modifying
the Gamma Value, here's what I recommend
| | 06:50 | you do, not that you sit here and enter
numbers of course, but rather, you start
| | 06:53 | with 1 and then you can press the Up
Arrow key to raise that value in .01
| | 07:00 | increments, or the Down Arrow key
to lower it by a similar increment.
| | 07:04 | You can also, by the way, press Shift+Up Arrow
to raise it in 0.1 increments or
| | 07:09 | Shift+Down Arrow to lower it in 0.1
increments, and that's what I did.
| | 07:14 | So I just clicked in the value,
press Shift+Down Arrow and I ended up
| | 07:17 | getting this result here.
| | 07:18 | So the big difference, not a big
difference actually, it's a tweak, but here's
| | 07:23 | what the image looked like when we
first opened it, so the face of the wall was
| | 07:27 | a little bit too bright, and here's
the way the wall looks now, a little bit
| | 07:30 | more dim, a little bit more detail as
well inside of that wall, because we have
| | 07:34 | more contrast going on,
thanks to our revised Gamma Value.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| The futility of Output Levels| 00:00 | I've saved my progress as
Gamma tweak.psd, found inside the
| | 00:03 | 14_levels_curves folder.
| | 00:05 | And in this exercise, I'm going
to explain what's going on with the
| | 00:07 | Output Levels values.
| | 00:09 | Now, if you want the one sentence
summary so that you can skip ahead to the
| | 00:12 | next exercise and get on with your life, it's,
don't worry about them, they are virtually useless.
| | 00:18 | So I guess that's almost two sentences
there, but that really does sum up the
| | 00:22 | Output Levels values.
| | 00:24 | Having said that, let me show you how they work.
| | 00:26 | They sometimes come in handy with
Masking, other times you might find them
| | 00:29 | useful when compositing effects on top of
each other and applying special Blend modes.
| | 00:34 | But for standard everyday average
corrections, you don't need them.
| | 00:37 | Here's what it does.
| | 00:38 | We've got an Output Level value of 0,
which is black and an Output Level of
| | 00:41 | 255, which is white.
| | 00:43 | And what you're doing is you're saying,
the black point here, whatever black
| | 00:47 | point value we specified, in this
case 0, is going to be mapped to 0.
| | 00:51 | So in other words, black becomes black.
| | 00:53 | And in this case, 194, the white point
value, becomes 255, so it becomes white.
| | 01:00 | But let's say you'd rather map black
to something much lighter, for example,
| | 01:04 | I'll set the Output Levels value to 90,
now I'm saying, whatever was black
| | 01:08 | before, now becomes 90.
| | 01:11 | Problem is, with this
approach you have nothing beyond 90.
| | 01:15 | So 90 becomes your darkest color
and after that you've got nothing.
| | 01:18 | So if I bring up the Histogram panel, sure
enough, we just eliminated our Shadow detail.
| | 01:24 | And the same thing goes for
the white point value here.
| | 01:26 | If I take it down to, let's say, an
even value of 200, then I'm mapping 194
| | 01:32 | to 200, which means that I'm getting rid
of a bunch of highlights inside of my image.
| | 01:37 | And we end up with this very dimmed image
in the background, extremely low contrast.
| | 01:42 | So if you wanted to take something
that was high contrast and make it low
| | 01:45 | contrast, you could using this technique.
| | 01:48 | But this is no way to take the
contrast out of a continuous tone photograph,
| | 01:52 | because you end up with nothing in the
way of Shadows or Highlights, not reduced
| | 01:56 | numbers of Shadows or Highlights,
you're just wiping them out.
| | 02:00 | Now, where this could become useful, in
the old days you could use Output Levels
| | 02:04 | value in order to dim an image.
| | 02:06 | Then you would take it into
something like, let's say, PageMaker or
| | 02:09 | QuarkXPress, and use it as a
background and run Type over it, very common
| | 02:14 | design technique actually.
| | 02:15 | However, these days there's better ways to work.
| | 02:18 | You could take the image into InDesign
or Illustrator, for example, and reduce
| | 02:22 | its Opacity and get a very similar effect.
| | 02:24 | So for example, if I were to reduce
the Opacity of this image inside of
| | 02:29 | InDesign, to something pretty low,
let's say 30%, I would get an effect
| | 02:33 | that's analogous to this, which might serve
as the perfect background for some body copy.
| | 02:38 | Anyway, in our case, now that you
understand how they work, we may see practical
| | 02:42 | applications of Output Levels in
future chapters, but for now, go ahead and
| | 02:47 | leave your Output Levels
set to 0 and 255 respectively.
| | 02:51 | In the next exercise, I'm going to
show you how to brighten up the shadow
| | 02:54 | under the awning.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Selections and adjustment layers| 00:00 | I'm still working inside Gamma tweak.psd,
found inside the 14_levels_curves
| | 00:04 | folder, and my only remaining concern vis
-a-vis the brightness and contrast of
| | 00:08 | this image is the overly dark
shadows underneath this slight awning.
| | 00:13 | What I'd like to do is
breathe life into those details.
| | 00:16 | You'll sometimes hear people
talk about opening up the shadows.
| | 00:19 | That means they're hoping to
lighten up the darkest areas of the image.
| | 00:23 | Now, one way to work would be to grab
the Dodge tool, which you may recall from
| | 00:28 | Chapter 9 of the fundamentals portion
of this series, and then you could go
| | 00:32 | ahead and paint under the awning.
| | 00:33 | Now, I'm getting the ghostbuster icon,
because I have my adjustment layer active.
| | 00:38 | So, I'm going to collapse my
Adjustments panel and switch to the Background
| | 00:42 | layer, and then I'm going to paint
over it, and you can see that that makes a
| | 00:46 | big difference very quickly.
| | 00:47 | So, the Dodge tool allows you to
make quick edits inside of an image
| | 00:51 | like nobody's business.
| | 00:52 | However, let's say you
want more control than that.
| | 00:54 | I think we can do better.
| | 00:56 | In that case, what we need to do is
take a slightly more disciplined approach.
| | 00:59 | We need to select these shadow details
here, and then we need to brighten them
| | 01:03 | using another adjustment layer.
| | 01:05 | That's what I'm going to do.
| | 01:06 | So, I'll press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z on
the Mac to undo the Dodge tool, and then,
| | 01:11 | I'm going to switch to this tool right
here, the Quick Selection tool, not my
| | 01:14 | favorite selection tool inside of
Photoshop, however, quite good at selecting
| | 01:18 | areas with obvious edges, which
definitely defines these tiles right here.
| | 01:23 | Now, I'm going to go ahead and drag
across the tiles like so, and that does
| | 01:28 | quickly select them although I
selected down into this region right here.
| | 01:33 | What I've noticed in Photoshop CS5 is
that the automated selection tools have a
| | 01:38 | habit of behaving differently,
depending on whether you're working on a
| | 01:41 | pixel-based image or an adjustment
layer, which I have to say is little
| | 01:45 | peculiar, because you would think
they're always watching the composite image.
| | 01:49 | However, it does make a
difference what's selected.
| | 01:51 | So, check this out!
| | 01:52 | Notice this region above the sundial
is selected, I'm going to switch over to
| | 01:56 | my Adjustment layer.
| | 01:58 | I'm going to press Ctrl+D, Command+D on
the Mac to deselect that image, and I'm
| | 02:01 | going to paint that exact same brush
stroke with the Quick Selection tool.
| | 02:05 | This time, I do not select down into that
region above the sundial. So, go figure.
| | 02:10 | In fact, the only cleanup I have
to do is in this area right here.
| | 02:13 | So, I'll press the Alt key or the
Option key on the Mac, and paint over these
| | 02:18 | non-shadow details in the midsection of
the image, and I get this effect right there.
| | 02:24 | Now, at this point, you might
think, ay, caramba! This is awesome!
| | 02:27 | We've got an accurate and quick selection
outline, out of the Quick Selection tool.
| | 02:31 | But if you're paying any attention to
chapter 8, then you may recall that the
| | 02:35 | Quick Selection tool delivers selection
outlines with ratty edges, and you can
| | 02:39 | never trust the marching ants.
| | 02:41 | So, what we're going to do is click on
the Refine Edge button here in order to
| | 02:45 | bring up the dramatically enhanced
Refine Edge dialog box here in Photoshop CS5,
| | 02:50 | but here is another weirdness of
working on an adjustment layer.
| | 02:55 | This time, the Adjustment layer
is not helping us, it's hurting us.
| | 02:59 | What we're seeing here, instead of
seeing a little sliver of the image, do you
| | 03:03 | recall this, once again, from our
earlier discussion of Refine Edge, we saw a
| | 03:07 | preview of it, I'm going to explain
it in more detail in a future chapter.
| | 03:11 | But for now, what we should be seeing
what I'd expect to see is the selected
| | 03:16 | area, these tiles that is,
against a white background in our case.
| | 03:20 | However, I'm seeing a Mobius tube
instead, because Photoshop isn't smart enough
| | 03:23 | to see through the
Adjustment layer to the image below.
| | 03:26 | Then if we start making
modifications, check this out!
| | 03:29 | These are the changes that I'll be making.
| | 03:31 | I'll be raising the Radius value to 20.
| | 03:33 | Notice the bizarre, completely
unacceptable edges that we're getting right
| | 03:37 | there, and then I'll turn on the
Smart Radius option, I'll explain what I'm
| | 03:39 | doing here, when we do it for real.
| | 03:42 | I get this haloed effect,
altogether unacceptable.
| | 03:45 | I'll cancel out, and let's switch
to the Background layer instead, and
| | 03:49 | compare the results.
| | 03:50 | I'll go back to Refine Edge.
| | 03:52 | Now we see the actual image
against the white background.
| | 03:55 | By the way we do want to preview this
selection against the white background,
| | 03:58 | because that affords us the most
contrast, and if you're not seeing white, then
| | 04:01 | click inside this View icon
and choose On White, like so.
| | 04:05 | All right, I'll go ahead
and hide that dropdown menu.
| | 04:07 | Now watch what happens when I
raise the Radius value to 20 pixels.
| | 04:11 | Much better results this time around!
| | 04:13 | Incidentally, I want you to make sure
just in case that the Adjust Edge values
| | 04:18 | are all set to zero.
| | 04:19 | Decontaminate Colors should be turned off.
| | 04:21 | We don't want any of these
options for this effect right here.
| | 04:24 | What the Radius value does is it
intelligently seeps the selection outline into
| | 04:30 | different luminance levels.
| | 04:32 | It seeps the selection
according to the luminance.
| | 04:34 | So, in other words, if we've
selected a dark area, then it will seep into
| | 04:38 | other dark areas, seep away from the highlights,
and create a nice soft edge between the two.
| | 04:44 | But I'm also managing to seep the
selection a little bit into the hard edges of
| | 04:48 | the tiles, which I don't want.
| | 04:50 | So, I'm going to turn on this check box
right there, Smart Radius, which treats
| | 04:54 | the soft edges and the sharp edges differently.
| | 04:56 | So, when you turn that on,
notice that the tiles darken up.
| | 05:00 | Now, the shadows darkened up a little
bit as well, which actually long-term
| | 05:04 | benefits the selection outline, but we
definitely needed to keep those title
| | 05:07 | details nice and sharp, because, by
virtue of the fact they were going light on
| | 05:11 | us, that meant they were becoming
translucent, and we were seeing through to
| | 05:15 | the white background.
| | 05:16 | Anyway, notice how different this
looks when we're working on the background
| | 05:21 | image as opposed to the Adjustment layer.
| | 05:23 | So, just bear that in mind.
| | 05:25 | If you're getting weird aberrant
results out of your automated selection
| | 05:28 | tools inside Photoshop, try switching
away from the Adjustment layer or even
| | 05:33 | to the Adjustment layer, because it helped us
where the Quick Selection tool is concerned.
| | 05:37 | All right, I'll go ahead and click OK in
order to generate that selection outline.
| | 05:42 | In the next exercise, we'll use
the selection to mask another Levels
| | 05:46 | Adjustment layer.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Opening up the shadows| 00:00 | I'm still working inside Gamma tweak.psd
inside the 14_levels_curves folder.
| | 00:04 | You may recall in the previous exercise,
we went ahead and painted the selection
| | 00:08 | with the Quick Selection tool and then
refined it using the Refine Edge command.
| | 00:13 | Now, we're ready to create another
Adjustment layer that will open up those
| | 00:17 | shadows, and we're going to put that
Adjustment layer on top of the existing one.
| | 00:20 | So, go ahead and click on the custom
levels adjustment, and I'm going to apply
| | 00:24 | another Levels Adjustment layer.
| | 00:26 | So, I'll press Ctrl+Shift+L or Command+Shift+L
on the Mac, and I encourage you
| | 00:31 | to go ahead and name your Adjustment
layers according to their function.
| | 00:35 | So, in this case, I call my shadow
brightener, for example, because that's what
| | 00:39 | it's going to do, and then I'll click OK.
| | 00:42 | Up comes the Adjustments panel with a
histogram that represents the composite view.
| | 00:47 | So, in other words, I'm seeing the
histogram of the selection that's a
| | 00:51 | combination of the Background
image and the custom levels adjustment
| | 00:55 | layer working together.
| | 00:56 | That's the way the Adjustment layers work.
| | 00:58 | They build on top of each other.
| | 00:59 | All right, but it's not accurate, so
I could update it by clicking on this
| | 01:03 | warning icon, not all that
much different but worth doing.
| | 01:07 | Now, one way to work, if you really
wanted to brighten the heck out of these
| | 01:10 | shadows, you could drag
this white point over, like so.
| | 01:14 | Notice that goes ahead and applies a
kind of underlining to the awning, which
| | 01:18 | you might find to be beneficial.
| | 01:20 | It's definitely a little
bit surreal, I would say.
| | 01:22 | However, what you have to bear in mind
is that it's very possible that we're
| | 01:26 | going to be drawing out a lot of noise
inside of those shadows, because this is
| | 01:30 | a pretty significant tweak that we're
applying, and we're heaping it on top of
| | 01:35 | another adjustment layer.
| | 01:37 | So, it's basically one color
adjustment on top of another one.
| | 01:41 | That's bound to get a little bit
destructive, just something to bear in mind.
| | 01:45 | So, you want to take it easy.
| | 01:46 | I'm going to take that white point
value back up to 255, and I'm going to focus
| | 01:50 | my attention on the Gamma value.
| | 01:52 | So, I'll press Shift+Up Arrow three
times in a row to raise that value to 1.3.
| | 01:58 | That's not quite far enough in my
opinion, but if I go up to 1.4, that looks
| | 02:02 | to me to be too far.
| | 02:03 | So, I'm going to split the
difference by nudging that value down to 1.35.
| | 02:09 | Then if you take a look at the histogram,
you can see that we really don't have
| | 02:13 | a solid black going on here.
| | 02:15 | We've got some shadow details, but they
failed to touch the left edge of the graph.
| | 02:20 | As a result, we have some wishy-washy
details there inside the awning.
| | 02:23 | I'm going to go ahead and press Shift+Tab
in order to back up to the black point
| | 02:28 | value, and I'll press Shift+Up
Arrow in order to darken the shadows.
| | 02:32 | That ends up looking really nice in my opinion.
| | 02:34 | So, I'm going to collapse
the Adjustments panel here.
| | 02:37 | Let's see what kind of contribution
our new adjustment layer has made.
| | 02:40 | This is the image just that appeared
at the outset of the exercise, and this
| | 02:44 | is how it looks now.
| | 02:45 | So, definitely breathing some credible
life into those details, in other words,
| | 02:50 | we're not going too far, however, we
can make out the details quite nicely.
| | 02:55 | Now, another thing I'd like to do is
show you the difference between this,
| | 02:58 | our custom adjustment, and the blended
automatic adjustments that we applied
| | 03:02 | a few exercises back.
| | 03:04 | They're available to us right there,
the auto adjustment group, notice, it's
| | 03:08 | turned off, I'll go ahead and turn it back on.
| | 03:10 | So, this is what we had
arrived at, a few exercises ago.
| | 03:14 | It looked awfully darn good at the
time, but now if I turn it off, and we
| | 03:18 | compare it to what we have now, the
custom correction looks a heck of a lot
| | 03:22 | better in my opinion.
| | 03:23 | Just so that we can say we've come full
circle, if I Alt+Click or Option+Click
| | 03:27 | in the eyeball in front of the
Background layer, this is the original dim
| | 03:30 | low-contrast version of the image.
| | 03:32 | This is the image as it appears now,
thanks to two Levels Adjustments working
| | 03:37 | together here inside Photoshop.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Previewing clipped pixels| 00:00 | In this exercise I am going to show
you a little-known trick for previewing
| | 00:03 | exactly which pixels inside of an image
are clipping to either black or white on
| | 00:07 | a channel by channel basis when you
adjust the black-and-white points here
| | 00:12 | inside the Levels panel.
| | 00:13 | I saved my changes from the previous
exercise as Open shadows.psd just in case
| | 00:17 | you want to compare my file to yours.
| | 00:20 | Now I am going to switch over to this one.
| | 00:21 | It is called Levels set to Auto.psd.
| | 00:24 | It is the result of our noodling
around with the Auto button a few
| | 00:27 | exercises back now.
| | 00:29 | Let's say that I want to go ahead and
wipe out the changes that I've made here
| | 00:33 | inside the Levels panel
so that I can start afresh.
| | 00:36 | I don't want to get rid of the Adjustment layer;
| | 00:37 | I want to keep it because I need it.
| | 00:38 | I just want to start over again.
| | 00:41 | All right, then notice I have this icon down
here in the bottom-right corner of the panel.
| | 00:45 | You can see that the arrow goes
all the way around the circle.
| | 00:48 | This icon actually has two
states and let me show them to you.
| | 00:51 | I am going to go ahead and change
the Gamma value to let's say 0.7.
| | 00:54 | I am not recommending this change;
| | 00:57 | I am just doing it for
the sake of demonstration.
| | 00:59 | Now notice that this cursor down here
in the lower-right corner only makes it
| | 01:03 | halfway around the circle and the
hint says, reset to previous state.
| | 01:07 | So if you click on it, then you're
going to get rid of your most recent
| | 01:11 | modification and now the arrow goes all
the way around the circle, click again,
| | 01:15 | and you will wipe out all
the changes that you've made.
| | 01:19 | For our next modifications to work, I
really need the Opacity value to be set to 100%.
| | 01:25 | So I am going to press the
0 key in order make it so.
| | 01:27 | So now we have a fully opaque
version of this Adjustment layer.
| | 01:31 | It doesn't happen to be doing anything
right now, but it will in just a moment.
| | 01:36 | So check out what happens
when I modify the Y point value.
| | 01:39 | Let's say I take it down to what is it now, 224.
| | 01:43 | I know just because I know how the
dialog box works that any pixel with a
| | 01:47 | composite luminance level of 224 or
lighter is going to get clipped to white.
| | 01:51 | But what does that mean inside the image?
| | 01:53 | I don't know where these pixels are located.
| | 01:55 | In other words, just because they
appear over here on the right-hand side of
| | 01:58 | the histogram doesn't mean that
they're somehow magically over on the
| | 02:01 | right-hand side of the image.
| | 02:03 | Those clipped white pixels
could be anywhere inside the image.
| | 02:06 | The same holds true if I were to clip
all the pixels that have a luminance level
| | 02:10 | of 68 or darker to black.
| | 02:13 | Again, I know the effect that it is
going to have on histogram because it can
| | 02:16 | bring up the Histogram panel and there it is.
| | 02:19 | Lots of pixels are getting clipped to
black and white as indicated by those tall
| | 02:23 | lines on either side of the graph.
| | 02:25 | But where they are inside the image, who knows?
| | 02:28 | Well, you could preview which part
of the image is being affected by
| | 02:31 | pressing-and-holding the Alt key or the
Option key on the Mac, and then dragging
| | 02:36 | either the White or Black slider triangle.
| | 02:38 | I am going to start with the white one
because it is a little easier to understand.
| | 02:42 | Now notice as I Alt+Drag or Option+Drag
this White slider triangle, I am going
| | 02:47 | to see the clipped pixels onscreen.
| | 02:48 | But in order to read this, you
need to know what the various colors
| | 02:50 | you're seeing mean.
| | 02:51 | Black means not getting clipped.
| | 02:54 | It is perfectly fine.
| | 02:55 | White means, it is getting
clipped in all three channels.
| | 02:58 | So that's very dangerous, especially
if you're seeing big areas of white.
| | 03:02 | That's no good, you don't want to clip
huge areas to white inside of an image.
| | 03:06 | If you're seeing any color, that means
it is clipping inside of that channel.
| | 03:10 | So where we are seeing red, it is
clipping inside the red channel.
| | 03:13 | Where we are seeing yellow, well there is
no yellow channel inside of an RGB image.
| | 03:18 | So that's a combination of clipping
occurring in both the green and red
| | 03:21 | channels at the same time.
| | 03:22 | In other words, in those yellow regions
we only have blue detail and nothing more.
| | 03:28 | Then if I were to release, then I will
see the clipping actually taking place
| | 03:31 | inside of the composite image. All right!
| | 03:34 | So that's what happens when you Alt+Drag
or Option+Drag the white triangle.
| | 03:37 | When you Alt+Drag or Option+Drag the
black triangle, things turn on their heads,
| | 03:41 | so you get an inverted picture.
| | 03:42 | Wherever you see white
means no clipping is occurring.
| | 03:45 | Where you see black means it is
clipping in all three channels, and wherever
| | 03:49 | you see another color is the invert of the
channel in which the clipping is occurring.
| | 03:54 | So yellow for example means that we
are clipping in the blue channel, red
| | 03:58 | means we are clipping in a
combination of both the blue, and the green
| | 04:02 | channels, because the opposite of red
is cyan, and cyan is combination of blue
| | 04:07 | and green working together.
| | 04:09 | So that just gives you a
sense of what's going on.
| | 04:11 | Again, what you want to do
is avoid big areas of black.
| | 04:15 | So tiny areas of black like this are
going to be fine, but big areas of black
| | 04:20 | like this are no good.
| | 04:21 | Well, in my case what I can see here
is that a value of 60 works out pretty
| | 04:25 | nicely for closing in on those eyes.
| | 04:29 | I'd go ahead and Alt+Drag or Option+Drag
the White slider triangle all the way
| | 04:33 | up to the right because otherwise I am
starting to clip details in a way I don't want.
| | 04:37 | So we really don't want to clip anything
over there on the right-hand side of the graph.
| | 04:41 | So this is a good starting point.
| | 04:43 | In the next exercise I will show you
how you can set the black point, the white
| | 04:46 | point, and the gamma
using these three eyedroppers.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| The black, white, and gray eyedroppers| 00:00 | I'm still working inside Levels set to
Auto.psd, and I am going to clear out
| | 00:04 | my Level settings by clicking on the
Reset icon in the bottom right corner of
| | 00:07 | the Adjustments panel.
| | 00:09 | By the way, if you are working along
with me, make sure that the Opacity value
| | 00:12 | for this Adjustment layer is set to 100%.
| | 00:15 | In this exercise, I am going to
show you how to use this group of three
| | 00:18 | eyedroppers in the upper left
portion of the Adjustments panel.
| | 00:22 | What they allow you to do is set the
black point, gray point and white point
| | 00:25 | here inside the Levels panel just by
clicking on a pixel inside the image.
| | 00:30 | So for example, I am going
to grab that black eyedropper.
| | 00:33 | Let's try clicking underneath her
chin right there and that dark jaw line.
| | 00:38 | That will go ahead and change the
pixel on which I clicked to black.
| | 00:42 | It will stretch out the
rest of the histogram as well.
| | 00:44 | In fact, you can now see the after view of
the histogram here inside the Levels panel.
| | 00:50 | Also notice that none of my
settings have changed at all.
| | 00:53 | So what in the world is going on there?
| | 00:55 | That seems like it would limit
your ability to customize the effect.
| | 00:59 | Well, once happened whenever you see
something like this occur, it means that
| | 01:03 | all the changes have been
applied on a channel by channel basis.
| | 01:06 | So you would switch your channel
option to something other than RGB.
| | 01:09 | I'm going to switch over to Red.
| | 01:12 | You'll now see that in my case,
the black point value is 82.
| | 01:15 | So I have raised the heck out of that
black point value and as a result I must
| | 01:19 | be clipping all kinds of stuff inside this
image to see what kind of clipping is occurring.
| | 01:24 | I could either go back to RGB, and
I could Alt+Drag that Black slider
| | 01:30 | triangle right there.
| | 01:31 | You can Alt+Drag or Option+Drag the
Black or White sliders inside of the various
| | 01:35 | channel views as well.
| | 01:37 | Anyway, in my case I am seeing that
everything that's not white is clipping the black.
| | 01:41 | But an even better way to preview the
clipping is to press the Alt or Option key
| | 01:46 | while you're using the black eyedropper.
| | 01:48 | So as long as the black eyedropper is
selected, all I have to do is press Alt or
| | 01:52 | Option, and I can see the
clipping inside the image window.
| | 01:55 | If I release the Alt or Option key and
then click in some other portion of the
| | 01:59 | image like I will click on the pixel
right there, then I press Alt or Option,
| | 02:04 | and I will see a lot more
clipping occurring. All right!
| | 02:06 | So the big problem with this
eyedropper in my opinion is that it tends to
| | 02:09 | clip too much detail.
| | 02:11 | If you can actually find an obvious
black pixel inside the image and click on
| | 02:15 | it, then very likely there is some
other even darker pixels that are going to
| | 02:19 | go to black as well.
| | 02:20 | I am going to click as near as I can
tell in her pupil and see how that works.
| | 02:25 | Apparently I missed and clicked in her iris.
| | 02:26 | Let's try again, there we go.
| | 02:28 | So I clicked inside of the pupil and now
I will press and hold the Alt or Option
| | 02:32 | key, and I can see that very
little of my image is clipping.
| | 02:36 | So that's a much more satisfactory modification.
| | 02:38 | Notice that as soon as I move my cursor into
the panel, I still have Alt or Option down;
| | 02:43 | the clipping preview goes away.
| | 02:45 | I have to have my cursor
out there in the image window;
| | 02:48 | kind of weird, but that's
the way it works. All right!
| | 02:50 | The white eyedropper, same diff;
| | 02:52 | I would click somewhere inside the image.
| | 02:54 | Let's say on her cheek, on the dark part of
her cheek so that we make a huge modification.
| | 02:59 | We get this wild, high key image as a result.
| | 03:02 | Pretty darn cool looking actually.
| | 03:04 | If I press and hold the Alt or Option
key, I can see where the clipping is
| | 03:08 | occurring on the fly so long as I keep my
cursor inside the image window. All right!
| | 03:12 | So I release the Alt or Option key.
| | 03:14 | Let's say for the moment
that I kind of like that effect.
| | 03:17 | Now then I need to adjust the Gamma value
and you can do that using this gray eyedropper.
| | 03:21 | Notice its tip doesn't say anything
about holding Alt or Option by the way.
| | 03:26 | That's because you can't clip using the
Gamma value inside Photoshop. All right!
| | 03:30 | So when you are using the gray
eyedropper, you want to click on a color that
| | 03:34 | ought to be neutral inside the image.
| | 03:36 | So let's say I decide I want
her irises to be nice and gray.
| | 03:40 | Then I would click on them and
that's going to change the other
| | 03:44 | colors accordingly.
| | 03:45 | Again, all these changes are
happening on a channel by channel basis.
| | 03:48 | Our histogram has been laid waste
to here inside of the Composite view.
| | 03:53 | But if I switch over to Red once again,
you can see that we have made some
| | 03:57 | pretty significant modifications.
| | 03:59 | We have got a black point value of 54
now, white point 160, that's an awful lot
| | 04:04 | of clipping going on, and then a very
bright Gamma value of 1.41 because we
| | 04:09 | neutralized something that was
greenish blue in the first place.
| | 04:13 | So we subtracted a lot of green, we
subtracted a lot of blue, and we had to add
| | 04:18 | a lot of red and that's what's happened here.
| | 04:20 | If you switch over to the Green
channel, you will see that yes indeed we've
| | 04:23 | dropped the Gamma value there, and then
inside the Blue channel I have dropped
| | 04:27 | the Gamma value even more. All right!
| | 04:29 | So those are the eyedroppers.
| | 04:30 | Now, the big reason this gray
eyedropper exists I should tell you is for
| | 04:35 | neutralizing a gray card.
| | 04:37 | So in other words, you shot a gray
card or a Macbeth chart or something
| | 04:42 | along those lines along with the image which
is fairly standard for studio photographers.
| | 04:47 | However, when you are on the road,
it's less likely that you are going to use
| | 04:50 | a gray card, and of course if you are not a
photographer, you may not own a gray card at all.
| | 04:55 | So what do you do?
| | 04:56 | How do you actually find a color
that should be gray inside the image?
| | 05:01 | I am going to show you a little trick
that sometimes work sometimes doesn't
| | 05:05 | in the next exercise.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Gray card tips and tricks| 00:00 | I have saved my changes as High-key
portrait.psd found inside the
| | 00:04 | 14_levels_curves folder.
| | 00:06 | In this exercise, I am going to pass
along a trick that works well if you
| | 00:09 | photographed a gray card inside of an
image and then because most photographs
| | 00:14 | are captured without a gray card, I
will show you how to fake a gray card that
| | 00:19 | may or may not work for you.
| | 00:21 | It is fairly analogous to the way that the
Auto Color command works inside of Photoshop.
| | 00:25 | So it is sort of a hit or miss proposition.
| | 00:27 | Anyway, I am going to go ahead and
collapse my Adjustments panel, turn off the
| | 00:31 | Levels Adjustment, switch to
the background layer as well.
| | 00:34 | I am also going to switch over here to
the legitimate Eyedropper tool which you
| | 00:38 | can get by pressing the I key.
| | 00:40 | The reason is, because it is
the king of the eyedropper.
| | 00:43 | So any changes that you make to this
tool also affect other eyedroppers inside
| | 00:48 | of Photoshop including the three
eyedroppers in the Levels panel.
| | 00:51 | Notice currently, and by default, that
Sample Size is set to Point Sample, and
| | 00:56 | Sample is set to All layers.
| | 00:58 | We need Sample set to All layers, so that
we can see the composite color of the pixel.
| | 01:02 | When sample size is set to Point Sample
however, you are lifting the color of a
| | 01:07 | single pixel at a time;
| | 01:09 | so just that one pixel on which you click.
| | 01:12 | You are also making a determination
when you're working with the black and gray
| | 01:15 | and white eyedroppers inside the
Levels panel, you are making a determination
| | 01:19 | based on that one and only one pixel.
| | 01:22 | Well, if you have a gray card, then you are
going to have some noise inside of that gray card.
| | 01:27 | So two neighboring pixels
could be pretty different colors;
| | 01:30 | one could be a little bit blue,
another could be a little bit red.
| | 01:34 | So you probably want to go ahead, and
sample a merged version of those pixels.
| | 01:38 | So in other words, make a determination
as to the neutrality of that card based
| | 01:42 | on many pixels at a time.
| | 01:44 | To do that, you would set Sample Size to
something larger such as 5?5 or 11?11
| | 01:50 | or even 31?31 depending on resolution
of your image, and the size of your card.
| | 01:55 | Notice that every one of these
measurements ends in one, because there is the
| | 01:59 | pixel on which you click;
| | 02:00 | that's the one pixel, and in the
case of 31?31 you've got 15 pixels one
| | 02:05 | direction, 15 pixels the
other direction. All right!
| | 02:08 | But in my case, I don't have a gray
card, so I am going to leave this set to
| | 02:11 | Point Sample, because the trick I am
about to show you involves the creation
| | 02:15 | of a noiseless card.
| | 02:17 | Here is how it works.
| | 02:18 | I am going to go ahead and grab my
Rectangular Marquee tool for starters.
| | 02:22 | Then I am going to jump my image to a
new layer just by pressing Ctrl+J or
| | 02:26 | Command+J on the Mac.
| | 02:27 | I don't care what the name of the layer is.
| | 02:29 | It is fine if it is called background copy.
| | 02:31 | Then I will go up to the Filter menu,
I will choose Blur and I will choose
| | 02:34 | Average which fills the entire layer
with the average color of that image.
| | 02:40 | In this case, the average color is
kind of light rose as we're seeing here.
| | 02:46 | Now, I am going to use this as my gray card.
| | 02:49 | In other words, I am going to click on
this color with my gray eyedropper, and
| | 02:53 | it is going to change to gray which is
going to dramatically affect the other
| | 02:56 | colors in the image;
| | 02:57 | because if I have to turn something
this saturated gray, then I'm really going
| | 03:00 | to send the image as a
whole into that blue green zone.
| | 03:05 | So let's take a little bit of the
saturation out of this layer by going up to
| | 03:08 | the Image menu, choosing Adjustments,
and then choosing Hue/Saturation or you
| | 03:13 | could just press Ctrl+U, Command+U on the Mac.
| | 03:15 | I am working in a static fashion at this point.
| | 03:18 | I am going to take that Saturation
value down by pressing Shift+Down-arrow few
| | 03:23 | times in a row and let's say,
maybe about here or maybe even here.
| | 03:27 | So let's take it down to -50.
| | 03:29 | So we have got something of a
real-world gray card going on.
| | 03:32 | It should have some saturation.
| | 03:34 | Obviously, if you take all the
saturation out of it, then the gray eyedropper
| | 03:38 | isn't going to do anything.
| | 03:39 | It is just going to change gray to
gray and you are not going to adjust
| | 03:42 | the color cast at all.
| | 03:43 | So let's go with -50, click OK
in order to apply that setting.
| | 03:48 | Now, armed with your Rectangle
Marquee tool, let's draw a square.
| | 03:51 | So Shift+Drag with the tool in order to
make a card the size of your choosing;
| | 03:56 | really doesn't matter how big it is.
| | 03:58 | Then press Ctrl+Alt+J or
Command+Option+J on the Mac.
| | 04:01 | So we are adding Alt or Option this
time to bring up the New layer dialog box,
| | 04:05 | and I will call this gray card because now
we have a fake gray card, and I will click OK.
| | 04:10 | The reason, the point sample is going to work
fine for this card is because it is noiseless.
| | 04:15 | There is no noise going on, each and
every pixel is exactly the same color.
| | 04:19 | Switch back to background copy, press
the Backspace key or the Delete key on the
| | 04:23 | Mac to get rid of it.
| | 04:24 | Then switch back to the gray card layer.
| | 04:25 | Let's go ahead and move this card.
| | 04:28 | I am Ctrl or Command+Dragging on it to
move it to a location that's not covering
| | 04:32 | up her face, so that we
can see what we are doing.
| | 04:34 | Then I will turn on the Levels layer
again and I will double-click on its
| | 04:37 | thumbnail to bring up the Adjustments panel.
| | 04:40 | Let's go ahead, and clear out our settings.
| | 04:42 | So we don't have this High-key effect.
| | 04:43 | I want a more natural correction this time.
| | 04:45 | So I will click on the Reset button,
I will grab my black eyedropper;
| | 04:49 | I will click inside of her pupil in order to
darken up the shadow details; that's fine.
| | 04:53 | I am not going to do anything with
white eyedropper, because I am already
| | 04:56 | starting with clipped
highlights inside of this image.
| | 04:59 | Then I will go to the gray eyedropper
and I will click inside of my card, and
| | 05:03 | that will go ahead and make the card neutral.
| | 05:05 | In other words, it will rob it of all
saturation by adjusting the midtones
| | 05:09 | across the various color channels and
it will change the color cast of the
| | 05:13 | image as we see it here. All right!
| | 05:14 | Now, let's go ahead and collapse the
Adjustments panel again or at least I need
| | 05:18 | to, because otherwise, I can't get to
my layers and I will turn off the gray
| | 05:22 | card, and this is the result that we get.
| | 05:24 | So as I say it is analogous to the way
that Auto Color works, because that's a
| | 05:29 | kind of calculation that Photoshop is applying
in the background when you choose Auto Color.
| | 05:34 | The big difference is we made a
determination about the accuracy of that color card.
| | 05:40 | So when it came up initially hyper-saturated
with that rose color, we backed it
| | 05:45 | off before applying the gray eyedropper;
| | 05:48 | that's something that
Photoshop is not smart enough to do.
| | 05:51 | However, that said, well I think
this is a halfway decent correction.
| | 05:55 | It's not every bit as good as it could be.
| | 05:57 | In the next exercise, we are going
to roll up our sleeves and make custom
| | 06:01 | modifications to the
channel by channel histograms.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Making channel-by-channel adjustments| 00:00 | I have saved my progress as Fake gray
card adjustment.psd found inside the
| | 00:04 | 14_levels_curves folder.
| | 00:06 | In this exercise, we are going to throw
away essentially all the automatic stuff
| | 00:10 | that we've done so far.
| | 00:12 | We are going to apply some custom numerical
adjustments on a channel by channel basis.
| | 00:17 | So go ahead and double-click on the
thumbnail in front of Levels there in order
| | 00:21 | to bring up the Adjustments panel.
| | 00:23 | I am going to once again reset my
options by clicking on the Reset button.
| | 00:29 | Then I am going to click on Auto.
| | 00:31 | The reason I am clicking on Auto is
I want to go ahead and automatically
| | 00:35 | reposition my black-and-white points
at the beginning and end of the big
| | 00:40 | mountainous histogram on a
channel by channel basis.
| | 00:43 | That's something I am
going to need to do anyway.
| | 00:45 | So I might as well have Photoshop do
it for me automatically in advance.
| | 00:49 | So I will click on Auto
and we get this change here.
| | 00:53 | We are not really terribly concerned
with the accuracy of the modifications so
| | 00:57 | far, because we are going
to be modifying our settings.
| | 01:00 | Notice that we have a stretched histogram,
so we have an after view of the histogram.
| | 01:04 | There are no changes to the
numbers under the histogram.
| | 01:07 | So that means that Photoshop has made its
modifications on a channel by channel basis.
| | 01:11 | This channel by channel number happens
regardless of which Auto command you apply.
| | 01:16 | So even if, I will go ahead and Alt+Click
or Option+Click on the Auto button to
| | 01:20 | bring up the Auto Color Correction
Options dialog box, even if I decide to
| | 01:25 | enhance the Monochromatic Contrast which
theoretically operates on the composite
| | 01:29 | histogram and then click on OK, why,
then again I've got a stretched histogram,
| | 01:35 | and I have no settings.
| | 01:37 | Instead, I have modifications on a channel by
channel basis, and I want you to see this here.
| | 01:42 | Each of the channels has a keyboard
shortcut, and I am going to be employing
| | 01:46 | them just so I can quickly switch
back-and-forth without the headache of having
| | 01:50 | to go to this little pop-up
menu over and over again.
| | 01:53 | Notice it's Alt+2 or Option+2 for the
RGB image, and then Alt or Option+3, 4,
| | 01:59 | 5 for Red, Green, and Blue or whatever
color channels are at work inside of your image.
| | 02:05 | So if it's CMYK image, it would
be Alt+2 or Option+2, for CMYK;
| | 02:10 | then Alt or Option+3
through 6, for Cyan through Black.
| | 02:13 | Anyway, I am going to go ahead
and switch to the Red channel here.
| | 02:16 | Press the Escape key, so
that option is no longer active.
| | 02:19 | Notice that the black point value is
47, the other values are unchanged.
| | 02:23 | Then if I press Alt+4 or Option+4
for the Green channel, 47;
| | 02:27 | the others are unchanged;
| | 02:29 | Alt or Option for blue, 47;
| | 02:31 | the others aren't changed.
| | 02:32 | So even though Auto Contrast applied
its modifications on a channel by channel
| | 02:36 | basis, it applied the exact same
modifications to each and every channel.
| | 02:41 | So it would've been the same, we
would get the exact same result, as if I
| | 02:45 | clicked on the Reset button, switched
back to RGB, and changed the Black value
| | 02:50 | inside of the composite view to 47.
| | 02:53 | That is the exact same
color correction right there.
| | 02:56 | Anyway, I am going to just click on
Auto to apply the Auto Tone function;
| | 03:00 | that is, we are changing the black-and-white
points differently on a channel by channel basis.
| | 03:05 | Now, because we already have a little
bit of clipping in the original image as
| | 03:09 | indicated by that line on the far right-hand
side of the graph, Auto Tone is not
| | 03:14 | going to change the white point value.
| | 03:16 | It just changed the black point values.
| | 03:18 | As we can see here, if I press Alt+3
or Option+3, then the black point is 80;
| | 03:23 | Alt+4 or Option+4 and the black
point is 50, and the green channel;
| | 03:27 | Alt+5 or Option+5, and the black point
is 44 in the blue channel. All right!
| | 03:32 | So that's a good starting point.
| | 03:33 | When I typically do then as I might go
ahead and back it off, like I'm looking
| | 03:38 | at this image and thinking, we may not
have absolutely clipped the shadow detail
| | 03:42 | in the eyelashes, and the eyebrows and
below her neck, but we are definitely
| | 03:46 | getting awfully dark to the point
that we're losing a lot of detail.
| | 03:50 | So I am going to start at my Red
channel by pressing Alt+3 or Option+3 and I
| | 03:53 | will click inside that black point value
which is 80 currently, and I will press
| | 03:56 | Shift+Down-arrow twice to take it down to 60.
| | 03:58 | Then I will press Alt+4 or Option+4 in
order to switch to the Green channel.
| | 04:04 | It starts out as 50.
| | 04:05 | I will press Shift+Down-arrow once
this time around to drop it down to 40.
| | 04:10 | Notice that in each case, here is once again
the Red channel, and here is the Green channel.
| | 04:15 | I want you to see that in each case
we are just clipping a few colors right
| | 04:19 | there, few existing
luminance levels inside the image.
| | 04:22 | So the Auto button on its own is
going to clip 0.1%, then we are backing it
| | 04:26 | off, so we are clipping more like I would say 0
.05% of the Luminance levels inside the image.
| | 04:32 | So I really want to be as kind and
loving to that original image as possible.
| | 04:36 | Now, I will press Alt+5 or Option+5 in
order to switch to the Blue channel and
| | 04:40 | I will press Shift+Down-arrow to reduce
that value to 34, or I might even take
| | 04:44 | it up to 35 let's say.
| | 04:46 | So where the black point values are
concerned, I have got 60 in the Red channel,
| | 04:49 | 40 in the Green channel, 35 in the Blue channel.
| | 04:53 | Now, we want to turn around and
modify the Gamma settings and I am going to
| | 04:56 | start here inside the Blue channel
because the image has a little bit of a red
| | 05:01 | color cast as we've discussed many times so far.
| | 05:04 | I will tab over to my Gamma value,
and I am going to press Shift+Up-arrow.
| | 05:08 | We've countered that red color cast
by increasing the brightness of the
| | 05:14 | other two channels.
| | 05:15 | So I'll take that Gamma value up to 1.1.
| | 05:18 | Now, she's a little bit too blue.
| | 05:20 | So let's press Alt+4 or Option+4
to switch to the Green channel.
| | 05:23 | Notice my Gamma value is still active.
| | 05:25 | So the value stays active as you switch
channels, which is actually a helpful thing.
| | 05:30 | I will press Shift+Up-arrow here.
| | 05:32 | Now she looks too green, so
I am going to back it off.
| | 05:35 | I will press the Down-arrow key a few
times until I reduce that Gamma value to 1.05.
| | 05:40 | That looks pretty darn good to me.
| | 05:44 | It doesn't look perfect and you are
not always going to get perfection out of
| | 05:47 | levels or curves or any of these
features for that matter because you are always
| | 05:51 | trying to compensate for the original image.
| | 05:53 | If the original image isn't perfect in
the first place, then all you are really
| | 05:57 | going to do to it is reduce
its levels of imperfection.
| | 06:00 | It may not make it totally perfect.
| | 06:03 | Anyway, this looks pretty
darn good though, I have to say.
| | 06:05 | If I turn off Levels, this is
what she looked like before.
| | 06:08 | This is what the image looks like with my
Levels adjustments that I have applied so far.
| | 06:13 | Now, the one other thing I would like
to do is really increase the saturation
| | 06:17 | of this image because the more time I
spend with it, the more it comes off as
| | 06:21 | being awfully darn drab.
| | 06:23 | I am going to add a Vibrance Adjustment layer.
| | 06:25 | Now I haven't given you a
keyboard shortcut for Vibrance.
| | 06:27 | So we are going to have to
create that one manually.
| | 06:29 | I will click on this left-pointing
arrowhead in the bottom left corner of the
| | 06:33 | Adjustments panel to switch back to the
list of color adjustments available to me.
| | 06:38 | Then I have got this guy right there Vibrance.
| | 06:39 | I will Alt+Click or Option+Click on
that first icon in the second row, and I
| | 06:43 | will call this guy color
blaster and I will click OK.
| | 06:48 | Now, I am going to increase the
Saturation value just a little bit.
| | 06:51 | I am going to press Shift-Up-arrow a
couple of times in a row to take that
| | 06:54 | saturation value up to +20.
| | 06:55 | Then I am going to send that
Vibrance value through the roof.
| | 06:59 | I am going to take it up to 85%
like so, and press the Enter key or the
| | 07:04 | Return key on the Mac.
| | 07:05 | That is my final version of the image.
| | 07:07 | I will collapse the Adjustments panel
by double-clicking to the right of masks
| | 07:11 | and then I will Alt+click or Option+Click
the eyeball in front of the background
| | 07:14 | layer, so that we can see the
before version of the image.
| | 07:16 | Here's what she looked like when we
originally opened her so long ago, and
| | 07:20 | here's what she looks like now.
| | 07:22 | Thanks to a combination of the Levels
and Vibrance commands working together
| | 07:27 | here inside Photoshop.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Introducing the Curves command| 00:01 | All right, we're through
with us Fotolia portrait.
| | 00:02 | I've gone ahead and saved out the
final corrections as Scarlet starlet.psd.
| | 00:06 | We're now going to move on to an image
that you cannot successfully accommodate
| | 00:10 | using the Levels command.
| | 00:12 | That's this one right here,
it's called Snowy old barn.tif.
| | 00:15 | This is an image that I captured either
in northern Wyoming or southern Montana,
| | 00:20 | we were somewhere right around the border.
| | 00:22 | I'm going to go ahead and press Shift+Tab
to hide the right side panels, and
| | 00:25 | then scoot this guy over to the left a
little bit, so that we have some room
| | 00:29 | to work on the right.
| | 00:29 | While I really like the detail inside of
this image, it's really sharp and tactile.
| | 00:35 | However, we've got some major contrast problems.
| | 00:37 | The barn is so dark, it
looks like it was set on fire.
| | 00:41 | Then the background is so bright,
we barely have any detail whatsoever.
| | 00:45 | So, what we need to do is
reduce the contrast of this image.
| | 00:48 | That's not something that
the Levels command excels at.
| | 00:52 | If you go up to the Image menu and
choose Adjustments, and then choose the
| | 00:55 | Levels command, and right now we're
working with static adjustments, so that we
| | 00:59 | can keep a careful eye on the image,
which is awfully wide as you can see.
| | 01:03 | Or you can press Ctrl+L, of course, Command+L
on the Mac to bring up this dialog box.
| | 01:08 | Notice that we have this big,
mountainous group of shadows, and then we have
| | 01:13 | this huge plateau of highlights.
| | 01:16 | But what are we going to do about that?
| | 01:18 | We could use the White Point slider
here to make the highlights that much
| | 01:21 | brighter, and we could use the Black Point
in order to make the shadows that much darker.
| | 01:26 | But that's not going to
do us any good whatsoever.
| | 01:28 | Now, we could turn around and decrease
the contrast by raising the Black Output
| | 01:34 | Level and then lowering the White Output Level.
| | 01:37 | But as we've seen before, and we can
clearly see now, these options don't do you
| | 01:42 | any good, where correcting
continues photographs are concerned.
| | 01:45 | So, what I'd like to do is completely
reset the options in the dialog box, and
| | 01:49 | you can do that by Option+Clicking
the Cancel button.
| | 01:52 | So, notice when you press and hold the
Alt key on the PC or the Option key on
| | 01:55 | the Mac, the button changes to Reset.
| | 01:57 | Click on it, and you're back
to no modifications whatsoever.
| | 02:01 | Now, the one positive change we could
make to this image is to increase the
| | 02:06 | Gamma value like so, and that will
brighten up the wood on the outside of
| | 02:11 | the barn terrifically.
| | 02:12 | However, the problem is, while we're
left with some nice, dark shadows inside
| | 02:17 | the barn, we've pretty much ruined
what positive contrast we had here in the
| | 02:21 | slats of wood, and we haven't done
anything positive for this snowy background.
| | 02:25 | If anything, it's actually
brighter than it was before.
| | 02:28 | So, go ahead and click the Cancel button;
| | 02:30 | that command is not going to work for us.
| | 02:32 | If you're in a hurry, or you want a
simple solution, why then you could go up to
| | 02:36 | the Image menu, choose Adjustments
once again, and this time try out
| | 02:39 | Brightness/Contrast.
| | 02:41 | For contrast reductions, it's actually a
more successful command than Levels is.
| | 02:45 | Make sure Use Legacy is turned off.
| | 02:47 | Then reduce the Contrast value to
its minimum, in the case of this image.
| | 02:52 | I might go ahead and bump the
Brightness value up to 30, let's say.
| | 02:57 | We get this effect here, and it's
much better than what we achieved just a
| | 03:01 | moment ago with Levels.
| | 03:02 | We have some decent detail
left inside of that wood.
| | 03:05 | We still have some nice rich
shadows inside the barn and so on.
| | 03:09 | However, again, we haven't managed to make a
positive contribution to the snowy background.
| | 03:15 | So, we still have this definition-less
world in which the barn exists, which I'm
| | 03:21 | not comfortable with.
| | 03:22 | I want to bring out
detail throughout this image.
| | 03:24 | The only way I'm going to pull that
off, I'll Cancel out here, is to apply
| | 03:28 | the Curves command.
| | 03:29 | So, I'll go up to the Image menu,
choose Adjustments, and notice Curves
| | 03:33 | that appears right under Levels, also, by
the way, its keyboard shortcut is sequential.
| | 03:39 | So, what you're seeing here is if Ctrl+L
or Command+L doesn't work for you,
| | 03:43 | then step it up and press Ctrl+M or Command+M
in order to bring up the Curves dialog box.
| | 03:48 | In the graph, just like the graph inside
the Levels dialog box, features a histogram.
| | 03:54 | Now you might look at this histogram
and say, well, it's quite different
| | 03:56 | Deke, it's all squished.
| | 03:58 | Well, really, it's stretched.
| | 04:00 | It's the same width as the histogram that
we saw on the Levels dialog box, 256 pixels.
| | 04:05 | But it's been stretched
to fit inside of a square.
| | 04:07 | That actually doesn't matter.
| | 04:09 | The reason is that these
individual bars in the bar graph, they don't
| | 04:11 | represent absolute numbers.
| | 04:14 | In other words, we're not seeing a pile
of all the pixels that have a luminance
| | 04:18 | level of say 28, rather we're seeing
the relative population of those luminance
| | 04:25 | level 28 pixels with respect to
the other pixels inside the image.
| | 04:30 | So, you can make the histogram taller
or shorter without changing its meaning.
| | 04:34 | Also, notice here that we see black
on the left, and white on the right.
| | 04:38 | Now, that's what you should see as well,
and that's in keeping with both Levels
| | 04:41 | and the Histogram panel.
| | 04:43 | Now, if you're not seeing that, for
some reason, you see white over on the
| | 04:46 | left-hand side, and black over on the
right-hand side, which is the default
| | 04:50 | setting, by the way, when
working inside of a CMYK image.
| | 04:55 | Then you can switch it by clicking on this
double down-pointing arrowhead right there.
| | 04:59 | It reveals a handful of other options.
| | 05:01 | Make sure all the check boxes are
turned on, by the way, and then you would
| | 05:05 | switch from Pigment, that would be
your problem, as you're looking at the
| | 05:08 | Pigment version of the graph,
switch it back to Light.
| | 05:11 | Now, I should say, Light is the
default behavior for RGB images, and we want
| | 05:15 | to keep it that way.
| | 05:17 | All right, go ahead and hide these
options, so that we can see more of the
| | 05:19 | image in the background.
| | 05:21 | Now, in order to use the Curves dialog
box, you change the curvature of this
| | 05:25 | line through the center of the graph,
and that line actually is the curve for
| | 05:30 | which Curves is named.
| | 05:31 | Now, you might look at that and say,
well, that's not a curve Deke, that's a
| | 05:34 | straight line, and that's true.
| | 05:36 | But it will be a curve, as soon as you
clicked to set a point, and right now I
| | 05:39 | want you, if you're working along with
me, to set a point right in the middle
| | 05:42 | of the graph, like so.
| | 05:43 | That's going to be the same as the
Gamma value inside the Levels dialog box.
| | 05:49 | But Curves doesn't talk to us in terms
of gamma, it addresses us in terms of
| | 05:53 | Input and Output levels, and
128 is right there in the center.
| | 05:57 | So, we've got zero for Black, 255 for
white, 128 is neutral gray, and right now,
| | 06:03 | I'm mapping what's currently
128 inside the image to 128.
| | 06:07 | So, in other words, I'm not
making any changes so far.
| | 06:10 | However, if I were to drag this point
upward like so, I'd be mapping an Input
| | 06:16 | level of 128 to an Output level of 153.
| | 06:18 | That has exactly the same
effect as raising the Gamma value.
| | 06:24 | As a result, I increase
the brightness of the barn.
| | 06:27 | So, before, when we were inside the
Levels dialog box, we took it quite high,
| | 06:31 | actually a little higher than this, I think.
| | 06:33 | We've got an effect that
looks something like this.
| | 06:35 | It's hard to say exactly what that was,
because there is no way to map a gamma
| | 06:38 | value to this Input-Output relationship here.
| | 06:41 | But in our case, we are
increasing the Gamma like crazy.
| | 06:45 | Now, if you wanted to decrease the
Gamma you would just grab that middle
| | 06:48 | point, keep it in the middle of the graph,
because you can't move it back and forth like that.
| | 06:52 | Keep it in the middle of the
graph and just drag it down.
| | 06:54 | All right, so where Curves really shows
off its power is when we add additional
| | 07:00 | points to the graph.
| | 07:01 | I could grab this point that we've
created so far and I can move it into the
| | 07:04 | Shadow region, and also lift it up, so that
we're brightening the shadows inside the image.
| | 07:10 | Then I could set another point in the
Highlight region like so, and I could drag
| | 07:14 | that one down in order to darken the highlights.
| | 07:17 | I get this effect right here
where the snow is now darker, and thus
| | 07:20 | delivering more detail.
| | 07:22 | The barn is now brighter, it's
delivering more detail as well.
| | 07:26 | Now, I'm not saying that this specific
adjustment is what we're looking for.
| | 07:30 | In fact, I don't think it is.
| | 07:32 | I think we need to work a little harder at it.
| | 07:34 | But this does give you a sense of what
you can do inside the Curves dialog box,
| | 07:39 | and you can alternately add and
adjust as many points as you like.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Curves dialog box tricks| 00:00 | In this exercise, I'm going to pass
along a few tips and tricks for working
| | 00:03 | inside the static Curves dialog
box, i.e. it applies static color
| | 00:07 | adjustments inside Photoshop.
| | 00:09 | Then in the next exercise, we'll move on
to the dynamic Curves Adjustment layer.
| | 00:13 | I'm still working inside Snowy old barn.
tif, and I've gone ahead and chosen the
| | 00:17 | Curves command, added a
couple of points in my graph.
| | 00:20 | Now, some of the features inside of
Curves are identical to those inside
| | 00:24 | the Levels dialog box.
| | 00:25 | You have the trio of eyedroppers right there.
| | 00:29 | You have the Auto button for applying
auto tone, and then you have the Options
| | 00:33 | button for switching to one
of the other Auto functions.
| | 00:36 | You also have a black point triangle
and a white point triangle, and they do
| | 00:39 | exactly the same thing.
| | 00:41 | So, you could darken up your shadows
with the black point, lighten up your
| | 00:43 | highlights with the white point.
| | 00:45 | If you Alt+Drag or Option+Drag
either of those triangles, you're going to
| | 00:49 | preview the clipping.
| | 00:50 | You also have this Show
Clipping check box right there.
| | 00:54 | If you turn it on, you'll see the
clipping without pressing the Alt or Option key.
| | 00:58 | This is actually pretty darn handy.
| | 01:00 | Anyway, I'm going to turn it off, and
I'm going to reset the white point and the
| | 01:04 | black point, because I don't want to
be clipping any highlights or shadows
| | 01:06 | inside of this image.
| | 01:07 | We have more than enough contrast.
| | 01:10 | Now, that does very much like
the way it is inside Levels.
| | 01:13 | Here is some stuff that's totally different.
| | 01:15 | We've got these points, notice that
we're working with inside the graph, but
| | 01:19 | sometimes it's difficult to figure out
how those points map inside the image,
| | 01:23 | which is why you have
this eyedropper right here.
| | 01:25 | So, when you move your cursor out of the
dialog box, it turns into an eyedropper.
| | 01:29 | Then when you drag inside the image,
what I want you to do is watch the
| | 01:33 | Curves graph right here.
| | 01:34 | When you drag inside the image, you'll
see this little bouncing ball, and that's
| | 01:38 | showing me exactly how the pixels
under my cursor are mapping into the graph.
| | 01:44 | So, notice when I drag from the sky,
which is very bright, into the barn, all of
| | 01:49 | a sudden that ball is going to whip
down to the lower left region of the graph.
| | 01:53 | So, that gives you a sense of what kind of
luminance levels you're dealing with right here.
| | 01:57 | But you might figure, gosh!
| | 01:58 | It'd be really great to remove all
ambiguity and just say, you know what, I want
| | 02:03 | to be able to modify the brightness of
this specific area of this slat of wood.
| | 02:09 | So, I want to nail it.
| | 02:10 | You do that by pressing and holding the
Ctrl key or the Command key on the Mac,
| | 02:14 | and clicking at that location.
| | 02:16 | What that did was it added a
point right there inside the graph.
| | 02:20 | So, I'll show you that again,
just so that you can see it happen.
| | 02:23 | Notice if I press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z
on the Mac, that point disappeared.
| | 02:26 | So, watch this section of the
graph, as soon as you Ctrl+Click or
| | 02:29 | Command+Click, bang! It gets added.
| | 02:32 | So there's no guesswork involved.
| | 02:34 | Now, you also have the option, although,
I don't take advantage of it as much
| | 02:38 | inside Curves, just because it's a
little bit more difficult to predict.
| | 02:42 | But you can switch from the
Composite channel to the Red, Green, and
| | 02:45 | Blue channels as well, so you
can modify every single one of the
| | 02:48 | channels independently.
| | 02:50 | I will show you an example
before this chapter is out.
| | 02:53 | You can even add channel-by-channel
points if you want to, and the keyboard
| | 02:58 | shortcut in that case, I'm not going
to do it, I'll just tell it to you, is
| | 03:01 | Ctrl+Shift+Click out here in the image
window or Command+Shift+Click on the Mac.
| | 03:06 | You won't see a point added in the
Composite view, but then when you switch to
| | 03:10 | the individual color channels,
you'll see a new point on the graph.
| | 03:13 | All right, now notice that the new
point is selected here inside of the graph.
| | 03:17 | You can drag it around to a different
location if you want, or you can nudge it
| | 03:21 | using the Arrow keys.
| | 03:23 | If you press the Down Arrow key, notice
you're going to reduce the Output level.
| | 03:28 | If you press the Up Arrow key, you're
going to increase that Output level.
| | 03:33 | If you press the Right Arrow key,
you're going to increase the Input level, and
| | 03:36 | if you press the Left Arrow key,
you're going to decrease that Input level.
| | 03:40 | Now you might say, how in the
world am I supposed to remember that?
| | 03:43 | Well, you're really just moving the point
in that direction, here inside the graph.
| | 03:47 | So, when you press the Right Arrow key,
you're moving it to the right, when you
| | 03:50 | press the Left Arrow key,
you're moving it to left.
| | 03:53 | That just happens to affect the
input value, because you're changing the
| | 03:56 | luminance level that's getting modified,
which is Input, and when you're raising
| | 04:01 | and lowering the point, you're changing
how it gets modified, and that's Output.
| | 04:05 | You can move the point in bigger
increments as well, if you like, by pressing
| | 04:08 | Shift, along with an Arrow key.
| | 04:10 | So, that's Shift+Right Arrow,
this is Shift+Left Arrow and so on.
| | 04:14 | Notice this grid, that's
to work inside the graph.
| | 04:18 | If you want to see more gridlines,
you can Alt+Click or Option+Click inside
| | 04:22 | the graph, and then if you want to
see fewer gridlines, you'll Alt+Click or
| | 04:25 | Option+Click again.
| | 04:27 | One way to select a point in the graph
is to just go ahead and click on it, but
| | 04:31 | when you do that, it's very possible
that you're going to be a little sloppy
| | 04:34 | about your click and accidentally
move the point as you click on it.
| | 04:38 | If you want to eliminate any
possibility of that happening, then you can cycle
| | 04:42 | through the points in the graph
using one of two keyboard shortcuts.
| | 04:46 | I just mentioned this because back
in the day there was keyboard X, and
| | 04:50 | nowadays there is also keyboard Y, which
works inside the Curves Adjustment layer as well.
| | 04:56 | So, the old-school keyboard shortcut is
Ctrl+Tab, and that actually cycles you
| | 05:01 | from one point to the next.
| | 05:02 | So, notice, I'm moving from this point
to this point, Ctrl+Tab then selects the
| | 05:06 | next point over and so on.
| | 05:08 | Ctrl+Shift+Tab moves backward.
| | 05:11 | When I say Ctrl+Tab, that same keyboard
shortcut works both on the PC and the Mac.
| | 05:15 | The other way to work, and this is the
preferred method, because it also works
| | 05:18 | inside the Adjustments panel, also
simpler I think, to press the Plus key to
| | 05:23 | move forward through the points and
press the Minus key to move backward.
| | 05:27 | Also notice that you can select
multiple points inside the graph, so I could
| | 05:31 | Shift+Click and Shift+Click on these two
points, and then notice when I drag any
| | 05:36 | one of them, I move all the points together.
| | 05:38 | You can also go ahead and nudge the
points around by pressing the Arrow keys.
| | 05:43 | In this case, I'm pressing
Shift along with an Arrow key.
| | 05:45 | Then the final option inside of this
dialog box is the Pencil tool right here.
| | 05:47 | So, rather than working away in the Point
mode, you can actually draw your own graph.
| | 05:48 | This is sometimes known as an Arbitrary curve.
| | 05:49 | So, if I grab the Pencil tool, and
then start dragging around like so, I can
| | 05:50 | draw my own brightness graph;
| | 05:51 | or I can also, by the way, click, and then
Shift+Click in order to draw straight lines.
| | 05:52 | Now, if you draw straight lines like
that, you may find that you need to go
| | 06:17 | ahead and smooth them off a little bit.
| | 06:18 | You can do that by
clicking on the Smooth button.
| | 06:22 | So, the first click of the Smooth
button smoothes a little, if you want to
| | 06:25 | smooth more, you keep clicking away.
| | 06:27 | So, you can click multiple times
on this button if you so desire.
| | 06:31 | Another way to work, by the way,
and this is pretty cool is to make
| | 06:35 | radical changes like this.
| | 06:37 | So, I'll click in the upper right-hand
corner, Shift+Click down here, for
| | 06:40 | example, and then Shift+Click right there.
| | 06:43 | Now, I'm really making a mess of the snow.
| | 06:45 | I'm revealing the fact that
there is the sun in the background.
| | 06:48 | There is the sun showing up darker than the sky.
| | 06:52 | How often does that happen?
| | 06:54 | Now I could resolve some of this wacky
noise that's showing up in the background
| | 06:57 | by clicking on the Smooth button.
| | 07:00 | That's going to smooth
out the spiky transitions.
| | 07:03 | So, those are the various options that are
available to you in the Curves dialog box.
| | 07:08 | We're next going to transition to a
Curves Adjustment layer, and then after
| | 07:11 | that, I'll pass along some practical
advice for working with this image.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Curves adjustment layer tricks| 00:00 | I've gone ahead and cancelled
out of the Curves dialog box.
| | 00:03 | I'm still working in the image,
Snowy old barn.tif, found inside the
| | 00:06 | 14_levels_curves folder.
| | 00:08 | In this exercise, I'm going to introduce
you to the Curves Adjustment layer, and
| | 00:12 | we'll see how things work slightly
differently in the Adjustments panel.
| | 00:15 | Now, we'll start off by creating a
Curves Adjustment layer, and assuming that
| | 00:19 | you loaded dekeKeys or you've followed
my advice earlier in this chapter, you
| | 00:23 | can do it from the keyboard.
| | 00:24 | You just add the Shift key to the
standard curve shortcut, which means you press
| | 00:28 | Ctrl+Shift+M or Command+Shift+M on the Mac.
| | 00:32 | That displays the Adjustments panel.
| | 00:34 | That automatically clicks on the
third icon in on the first row, which is
| | 00:37 | Curves, brings up the New layer dialog box,
so you can name the new layer if you want.
| | 00:43 | I'm just going to call it Curves for now.
| | 00:45 | I'll click OK, and now we
see the giant Curves graph.
| | 00:49 | This group of options is what's responsible
for the enormity of the Adjustments panel.
| | 00:54 | Most of the options that show up inside this
panel don't begin to fill it, but Curves does.
| | 00:59 | So, it's sized specifically
to house the Curves command.
| | 01:01 | All right, so notice that we have the
familiar Auto button, which applies auto
| | 01:05 | tone if you Alt+Click or Option+Click on
that button, then you can switch to one
| | 01:09 | of the other flavors of auto.
| | 01:11 | We also have the various eyedroppers
right here, if you want to use those.
| | 01:15 | We've got the Pencil tool, and notice,
by the way, if I draw an arbitrary map,
| | 01:19 | and in this case, I'm Shift+Clicking
with the tool to create something fairly
| | 01:23 | over the top, then you can smooth it
by clicking on this button here, so we
| | 01:27 | don't see a smooth button, we see a smooth icon.
| | 01:30 | But it works the same way.
| | 01:31 | You click repeatedly in order to
incrementally smooth that graph.
| | 01:35 | All right, I'm going to go ahead and
reset my curve, because I don't want
| | 01:38 | to work from that one.
| | 01:39 | I'll switch back to the Point tool.
| | 01:42 | Notice that when the Point tool is
active, you have access to the black and
| | 01:46 | white points, and so you can go ahead
and drag those, in order to darken up the
| | 01:49 | shadows or lighten the highlights.
| | 01:51 | If you Alt+Drag or Option+Drag the
triangles, then you're going to preview the
| | 01:54 | clipping out there in the image window.
| | 01:56 | Another option that's available to you
is to go to the Adjustments panel flyout
| | 02:00 | menu, and choose Show
Clipping for Black/White Points.
| | 02:03 | Now unlike the similar option inside the
Curves dialog box, it's not on all of the time.
| | 02:08 | So, when you turn that command on, it
doesn't immediately turn on the preview
| | 02:12 | here inside the image window, it waits
until you're actually dragging a black
| | 02:17 | slider triangle or the white slider
triangle in order to invoke that preview.
| | 02:22 | So, I think that makes a
lot more sense, quite frankly.
| | 02:25 | Anyway, I'm going to go ahead and
reset these guys back where they were, and
| | 02:28 | also, turn off this command, because
it's not really doing me any good where
| | 02:31 | this image is concerned.
| | 02:33 | Now, another thing to know, you should
see black in the left and white on the
| | 02:36 | right, that is the default setting for
RGB images, but if you ever find that,
| | 02:40 | mysteriously, white is over on the
left-hand side, and black is over on the
| | 02:44 | right, you can switch them by again
going to the flyout menu, and choosing
| | 02:48 | Curves Display Options.
| | 02:50 | That's going to bring up those same
options that were available to you at the
| | 02:54 | bottom of the Curves dialog box,
you'd switch back to Light, click OK.
| | 02:58 | You also have the option of changing
the number of grid lines inside the graph
| | 03:02 | by Alt+Clicking or Option+Clicking.
| | 03:04 | Alt+Click or Option+Click again in
order to reduce the number of grid lines.
| | 03:09 | Just is in the Curves dialog box, you
click to set a point, and then drag it to
| | 03:13 | a different location.
| | 03:14 | You can also use the arrow keys if you want to.
| | 03:17 | So if I press Shift+Arrow, I'm going to
move that point down in large increments,
| | 03:22 | thereby reducing the Output value.
| | 03:24 | Now, I think this is little weird that
we see Output first and Input second,
| | 03:28 | because I always think in the other
direction, I think we're starting with
| | 03:31 | an Input level and mapping it to an Output
level, but that is the way that it works.
| | 03:37 | So, the question becomes, how do you get
that little bouncing ball inside of the
| | 03:40 | graph, and how do you add points to
the graph from the image window, when you
| | 03:44 | have no eyedropper to work with, the way
you do when you move your cursor around
| | 03:48 | inside the image, when you're
working inside the dialog box.
| | 03:51 | Well, there is a couple of solutions.
| | 03:53 | One is to grab the legitimate Eyedropper,
which you can get from the toolbox, or
| | 03:57 | you can press the I key.
| | 04:00 | Then rather than dragging inside the
image, you press the Ctrl key or the
| | 04:03 | Command key, and drag, and I want you
to watch here inside the graph, when I
| | 04:08 | Ctrl+Drag or Command+Drag, not only am
I seeing that ginormous sampling ring
| | 04:13 | out there in the image window, but I'm also
seeing the bouncing ball inside of the curve graph.
| | 04:18 | As soon as I move into the barn, you
can see that it bounces down to the lower
| | 04:21 | left region of the graph.
| | 04:23 | Now, because the Ctrl or Command key is
down, as soon as I release, I'm going to
| | 04:28 | end up with a point there in the graph.
| | 04:30 | So, that's a little bit of a difference
when working with the Eyedropper tool.
| | 04:34 | If I were to Ctrl+Shift+Click or
Command+Shift+Click, then I would add
| | 04:38 | independent points to each
one of the color channels.
| | 04:41 | Another way to work instead of
grabbing the Eyedropper is to switch to the
| | 04:45 | Target Adjustment tool, so the Curves
command, whether you're working inside the
| | 04:48 | dialog box or the Adjustments panel,
you've got a Target Adjustment tool, that
| | 04:52 | you can take advantage of here.
| | 04:54 | Then you just move your cursor around,
you don't have to drag it all, and
| | 04:58 | notice as you move your cursor, you'll see a
bouncing ball over there inside the Curves graph.
| | 05:03 | When I move my cursor into the barn,
then you see the ball jump down to the
| | 05:07 | lower left region of the graph.
| | 05:09 | If you want to add a point, then you do
the same thing you do with the dialog box.
| | 05:12 | You Ctrl+Click or you Command+Click
inside the image window, then you have
| | 05:17 | a point inside the Composite graph,
if you want to add one to each one of
| | 05:21 | the Channel graphs, then you Ctrl+Shift+Click
or Command+Shift+Click inside the image window.
| | 05:26 | Then finally, you've got this option
down here to update your histogram, you
| | 05:30 | just go ahead and click on it, and then you
see the new histogram here inside the panel.
| | 05:35 | I realize I'm throwing a
lot of stuff at you here.
| | 05:37 | In the next exercise, we're going to
take those techniques, and we're going to
| | 05:40 | actually apply them to the
task of correcting this image.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Correcting an image with Curves| 00:00 | I'm still working inside Snowy
old barn.tif, found inside the
| | 00:03 | 14_levels_curves folder.
| | 00:05 | In this exercise, we're going to take a
Curves Adjustment layer and we're going
| | 00:08 | to apply it to the actual
task of correcting this image.
| | 00:11 | Now, I already have a Curves
Adjustment layer at work here.
| | 00:14 | But I'm going to clear it out by
clicking on the Reset icon in the lower right
| | 00:18 | corner of the Adjustments panel.
| | 00:20 | Then I'm going to start to work using
the Target Adjustment tool, which greatly
| | 00:24 | simplifies the behavior of the
Curves dialog box in my opinion.
| | 00:28 | Now, notice that the pointing
finger has an up-down arrow icon next to
| | 00:32 | it, meaning that you're going to
drag up and down inside the image in
| | 00:35 | order to produce results.
| | 00:37 | So, go ahead and click on that tool to
select it, and then I'm going to begin
| | 00:41 | dragging from one of the darkest
details inside the image, known as this point
| | 00:46 | here, next to this knot.
| | 00:47 | So, it's just little bit over,
inside the right portion of the barn.
| | 00:52 | If you're looking at the Input and
Output levels at the bottom of the
| | 00:55 | Adjustments panel, you should see that
they say something around 21 is going
| | 00:59 | to work out for us.
| | 01:00 | You don't have to get that value exactly right.
| | 01:03 | But 21 is a good starting point.
| | 01:05 | Then click and drag up, and notice that
the Target Adjustment tool automatically
| | 01:10 | places a point on the graph, and then
begins moving it along with your cursor.
| | 01:15 | So, if you drag up, you're going to
assign a higher output value, thereby
| | 01:19 | brightening the colors, and if you
drag down, you're going to assign a lower
| | 01:23 | output value, which will darken the colors.
| | 01:26 | I obviously want to brighten this dark region.
| | 01:29 | So, I'll go ahead and drag up
until I see an output value of 36.
| | 01:33 | So, in my case, if I move my cursor
back here into the Adjustments panel, I can
| | 01:38 | see then I'm mapping an Input level of
21 to an Output level of 36, bearing in
| | 01:43 | mind once again that 0
is black and 255 is white.
| | 01:47 | All right, now I'm going to move my
cursor back into the image window, and I'm
| | 01:51 | going to find a fairly light detail,
somewhere in a fairly shadowy region of
| | 01:55 | snow, and notice, my cursor is
directly below the barn here.
| | 02:00 | If you check out the Input and
Output values down at the bottom of the
| | 02:02 | Adjustments panel, once again, you'll
see that Input over on the right is 229,
| | 02:07 | and Output over on the left is 240.
| | 02:10 | I'm going to click and hold at that
location, and I'm going to drag down,
| | 02:14 | because I want to sink those dark colors.
| | 02:18 | I'm going to drag down until
I get an Output value of 216.
| | 02:22 | So, I'm mapping from, in my case, it
looks like things shifted a little bit.
| | 02:26 | I'm mapping from an Input level
of 232 and Output level of 216.
| | 02:30 | That's going to work out fine.
| | 02:32 | Then I just want to brighten my quarter
tones, ever so slightly, so I'm going to
| | 02:37 | sort of move my cursor around this
lump of snow, down here in the lower right
| | 02:42 | region of the image.
| | 02:43 | Once again, at the bottom of the
Adjustments panel, once I see an Input level of
| | 02:47 | around 189 or 195, either of
those is going to work pretty good.
| | 02:51 | I've got 195 right now.
| | 02:53 | I'm going to click and drag
upwards slightly, in order to raise that
| | 02:58 | Output value to 183.
| | 03:01 | It was below 195 before, because the other
points in the curve we're dragging it down.
| | 03:06 | So, I'm just elevating it ever so slightly.
| | 03:09 | I end up getting these points right here.
| | 03:12 | Now, if you want me to
review the values, here we go.
| | 03:14 | I'll go ahead and press the Plus key
until we go ahead and cycle around the points.
| | 03:20 | You may recall, pressing the Plus
key selects the next point in the curve,
| | 03:23 | pressing the Minus key
selects the previous point in the curve.
| | 03:26 | So, we start things off, if I
press Minus once again here.
| | 03:29 | We start things off with a black
point, which is mapping 0 to 0.
| | 03:34 | So, nothing's happening there.
| | 03:36 | Then the next point in the graph
maps from 21 to an Output level of 36.
| | 03:41 | Then after that, we've got a point that
maps from 195 to an Output level of 183.
| | 03:47 | The next one maps an Input level
of 230 to an Output level of 216.
| | 03:52 | Then we have a fifth point,
which is one of the default points.
| | 03:55 | It goes from 255 to 255.
| | 03:57 | So, it keeps the whites white.
| | 03:59 | We end up with this effect here.
| | 04:01 | Now, I'll go ahead and press the M
key, in order to switch back to my
| | 04:04 | Rectangular Marquee tool.
| | 04:06 | To give you a sense of what we have
accomplished here, I'm going to go ahead and
| | 04:09 | collapse the Adjustments panel.
| | 04:11 | I'll turn off the curves layer.
| | 04:12 | So, this is what the image looked like before.
| | 04:15 | This is how it looks now.
| | 04:17 | So, we not only have a brighter barn, but
we also have darker snow in the background.
| | 04:21 | I think it actually looks fairly terrific,
but there's one other thing I want to do.
| | 04:26 | I want to increase the Saturation
of these colors like crazy, and once
| | 04:30 | again, just as with that Fotolia image, I'm
not going to even attempt to do a subtle job.
| | 04:35 | This is going to be fairly over-the-top.
| | 04:37 | So, let's go ahead, and once again,
expand the Adjustments panel, click the
| | 04:40 | left-pointing arrowhead down in the
bottom-left corner in order to switch back
| | 04:44 | to the list of Adjustment layers.
| | 04:46 | Once again, Alt+Click or Option+Click
in the Vibrance button there, the
| | 04:50 | first button in the second row, and
I'll call this guy superblaster, and
| | 04:54 | then I'll click OK.
| | 04:56 | I'll start by raising the
Saturation value to let's say 40.
| | 04:59 | See how that looks.
| | 05:00 | That brings out those
colors in the slats of the barn.
| | 05:03 | Then I'll press the Tab key to go to the
Vibrance value, and I'll change it to a
| | 05:07 | 100, its maximum setting, and we end
up getting this effect here. Love it!
| | 05:12 | All right, I'm going to collapse
the Adjustments panel once again.
| | 05:15 | This is the before version of the image,
very dark barn, very bright snow, way
| | 05:19 | too much contrast inside the image.
| | 05:21 | This is the after version of the image.
| | 05:24 | Thanks to a combination of
Curves and Vibrance working together!
| | 05:27 | In the next exercise, I'm going to
do some additional work to bring out
| | 05:30 | the detail in the snow.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Filling in the highlights| 00:00 | I have saved my changes as
Enhanced barn.psd, found inside the
| | 00:04 | 14_levels_curves folder.
| | 00:06 | In this exercise, we're going to begin
the task of darkening the snow, because
| | 00:10 | it still needs more definition.
| | 00:12 | If you look at this landscape here,
we have a little bit of shadow detail
| | 00:16 | underneath the barn, and we've got
nothing going on in the background.
| | 00:20 | Now, in order to solve this problem, in
order to add a little bit of additional
| | 00:24 | detail to the highlights, I'm going to
add another Curves Adjustment layer, and
| | 00:28 | we're going to mask this layer, so
only the highlights are affected.
| | 00:32 | Rather than using one of the selection
tools, we're actually going to dig in to
| | 00:35 | the Channels panel, and we're going to
create what's known as a luminance mask,
| | 00:39 | which is about this simplest
kind of mask that you can create.
| | 00:43 | So, for starters here, I want you to Alt+Click
or Option+Click on the eyeball in
| | 00:47 | front of the Background layer, so that
we're just seeing that original image.
| | 00:51 | Notice that the barn is extremely dark,
and the background is extremely bright.
| | 00:57 | So, if you think of this as a layer
mask, with a dark barn and a bright
| | 01:00 | background, it means we'll protect the
barn and we'll expose the background.
| | 01:05 | So, our mask is pretty much already
created, we just need to go grab it.
| | 01:10 | To do exactly that, go to the Channels panel,
and then take a look at our color channels.
| | 01:14 | We've got a Red channel here,
which is pretty darn dark.
| | 01:18 | We have a Green channel that's even
darker, and we have a Blue channel
| | 01:22 | that's darker still.
| | 01:23 | So, we want to work with a channel
that's got the most contrast, and
| | 01:26 | that's going to be Blue.
| | 01:28 | To convert a channel to a selection
outline, all you do is you press the Ctrl
| | 01:32 | key here on the PC or the Command
key on the Mac, and you click on it.
| | 01:36 | That goes ahead and converts
that channel to a selection outline.
| | 01:40 | So, you're selecting the bright stuff in
the channel, which would be the sky and
| | 01:44 | the snow, and you're deselecting the
dark stuff which would be the barn.
| | 01:48 | All right, go ahead and click on RGB in
order to make the Composite image active.
| | 01:52 | Then switch back to the Layers panel
and go ahead and Alt+Click or Option+Click
| | 01:56 | on that eyeball again in
order to turn on all the layers.
| | 02:00 | Now, we're going to add another
Curves Adjustment layer, and we'll do that,
| | 02:03 | again, by pressing Ctrl+Shift+M
or Command+Shift+M on the Mac.
| | 02:07 | I'm going to call this darken snow.
| | 02:10 | Then I'll click OK.
| | 02:11 | Notice that we have a new adjustment
layer, and automatically, we converted the
| | 02:15 | contents of that Blue channel to the
layer mask, and you can see that little
| | 02:19 | mask thumbnail in the Layers panel.
| | 02:22 | That's what's known as a luminance mask.
| | 02:23 | It's a found mask inside the image.
| | 02:25 | All right, this time we're going to add
just one point to the graph, and we're
| | 02:29 | not going to lift it using the Target
Adjustment tool, we're just going to click
| | 02:32 | in the graph to create it.
| | 02:33 | I want that point to be at an Input
value of 165, so start it right there and
| | 02:38 | notice that my Input
level is 165, below the graph.
| | 02:41 | Go ahead and click, and
then drag it downward, like so.
| | 02:45 | So ultimately, I want you to map a
luminance level of 165 to an Output level of
| | 02:49 | 85, just as we see here.
| | 02:52 | So, notice the Input value
is 165, the Output is 85.
| | 02:56 | If you need to nudge that value
with the arrow keys, go for it.
| | 02:59 | I'm going to go ahead and zoom out
for my image, so we can see what a
| | 03:02 | difference we've made.
| | 03:03 | This is the before version of the
image, and this is the after version.
| | 03:07 | Now, we have two issues that I
think are pretty obvious here.
| | 03:10 | One is, we are darkening the barn a
little bit, actually, which I don't want to
| | 03:15 | do, and we're lightening the
background a little less than I'd like.
| | 03:18 | So, I need to increase the contrast
of my mask, so that we're completely
| | 03:22 | protecting the barn and we're
completely revealing the background.
| | 03:26 | Then the second problem is that our
sky and our snow have a little bit of a
| | 03:29 | purple cast, and we'll solve
that problem in the next exercise.
| | 03:33 | But for now, here is what I want you to do.
| | 03:34 | Go to this layer mask thumbnail
inside the Layers panel, and Alt+Click
| | 03:38 | or Option+Click on it.
| | 03:40 | That's going to show you that layer mask
independently of the rest of the image.
| | 03:44 | I'll go ahead and zoom in, so
you can see what you're doing.
| | 03:46 | We need the barn to be totally black, and
we need the background to be totally white.
| | 03:52 | So, we're going to clip the background
to white using the best clipping tool on
| | 03:56 | the business, and that's the Levels command.
| | 03:59 | Now, we can't use the Levels
Adjustment layer, because you can't assign an
| | 04:02 | adjustment layer to a mask.
| | 04:04 | That's just the way things
works inside of Photoshop.
| | 04:06 | So instead, we're going to
apply a static adjustment.
| | 04:08 | So, go to the Image menu, choose
Adjustments, and choose Levels, or press
| | 04:12 | Ctrl+L, Command+L on the Mac.
| | 04:15 | There is our barn right there.
| | 04:16 | It needs to be black.
| | 04:18 | There is our snow and sky, it needs to be white.
| | 04:21 | So, what I'd like you to do is go ahead and
drag that white slider triangle over to about 200.
| | 04:27 | So, we're saying anything with a luminance
level of 200 or brighter is going to become white.
| | 04:32 | That means we're going to clip all of
this stuff right there to white, which
| | 04:36 | works great for masking.
| | 04:38 | So, whereas you want to try to avoid
clipping when you're adjusting a continuous
| | 04:41 | tone image, when you're editing a
mask, you want to clip like crazy.
| | 04:46 | Now let's go ahead and drag that black
slider triangle over to the right, and
| | 04:50 | I'm going to move it to about 70,
maybe a little farther actually.
| | 04:53 | Let's take it up to 90.
| | 04:55 | In this case, I'm saying anything with
the luminance level of 90 or darker is
| | 04:59 | going to become black.
| | 05:00 | That's going to pretty well-protect that barn.
| | 05:03 | Now click OK in order to accept that
modification, and I will once again
| | 05:08 | Alt+Click or Option+Click on that layer
mask thumbnail there inside the Layers panel.
| | 05:13 | So, to give you a sense of the impact of
the Levels command there, I'll go ahead
| | 05:16 | and press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z on
the Mac for the before version.
| | 05:19 | So, this is that radical Curves Adjustment
applied slightly to the barn as you can see here.
| | 05:24 | So, we are darkening the barn
more than I'm comfortable with.
| | 05:27 | If I press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z again,
then we see the after version in which
| | 05:31 | the barn is protected.
| | 05:33 | Now, we still have an awful lot of
purplish sky and snow, and we're going to
| | 05:37 | correct that problem by removing the
color cast in the very next exercise.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Neutralizing casts and smoothing transitions| 00:00 | In this final exercise of the
chapter, we're going to modify the
| | 00:03 | channel-by-channel curves settings in
order to remove this purple color cast
| | 00:07 | from the sky and the snow.
| | 00:10 | I've gone ahead and saved my changes
to this Purple sky.psd, found inside the
| | 00:14 | 14_levels_curves folder.
| | 00:16 | With this top layer selected, that is
darken snow, make sure that layer is
| | 00:20 | active, and that you're looking at the
contents of the Adjustments panel here.
| | 00:23 | I'm going to grab my gray eyedropper,
and I'm going to move it down into a
| | 00:28 | fairly purple region of the snow here,
and I'm going to click on it, because the
| | 00:33 | snow should just be neutral.
| | 00:35 | All right, and that seems like it
might have given the snow a bit of a
| | 00:40 | green color cast now.
| | 00:41 | That could be because I
clicked on the wrong pixel.
| | 00:44 | I've got my Eyedropper set to Point Sample.
| | 00:47 | So, you know what, let's go ahead
and change an eyedropper setting.
| | 00:50 | I'll select the Eyedropper tool from
the toolbox, and then I'll switch from
| | 00:54 | Point sample to let's say 5 by 5 Average.
| | 00:57 | I don't want to make it too big, because I
don't have a lot of room inside of the snow.
| | 01:02 | Now, I'll select the gray eyedropper,
here inside the Adjustments panel, and
| | 01:06 | I'll click inside the snow again, and
that does a better job, it seems to me, of
| | 01:10 | neutralizing that snow.
| | 01:11 | Now, if you want to double-check
things, and make sure you've got some real
| | 01:15 | neutral snow going, well, I then move the
darken snow layer under that Vibrance layer.
| | 01:20 | In my case, I'm going to have to
collapse the Adjustments panel and I'll drag
| | 01:24 | darken snow below superblaster, like so.
| | 01:27 | What that's going to go is exaggerate
any lack of neutrality inside of my snow.
| | 01:32 | So, I do have a lot of green going on there.
| | 01:34 | All right, so let's go ahead and double-click
on the thumbnail for that Curves
| | 01:38 | Adjustment, and now I'm going to
visit the green color channel there, by
| | 01:41 | selecting Green from this pop-up menu.
| | 01:43 | Notice I once again have those same
keyboard shortcuts that I had with Levels,
| | 01:47 | i.e. Alt+2 or Option+2 takes me to
the composite image, then Alt+3-5 or
| | 01:51 | Option+3-5 takes me to the
various independent channels.
| | 01:55 | I'm going to switch over to Green here,
and I'm going to grab this Green point
| | 01:59 | and drag it closer in, like so.
| | 02:02 | So, if I'm dragging this point up,
I'm going to add Green to the image.
| | 02:06 | If I drag it down towards this diagonal
line, then I'm going to remove some of
| | 02:10 | the green from the image.
| | 02:11 | However, if I go too far, then I'm
going to essentially add the opposite of
| | 02:16 | green, which is the purple that I was
trying to remove in the first place.
| | 02:19 | So, let's go ahead and take this guy
just slightly upward, and I'm going to make
| | 02:24 | sure that my Input level is 128,
and my Output level is 130.
| | 02:28 | So, we're ever so slightly brightening the
greens in order to compensate for those purples.
| | 02:34 | All right, now let's check out the Blue channel.
| | 02:36 | I'm going to grab this point, move it
down a little bit, and now I'm going to
| | 02:38 | take that Input level once again to 128,
and I'm going to raise the Output level
| | 02:42 | to say 126 or maybe 125.
| | 02:46 | I'll take it down to 125,
that looks pretty good.
| | 02:48 | Then I'll visit the Red channel,
just to make sure I'm happy with things.
| | 02:51 | I'll drag this guy down once again to
an Input level of 128, and I'm going to
| | 02:56 | take that Output level down
one increment to a value of 124.
| | 03:00 | That looks pretty darn good to me.
| | 03:02 | All right, now we may end up still
having a little bit of discernible color
| | 03:06 | cast, but bear in mind that some
of this is because we're under this
| | 03:10 | superblaster, which is elevating
the saturation levels like crazy.
| | 03:14 | I'm going to collapse my Adjustments
panel, and then I'm going to drag darken
| | 03:18 | snow above superblaster, and pretty
much all of that saturation is going to go
| | 03:23 | away and we should see some
very neutral snow left over.
| | 03:26 | The last thing I'm going to do,
because if you zoom in on this image, you're
| | 03:30 | going to see some very crunchy details
around this grass, down here in the lower
| | 03:35 | right corner of the image, and
closer toward the house as well.
| | 03:38 | To get rid of that crunchiness,
here's what I want you to do.
| | 03:41 | This is another option we
haven't seen yet inside the software.
| | 03:45 | Very easy to apply however!
| | 03:47 | Make sure the layer mask is selected
there in darken snow, and by that I mean it
| | 03:51 | should have a double outline around it.
| | 03:53 | Then I want you to switch to the Masks
panel, and you can get to Masks by going
| | 03:58 | to the Window menu and choosing the
Mask command, or if you loaded dekeKeys, I
| | 04:01 | gave you a keyboard shortcut of
Alt+F10 or Option+F10 on the Mac.
| | 04:05 | Now, I want you to raise the Feather
value, and you can just click inside of
| | 04:10 | that Feather value and press the Up
Arrow key in order to increase that
| | 04:14 | incrementally, and you'll see the
crunchiness disappear before your very eyes.
| | 04:18 | At a value of about 5 pixels,
I think it looks pretty good.
| | 04:22 | This, by the way, is a nondestructive
parametric adjustment, meaning we could
| | 04:27 | change our minds anytime we like.
| | 04:29 | I'm essentially blurring the mask on
the fly, but I could always come back
| | 04:33 | and unblur it later.
| | 04:34 | All right, I'll go ahead and press
the Enter key or the Return key on the
| | 04:36 | Mac, and then I'm going to zoom out so that
we can take in more of the image at a time.
| | 04:41 | I'll go ahead and center the
image in the window a little bit.
| | 04:43 | Actually, you know what, let's drag
the side of these panels over, so that we
| | 04:48 | have even more room to work.
| | 04:50 | Now to give you a sense of just how far
we've come with this image, notice, by
| | 04:54 | the way, all that detail in the snow
down there, you can see all those shadow
| | 04:59 | contours that we never saw before.
| | 05:01 | You can also make out the distinction
between the ground and the sky, something
| | 05:05 | that was very hard to see.
| | 05:06 | Then finally, if you look very closely,
there is the darkish sun, so weird that
| | 05:12 | this sun is darker than the sky.
| | 05:15 | Anyway, I'm going to go ahead and
Alt+Click on that Background layer, so that
| | 05:18 | we can see the original version of the
image in terrible shape, now that we look at it.
| | 05:24 | If I Alt+Click or Option+Click again, then
I see the corrected version of the image.
| | 05:29 | Thanks to the amazing contrast
reducing power of the Curves command, here
| | 05:34 | inside Photoshop!
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
15. Sharpening DetailsThe art of enhancing edges| 00:00 | Last we spoke, I explained the
three imperatives of Photoshop.
| | 00:04 | It sees an image one channel at a time.
| | 00:07 | It receives the image in terms of luminance
levels and it loves areas of rapid contrast.
| | 00:13 | Let me explain that last one.
| | 00:14 | Imagine you are looking at an aerial photo,
shot from the sky of a beach on a sunny day.
| | 00:20 | On one side you have that beach, the
sand highly reflective and therefore wildly
| | 00:26 | bright on the other you have the ocean.
| | 00:28 | It absorbs light and it's rich and dark.
| | 00:32 | Bright beige sand right next a
deep aquamarine greens and blues.
| | 00:36 | That is a rapid luminance shift.
| | 00:38 | Light on one side turned
suddenly dark on the other.
| | 00:42 | In Photoshop parlance that's an edge.
| | 00:45 | Photoshop can increase the contrast of
that edge which makes the edge appear
| | 00:49 | sharper and it does so
using the Sharpening Filters.
| | 00:53 | Bear in mind however, Photoshop cannot
actually sharpen the focus of a photograph.
| | 00:57 | Meaning that if a photo is badly
focused in the first place Photoshop cannot
| | 01:02 | reach back in a time and
adjust the focus of your camera.
| | 01:05 | Time travel is impossible and
Photoshop despite its considerable strengths
| | 01:10 | cannot do the impossible, but it can
take good focus and make it appear great.
| | 01:15 | Meaning a decent edge around a person or
an object or anything becomes reach out
| | 01:21 | and touch it tactile, which
is what this chapter is about.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| How sharpening works| 00:00 | In this exercise I will introduce you to
how sharpening works inside of Photoshop.
| | 00:04 | I also want you to have a sense of
what sharpening can and can't do.
| | 00:08 | Despite the fact that sharpening is
the foremost filtering effect inside of
| | 00:12 | Photoshop so much so by the way that
if you go to the Filter menu and choose
| | 00:15 | Sharpen, you will see a total of five
commands available in this submenu and
| | 00:20 | that's not quite everything.
| | 00:21 | There are a couple of other
sharpening features that we will see as well.
| | 00:24 | So Photoshop is throwing a lot of
commands at the task of sharpening and
| | 00:28 | Photoshop is an exceedingly powerful
program, but the one thing you have
| | 00:32 | to remember about Photoshop is that it
cannot generate detail where no detail exists.
| | 00:38 | So, for example, just as when you re-
sample an image that is you increase the
| | 00:43 | number of pixels or decrease the
number of pixels, you are not going to
| | 00:46 | suddenly add clarity.
| | 00:48 | Those new pixels if you up sample the
image are merely transitional pixels.
| | 00:52 | They are not making up new detail that
was there in that original scene, but the
| | 00:57 | camera has somehow did not pick up and
the same goes for sharpness of focus.
| | 01:02 | Ultimately, that is an optical effect;
| | 01:04 | focus is captured by the camera as
you shoot the image after that you
| | 01:09 | can't generate new focus.
| | 01:11 | So here I am working inside this
image called Macro butterfly.jpg.
| | 01:15 | It's found inside the 15_sharpen
folder and I am going to press Ctrl+1 or
| | 01:19 | Command+1 on a Mac to go ahead and
zoom the image to 100% so that we are
| | 01:23 | devoting one screen pixel to every image pixel.
| | 01:26 | Now I shot this image using an Olympus
E-30 and if you are ever curious about
| | 01:32 | what kind of lens for example was used
to capture an image and it was captured
| | 01:36 | with a digital SLR, then you can go up
to the File menu and you can choose the
| | 01:40 | File Info command or press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+I,
Command+Shift+Option+I on a Mac and
| | 01:45 | then switch from the Description
panel to Camera Data right there.
| | 01:49 | This is exif data that was captured by
the camera at the moment the image was shot.
| | 01:54 | So you can see that sure enough the
Make is Olympus, the model is E-30.
| | 01:58 | If we dropdown here you can see that I
was using a 14.0-54.0 mm lens which was
| | 02:03 | the stock lens that shipped along with a camera.
| | 02:06 | Notice the Focal Length is 54.0 mm.
| | 02:08 | So, if you will, I will zoom all the
way and I will go ahead and cancel out of
| | 02:12 | this dialog box here.
| | 02:14 | As a result we have a
very shallow plane of focus.
| | 02:18 | That is to say, because this is a macro image.
| | 02:21 | We have probably got a few
millimeters of information of depth that is to
| | 02:26 | say, that's in focus.
| | 02:28 | Everything else is drifting out of focus.
| | 02:31 | So this butterfly's eye is in focus, its
proboscis, its curlicue right here is in focus.
| | 02:36 | This knee right here of its leg is in
focus, this rear leg though is completely
| | 02:41 | out of focus, and there is no
way I am going to change that.
| | 02:44 | I am not going to bring the out of focus
details into focus no matter how hard I
| | 02:49 | try unless I go in there
and hand-generate detail.
| | 02:52 | Over the years I have received so
many heartbreaking photos from folks.
| | 02:56 | Once in a lifetime photos that are
blurry, they ask me how do I bring out the
| | 02:59 | detail and the answer is, I am afraid you can't.
| | 03:02 | You have to shoot the image in focus in
the first place in order to sharpen in
| | 03:06 | effectively inside of Photoshop.
| | 03:09 | That said, if you are working with
an image with good focus you can make
| | 03:14 | that detail absolutely tactile onscreen you
can make it leap off the page using sharpening.
| | 03:20 | So let's see how that works.
| | 03:21 | I will go up to the Filter menu, I will
choose Sharpen and I am going to choose
| | 03:25 | this command here without going into
detail about how this command works.
| | 03:29 | We will see that in future exercises.
| | 03:31 | If you loaded Deke keys you have got a
keyboard shortcut of Shift+F6 that brings
| | 03:35 | up this big dialog box here.
| | 03:37 | I will go ahead and drag the head of the
butterfly over a little bit inside this
| | 03:41 | in-dialog box preview.
| | 03:42 | Here are my default settings that is an
Amount of 100%, Radius 1.0 Remove set to
| | 03:47 | Gaussian Blur, More Accurate turned off.
| | 03:51 | It's very important for now.
| | 03:52 | I am going to go ahead and maximize
this amount value, so that we get as much
| | 03:56 | sharpening as possible from this filter.
| | 03:59 | Now this more sharpening than we need.
| | 04:00 | We are actually over-sharpening the
image for the sake of demonstration.
| | 04:04 | Notice if I click-and-hold inside of
this preview here, I will see the before
| | 04:08 | version of the butterfly, as soon as I
release this I see the after version.
| | 04:12 | So you can see the difference we are making.
| | 04:13 | I will go ahead and click OK in order
to accept that effect, and just to make
| | 04:17 | sure that the effects of the Smart
Sharpen filter survive the transition of
| | 04:21 | video I am going to go ahead and
zoom this image in here to 200%.
| | 04:25 | This is the before version of the
butterfly and this is the after version.
| | 04:30 | What Photoshop is doing where sharpening is
concerned is it's exaggerating edge contrast.
| | 04:36 | So an edge is an area of rapid
luminance transition inside of the image.
| | 04:40 | For example, right here we have got an edge.
| | 04:43 | We go from bright pixels in the
background to very dark pixels inside of the leg
| | 04:48 | extremely rapidly just over
the course of a few pixels here.
| | 04:52 | What Photoshop does when we apply a
sharpening filter it goes ahead and takes
| | 04:56 | the light side of the edge and makes it
slightly lighter and it takes the dark
| | 04:59 | side of the edge and makes it slightly darker.
| | 05:02 | So it's actually tracing tiny lines
as we will see in a future exercise.
| | 05:07 | What that does is, it make our eyes
lock on to that feature, because we are
| | 05:12 | trained as human beings to read areas of
rapid luminance transition as sharp edges.
| | 05:17 | Now notice what happens to sharply
focus details like this leg here.
| | 05:22 | It appears more tactile, more
articulated than ever versus what happens to areas
| | 05:28 | that are not in focus like this rear leg.
| | 05:30 | That doesn't really look
any better than it did before.
| | 05:33 | So this is the before version of
the image, this is the after version.
| | 05:37 | Really all we are doing in the areas of
low focus is we are bringing out noise
| | 05:42 | and noise of course is random luminance
variations between neighboring pixels.
| | 05:46 | So anywhere where you have good detail,
you get more articulated detail more
| | 05:50 | tactile detail, if you will.
| | 05:53 | Anywhere where you have low detail, you
get more noise and that's what's going
| | 05:58 | on with sharpening inside Photoshop.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| The single-shot sharpeners| 00:00 | In this exercise I am going to demonstrate the
threes single shot sharpeners. That is to say;
| | 00:04 | sharpen, sharpen edges, and sharpen more.
| | 00:07 | Very easy filters to use.
| | 00:09 | All you do is choose the command, let it
rip, it does its thing no questions asked.
| | 00:13 | However, not terribly satisfying filters either.
| | 00:16 | They can be useful for web
work, but that's about it.
| | 00:19 | I am working inside of this
image called Finely hewn.psd.
| | 00:22 | It's found inside the 15_sharpen folder.
| | 00:25 | Once again it's that detail from the $1
bill and I have gone ahead and repeated
| | 00:30 | that detail five times on five separate
layers that are stacked directly on top
| | 00:34 | of each other so that we can compare the
performance of each one of the filters.
| | 00:38 | I am going to go ahead and zoom in to
200% here so that we can really see the
| | 00:43 | effect of these filters.
| | 00:44 | Otherwise, it's very difficult to see
the two initial filters in particular;
| | 00:49 | Sharpen and Sharpen Edges.
| | 00:51 | Now I am going to click on the sharpen
layer, turn it on and I will go up o the
| | 00:54 | Filter menu choose Sharpen and
choose this very first command Sharpen.
| | 00:59 | Keep a careful eye on your screen,
because it's easy to miss this one.
| | 01:02 | That applies a little bit of
edge contrast as you can see there.
| | 01:07 | So if I turn this layer off we can see
the original version of the dollar bill,
| | 01:11 | the original scan that is and then if
I turn it back on, that's the version
| | 01:16 | subject to the Sharpen commands.
| | 01:18 | So not much difference at all.
| | 01:20 | Between you and me, I
never ever use this command.
| | 01:22 | I haven't used it in maybe 20 years now.
| | 01:25 | In its defense, it's been shipping
along with Photoshop since 1.0 and back in
| | 01:30 | the old days it was more likely you
might be working with low resolution images,
| | 01:33 | it can make a difference for a screen
image, an image that you might put up on
| | 01:39 | the web for example.
| | 01:40 | However, not really
enough to make it worthwhile.
| | 01:43 | All right, let's go ahead and turn that
guy off and I will turn on Sharpen Edges
| | 01:47 | right there, which is an even
more subtle effect by the way.
| | 01:49 | I will go ahead and click on that
layer, go up to the Filter menu, choose
| | 01:53 | Sharpen and this time choose Sharpen
Edges and the difference here is you are
| | 01:57 | applying basically the same amount of
sharpening, however, you are ruling out
| | 02:01 | some non-edges inside the image that is some
dust and some noise and that kind of thing.
| | 02:08 | So as soon as I choose this command again
keep a very careful eye on the screen here.
| | 02:11 | That's the effect you get.
| | 02:13 | So just a little bit of sharpening
this time around, less than we saw before.
| | 02:18 | I will go ahead and turn off this layer
so we can see this is the original version.
| | 02:21 | Watch around his eyes you can see it
just a little bit there, and this is the
| | 02:25 | after version after applying Sharpen Edges.
| | 02:28 | I will also go ahead and
compare this to sharpen here.
| | 02:30 | I will turn this layer on.
| | 02:31 | So this is Sharpen Edges
we are seeing right there.
| | 02:33 | If I turn it off, there is the Sharpen command.
| | 02:35 | So Sharpen actually produces bigger
effects than Sharpen Edges which rules out
| | 02:40 | some of the pixels inside the image.
| | 02:42 | Next, I am going to turn on sharpen
more here, the sharpen more layer.
| | 02:46 | Click on it in order to select it and
once again we are looking at the original
| | 02:49 | image, because I haven't
done anything to it yet.
| | 02:51 | I will go up to the Filter menu, choose
Sharpen, and this time you are going to
| | 02:55 | see the effect here at 200%.
| | 02:56 | I will choose Sharpen More and that
applies quite a bit more sharpening than
| | 03:01 | we have seen so far.
| | 03:02 | So if I turn off this layer we
will see the sharpen layer underneath.
| | 03:05 | So this is Sharpen More
compared with Sharpen right there.
| | 03:09 | So quite a bit more sharpening going on.
| | 03:12 | I will go ahead and turn that layer
back on and I will zoom out to 100% so that
| | 03:17 | we can see the screen version of the image.
| | 03:19 | Notice this time if I turn off
sharpen more, I have got sharpen and
| | 03:22 | Backgrounds sitting here.
| | 03:23 | So Background represents the original
image, sharpen is the image subject to
| | 03:27 | the Sharpen command.
| | 03:28 | If I turn off sharpen, we are seeing
now the original version of the image.
| | 03:32 | Now we are seeing the Sharpen version of
the image, not much difference there at 100%.
| | 03:36 | A little bit of difference, you maybe
you able to perceive it in the video,
| | 03:39 | you may not be able to.
| | 03:41 | However, compared with sharpen more
that really stands out in the video.
| | 03:45 | However, here is the problem, I will go
back over to Macro butterfly.jpg and I
| | 03:50 | am viewing this image at 50%.
| | 03:52 | Now I will go up to the Filter menu
and notice right here at the top of the
| | 03:56 | Filter menu, I see sharpen more.
| | 03:58 | You always see your last applied
filter up here at the top of the Filter menu
| | 04:03 | and you can reapply that command just by
pressing Ctrl+F or Command+F. So Ctrl+F
| | 04:07 | or Command+F gets you to the last
applied filter complete with any settings you
| | 04:12 | may have applied if it
usually brings up a dialog.
| | 04:15 | I will choose sharpen more.
| | 04:17 | Just a slight difference;
| | 04:18 | in fact, what I am really bringing out
is these pollen particles in the animals
| | 04:23 | fur or whatever it is.
| | 04:25 | Anyway, I will press Ctrl+Z in
order to see the original version,
| | 04:29 | that's Command+Z on a Mac.
| | 04:30 | So very small difference.
| | 04:32 | Then I will go ahead and reapply the filter.
| | 04:34 | Very slight difference when you
start zooming out from the image.
| | 04:38 | That gives you a sense that this
filter is not going to survive printing.
| | 04:43 | So in other words, you can't really
use anything that we've seen so far for
| | 04:46 | output purposes, because you will just
lose the effect, because it's too tiny.
| | 04:51 | I am going to switch back to Finely hewn.
psd just for the sake of demonstration.
| | 04:55 | This is little over the top here.
| | 04:55 | I will switch over to the real sharp
layer, I will turn it on, so that's the
| | 05:00 | original version of the bill.
| | 05:02 | Then I will go up to the Filter menu I
will choose Sharpen and I will choose
| | 05:05 | Smart Sharpen and I will go ahead and
apply those last applied settings, the
| | 05:10 | settings that I showed you in a
previous exercise that is this over-the-top
| | 05:13 | Amount value of 500%, Radius of 1.0 and so on.
| | 05:17 | Click OK, and this is a big difference.
| | 05:21 | So this is the difference between real
sharp, I will go ahead and turn it off,
| | 05:24 | and sharpen more right there
compared eventually with sharpen down here.
| | 05:29 | Then of course the original image at the bottom.
| | 05:32 | But real sharp when I turn it on,
it's almost offensively sharp.
| | 05:36 | It hurts your eyes practically.
| | 05:39 | But my point here is not that this
is a better effect, my point is that
| | 05:43 | using Smart Sharpen or its partner
Unsharp Mask you can control the degree
| | 05:48 | of sharpening which is much more
useful when you are sharpening images
| | 05:52 | inside of Photoshop.
| | 05:53 | So both of those commands once
again Smart Sharpen and Unsharp mask,
| | 05:56 | they required that you learn how the
filters work, but they also give you more control.
| | 06:00 | In the next exercise, I will
introduce you to the first of those two
| | 06:04 | commands Unsharp Mask.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Introducing Unsharp Mask| 00:00 | In this exercise, I'm going to
introduce you to your primary sharpening tool
| | 00:04 | inside of Photoshop, and that's Unsharp Mask.
| | 00:07 | If you learn nothing else about how to
sharpen inside the program, you want to
| | 00:10 | learn how to use this one filter.
| | 00:13 | I'm working inside of a document
called Single-shot samples.psd.
| | 00:17 | It features each of those three
commands, sharpen, sharpen edges, and sharpen
| | 00:20 | more applied to independent layers.
| | 00:23 | I'm going to go and click on the
real sharp layer, and turn it on.
| | 00:26 | This layer has not been affected so far.
| | 00:28 | Now I'll go up to the Filter menu,
choose Sharpen, and choose Unsharp Mask,
| | 00:33 | this guy right there.
| | 00:34 | Now notice that if you've loaded dekeKeys,
I've assigned a keyboard shortcuts to
| | 00:38 | a few of the filters.
| | 00:39 | Basically, the filters that I use
the most often inside the program.
| | 00:43 | Starting with Shift+F5, and it
goes all the way to Shift+F12 for the
| | 00:48 | minimum command right here.
| | 00:49 | But what I want you to really note is
that Unsharp Mask is the first guy to
| | 00:54 | receive a keyboard shortcut.
| | 00:56 | That's because, once again, it is the
most essential Filter inside the program,
| | 01:01 | the one you really want to learn first.
| | 01:03 | So I'm going to go ahead and choose that
command to bring up the Unsharp Mask dialog box.
| | 01:08 | Now you may will ask, well, why in the
world did Adobe choose to call the most
| | 01:13 | essential sharpening function inside
the entire program Unsharp Mask, which
| | 01:18 | makes no darn sense whatsoever.
| | 01:20 | It's named after a traditional darkroom
technique and it actually works its way
| | 01:25 | inside of Photoshop as well.
| | 01:27 | So the idea is that Photoshop really
is incapable of sharpening an image.
| | 01:33 | We discussed how it can't generate
detail, but it can break down detail.
| | 01:38 | So what Unsharp Mask is actually doing, is
it's blurring the information inside the image.
| | 01:43 | I know that just doesn't sound possible
at all, but it's using the Gaussian Blur
| | 01:47 | filter inside of a masked environment.
| | 01:50 | So it's using the edges inside the
image to mask the effects of Gaussian
| | 01:54 | Blur, hence Unsharp Mask.
| | 01:57 | If you want to actually see that
it works, you can go to my Photoshop
| | 02:01 | sharpening images series.
| | 02:02 | There are a couple of movies in that
series, where I actually build up an exact
| | 02:07 | replica of Unsharp Mask, using
nothing more than Gaussian Blur, and this
| | 02:11 | command called Apply Image.
| | 02:13 | You can see how it works.
| | 02:14 | Now it's not a technique.
| | 02:15 | It's just a demonstration.
| | 02:17 | But frankly between you and me, you don't need
to understand what's going on under the hood.
| | 02:21 | You just need to know that Unsharp Mask is
the first sharpening filter you need to learn.
| | 02:26 | All right, notice that this
dialog box contains a Preview.
| | 02:30 | You can drag the Preview around if you want to.
| | 02:32 | If you click and hold on the
Preview, you'll see the Before effect.
| | 02:35 | If you release, you'll see the After effect.
| | 02:38 | You can also Preview the effect
out here in the larger image window.
| | 02:41 | You can turn the check box off
to send that outside image to its
| | 02:46 | original appearance.
| | 02:47 | Turn the check box on to preview the
settings inside of the background image window.
| | 02:53 | You can zoom, by the way, if you press
Ctrl+Minus or Commnad+Minus on
| | 02:57 | the Mac, you'll zoom out the
image in the background that is.
| | 03:00 | If you press Ctrl+Plus or Command+Plus
on the Mac, you'll zoom in.
| | 03:04 | You can Spacebar-drag the image
around if you want to. You can also;
| | 03:07 | by the way, if you want to center the
preview here inside the dialog box, you
| | 03:11 | can just click inside the image.
| | 03:14 | Notice that I have a little square here.
| | 03:16 | That goes ahead and centers
that area inside the Preview.
| | 03:20 | All right, now let's visit these
three options that are available to you.
| | 03:23 | Even though at first, they're very
mysterious in terms of how they work.
| | 03:26 | They're actually fairly simple.
| | 03:28 | There are just three options.
| | 03:29 | That's all you have to work with inside
this dialog box, and not a lot to worry about.
| | 03:33 | The very first option is
pretty much self-evident.
| | 03:36 | You're either going to apply less
sharpening using this Amount setting here,
| | 03:40 | or more sharpening.
| | 03:42 | Already, we're ahead of the game.
| | 03:44 | That is compared with sharpen, sharpen
edges, and sharpen more, because we can
| | 03:48 | control the degree of
sharpening that we're applying here.
| | 03:52 | In fact, by the way, sharpen, sharpen
edges, and sharpen more are based on
| | 03:57 | Unsharp Mask settings.
| | 03:58 | All right, so that's what you do with Amount.
| | 04:01 | Typically, you vary the
Amount value, although not always.
| | 04:04 | This is just a rule of thumb.
| | 04:06 | Somewhere between 50% which is a
pretty low amount of sharpening frankly.
| | 04:10 | And about 200%, although I should say
that the highest you can go is 500%.
| | 04:16 | There are times where I wish you
can go higher with this option.
| | 04:19 | 500% can be very useful for gauging the
results of the other settings as well.
| | 04:23 | Now I'll go ahead and take this
value down to let's say 250 for
| | 04:27 | demonstrational purposes.
| | 04:28 | Now let's dropdown to Radius.
| | 04:30 | The Radius value affects
the thickness of the halo.
| | 04:33 | I'll explain what's going on there in a
later exercise, but the thickness of the
| | 04:36 | halos that are being drawn around the edges.
| | 04:39 | So if I increase this Radius value,
notice that I get these big thick halos
| | 04:45 | around all of my edges.
| | 04:46 | So I get these big thick highlights,
big thick shadows as well around the edges
| | 04:51 | inside the image once again.
| | 04:53 | The higher you go with the Radius value,
the more distributed your Unsharp Mask
| | 04:57 | effect becomes, the more
blur you are applying in fact.
| | 05:01 | The more you're getting something of a
clarity effect, less of the sharpening
| | 05:05 | effect that is to say.
| | 05:06 | If you want a super-sharp tactile effect,
you want to reduce the Radius value.
| | 05:11 | Again, I'll explain what's
going on there in a later exercise.
| | 05:14 | Right now, I'm going to take
that Radius value up to 5 pixels.
| | 05:18 | I'm going to move my dialog box over here, so
that we can see this area in the background.
| | 05:23 | Notice these little bits of paper
texture and these threads that are woven
| | 05:26 | into the dollar bill.
| | 05:27 | Let's say, I want to eliminate
them from the sharpening equation.
| | 05:31 | That's the purpose of the Threshold value.
| | 05:33 | So if I take this value, let's say up
to something like, let's take it to 20.
| | 05:39 | Notice that I'm no longer
sharpening that paper texture, but I'm still
| | 05:43 | sharpening George's face quite a bit here.
| | 05:46 | What this is saying is go ahead and
sharpen two neighboring pixels if they are
| | 05:51 | 20 luminance levels or more
different from each other.
| | 05:54 | If they're 20 luminous levels were
less different from each other, then
| | 05:58 | don't sharpen the pixels.
| | 06:00 | So if you want to rule out low levels
of contrasts inside the image, then you
| | 06:04 | crank up that Threshold option.
| | 06:07 | So that's how these options
work just on the face of them.
| | 06:10 | I think Amount is pretty self-evident.
| | 06:12 | You can work with that one.
| | 06:13 | I'm going to explain Radius and
Threshold in more detail, starting in the
| | 06:17 | next exercise.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Radius and Threshold| 00:00 | In this exercise I'm going to provide
a detailed analysis of what's going on
| | 00:03 | with the Radius and Threshold
options inside the Unsharp Mask dialog box.
| | 00:07 | This is one case where it really pays
to know what's going on under the hood.
| | 00:11 | That way you'll get more
effective results out of Unsharp Mask.
| | 00:15 | So in addition to this Macro butterfly
.jpg image here, I've gone ahead and
| | 00:19 | created a stripped down version of the
image called Simpli-fly.jpg, also found
| | 00:26 | inside the 15_sharpen folder.
| | 00:28 | In this case, I've gone ahead and
distilled the image down into just a few
| | 00:32 | interacting colors here.
| | 00:34 | That provides us with some very obvious
edges inside the image, that the Radius
| | 00:38 | value can glom onto.
| | 00:40 | Notice also, if I zoom in on this
image, that I've added a synthetic paper
| | 00:44 | texture here using a couple of filters.
| | 00:46 | We'll see how that works in the future chapter.
| | 00:49 | That will allow us to examine
what's going on with Threshold.
| | 00:53 | So I'm going to go up to the Filter menu,
choose the Sharpen command, and choose
| | 00:57 | Unsharp Mask, or press Shift+
F5 if you've loaded dekeKeys.
| | 01:00 | What I want to do is move my dialog
box over a little bit, and click on this
| | 01:05 | back portion of the wing right here in
order to center it inside the in dialog
| | 01:10 | box Preview, just so we
can see what we're doing.
| | 01:12 | I'll raise the Amount value to 250%,
which is half of your maximum value
| | 01:17 | inside this dialog box.
| | 01:19 | You can take it as high as 500.
| | 01:21 | Then I'll tab down to the Radius value.
| | 01:23 | I want you to see what's going on
here inside the dialog box in particular.
| | 01:28 | Notice as I raise this value here, I'm
increasing the thickness of these halos.
| | 01:34 | I'm actually drawing halos along the dark side
of the edge, and the bright side of the edge.
| | 01:38 | So this is an edge at this
location, because it's an area of rapid
| | 01:42 | luminance transition.
| | 01:43 | We're going from bright to dark very
quickly over the course of the very few pixels.
| | 01:48 | As I raise this Radius value, I'm
drawing a bright halo on one side, and a dark
| | 01:52 | halo on the other side, and the thickness
of the halo is dictated by this Radius value.
| | 01:57 | It also drops off very softly.
| | 01:59 | Notice this, because the halo is
actually produced by a filter called Gaussian
| | 02:04 | Blur inside of Photoshop.
| | 02:06 | So it is a true blur that's going on here.
| | 02:09 | The larger your Radius value, the
thicker that halo that you're drawing.
| | 02:13 | So as a result over time, you're
distributing the sharpening effect.
| | 02:17 | So it looks less sharp, and it looks
more like you're just emphasizing the
| | 02:22 | edges inside the image.
| | 02:23 | So if you want to create a more
volumetric image where you're really enhancing
| | 02:28 | the shadows and the highlights and so
on, a low Amount value combined with a
| | 02:32 | high Radius value can really do the trick.
| | 02:35 | I'll go ahead and reduce this Amount
value down to 50% for example, and I'll
| | 02:40 | send this Radius file you to 50 pixels.
| | 02:43 | Now notice the difference.
| | 02:44 | If I turn off the Preview check
box, so keep an eye on the image in
| | 02:47 | the background here.
| | 02:48 | If I turn off the Preview check box, this is the
original version of the image. Turn on Preview;
| | 02:53 | this is the punched up, higher
clarity version of the image.
| | 02:57 | Thanks to once again, a low
Amount value, and a high Radius value.
| | 03:01 | However, that doesn't
really look all that sharp.
| | 03:04 | If you want sharp edges,
tactile edges that is to say.
| | 03:07 | Then you go with the high Amount value,
maybe not as high as 250%, but I'm
| | 03:11 | trying to make a point here.
| | 03:12 | Then dropdown to the Radius value and
enter a low Radius value, something like 3
| | 03:17 | pixels or even lower, 3 pixels
is pretty good for print work.
| | 03:22 | Lower values such as 0.5, you can go very low
with this value, are useful for screen work.
| | 03:28 | We'll discuss that in more detail.
| | 03:30 | But for now, just know, low Amount,
high Radius gives you lots of clarity.
| | 03:34 | High Amount, low Radius
gives you lots of sharpness.
| | 03:38 | All right, I'm going to take this
Radius value up to something like 20 pixels
| | 03:41 | for now, something very high.
| | 03:43 | So we're combining high Amount and
high Radius, just so that we can see the
| | 03:47 | difference that Threshold provides.
| | 03:49 | The whole idea here with this Threshold
value is that we're trying to eliminate
| | 03:53 | any of the background junk.
| | 03:54 | So for example, we're trying to get
Unsharp Mask to ignore the noise inside
| | 03:59 | the image, or the paper texture, or this
artificial texture that's going on in our case.
| | 04:05 | What I would recommend that you do when
you're using this value is just go ahead
| | 04:09 | and click inside of it, and then press
the Up Arrow key in order to nudge that
| | 04:13 | value upward, until your
background texture disappears.
| | 04:18 | Now if you're trying to omit noise,
you're trying to make sure that you don't
| | 04:21 | sharpen noise inside of an image, then
you want to keep this Threshold value
| | 04:24 | very low, something like one to three levels.
| | 04:28 | This is luminance levels
between neighboring pixels.
| | 04:31 | Recall from the previous chapter, that
you've got 256 luminance levels in all;
| | 04:36 | 0 for black, 255 for white.
| | 04:38 | So three luminance levels difference
between two neighboring pixels is not very much.
| | 04:43 | However, when you start to go higher
than that, let's say, I take this value up
| | 04:46 | to 40, so that I'm only sharpening
pixels that are at least 40 luminance levels
| | 04:52 | different from each other
that is neighboring pixels.
| | 04:55 | Then I end up getting this pockmarked
effect that we're seeing right there.
| | 04:58 | Now I'll go ahead and click in the
animal's head, so that we can see that
| | 05:02 | some pixels are all of a sudden
getting sharpened, and neighboring pixels are
| | 05:05 | not getting sharpened.
| | 05:07 | That's because this is an either/or proposition.
| | 05:09 | Either two neighboring pixels are less
than 40 luminance levels different from
| | 05:13 | each other and they don't get sharpened,
or they're 40 or more luminance levels
| | 05:17 | different from each other and they do get
sharpened, and there is no variance in between.
| | 05:21 | So all of a sudden, out of the blue,
you'll have a pixel that will get sharpened.
| | 05:25 | That makes for pockmarks.
| | 05:27 | Never use this option in order to omit
sharpening details in somebody's face,
| | 05:33 | because when you're working with
portrait shots, high Threshold settings
| | 05:36 | actually make the effect that much worse.
| | 05:39 | So watch out for that.
| | 05:41 | Anyway, for most of my work, I
keep this Threshold value set to 0.
| | 05:45 | But as I say, if you want to avoid
noise, then you can raise this value to
| | 05:50 | something between one and three.
| | 05:53 | So go ahead and experiment with that.
| | 05:54 | Now after everything I've told you here,
there is one big question mark I would
| | 05:59 | have, if I were looking at this
detail of this bug's head right here.
| | 06:03 | The question I would have is, okay
Deke, so we're drawing light halos on
| | 06:08 | the light side of an edge, and we're
drawing dark halos on the dark side of the edge.
| | 06:13 | Why in the world do we have blue
halos inside of this bug's head?
| | 06:18 | I'll explain what's going on there,
and the solution to this problem in the
| | 06:22 | next exercise.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Sharpening colors vs. luminosity| 00:00 | All right, at the end of the last
exercise, I was showing you how Unsharp Mask
| | 00:03 | has a habit of producing aberrantly
colored halos inside of an image.
| | 00:08 | This can happen not only with
Unsharp Mask, but any of the sharpening
| | 00:11 | functions inside Photoshop.
| | 00:13 | I want to show you why it happens, and
then I want to show you the solution.
| | 00:17 | So what I've done here is, I've gone
ahead and opened Simpli-fly.jpg found
| | 00:20 | inside the 15_sharpen folder.
| | 00:22 | Then I've created three more
windows into that same image.
| | 00:26 | I did that by the way by going up to the
Window menu, choosing Arrange, and then
| | 00:30 | choosing New Window for Simpli-fly.jpg.
| | 00:34 | The advantage of doing this by the
way is that you have multiple views of
| | 00:39 | the exact same image.
| | 00:41 | So in our case, the reason I'm working this
way is notice I have the Channels panel up.
| | 00:46 | In this very first version of the image,
I'm viewing the entire RGB composite,
| | 00:50 | so the combination of Red,
Green, and Blue working together.
| | 00:54 | Then if I switch to the next image,
that is this second guy right there.
| | 00:58 | Then I'm just viewing the Red channel.
| | 01:00 | Next, I'm just viewing the Green channel.
| | 01:03 | Finally, I'm just viewing the Blue channel.
| | 01:05 | That's indicated by the
appearance of the eyeball right there.
| | 01:07 | So the eyeball shows up in front of
Blue, but not in front of Red or Green.
| | 01:13 | The reason I want to see each one of
these three channels is because Photoshop -
| | 01:17 | and this is a hard thing to get used to,
or hard thing to wrap your mind around.
| | 01:21 | Photoshop is ultimately
a grayscale image editor.
| | 01:24 | Most of Photoshop's functions,
something like 90 to 95% of the program works on
| | 01:30 | a single grayscale channel at a time.
| | 01:33 | Then the results are combined in
order to create the full color composite.
| | 01:38 | All right, I'm going to press Shift+Tab
to hide the right side panel.
| | 01:41 | So we have a little more room to
see our slices of imagery here.
| | 01:44 | Then I'm going to Shift+Spacebar+drag
this image, so that I'm scrolling the
| | 01:47 | image inside all of the windows at once.
| | 01:50 | With the RGB version of the image
active, I'll go up to the Filter menu.
| | 01:54 | Choose Sharpen, and once
again choose Unsharp Mask.
| | 01:58 | I'm going to apply those settings we saw
just a moment ago, 250% for the Amount value.
| | 02:04 | Then I'll take that Radius value up to
something like 20 pixels, so that we can see.
| | 02:09 | Sure enough, we've got this blue
edge on the inside of the insect's head.
| | 02:13 | So what in the world's happening there?
| | 02:14 | Well, you have to consider what's going on
inside each one of the color channels here.
| | 02:20 | Inside the Red channel, the insect
is dark and the background is light.
| | 02:24 | So we have a dark halo inside the bug,
and a light halo outside the bug.
| | 02:28 | In the Green channel right here, same thing.
| | 02:31 | We've got a dark halo on the
inside and a light halo on the outside.
| | 02:34 | However, in the Blue channel notice this,
the bug is actually quite light, and
| | 02:40 | the background is very dark, because that
yellow background doesn't contain any blue.
| | 02:45 | As a result, we have a bright highlight
on the inside of the bug's head, just a
| | 02:49 | little bit of brightening you can see
there, and then something of a dark edge
| | 02:54 | on the outside of the bug's head.
| | 02:56 | That because we have a contribution of
blue going on here and we are losing red
| | 03:01 | and green, because we have
black in the Red and Green channels.
| | 03:04 | We get this aberrant blue
edge inside of the insect's head.
| | 03:08 | Now this is an exaggeration of
something that happens all the time when you're
| | 03:13 | sharpening RGB images inside of Photoshop.
| | 03:16 | You're always getting these aberrant colors.
| | 03:18 | You may not notice them, but they
are appearing to some extent or other.
| | 03:22 | So in our case, it just happens to be
extremely obvious, because we're working
| | 03:26 | on this low color image.
| | 03:27 | All right, so I'm going to go
ahead and apply these settings.
| | 03:29 | So what in the world do we do about it?
| | 03:31 | Clearly, we don't want a weird blue
edge, all of a sudden inside of what is
| | 03:36 | otherwise kind of a purple insect.
| | 03:38 | That doesn't make any sense at all.
| | 03:39 | We want it to be nice and dark.
| | 03:41 | Well, what you do, after applying the Filter?
| | 03:44 | Is you go up to the Edit menu, and
you choose Fade Unsharp Mask, or you can
| | 03:48 | press Ctrl+Shift+F, Command+Shift+F
on the Mac in order to choose that
| | 03:52 | command from the keyboard.
| | 03:54 | What that allows you to do?
| | 03:55 | This command allows you to take that last
pixel-based modification you just applied.
| | 03:59 | In our case Unsharp Mask, and Fade it.
| | 04:02 | That is, blend it with the original
version of the image before you applied
| | 04:08 | that last modification.
| | 04:09 | So you're actually blending those
two versions of the image together.
| | 04:13 | You can if you want to,
just reduce the Opacity value.
| | 04:16 | However, that's just
going to back off the Filter.
| | 04:18 | That's not going to get
rid of our blue highlight.
| | 04:20 | As you can see, it's still
hanging on there even at 48%.
| | 04:24 | So let's leave that Opacity values set to 100
%, instead, you want to change your Blend mode.
| | 04:29 | We'll see more about how blend
modes work in a later chapter.
| | 04:32 | But for now, I'm going to switch it from
Normal to the very last Blend mode Luminosity.
| | 04:37 | What that does is it goes ahead and
keeps the luminance modification that's been
| | 04:42 | applied, and it blends it with the colors.
| | 04:44 | So the opposite of
Luminosity is Color right there.
| | 04:47 | It blends it with the colors from the
original version of that butterfly image.
| | 04:52 | So in other words, we're going to
get rid of the blue and we are going to
| | 04:55 | replace it with whatever color was
already there in the first place.
| | 04:58 | So I'll go ahead and choose Luminosity,
notice that goes ahead and drops out
| | 05:02 | the aberrant colors.
| | 05:03 | We just get the luminance version of
the sharpening effect, which is all we
| | 05:07 | want, because it's luminance that carries
detail information inside of a digital image.
| | 05:13 | So really on a regular basis, the only
thing you want to touch with any of the
| | 05:17 | sharpening filters is Luminosity.
| | 05:20 | So that also means by the way on a
regular basis, every time you get
| | 05:23 | unsharpening an image, your next step
should be to choose Edit Fade, and then
| | 05:28 | set the Blend mode to Luminosity.
| | 05:30 | That should be the next
thing you do in all cases.
| | 05:33 | Now it's not always necessary, because
you don't always notice these weird edges.
| | 05:38 | But if you ever get a hint that those edges
are happening, here is how you get rid of them.
| | 05:42 | Anyway, go ahead and click OK in
order to apply that modification.
| | 05:46 | And that my friends is why sharpening
often delivers aberrantly colored edges.
| | 05:51 | That's how you get rid of those
aberrant colors here inside Photoshop.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Gauging the ideal settings| 00:00 | In this exercise I am going to show
you how to gauge the ideal Sharpening
| | 00:03 | settings whether you intend to
output your image to the web or you intend
| | 00:07 | to print your image.
| | 00:08 | Now these are two very different media
so they will require different settings
| | 00:12 | but I'll show you how it all
works inside this exercise.
| | 00:15 | I am working inside of the image
called Macro butterfly.jpg found inside
| | 00:19 | the 15_sharpen folder.
| | 00:21 | Before we go any farther, I need to
make sure that you have established
| | 00:25 | your screen resolution.
| | 00:26 | You've measured your screen
resolution and made Photoshop aware of it, and
| | 00:30 | that's something I showed you how to
do back in Chapter 4 of Photoshop CS5
| | 00:35 | One-on-One fundamentals.
| | 00:36 | But just to confirm, press Ctrl+K or
Command+K on the Mac to bring up the
| | 00:41 | Preferences dialog box and then
click on Units and Rulers and note the
| | 00:45 | Screen Resolution value.
| | 00:46 | It should be set to something other
than 72 pixels per inch, 72 is the default
| | 00:51 | setting, and it's wrong.
| | 00:53 | Now, 117 happens to
simulate a 17 inch MacBook Pro.
| | 00:58 | So if you've got that kind of machine, great!
| | 01:00 | You can work with 117.
| | 01:01 | Otherwise, you need to measure your
screen resolution and enter it into this
| | 01:06 | Option box and then click on the
OK button before you go any farther.
| | 01:10 | Once again to figure that out, go
to Chapter 4 of my Photoshop CS5
| | 01:15 | One-on-One fundamentals course and
take a look at the movie called Viewing
| | 01:19 | the image at print size.
| | 01:21 | Assuming that you've done that, let's
go ahead and prepare our image for output
| | 01:24 | to the web first and then we'll
see how to prepare it for print.
| | 01:28 | So if you're going to the web you want
to view the image at the 100% view size.
| | 01:32 | So go ahead and press Control+1 or Command
+1 on the Mac to zoom the image to 100%.
| | 01:37 | You can also go to the View menu
and choose the Actual Pixels command.
| | 01:42 | At this zoom ratio, Photoshop devotes 1
screen pixel to every image pixel which
| | 01:47 | is the way it works on the web.
| | 01:49 | So my assumption is you've gone ahead
down-sampled the image, so it's going to
| | 01:52 | fit on the web page.
| | 01:53 | This image is of course way too big.
| | 01:55 | So let's say we're going to eventually crop it.
| | 01:58 | I'll go up to the Filter menu and I'll
choose the Sharpen command and I'll now
| | 02:02 | choose Unsharp Mask or press
Shift+F5 if you've loaded dekeKeys.
| | 02:06 | And I usually start things off
by maximizing my Amount value.
| | 02:10 | Even if I don't intend to apply that
much sharpening, I'll start with an
| | 02:13 | Amount value of 500%.
| | 02:15 | So I can accurately gauge Radius and Threshold.
| | 02:18 | Then if your destination is the screen,
which is the way it is on the web, then
| | 02:23 | you want to reduce your Radius value.
| | 02:25 | I typically take it as low as 0.3
pixels, any lower than that and you really
| | 02:30 | lose any distinguishable sharpening
effect even at a very high amount value.
| | 02:34 | Notice if I take it down to 0.2 pixel,
we really lose the effect onscreen.
| | 02:40 | It's still there a little bit,
but not enough to be noticeable.
| | 02:43 | So I'll keep it as low as 0.3 pixel,
I might raise it as high as 0.7.
| | 02:49 | So that's pretty much the range I
work with when I am going to the web.
| | 02:52 | Anyway, let's keep it really tight here.
| | 02:54 | I'll take it down to 0.3.
| | 02:56 | Now I am bringing out a bunch of noise
in my image and because so much of this
| | 03:00 | image is out of focus, because it's a
macro shot, I'll take the Radius value
| | 03:04 | higher than I might normally take it.
| | 03:06 | I'll take it to 5 levels in this case.
| | 03:08 | I could take it even higher than that,
pretty much altogether eliminate that
| | 03:12 | noise showing up in the background.
| | 03:14 | However, if I do that, I am going to
have fairly stark contrast between the
| | 03:18 | pixels that are getting sharpened and
those that aren't getting sharpened.
| | 03:21 | And I want this to look like a
homogeneous sharpening effect.
| | 03:25 | So in my case, this works out pretty nicely;
| | 03:28 | 500%, Radius of 0.3 pixels,
and a Threshold of 5 levels;
| | 03:33 | I am going to go ahead and Zoom-in to 200% so
I can really see the detail inside my image.
| | 03:40 | Now, I'll turn the Preview check box off.
| | 03:42 | This is the original version of
the image before I sharpened it.
| | 03:45 | If I turn Preview back on, this is
the sharpened version of the image.
| | 03:49 | So it's a fairly subtle effect even at
such a high Amount value, notice that.
| | 03:53 | However, that's what I want.
| | 03:55 | I don't want to over-sharpen the image,
I don't want to go too far with it.
| | 03:58 | I just want to give it some additional
punch, and sizzle onscreen. All right!
| | 04:02 | So that's how you go about sharpening
an image for screen work for the web.
| | 04:06 | That is to say, you go ahead, and view
the image at 100% zoom ratio or higher
| | 04:11 | and then you work with a high
Amount value and a very low Radius value.
| | 04:15 | What do you do if you're
preparing the image for print?
| | 04:17 | Well, the first thing you do is go to
the View menu and you choose the Print
| | 04:21 | Size command or you press Ctrl+Alt+0
or Command+Options+0 on the Mac.
| | 04:25 | Again, I need to emphasize this
command performs accurately if and only if
| | 04:31 | you've assigned a screen resolution
value there in the Preferences dialog box.
| | 04:35 | Otherwise, it's totally misleading.
| | 04:37 | Anyway, I'll go ahead and choose the
command, and I zoom out in my case to 48.8%.
| | 04:40 | It will be something different in your case.
| | 04:44 | Now, I am seeing the
butterfly as it will output.
| | 04:46 | I'm going to leave my Amount value set
to 500% for now, and then I'll select the
| | 04:51 | Radius value and I'll take
it up to let's say 3 pixels.
| | 04:55 | That looks like we've got way too much
sharpening going on at this point, and we do.
| | 04:59 | I'm over-sharpening the image.
| | 05:01 | But what I really want you to keep in
mind is that we need a high Radius value,
| | 05:06 | a higher Radius value than we do when
we're going to screen work, in order to
| | 05:10 | survive the print process.
| | 05:12 | So basically, you need at least 1 pixel of
Radius for every 100 pixels of resolution.
| | 05:17 | So in other words, 3 pixels
would be ideal for a 300 PPI output.
| | 05:22 | Now, this is the rule of thumb when you're
working inside the Unsharp Mask dialog box.
| | 05:26 | If you're working inside Smart
Sharpen, the equation changes slightly.
| | 05:30 | Especially, if you're accounting for
Lens Blur, then you might want to take that
| | 05:34 | Radius value up a little farther.
| | 05:36 | You may not know what I'm talking about now but
you will before you're done with this chapter.
| | 05:40 | Anyway, I'm going to 300 pixels per inch.
| | 05:42 | So radius of 3 is going to work out nicely.
| | 05:44 | I already know that Threshold
should be set to 5 levels for this image.
| | 05:48 | So I'll leave that set as is.
| | 05:50 | Then I would probably want to take this
Amount value down to something much lower.
| | 05:54 | Now at about 100 where this image is
concerned, it pops pretty nicely at the
| | 06:00 | print size that I am seeing here onscreen.
| | 06:02 | Just to show you what I mean, here is
the before version of the image if I turn
| | 06:05 | Preview off, here is the after version
of the image if I turn Preview back on.
| | 06:10 | Again, it's a subtle, but meaningful difference.
| | 06:13 | Now, because I'm preparing an image
for output, things will change in the
| | 06:17 | conversion from the screen image to the
final printed image, and I am going to
| | 06:21 | lose some sharpness in that process.
| | 06:24 | So I typically add another 50
% on just for good measure.
| | 06:28 | So if 100% looks good,
then give it 150% for example.
| | 06:30 | Now, I am going to go ahead just
because I want to exaggerate an effect here.
| | 06:35 | I am going to go ahead and take this
guy up to 500% which is way too far, but
| | 06:40 | we will back it off in just a moment, so that
I can show you, I will go ahead and click OK.
| | 06:43 | I want to show you how that is bringing
out if we go ahead and zoom-in here, a
| | 06:49 | bunch of aberrant colors along
the edges inside of my image.
| | 06:52 | So notice all of these blues and purples
that are going on here, and we have all
| | 06:56 | sorts of weird off-color
pixels going on as well.
| | 06:59 | You can just see dots of color here
and there inside of this animal's fur or
| | 07:04 | whatever you call it.
| | 07:06 | So I'll go up to the Edit menu
and I'll choose Fade Unsharp Mask;
| | 07:10 | Ctrl+Shift+F, Command+Shift+F,
something to note about this command.
| | 07:13 | It's only available for the
very last pixel operation.
| | 07:17 | So immediately after applying Unsharp
Mask, you need to choose this command.
| | 07:21 | I'll go ahead and choose the command,
and I'll change the mode from Normal to
| | 07:25 | Luminosity, so that same trick in
order to make those aberrant colors go away
| | 07:29 | and you just saw them
completely disappear onscreen.
| | 07:33 | Then I want to reduce my Opacity value.
| | 07:35 | Now, I had my amount value set to 500%
just to exaggerate things, just so we
| | 07:40 | could really see those aberrant colors,
because otherwise they are a little easy
| | 07:43 | to mess even though they are still there.
| | 07:46 | So what I really wanted
was an Amount value of 150%.
| | 07:49 | I don't necessarily expect you to work
this way but 150 turns out to be 30% of 500.
| | 07:56 | So if I reduce this Opacity value down
to 30%, I am going to get the same effect
| | 08:00 | as having applied 150% in the first place.
| | 08:03 | I'm just doing this for
demonstrational purposes.
| | 08:05 | What I would tell you to do is where
this butterfly is concerned, set the Amount
| | 08:09 | to 150%, set the Radius to 3 pixels,
set the Threshold to 5 levels, then choose
| | 08:15 | the added Fade command, and set the
mode to Luminosity, and you are done.
| | 08:19 | But in my case I am taking the
Opacity value down as well. All right!
| | 08:23 | So I'll go ahead and click OK, and
this is my sharpened image for output.
| | 08:27 | I'll go ahead and take the image out to
100% view size here, and I'll bring up
| | 08:31 | my History panel and I'll click on
this guy right there, Revert which is the
| | 08:35 | last step I applied
before I applied Unsharp Mask.
| | 08:38 | So this is the version of the bug as it
looked when we started out the exercise
| | 08:43 | here, and this is the
sharpened version of the image.
| | 08:47 | Accurately gauged, using the Print
Size command here under the View menu,
| | 08:52 | assuming of course that you've
accurately set up your Screen Resolution inside
| | 08:56 | the Preferences dialog box.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Unsharp Mask vs. Smart Sharpen| 00:00 | In this exercise I am going to
introduce you to the next Sharpening Filter in
| | 00:03 | our hit parade located under the Filter menu.
| | 00:06 | You come down here to Sharpen and
it's this guy right there, Smart Sharpen.
| | 00:09 | In many respects it's an
upgrade to Unsharp Mask.
| | 00:13 | It does lack one option which is Threshold.
| | 00:15 | In return, it gives you few more.
| | 00:18 | Notice that if you've loaded dekeKeys,
I give you the next keyboard shortcut
| | 00:22 | sequentially which is
Shift+F6 for Smart Sharpen.
| | 00:26 | Anyway, I have created a sample file
here, so that we can compare, and contrast
| | 00:30 | the results of the two filters.
| | 00:32 | It's called USM butterfly.psd and
it's found inside the 15_sharpen folder.
| | 00:37 | It contains this layer right here USM
which stands for Unsharp Mask and this
| | 00:42 | is the butterfly subject to those very
settings that we applied in the previous exercise.
| | 00:47 | On top, I have another layer called Smart Sharp.
| | 00:50 | I'll go ahead and turn it on and
click on that layer to make it active.
| | 00:53 | This is the original version of
the butterfly before we applied any
| | 00:57 | sharpening settings.
| | 00:58 | Now let's go up to the Filter menu,
choose Sharpen, and choose Smart Sharpen;
| | 01:03 | brings up this big old dialog box here,
so it's significantly larger than the
| | 01:08 | Unsharp Mask dialog box.
| | 01:09 | It also has this big whopping preview here.
| | 01:12 | Now, a lot of people love
this preview. I don't know why?
| | 01:15 | All it does is block the
background image that's right there.
| | 01:19 | So we already have this great
preview in the background, what do we need
| | 01:23 | this gargantuan preview inside the
dialog box, particularly sense, it
| | 01:27 | sometimes malfunctions.
| | 01:29 | Notice here on the PC anyway.
| | 01:31 | If you press Ctrl and Spacebar at the
same time, that would be Command+Spacebar
| | 01:35 | on the Mac in order to get the Zoom
tool and you click to zoom-in, you zoom-in
| | 01:39 | to totally the wrong portion of the
image, which is a big pain in the neck.
| | 01:43 | Then you have to go back to the image
itself, and click in order to re-center
| | 01:48 | that preview, like so.
| | 01:49 | So I am not very fond of this
gargantuan preview, very fond however of the
| | 01:55 | settings that are provided
to me inside this dialog box.
| | 01:58 | So the default settings are what you
see here, an Amount value of 100%, Radius
| | 02:02 | 1.0, Remove set to Gaussian Blur;
| | 02:05 | we'll come back to that in the next
exercise, and More Accurate Turned off.
| | 02:08 | We'll see what all that stuff means.
| | 02:10 | But right now I am just going to
apply the same settings we applied before.
| | 02:13 | I am going to raise that Amount value to
500%, you may recall that's what we did
| | 02:17 | at the end of the previous exercise.
| | 02:20 | Then I'll tab to the Radius value, take it up
to 3 pixels, leave Remove set to Gaussian Blur.
| | 02:25 | That's what's going on inside of
Unsharp Mask because Unsharp Mask as I was
| | 02:28 | telling you uses Gaussian Blur in
order to create a sharpening effect, and
| | 02:33 | that's what's happening here as well.
| | 02:35 | Leave More Accurate turned off, don't
fiddle with any of the other options.
| | 02:39 | Now, the one big difference here is
we don't have a Threshold setting.
| | 02:42 | I had previously raised the Threshold
setting to 5 inside the Unsharp Mask
| | 02:46 | dialog box, that's not an
option here inside Smart Sharpen.
| | 02:50 | So I'll just go ahead click OK in
order to accept that modification.
| | 02:54 | Then just as we did with Unsharp Mask,
I'll go up to the Edit menu, choose the
| | 02:59 | Fade command, so I'll choose Fade
Smart Sharpen in this case, Ctrl+Shift+F or
| | 03:03 | Command+Shift+F is the keyboard shortcut,
and I'll change the mode from Normal
| | 03:08 | to Luminosity, so you have that exact
same issue by the way with Smart Sharpen
| | 03:12 | as you do with Unsharp Mask.
| | 03:14 | It's just as likely to bring out
aberrant color halos as Unsharp Mask is.
| | 03:19 | So go ahead and change the mode to
Luminosity and then I'll reduce that
| | 03:22 | Opacity value to 30%.
| | 03:23 | I am just running through
the same motions I did before.
| | 03:27 | I'll click OK in order to accept those changes.
| | 03:30 | Let's go ahead, and zoom in to the
image, so that we're seeing it at 200%.
| | 03:34 | This is the Smart Sharpen version of
the butterfly, and if I turn it off, this
| | 03:39 | is my Unsharp Mask version
of the butterfly underneath.
| | 03:42 | So the biggest difference is and you
really have to keep a close eye after this.
| | 03:46 | The biggest difference is
that we have more Noise;
| | 03:48 | we are sharpening more of the Noise
in the image where Smart Sharpen is
| | 03:52 | concerned because we don't have that
Threshold value that's ruling the Noise out.
| | 03:58 | Now if you're ever feeling like getting
scientific inside of Photoshop, and you
| | 04:01 | really want to compare the effects of a
couple of different approaches, then go
| | 04:06 | ahead and apply them to different
layers like this, and then here's a little
| | 04:10 | trick that you should know.
| | 04:12 | You can change the Blend mode that's
assigned to the top layer, go ahead and
| | 04:16 | change it from Normal to Difference,
and that's going to find the differences
| | 04:20 | between these two layers.
| | 04:22 | So I'll choose the Difference command;
| | 04:23 | anything that appears black is exactly the same.
| | 04:27 | Anything that appears any
other color is different.
| | 04:30 | Well, if you take a look at this image,
and I'll go ahead and zoom-out, so
| | 04:33 | we can see more of it;
| | 04:34 | it appears as if everything inside this
image is absolutely black. Well, not quite.
| | 04:40 | It looks that way but
that's not quite what's going on.
| | 04:43 | So I am going to create a Merge
Composite of these two layers using that top
| | 04:49 | secret keyboard shortcut which is
basically mash or fist E, and you may recall
| | 04:53 | under the layer menu that Ctrl+E goes
ahead and merges two layers together,
| | 04:59 | that's Command+E on the Mac, and then
if you want to merge everything that's
| | 05:02 | visible it's Ctrl+Shift+E or Command+Shift+E.
If you add Alt or Option, then you
| | 05:07 | go ahead and merge all the visible
layers onto a new layer, and that's what we
| | 05:11 | are going to do here.
| | 05:12 | So I'll go ahead, and press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+E,
Command+Shift+Option+E on the Mac,
| | 05:18 | and that goes ahead and merges those
two layers onto a new layer, and I'll go
| | 05:21 | ahead and name this layer Difference.
| | 05:24 | Now, let's use the Levels command in
order to find what those differences are.
| | 05:29 | So go up to the Image menu, a static
application of levels will do us just fine.
| | 05:33 | So go to the Image menu, choose
Adjustments, and choose Levels or press Ctrl+L,
| | 05:37 | Command+L on the Mac.
| | 05:39 | Notice that tiny histogram over
here on the far left side of the graph,
| | 05:44 | that shows us that we do have some
luminance distinctions inside of that
| | 05:49 | dramatic shadow detail.
| | 05:51 | So I'll drag this White slider triangle
almost all the way over to the left hand side.
| | 05:57 | You can see now these are the differences,
anything that doesn't appear entirely
| | 06:01 | black is the difference
between these two layers;
| | 06:04 | a difference between that is
Smart Sharpen and Unsharp Mask.
| | 06:07 | Notice that I've changed
that Y point value to 2.
| | 06:11 | So anything that has the luminance
level of 2 which is very, very dark or
| | 06:16 | brighter, has now become white.
| | 06:18 | So we are really exaggerating the distinctions.
| | 06:20 | I'll will go ahead and click OK in order
accept that modification, and then zoom in.
| | 06:24 | And everything that's not black at
this point, everything that has any kind
| | 06:29 | of color going on are just low
levels of differences between these two
| | 06:33 | layers, between Smart Sharpen and Unsharp
Mask and it's all happening inside of that Noise.
| | 06:39 | So Unsharp Mask gives you a
mechanism for avoiding the Noise, using that
| | 06:43 | Threshold value, and Smart Sharpen doesn't.
| | 06:46 | So Smart Sharpen is really designed for
low noise images as we'll see. All right!
| | 06:52 | So that gives you a basic
sense of how the Filter works.
| | 06:54 | In the next exercise, I'll introduce
you to the Remove option inside of the
| | 06:59 | Smart Sharpen dialog box.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Remove settings| 00:00 | In this exercise, I'm going to
demonstrate the difference between a couple
| | 00:03 | of Remove settings that are available to
you inside of the Smart Sharpen dialog box.
| | 00:08 | Those are Gaussian Blur versus Lens
Blur, which is why I've created this
| | 00:12 | new demo file that's called Lens vs
Gaussian.psd, found inside the 15_sharpen folder.
| | 00:18 | It contains three layers.
| | 00:20 | We're starting off again with the
Unsharp Mask layer, the USM layer here,
| | 00:24 | which represents those very unsharp mask
settings that we applied a couple of exercises ago.
| | 00:28 | On top of this is the virgin Smart Sharp layer.
| | 00:32 | So, in other words, I have not
applied any sharpening to this layer so far.
| | 00:36 | Then at the very top, we have GBlur
diff, because this is that comparison
| | 00:41 | between the unsharp mask settings, and
Smart Sharpen set to a Remove value of
| | 00:47 | Gaussian Blur, even though we
didn't pay much attention to that.
| | 00:50 | That's what was going on.
| | 00:52 | Now, when you're first seeing these
kinds of difference layers, they may be
| | 00:55 | very hard to interpret.
| | 00:56 | There is just a ton of noise going on.
| | 00:59 | It looks like gibberish, it's
fairly analogous at first to reading an
| | 01:02 | ultrasound, and trying to figure out
what it is you're really seeing, because
| | 01:05 | you have to figure out
what's real and what's static.
| | 01:08 | But as we'll see by the end of this
exercise, the difference that we're about to
| | 01:12 | achieve is very different
than this difference here.
| | 01:14 | Anyway, I'm going to turn
this GBlur diff layer off.
| | 01:18 | Make sure Smart Sharp is turned on and active.
| | 01:21 | Then I'll go up to the Filter menu.
| | 01:23 | Notice the very first command is Smart Sharpen,
because that was the last filter I applied.
| | 01:28 | If I go ahead and choose this command
or press Ctrl+F, Command+F on the Mac,
| | 01:31 | then I just repeat my last settings,
which is not what I want to do.
| | 01:35 | So, I'll press Ctrl+Z, Command+Z on the Mac.
| | 01:38 | What I need to do, if I want to redisplay
the dialog box is add the Alt or Option key.
| | 01:42 | So, Ctrl+Alt+F or Command+Option+F on
the Mac displays the last settings for the
| | 01:48 | last used filter which, in this
case, are these settings right here.
| | 01:52 | All right, I'm going to go ahead and
drag the bug's head down just a little bit.
| | 01:56 | I'm going to zoom in on it.
| | 01:57 | This time I won't use the Zoom tool,
because that gets us in trouble, as you may
| | 02:01 | recall from the previous exercise.
| | 02:03 | Instead, I'll just click on the Plus
button, which works better inside this dialog box.
| | 02:07 | I'll drag the bug's head down a little
bit, so we're viewing it at 200% inside
| | 02:11 | the dialog box, 100% outside the dialog box.
| | 02:14 | I'll go ahead and scoot this
guy over a little bit as well.
| | 02:17 | All right, so notice, we've got Remove, this
Remove value which, by default, is Gaussian Blur.
| | 02:22 | You may recall that the Unsharp Mask
filter actually uses Gaussian Blur, another
| | 02:27 | filter that's available to us inside
Photoshop, in order to achieve a sharpening
| | 02:31 | effect, and so does the
Smart Sharpen filter, by default.
| | 02:34 | But you can change that out.
| | 02:36 | You can switch it to Lens Blur or
Motion Blur, two other blur filters
| | 02:39 | available to Photoshop.
| | 02:41 | Rather than removing the effects of
those filters, which is insanity, because
| | 02:45 | you're not going to apply Gaussian
Blur and then try to cover up your tracks
| | 02:49 | after you do it, using
one of these settings here.
| | 02:52 | Instead, you're actually using
Gaussian Blur or Lens Blur or Motion Blur to
| | 02:56 | achieve the sharpening effect. But so what?
| | 02:59 | What does that even mean in
terms of using these options?
| | 03:02 | Well, here is how it goes.
| | 03:04 | Gaussian Blur is great for
accounting for the effects of downsampling.
| | 03:10 | So, if you use the Image Size command
in order to decrease the size of an image
| | 03:14 | for the web, for example.
| | 03:16 | You're using Bicubic Interpolation,
which is the default setting, why then you
| | 03:20 | might want to follow up with little bit
of Gaussian Blur style smart sharpening
| | 03:24 | here, a very low amount setting, 100%
or less, and a very tiny radius setting,
| | 03:29 | something like 0.3, 0.4, 0.5,
something along those lines.
| | 03:34 | Also, Gaussian Blur is great
for sharpening scanned images.
| | 03:39 | So, if you start with a nicely focused
image and you scan it, and it suffers
| | 03:43 | from just a little bit of softness,
whether because of the thickness of the
| | 03:47 | glass or some other blur variable
that's going on, why then Gaussian Blur can
| | 03:52 | help to get rid of that.
| | 03:53 | If you're trying to sharpen a digital
photograph, I urge you to move on to Lens
| | 03:57 | Blur, which gives you much
better edges as we're about to see.
| | 04:01 | Now, it's a subtle difference,
but it's a meaningful difference.
| | 04:05 | Then Motion Blur is designed to
correct for the effects of camera shake, and
| | 04:09 | I'll show you what that means later.
| | 04:11 | For now, I want you to go ahead and
choose Lens Blur, because this is a digital
| | 04:14 | photograph after all.
| | 04:15 | Now, did you notice that difference?
| | 04:17 | By the way, I want you to
watch this preview right here.
| | 04:19 | Watch the halo inside of this
proboscis or whatever it is.
| | 04:24 | I'm going to switch between Gaussian Blur.
| | 04:26 | Notice how thick that light halo is.
| | 04:29 | Then I'll switch over to Lens Blur.
| | 04:30 | It gets a little thinner;
| | 04:32 | actually, it gets quite a bit thinner, even
though the Radius value did not change at all.
| | 04:36 | Well, what you need to do, if you want
to keep your Radius value about the same,
| | 04:40 | is you need to increase it by half again.
| | 04:43 | So, I'm going to take this value up to 4.5.
| | 04:45 | So, it was 3 before, half of 3 is 1.5.
| | 04:48 | I add 1.5 to 3, I get 4.5.
| | 04:51 | So, I'm going with 4.5 pixels, I'm
going to leave More Accurate turned off.
| | 04:55 | We'll discuss that shortly.
| | 04:56 | So, 500%, 4.5, Lens Blur,
let's see what that looks like.
| | 04:59 | Go ahead and click OK in
order to apply that setting.
| | 05:03 | Now let's run through
those same steps we did before.
| | 05:06 | Go up to the Edit menu, because we still
have all sorts of strangely colored halos.
| | 05:10 | Choose Fade Smart Sharpen;
| | 05:11 | Ctrl+Shift+F, Command+Shift+F on the Mac.
| | 05:14 | Notice how close that keyboard
shortcut is to the filter shortcuts.
| | 05:19 | So, it's Ctrl+Alt+F or
Command+Option+F to redisplay the dialog box.
| | 05:23 | It's Ctrl+Shift+F or Command+Shift+F in
order to fade the effects of that filter.
| | 05:29 | Even though the Fade command is
applicable to all sorts of things, brush
| | 05:32 | strokes, any pixel level edit, it does
have a keyboard shortcut that's very much
| | 05:37 | analogous to filtering.
| | 05:39 | All right, anyway, I'm going to
go ahead and choose that command.
| | 05:41 | Notice all the weird colors that are
going on inside this butterfly head.
| | 05:46 | I'm going to go ahead and zoom in on it,
and move it over a little bit, so that
| | 05:49 | you can see all of those
weird blues and purples.
| | 05:51 | They drop out as soon as I
choose Luminosity. They all go away.
| | 05:55 | Notice how everything settles down there.
| | 05:57 | Then I'm going to reduce
my Opacity level to 30%.
| | 06:00 | Once again, I'm just running
through those same steps as before.
| | 06:03 | I could've applied a lower
amount value in the first place.
| | 06:06 | I really want you to see the
sharpening at work onscreen here.
| | 06:10 | I'll go ahead and click OK, and
now let's find the difference.
| | 06:13 | So, with Smart Sharp selected, I'll
switch the Blend mode from Normal to
| | 06:17 | Difference, like so.
| | 06:19 | That produces what appears
to be a black background.
| | 06:22 | I'll go ahead and press the Escape key
here on the PC to make sure the Blend
| | 06:25 | mode option is no longer active.
| | 06:27 | Then I'll press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+E or
Command+Shift+Option+E on the Mac, in order
| | 06:33 | to create a merged version of
those two layers blended together.
| | 06:37 | I'll call this guy LBlur vs GBlur , like so.
| | 06:43 | Then I will press Ctrl+L or Command+L
on the Mac, in order to bring up
| | 06:47 | the Levels dialog box.
| | 06:48 | You know what I ought to do.
| | 06:49 | I'm going to cancel out of there.
| | 06:51 | I should show you how to bring up the
last used Levels setting from the keyboard;
| | 06:55 | you can press Ctrl+Alt+L or
Command+Option+L on the Mac.
| | 07:00 | Just by virtue of the fact we added
Alt or Option, so the same thing we did
| | 07:04 | with the filter, right?
| | 07:05 | We bring up the last applied settings here.
| | 07:07 | So, notice that I've changed the
white point value to 2. Click OK.
| | 07:13 | You may look at this and think golly!
| | 07:15 | I have no idea of what I'm looking at.
| | 07:17 | It looks like a bunch of
that same static we saw before.
| | 07:20 | Let's compare these two
difference layers together.
| | 07:23 | This is the one we saw last on.
| | 07:26 | This is the difference
between the two GBlur settings.
| | 07:28 | So, notice that we're seeing a
lot of noise going on and a lot of
| | 07:33 | difference between the noise.
| | 07:34 | So, in other words, the Unsharp Mask
version of the butterfly had less noise
| | 07:38 | than the Smart Sharpen version.
| | 07:40 | That's why we're seeing all these
noise differences, but if I turn that layer
| | 07:43 | off, I want you to see something.
| | 07:45 | Around the edges, notice
these edges look fairly routine.
| | 07:49 | The edges are kind of black, maybe
a little bit white here and there.
| | 07:53 | However, as soon as I turn off the
GBlur diff, I see these big, thick
| | 07:58 | outlines around the edges.
| | 08:01 | So, there's all sorts of
molten detail around those edges.
| | 08:04 | That's because the edges
are fundamentally different.
| | 08:06 | So, it's not just the noise, which we
are seeing all over the place here, but
| | 08:11 | it's also a difference between the edges, and
the edges you get from Lens Blur are better.
| | 08:17 | They are sounder edges.
| | 08:18 | All right, so I'm going to go ahead
and turn off this Difference layer.
| | 08:21 | Let's go ahead and switch back to Smart Sharpen.
| | 08:23 | Let's change its Blend mode back to Normal,
because Difference has served its purpose here.
| | 08:29 | Let's go ahead and zoom in, so that
we can see the difference between these
| | 08:32 | two sharpened images.
| | 08:34 | This is the Smart Sharpen version of
the image, set to Lens Blur, and this is
| | 08:38 | the Unsharp Mask version of the
image, which employs Gaussian Blur.
| | 08:42 | Now, you may look at those two things
and say, I didn't see any difference.
| | 08:46 | All right, here's what I want you to look at.
| | 08:47 | Watch this area inside of the curling proboscis.
| | 08:52 | This highlight right here, notice how
thin and fragile the highlight is in the
| | 08:56 | Unsharp Mask example.
| | 08:57 | As soon as I turn on Smart Sharpen, it
grows a little brighter, a little more
| | 09:02 | information held inside of that area.
| | 09:05 | So, that's the kind of effect
you're going to get using Lens Blur.
| | 09:08 | You're going to get sharper details;
| | 09:10 | you're going to get better
details out of your image.
| | 09:12 | Bear in mind, this is a
fairly low-resolution image.
| | 09:15 | Anything you see work inside of a
low-res image, is going to work even better
| | 09:19 | inside of your high-resolution
original digital photographs.
| | 09:23 | In the next exercise, I will
demonstrate how to work with the More
| | 09:28 | Accurate check box.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| The More Accurate checkbox| 00:00 | In this exercise, I'm going to
demonstrate what's going out with that More
| | 00:02 | Accurate check box inside
the Smart Sharpen dialog box.
| | 00:06 | I'm back inside the Macro butterfly.jpg
image, found inside the 15_sharpen folder.
| | 00:12 | I'm going to press Ctrl+Alt+F or
Command+Option+F on the Mac to bring up the
| | 00:16 | Smart Sharpen dialog box, complete
with the last used settings here.
| | 00:20 | I'll go ahead and center the
butterfly's head inside the preview.
| | 00:24 | So, I've got an Amount value of 500%, obviously.
| | 00:26 | That is oversharpening the image.
| | 00:29 | A Radius value of 4.5,
with Remove set to Lens Blur.
| | 00:33 | Actually, great settings,
except for Amount, which is too high;
| | 00:36 | otherwise, great settings if I
were planning on printing this image.
| | 00:39 | All right, so what I want you to
notice here is that we have a single rung of
| | 00:44 | highlights on the inside of this curlicue.
| | 00:48 | We have a single rung of shadows
on the other side of that edge;
| | 00:53 | whereas if I turn on More Accurate,
we're going to essentially have a double
| | 00:58 | row of halos, and we're tracing around every
single little bit of noise inside the image.
| | 01:04 | What I don't want you to think is that
this hint that appears when you actually
| | 01:08 | hover over More Accurate that says
Toggle to produce a more accurate sharpening
| | 01:12 | effect, is in any way shape or form accurate.
| | 01:15 | That's not right, because if it were,
you would always turn on this check box.
| | 01:20 | There wouldn't be any reason to turn it off,
why would you want a less accurate effect.
| | 01:24 | One would hope that Adobe would turn
it on, by default for you, and it's
| | 01:28 | actually off by default.
| | 01:29 | This is not a more accurate effect;
| | 01:31 | this is a much busier effect.
| | 01:33 | It's going to work for
some images, and not others.
| | 01:36 | Now, for most images, More
Accurate should be turned off.
| | 01:40 | The reason is that it exaggerates noise.
| | 01:43 | So it's pretty much the opposite of
the Threshold setting inside of the
| | 01:46 | Unsharp Mask dialog box.
| | 01:48 | Instead of avoiding the noise, it
exaggerates the noise when it's turned on.
| | 01:52 | Then also, it brings out all
sorts of defects in people's skin.
| | 01:56 | So, if you're sharpening a portrait,
definitely, leave this check box
| | 02:01 | turned off, because otherwise, you're
going to bring out every single pore
| | 02:06 | in a person's face.
| | 02:07 | Now, in the case of our butterfly, we've
got too much noise to handle this check
| | 02:12 | box, and we also get this unfortunate
double halo effect, where we get a light
| | 02:17 | halo followed by a dark halo on the
highlight sides of each one of these edges.
| | 02:23 | It doesn't look good at 100%, it
doesn't look good in the background at 50%.
| | 02:28 | Having More Accurate turned off, definitely
delivers a better effect all the way around.
| | 02:33 | All right, so I'm just going to go
ahead and cancel out of this dialog
| | 02:36 | box, where the butterfly is
concerned, because we've already seen Smart
| | 02:40 | Sharpen applied to it.
| | 02:41 | Let's go ahead and switch
over to this image here.
| | 02:43 | It's called Gray head iguana.jpg,
also found inside the 15_sharpen folder.
| | 02:48 | This image comes to us from my
fellow lynda.com trainer, Chris Orwig.
| | 02:53 | He's done a brilliant job on
this photograph, of course;
| | 02:56 | the guy is a professional after all.
| | 02:59 | This is a lower noise image, even
though, by the way, it was shot with a
| | 03:02 | higher ISO setting.
| | 03:03 | So, this image has an ISO of 400.
| | 03:05 | This one here, my macro butterfly image
has an ISO of 250 for what it's worth.
| | 03:11 | Anyway, one of the things that this
image has going for it, is all sorts of
| | 03:15 | highly articulated details.
| | 03:17 | So, low noise, lots of details
that we really want to bring out.
| | 03:21 | We're not worried about
this iguana's skin defects.
| | 03:24 | In fact, we want to exaggerate those
defects, because they're not defects;
| | 03:29 | there are these wonderfully awesome
scales that we want to call attention to.
| | 03:33 | So, I'm going to press Ctrl+Alt+F or
Command+Option+F on the Mac, and I've got
| | 03:38 | my same settings intact here:
| | 03:40 | an Amount value of 500%, way over the
top, Radius of 4.5 pixels, Remove set to
| | 03:45 | Lens Blur, ideal for digital photographs
assuming that you're going to print the photo.
| | 03:50 | If we are, by the way, preparing this
image for display on the web, you'd want
| | 03:54 | to drop this Radius value
down to about one pixel or lower.
| | 03:59 | Let's go ahead and center that I here
inside of the preview, and then I'm going
| | 04:03 | to turn on the More Accurate check box.
| | 04:06 | Notice that Photoshop now digs into
every single crevice of this lizard skin and
| | 04:11 | it brings out not only these edges
around the scales, but also, all kinds of
| | 04:16 | detail inside the scale.
| | 04:17 | Now that's not, in any way, shape or
form, none of this kind of sharpening is
| | 04:22 | going to survive the print process.
| | 04:23 | You wouldn't even notice it, the
sharpening that's at work on the inside of
| | 04:27 | these scales, but might show up nicely onscreen.
| | 04:30 | So, one of the things you might think
about after you turn on More Accurate,
| | 04:33 | if it appeals to you, you might want to think
about raising that Radius value just a little bit.
| | 04:38 | So in our case that might take it up,
even though I'm preparing an image for
| | 04:41 | screen work, let's say, I
might take it up to 1.2 pixels.
| | 04:45 | Now, More Accurate is great when
you're sharpening still images.
| | 04:50 | By the way, it's really great for that
if you're trying to bring out fabric or
| | 04:54 | woodgrain or tiny little details.
| | 04:56 | If you're sharpening for the
screen, it can work out sometimes.
| | 04:59 | If you're sharpening the equivalent
of the still image, like a very still
| | 05:04 | lizard, for example, anything but a
portrait shot, that's the one thing that I
| | 05:09 | would tell you, just avoid portrait
shots like crazy, and also avoid high noise
| | 05:14 | shots, like the one we saw before.
| | 05:16 | So anyway, end up coming up with this
result here, and of course, an Amount
| | 05:20 | value of 500% is over the top.
| | 05:22 | Let's go ahead and try out
200% and see how that looks.
| | 05:25 | I'll click-and-hold the preview to
see the original version of lizard.
| | 05:29 | Then I'll release to see the Sharpen version.
| | 05:31 | I think we've got a nicely
sharpened image going on here.
| | 05:34 | So, I'll click OK in order to accept
that modification, and then I will zoom in
| | 05:39 | to 100%, because we're preparing
them for display onscreen after all.
| | 05:44 | So, that's how the More
Accurate check box works.
| | 05:46 | It's not about accuracy;
| | 05:48 | it's about noise, low noise,
go ahead and turn it on;
| | 05:51 | high noise, turn it off.
| | 05:53 | It's about portrait shots.
| | 05:55 | In any case, any portrait shot that
you run into, leave that check box off,
| | 05:59 | and then finally, if you're working on a
still life, you might think about turning it on.
| | 06:03 | In the next exercise, I'll introduce
you to Smart Sharpen's Advanced Settings.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Saving your Smart Filter settings| 00:00 | In this exercise, I'm going to show
you how to save out your Smart Sharpen
| | 00:03 | settings, and then in the next exercise,
I'll show you how to apply Advanced settings.
| | 00:07 | It's very important we work in this
order, so that we don't mess up the default
| | 00:11 | settings that are
associated with that dialog box.
| | 00:14 | I'm including a new sample file for you.
| | 00:16 | It's called Rodents in love.jpg.
| | 00:19 | It's found inside the 15_sharpen folder.
| | 00:21 | This is an image that I shot on the coast
of California, close to San Simeon actually.
| | 00:26 | I'm going to take this flat image and
I'm going to create a copy of it, by
| | 00:29 | pressing Ctrl+Alt+J or Command+Option+J
on a Mac, which jumps the image to a new
| | 00:34 | layer, also forces the
display of the New layer dialog box.
| | 00:38 | I'll name this layer Advanced
settings, and we'll come back to it later.
| | 00:41 | So, I'll click OK and then turn the layer off.
| | 00:45 | Next, I'll click in the Background
layer to make it active, and assuming that
| | 00:49 | Smart Sharpen was the last filter we
applied, you can press Ctrl+Alt+F or
| | 00:53 | Command+Option+F in order to
bring up the Smart Sharpen dialog box.
| | 00:56 | Now, something that I think
you'll find very interesting here;
| | 00:59 | notice that our kissing squirrels are
a bit too big to fit inside of the in
| | 01:03 | dialog box preview at 100%.
| | 01:06 | However, if I zoom out by clicking on
the Minus button here to 67%, we get
| | 01:11 | overly jagged transitions.
| | 01:13 | I want you to compare that to the
appearance of the squirrels in the background.
| | 01:17 | So, if I go ahead and zoom in on my
squirrels, so that they're of the same size,
| | 01:21 | and I'll drag them over as well.
| | 01:23 | Notice that the squirrels in the
background image window are smoother than they
| | 01:26 | are inside the dialog box.
| | 01:28 | That's because Photoshop goes ahead and
employs OpenGL inside the image window
| | 01:33 | in order to create a more accurate effect.
| | 01:35 | It doesn't do any such
thing inside the dialog box.
| | 01:39 | So, here inside Smart Sharpen,
we're seeing the bad, old Photoshop CS3
| | 01:44 | and earlier preview;
| | 01:45 | out here in the image window, we see
the good Photoshop CS4 and later preview,
| | 01:50 | which makes this in dialog box preview
accurate only at even increments, i.e.,
| | 01:55 | 50%, it looks pretty good;
| | 01:57 | 33%, it doesn't look good at all;
| | 01:59 | 25%, it looks okay and so on.
| | 02:02 | The best view, however, is 100%.
| | 02:04 | So, I'm going to go ahead and zoom it
back into 100%, even though the squirrel
| | 02:08 | is too big to fit inside the dialog box.
| | 02:11 | All right, the next thing that I'm
going to do is I'm going to reinstate my
| | 02:14 | original default settings,
because Default is active here.
| | 02:18 | I'm going to do that by changing the
Amount value to 100%, and then I'm going to
| | 02:22 | tab to the Radius value, change it to 1.
| | 02:25 | I'm going to set Remove to Gaussian Blur,
and I'm going to turn More Accurate off.
| | 02:29 | So, those are the values that we're at
work when we first open this dialog box.
| | 02:33 | Now, I'll click OK in order to apply them.
| | 02:35 | All right, those aren't the values I want.
| | 02:37 | I just wanted to
reinstate those default settings.
| | 02:40 | So, I'm now going to press Ctrl+Z
or Command+Z on the Mac to undo that
| | 02:44 | modification and I'll press Ctrl+Alt+F
again or Command+Option+F to redisplay
| | 02:50 | the Smart Sharpen dialog box.
| | 02:51 | Now, we have default settings of 100,
0, Gaussian Blur, More Accurate off.
| | 02:55 | Now, it may seem like I'm not getting
anywhere so far, but just bear with me for a moment.
| | 03:00 | Actually, I would recommend you do what
I'm doing, even if you don't have access
| | 03:03 | to these sample files, just to make
sure that you keep track of those original
| | 03:09 | default settings, and don't
completely make a mess of them.
| | 03:12 | The next thing I'm going to do is I'm
going to raise the Amount value to 250%.
| | 03:16 | This is a little bit of oversharpening,
again, in order to make a point here for
| | 03:20 | demonstrational purposes where
these squirrels are concerned.
| | 03:23 | I'm going to tab down to the
Radius value, raise it to 4 pixels.
| | 03:27 | I'm going to switch Remove to Lens Blur
here, so that we end up getting a more
| | 03:31 | accurate sharpening effect.
| | 03:32 | So, I should say, by the way, Remove
is set to Lens Blur, that's what's more
| | 03:36 | accurate about the settings inside of
this dialog box as opposed to the More
| | 03:40 | Accurate check box that is.
| | 03:42 | Now, what I want you to do is,
save out a new group of settings.
| | 03:45 | By clicking on this little Floppy Disk
icon, which, of course, is the way we all
| | 03:49 | save things these days.
| | 03:50 | So, that makes sense.
| | 03:51 | But anyway, go ahead and click on the
little Floppy Disk, and let's go ahead
| | 03:54 | and name these print defaults, because it's a
good sort of starting point for print settings.
| | 04:00 | Then I'll go ahead and click OK
in order to accept those settings.
| | 04:03 | Now, the problem is that setting
doesn't automatically switch to my new
| | 04:08 | settings, the ones that I just saved off.
| | 04:10 | Even though, those new settings do
contain these options, if I click OK, I
| | 04:14 | will overwrite Default.
| | 04:16 | So, that work I did just a
moment ago will be for not.
| | 04:19 | What I need to do is now switch settings,
this is very important that you work
| | 04:22 | in this order, switch
settings to Print defaults.
| | 04:24 | I know it doesn't make a lick of
sense, but this is how it works.
| | 04:27 | Now, when you apply these settings,
you will go ahead and save 250%, and 4
| | 04:33 | pixels and Lens Blur with Print
defaults, and your original default
| | 04:37 | settings will remain intact.
| | 04:39 | Now, I'll click OK in order to apply
those settings, and just to show you that
| | 04:43 | everything worked here, I'm going to
press Ctrl+Alt+F. Don't worry about the
| | 04:47 | fact that the squirrels look terrible now.
| | 04:49 | All I want you to note is that when I
switch between Print defaults, which
| | 04:53 | includes our last applied settings, and
Default, which are Photoshop's defaults,
| | 04:58 | I go ahead and restore my original
settings of 100%, 1.0, and Gaussian Blur.
| | 05:04 | So, I can now switch between those.
| | 05:06 | The only thing that you have to bear in
mind as you work now from this point on
| | 05:10 | is that every time you make a major
change to your settings, you should go ahead
| | 05:15 | and save out new settings, the new
Settings option here, and you should select
| | 05:19 | it before clicking OK.
| | 05:21 | I'll show you how that works as well
in the next exercise, I'm canceling
| | 05:25 | out there, when we take a look at
how to apply Advanced settings from the
| | 05:28 | Smart Sharpen dialog box.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| The Advanced sharpening settings| 00:00 | In this exercise, I'm going to show
you how and why you might apply the
| | 00:03 | Advanced settings from the Smart
Sharpen dialog box, but first, I made a big
| | 00:07 | mistake in the last exercise.
| | 00:10 | Do you know what it is?
| | 00:11 | So, here I was working inside
the Rodents in love.jpg file.
| | 00:14 | I've made some changes to it.
| | 00:16 | So, I went ahead and jumped the image
to a new layer, turned that layer off,
| | 00:19 | applied some settings, using the Smart
Sharpen filter, but see, I didn't follow
| | 00:24 | it up with the Fade command.
| | 00:26 | And if you zoom in on these squirrels,
you'll see that we have all kinds of
| | 00:30 | weird colors now, going on inside the fur.
| | 00:32 | Notice these little purples
and these greens and so on.
| | 00:36 | So, if you've been working along with me,
and Smart Sharpen was the last thing
| | 00:39 | you did, you should be able to go up
to the Edit menu and choose Fade Smart
| | 00:43 | Sharpen, just as I'm doing right now.
| | 00:45 | We'll press Ctrl+Shift+F, Command+Shift+F
on the Mac, and watch these little
| | 00:49 | weird colors inside the fur.
| | 00:51 | As soon as I change the mode from
Normal to Luminosity, they go away and we
| | 00:56 | focus our sharpening efforts just on
the luminance information inside of that
| | 01:00 | image, and we leave the color alone.
| | 01:02 | All right, now click OK in
order to accept that affect.
| | 01:05 | I'll go and zoom back out, so that we
see more of the squirrels at a time.
| | 01:09 | And now I'll turn on my Advanced
settings layer that I created in the previous
| | 01:12 | exercise, I'll click on it in order
to make it active, this is the original
| | 01:17 | version of those
squirrels before I sharpen them.
| | 01:19 | All right, let's press Ctrl+Alt+F or
Command+Option+F on the Mac to bring back
| | 01:24 | up the Smart Sharpen dialog box, and
I want you to click on the Advanced
| | 01:28 | option right there.
| | 01:30 | Now, here is the idea.
| | 01:31 | This is something I want you to note
about sharpening inside of Photoshop in
| | 01:35 | general because you're tracing these
bright halos on the bright side of an
| | 01:39 | edge, and the dark halos on the dark
side of the edge, you're exaggerating the
| | 01:43 | contrast in the image, and you're running the
risk of clipping your highlights and shadows.
| | 01:48 | Now, you're not clipping the
highlights and shadows in big, huge areas, the
| | 01:52 | way you might say using the Levels command
or the Curves command, if you're not careful.
| | 01:57 | However, you're clipping little,
tiny strips of highlights and shadows,
| | 02:02 | allover the place, especially when you're
applying high Amount values and high Radius values.
| | 02:08 | So, the idea behind these advanced
settings, notice when I turned on the
| | 02:12 | Advanced radio button, I got two more panels
of settings here, named Shadow and Highlight.
| | 02:17 | So, before we didn't those tabs,
notice with Basic as selected, we don't
| | 02:21 | have any tabs there.
| | 02:22 | As soon as I turn on Advance, we get
the tabs and what they allow you to do is
| | 02:26 | mitigate the clipping in the
shadow detail and the highlight detail.
| | 02:30 | All right, so I'm going to switch to
shadows first, and generally speaking,
| | 02:33 | because I don't have a lot
of patience for these options.
| | 02:36 | I just recommend you set them to the
exact same darn thing and I'll show you
| | 02:40 | what those settings are.
| | 02:41 | First of all notice that
the Fade Amount is set to 0%.
| | 02:44 | So, at 0%, you're leaving
all of the clipping intact.
| | 02:47 | You're not making any changes to the clipping,
you're not reining in it, in other words.
| | 02:52 | So, I suggest, if you're going to go to
the trouble of reining in that clipping
| | 02:56 | to any degree whatsoever, you can
finesse this value if you like, you can sit
| | 02:59 | there and play with it, and try to
keep track of what's happening here inside
| | 03:03 | the preview, but what I
tend to do is just max it out.
| | 03:06 | Just say, you know what, I want
to rein in my clipping to 100%.
| | 03:11 | That's still actually not the most
significant modification in the world.
| | 03:14 | So, you're just easing it back to the
point that all of your halos fall inside
| | 03:18 | that visible spectrum.
| | 03:19 | Tonal Width controls what's
shadows and what's highlights.
| | 03:23 | So, at this point, you're saying 50%
of the luminance range falls inside the
| | 03:26 | shadows and this is tapering off, by the way.
| | 03:29 | So, Black is an absolute shadow.
| | 03:31 | We taper away to 50% gray.
| | 03:33 | So, it's not that kind of harsh
transition we were looking at with the Threshold
| | 03:36 | options, for example.
| | 03:37 | It's not an on or off proposition.
| | 03:40 | I recommend you leave this
guy set as is, 50% is just fine.
| | 03:44 | Now, Radius, I'll be darned, if you can
tell the difference in most images where
| | 03:49 | radius is concerned.
| | 03:50 | I'll go ahead and zoom in on this eye.
| | 03:53 | That's me, by the way, hunkered down
looking at the squirrels, inside of this
| | 03:57 | particular squirrel's eye, but notice,
if I take the Fade amount down to 0%,
| | 04:01 | notice how the edges of that
eye brighten up right there.
| | 04:05 | If I take it all the way up to 100%,
we're limiting those highlights of all things.
| | 04:11 | Even though, we're mitigating the
shadows, we're limiting the highlights
| | 04:14 | inside of that eye.
| | 04:16 | Well, if you want to rule out some of
those details, you can bring the Radius
| | 04:20 | value up, so that you're not scrubbing inside
of that eye, for example, to the same extent.
| | 04:26 | So, when you bring Radius down to one
pixel, which is the default setting,
| | 04:30 | you're fitting your changes into
small crevices inside the image.
| | 04:34 | If you don't want that to happen, you
can raise that value to 100 pixels, for
| | 04:37 | example and notice that recovers a
little bit of the highlight edge inside of
| | 04:42 | the eye, but I have to go all the way
from one pixel to 100 pixels to see any
| | 04:48 | kind of difference going on whatsoever.
| | 04:51 | My suggestion to you is when in doubt,
unless you really want to sit there, and
| | 04:55 | figure out exactly what's going on
inside each and every image that you edit, I
| | 04:59 | recommend that you just leave Radius set to 1.
| | 05:01 | In that way, you're digging into all
sorts of crevices and you're making sure
| | 05:05 | that you're mitigating the shadows
and highlights all over the place.
| | 05:09 | Now, I suggest you replicate these exact
same settings for the highlight options
| | 05:14 | and that means just making one change, i.
e. you're changing the Fade Amount from
| | 05:18 | 0% to 100% and that's all you're doing.
| | 05:21 | Now, here is where things get very important.
| | 05:24 | Don't click the OK button because if
you do that, you will replace your active
| | 05:28 | Settings option right there.
| | 05:30 | So Print defaults is going to get
completely messed up with these new shadow and
| | 05:34 | highlight settings, even if
I switch back to Basic now.
| | 05:37 | They're still at work, which
I think is highly confusing.
| | 05:41 | So, what I suggest you do is go ahead
and turn out Advance once again, so you
| | 05:44 | can keep track of what in the world
you're doing and then go ahead and save
| | 05:48 | out your new settings.
| | 05:49 | I'll click on my little floppy disk,
and for starters, I'll just call this
| | 05:52 | Advanced settings and I can always
come back to this later on, if I want to
| | 05:56 | create some variations on my advanced settings.
| | 05:59 | For now, this will be the
only advanced settings I have.
| | 06:01 | Click OK, and then, of course, very
important, after you get done saving, you
| | 06:06 | have to choose them.
| | 06:07 | So, you have to now choose Advanced
settings from this Settings pop-up menu,
| | 06:11 | and then click OK and that just goes ahead
and protects the other settings that you have.
| | 06:17 | Now then, let's get a sense of
what kind of difference this makes.
| | 06:20 | I'll go ahead and zoom in on my scroll,
so we can see them at a 100% view size.
| | 06:24 | If I turn off Advance settings, you can see
these are the original settings I applied.
| | 06:29 | So, a fairly over-the-top application
of Smart Sharpen with some fairly obvious
| | 06:33 | clipped highlights and shadows inside the fur.
| | 06:35 | In fact, it almost looks like these
guys have had their tips bleached or
| | 06:40 | something along those lines.
| | 06:41 | Now, I'll turn Advanced settings back
on and you can see that those highlights
| | 06:45 | and shadows are mitigated, not only
inside the fur, but in the whiskers as well.
| | 06:49 | Now, of course, the final thing I
would do is that first thing I did at the
| | 06:53 | beginning of the exercise, with Advanced
settings active, that Advanced settings
| | 06:57 | layer, go up to the Edit menu,
choose Fade Smart Sharpen, Ctrl+Shift+F,
| | 07:02 | Command+Shift+F on the Mac, and
switch your mode from Normal to Luminosity,
| | 07:07 | notice that all my weird colors went away there.
| | 07:09 | If you decide after this point that
you've applied too much sharpening, you can
| | 07:13 | go ahead and back off that Opacity
value to take it down to something more
| | 07:16 | reasonable, like 50%.
| | 07:19 | So, if you ever want to see, by the way,
the before version of the image, before
| | 07:23 | you start modifying it, you
can take Opacity down to 0%.
| | 07:26 | So, these are the before sharpening
squirrels right there, and then if I take
| | 07:31 | this Opacity value up to, let's say,
70%, these are the nicely sharpened
| | 07:37 | versions of the squirrels, thanks to a
combination of Advanced settings that I
| | 07:41 | saved out inside the Smart Sharpen
dialog box, and, of course, the good old Fade
| | 07:45 | dialog box that allows me to focus my
sharpening energies on the luminance
| | 07:49 | information inside the image.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Accounting for camera shake| 00:00 | All right, I've gone ahead and saved out
the file that I created in the previous
| | 00:03 | exercise, just in case you want to
take a look at it, it's called Basic vs
| | 00:06 | advanced.psd and the Background
layer shows the results of our basic
| | 00:11 | modifications, The Advanced (70%)
layer shows the results of our advanced
| | 00:15 | settings faded to 70%.
| | 00:17 | So it's not quite apples and
oranges but it's very close.
| | 00:20 | Anyway, think what we have when all
is said and done is some very nicely
| | 00:24 | sharpened squirrels here.
| | 00:26 | Now, I'm going to switch over to
Ceiling carving.jpg, also found by the way
| | 00:30 | inside the 15_sharpen folder, and this is a
ceiling frieze that I shot inside of San Simeon.
| | 00:35 | So I was actually shooting upward with
my camera, which was a little bit awkward
| | 00:39 | and as a result if you go ahead and
zoom in on the image, you can see that
| | 00:42 | there's a little bit of camera shake.
| | 00:44 | Now, by camera shake, I mean that I'm
moving a little bit while I'm shooting
| | 00:49 | this image under lowlight and as a
result I'm getting the impression here that
| | 00:54 | the frieze is moving, which is quite
impossible of course unless there was an
| | 00:57 | earthquake, but otherwise, this mermaid here
isn't going to move on me, she's a still image.
| | 01:02 | Photoshop gives you a couple of
different mechanisms for sharpening to
| | 01:07 | account for camera shake.
| | 01:09 | One of them is inside the Smart Sharpen
dialog box, another technique relies on
| | 01:13 | the Emboss Filter and I'll show you both here.
| | 01:16 | So, let's start things off by
jumping a version of this layer.
| | 01:20 | I'm going to press Ctrl+Alt+J or
Command+Option+J on a Mac and I'll call this SS
| | 01:25 | motion blur like so and then click OK.
| | 01:28 | So, we've got the original image on
the Background layer, we'll be sharpening
| | 01:32 | the SS motion blur layer using Smart
Sharpen set to Remove Motion Blur in just a
| | 01:38 | moment, and I'll create one more version
of this layer, I'll press Ctrl+Alt+J or
| | 01:42 | Command+Option+J on the Mac and I'll
just go ahead and call this one Emboss
| | 01:47 | overlay and you'll see why
that is in the next exercise.
| | 01:51 | So, click OK in order to accept that new layer.
| | 01:54 | All right, let's turn that guy off,
click on SS motion blur right there and then
| | 01:59 | press Ctrl+Alt+F once again or
Command+Option+F on the Mac to bring up the Smart
| | 02:03 | Sharpen dialog box complete with
our last applied Advanced settings.
| | 02:08 | I don't want those.
| | 02:08 | I want to switch back to the Default
here, which will rub out my Highlight
| | 02:13 | modifications and my Shadow
modifications, so I might as well switch back to
| | 02:17 | Basic, and then I do have
my Default settings at work.
| | 02:20 | All right, the next step is to switch
Remove from Gaussian Blur to Motion Blur,
| | 02:25 | and I'm also -- so we can see what
we're doing here, I'm going to raise the
| | 02:28 | Amount value to 500%, once again it's maximum.
| | 02:31 | Now, what I'm doing at this point is
I'm saying the angle of my camera shake is
| | 02:35 | back and forth like so, because
after all the Angle is zero degrees.
| | 02:40 | The actual angle of my camera shake is
up and down, that's how I happen to be
| | 02:45 | moving the camera, at least that's my
interpretation of what's going on by
| | 02:49 | looking at the image.
| | 02:50 | You wanted to look for repeated
details and that kind of thing;
| | 02:52 | you may find that you moved at some weird angle.
| | 02:56 | So you'll just have to try
to track that as best you can.
| | 02:59 | Anyway, I'm going to drag this little
line around here to 90 degrees like so, or
| | 03:03 | I could have entered 90 degrees as my
Angle value, leave More Accurate turned
| | 03:07 | off, you don't want to combine More
Accurate with Motion Blur, gives you pretty
| | 03:11 | disastrous results in fact.
| | 03:13 | Then what I recommend you do is click
inside the Radius value and press Shift+Up Arrow.
| | 03:18 | Notice by the way, when you just press
the Up Arrow key, when you're working
| | 03:22 | inside the Radius value, you raise
and lower the Radius in 0.1 increments.
| | 03:27 | So, 10th of a pixel increment,
which obviously results in some pretty
| | 03:31 | small modifications.
| | 03:32 | I recommend, when trying to gauge what
you need to do with Motion Blur that you
| | 03:37 | go ahead and raise and lower the
value in much larger increments.
| | 03:40 | So for whole number increments, you need
to press Shift along with up or down arrow.
| | 03:45 | I'm going to press Shift+up arrow in
order to raise that value to 3, then
| | 03:48 | Shift+up arrow again to raise it to 4,
and notice as I'm doing this that the
| | 03:52 | details are sort of moving back
and forth inside of my preview there.
| | 03:57 | So, I'm continually pressing Shift+Up
Arrow by the way, every so often here, so
| | 04:01 | that we can see the
effects of the modifications.
| | 04:03 | Now, I'm going away too far.
| | 04:05 | I think this is much more Radius value
than I need here and the Radius is just a
| | 04:10 | little different this time around,
you're not so concerned with halos, that is
| | 04:14 | what you're doing, you are creating
halos using this Motion Blur effect.
| | 04:18 | However, what you're trying to really
do is you're trying to match the distance
| | 04:23 | of the motion that was tracked by
the camera as recorded in pixels.
| | 04:28 | So in my case, I'm figuring it's more
like 4, that's based on my experience with
| | 04:32 | this image, and we can see the
difference here, if you click and hold inside the
| | 04:36 | preview, this is the original version
of that image, and this is the sharpened
| | 04:40 | version as soon as I release.
| | 04:41 | So, it appears that I've done a pretty good job.
| | 04:44 | The one thing that you have to bear in mind
is you get a lot of noise out of this effect.
| | 04:49 | So you're actually exaggerating noise
when you apply Smart Sharpen combined with
| | 04:53 | Remove set to Motion Blur.
| | 04:55 | Now, before you click OK, you're going
to write over your Default Settings and
| | 04:59 | it's rare that you're going to
use Remove set to Motion Blur.
| | 05:02 | So, you don't want that to happen.
| | 05:05 | What you want to do is create yet
another set of settings here by clicking on
| | 05:09 | the floppy disk and just go ahead and
say something like Motion blur 4px or
| | 05:14 | something along those lines or you
can call it a camera shake, whatever you
| | 05:17 | want, click OK and then of course,
choose those Settings from the Settings
| | 05:23 | pop-up menu there, and
then click OK to apply them.
| | 05:26 | Now, let's see what we've got.
| | 05:28 | I'll go ahead and zoom in on the image,
so we're zoomed in past 100% here.
| | 05:32 | If I turn off SS motion blur, this is
the original unsharpened version of the
| | 05:37 | image that is the pre-sharpened effect
and this is the post-sharpening effect
| | 05:42 | and you can see that we are bringing
out a lot of noise inside the image, even
| | 05:47 | though I have to say, we've done a
pretty good job of correcting for the camera
| | 05:51 | shake, and that's about
the best you're going to do.
| | 05:54 | Where camera shake is concerned, you
can correct for small tiny bits of camera
| | 05:58 | shake, not huge camera shake incidentally,
and you can only correct to a certain extent.
| | 06:03 | However, you may be able to
do a better job than this.
| | 06:06 | If you're finding that your image is
getting too noisy, you can take advantage
| | 06:11 | of a top-secret technique that involves
the Emboss Filter, which I'll tell you
| | 06:15 | about in the very next exercise.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Sharpening with the Emboss filter| 00:00 | I've saved my changes as Camera
shake corrections.psd found inside the
| | 00:04 | 15_sharpen folder and in this exercise
I'm going to show you a different way
| | 00:08 | to account for camera shake that might
turn out to be more successful for you,
| | 00:13 | you might get less noise out of the effect
depending on your image using the Emboss Filter.
| | 00:18 | So, for starters here, I'm going to
turn off the SS motion blur layer, and I'm
| | 00:23 | going to click on this Emboss overlay
layer right there, and I'm going to turn
| | 00:26 | it on in order to regain access to
the original version of my image, albeit
| | 00:32 | relegated to an independent layer
and this is the way you want work.
| | 00:36 | By the way this just gives you more
flexibility as opposed to applying the
| | 00:39 | command and then fading it using
the Fade command under the Edit menu.
| | 00:43 | Then go up to the Filter menu and
choose the Stylize command, so we're not even
| | 00:48 | going for sharpen this time around,
and I want you to choose Emboss.
| | 00:52 | Now, on the face of it, you look at
this effect right here and you wouldn't
| | 00:56 | think in a million years it has
anything to do with sharpening.
| | 00:59 | In fact, what it does is it goes ahead
and in case this is freeze in carbonite,
| | 01:04 | you may recall what happened to Han Solo
in Empire Strikes Back, and that's what
| | 01:09 | this filter more than anything
simulates in so far as I can tell.
| | 01:14 | And what it's really doing is it's
taking one version of the image and it's
| | 01:18 | inverting it and then it's overlaying
it on top of another version of the image
| | 01:23 | at 50% Opacity level and then it's
offsetting the two away from each other.
| | 01:27 | But let me just show you what I'm talking about.
| | 01:29 | I'll cancel out of here for a second.
| | 01:31 | Let's say I were to create a copy of this layer;
| | 01:35 | I'll press Ctrl+Alt+J or Command+Option+J
and I'll just call it copy invert like
| | 01:40 | so, and I'll click OK in
order accept that modification.
| | 01:43 | Then I'll go up to the Image menu and
I'll choose Adjustments and I'll choose
| | 01:47 | Invert or I could press Ctrl+I,
Command+I on the Mac to invert that affect.
| | 01:52 | Now, let's reduce the
Opacity value to 50%, like so.
| | 01:56 | They cancel each other out.
| | 01:57 | So the inverted version cancels out
the original version at 50% Opacity.
| | 02:02 | But if I were to now switch to my Move
tool so that I can move the layer and I
| | 02:08 | were to press the arrow keys in
order to nudge that image around, so I'm
| | 02:12 | pressing the Up Arrow key three
times and then the Right Arrow key three
| | 02:16 | times, then I get that exact same
effect that we were seeing a moment ago
| | 02:21 | inside the Emboss Filter.
| | 02:22 | So that's all that's going on, this is
how the Filter works and it creates a
| | 02:26 | kind of embossed effect, I guess we're
stamping the image in metal is the idea.
| | 02:31 | Anyway, let's go ahead and turn that
off, I just want you to see that some of
| | 02:34 | these filters are very simple in
terms of what they can accomplish.
| | 02:37 | But in terms of how you might employ
that effect, well, I guess that makes
| | 02:42 | you the powerful one.
| | 02:43 | So, I'll go ahead and click
on Emboss Overlay once again.
| | 02:47 | Let's go back to the Filter menu,
choose Stylize, and choose Emboss, and we're
| | 02:53 | pretty much seeing an exaggerated
and enhanced version of the effect we
| | 02:57 | applied just a moment ago.
| | 02:59 | But here is what I want to do, I want
you to set this Angle value to the Angle
| | 03:03 | of the movement, which could either
be positive 90 degrees or negative 90
| | 03:08 | degrees, either one, but I want this
kind of under-lighting effect, so I'm going
| | 03:12 | to set my Angle to negative 90 degrees.
| | 03:14 | Then I'm going to set my Height value
to half of what I was using for Radius
| | 03:19 | inside the Smart Sharpen dialog box.
| | 03:21 | So, I had figured out that a Radius of
4 worked out well combined with Remove
| | 03:26 | set to Motion Blur inside Smart Sharpen.
| | 03:28 | So, I'll divide 4 into half to get a
Height of 2 pixels here, and then I'll go
| | 03:33 | ahead and raise that Amount value to
the same amount we applied in the previous
| | 03:37 | exercise, 500% which is also the
maximum setting incidentally for the Emboss
| | 03:41 | Filter and I'll click OK.
| | 03:43 | So obviously we're going too far with
this filtered effect, that's all right.
| | 03:47 | Now then we have all this gray inside
of this layer, I mean you're looking at
| | 03:51 | it and thinking, how in the world is this going
to get us anywhere close to a sharpening effect?
| | 03:55 | Well, you can drop out the grays by
applying one of the contrast Blend modes.
| | 04:00 | So, click on the Normal option in the
top-left corner of the Layers panel and
| | 04:04 | your contrast modes range
from Overlay down to Hard Mix.
| | 04:07 | Now the ones you'll apply in a
regular basis range from Overlay to Linear
| | 04:12 | Light, as we'll see, but your default setting,
the one to apply when in doubt is Overlay.
| | 04:18 | Just go ahead and apply that setting,
see how it works out and notice we drop
| | 04:22 | out the grays, we keep the Highlights,
we keep the Shadows, so that we keep
| | 04:25 | those bright and dark halos that are
mixing in with the underlying image.
| | 04:30 | So, if I go ahead and turn this
layer off, you can see this is the
| | 04:33 | original camera shake version of the
image, and if I turn this layer on,
| | 04:38 | we see the corrected version.
| | 04:39 | Now obviously we're going too far with
the modifications, so I'm going to press
| | 04:43 | the 5 key to reduce the
Opacity value here to 50%.
| | 04:47 | So this is the original uncorrected
version of the image here, we're seeing it
| | 04:51 | when I turn Emboss overlay off and
this is the Emboss corrected version.
| | 04:56 | Let's go ahead and compare that to the
SS motion blur version, I'll drag it up
| | 05:00 | above Emboss overlay, turn it on and
you can see that it is a noisier effect.
| | 05:06 | Now, here is the trade off, even though
Emboss is giving us a less noisy effect,
| | 05:11 | it also has a few aberrant colors going on.
| | 05:14 | So notice those weird colors that we're
seeing inside of that Emboss overlay layer.
| | 05:19 | Wouldn't it be a good idea to get
rid of those, and yes, indeed it would.
| | 05:23 | So, let's go ahead and switch to Emboss
overlay, I'm going to switch that Blend
| | 05:27 | mode from Overlay back to Normal and I'm
going to restore the Opacity value back
| | 05:31 | to 100%, so that we can see that's
the culprit, all those weird colors that
| | 05:36 | we're saying inside this layer,
that's what's causing the problem.
| | 05:39 | Let's get rid of those by
making sure Emboss overlay is active;
| | 05:43 | then go up to the Image menu, choose
Adjustments and go ahead and choose this
| | 05:48 | command down here, Desaturate, and
that will get rid of all the colors on the
| | 05:52 | layer, so that we have nothing
but gray values as you see now.
| | 05:56 | All right, now let's apply
those same settings once again.
| | 05:59 | So, switch from Normal to Overlay, then
press the Escape key, so that Blend mode
| | 06:04 | is no longer active here on the PC, not
an issue on a Mac, and press the 5 key
| | 06:08 | in order to reduce the Opacity value to
50% and now we have a valid comparison.
| | 06:13 | Here is the SS motion blur version of
the image, a little noisier as you can
| | 06:18 | see, a little bit of a more
high-impact effect as well.
| | 06:21 | If I turn that layer off, this is the
Emboss overlay version of the correction.
| | 06:26 | All right, I'm going to go ahead and
zoom out so that we can see the final
| | 06:29 | corrected version of the image right here.
| | 06:32 | Choose your poise in either way Smart
Sharpen might work better with some images;
| | 06:35 | Emboss is going to work better for others.
| | 06:37 | In the next exercise, I'm going to
show you have to sharpen an image using
| | 06:41 | the High Pass Filter.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Sharpening with High Pass| 00:00 | I've gone ahead and saved the results
of the last exercise as Emboss vs SS
| | 00:05 | MB.psd, found inside the 15_sharpen folder.
| | 00:08 | I am doing this so that you can look
at this file on your own screen, if you
| | 00:13 | want to as opposed to here in the video.
| | 00:14 | Because even though we got rid of
all that color saturation in the Emboss
| | 00:19 | overlay layer, we are still getting
some different colors out of this effect
| | 00:23 | than we were with SS motion blur, and
I actually prefer the colors that are
| | 00:27 | going on inside the SS motion blur
effect even though we have more noise inside
| | 00:33 | that version of the image.
| | 00:34 | So again, it's going vary from one
image to the other and you can decide
| | 00:38 | which path to take.
| | 00:40 | Anyway, I am going to switchover here
now to Ready for High Pass.psd, which is
| | 00:44 | another variation on the
squirrel's image right here.
| | 00:48 | What we've got going is an Advanced 70% layer.
| | 00:52 | You may recall that's the
application of Smart Sharpen using the Advanced
| | 00:56 | settings that required a little bit of
work and then backing off the Opacity to 70%.
| | 01:01 | Now I am going to show you how to
avoid clipping if clipping is an issue for
| | 01:07 | you, that is highlight and shadow clipping.
| | 01:08 | How to avoid that clipping using High Pass?
| | 01:11 | And High Pass ends up having a
little bit more of a delicate touch where
| | 01:17 | sharpening is concerned.
| | 01:18 | It's not a super intuitive filter for
this purpose, but once you get the hang of
| | 01:21 | it, I think you can make it work.
| | 01:23 | It's really ideal for portrait
shots as well as these squirrels here.
| | 01:28 | All right, so I am going to go ahead
and turn off Advanced (70%) and basically
| | 01:32 | what I have going here is two
versions of the original image, one in the
| | 01:36 | Background layer and then
one on this High Pass layer.
| | 01:39 | So they are the exact same
non-sharpen version of that image.
| | 01:43 | I am going to zoom in little bit so
that we can take in more detail here, and
| | 01:48 | I'll go up to the Filter menu, I'll
choose Other, and I will choose this command
| | 01:52 | right there High Pass.
| | 01:53 | Notice if you loaded dekeKeys I've
given in a keyboard shortcut, because I
| | 01:56 | use this one a lot.
| | 01:57 | I don't use Emboss that often,
but I do use High Pass all the time.
| | 02:01 | Shift+F10, go ahead and choose that
command in order to bring up what has to be
| | 02:06 | just absolutely the ugliest filter ever.
| | 02:09 | It just turns the entire image gray.
| | 02:10 | It doesn't even bother to try to create
some kind of cool effect the way Emboss does.
| | 02:15 | It just makes the image all gray and the
edges are there hanging on for dear life.
| | 02:19 | So what's going on is that all the
non-edges in the image are turning gray and
| | 02:24 | then the edge details have little
halos popping off of them, but we are
| | 02:29 | actually seeing less in the way of
the edges than we were before we even
| | 02:32 | applied the command.
| | 02:34 | So if I go ahead and turn Preview off,
you'll see that those edges were a lot
| | 02:39 | stronger before I apply the filter and
then if I turn the filter back on you can
| | 02:44 | see that they're really going away.
| | 02:45 | Well, what's happening is the
edges really are hanging on.
| | 02:48 | So you can imagine that we are taking
all of the details inside this image and
| | 02:53 | sifting it through a funnel, let's say.
| | 02:56 | All the non-edges are going down to
the bottom of the funnel, they are just
| | 02:59 | running into this gray world here and
then the edges are hanging onto the sides.
| | 03:04 | This is a strange thing.
| | 03:05 | If you increase the Radius value, you
get less of a detrimental effect out of
| | 03:10 | this filter whereas if you decrease
the Radius, then you get more of an
| | 03:15 | effect out of this filter.
| | 03:16 | You get rid of more and more colors and
you have fewer edges hanging on there.
| | 03:21 | Well, what you want to do with the
Radius value is account for your output.
| | 03:26 | So in other words if you're
outputting for screen, you want to keep this
| | 03:29 | value very low and the same rules that apply
to Unsharp Mask apply here in High Pass as well.
| | 03:35 | So 0.3 to 0.5 is going to
work out well for screen images.
| | 03:40 | Even though it doesn't look like
it's going work at all, it will.
| | 03:43 | So you just have to trust it, and you
will gain experience over time, if you
| | 03:46 | decide to work this way.
| | 03:48 | For print, you want to raise that
value to something in the neighborhood of
| | 03:51 | 3 pixels for example, so one pixel
worth of Radius for every hundred pixels
| | 03:57 | per inch of resolution.
| | 03:59 | You may recall just so that we're
getting a decent comparison here.
| | 04:02 | I applied Radius value of 4 pixels
with Lens Blur inside the Smart Sharpen
| | 04:07 | dialog box, and I was telling you that
when you're using Lens Blur, you have to
| | 04:13 | increase your Radius value to
about half again what it was before.
| | 04:17 | So I am going to take my
Radius value down at 2.5.
| | 04:20 | That's not exactly the right math, but it will
work out well enough here. So 2.5, click OK.
| | 04:26 | Now what do we do about all
these grays inside the image?
| | 04:29 | How do we keep the highlights and the
shadows and burn them in the place and
| | 04:33 | get rid of the grays?
| | 04:34 | Well the same way that we did exactly
that same thing with the Emboss effect.
| | 04:38 | That is we apply one of the contrast
Blend modes starting with incidentally
| | 04:43 | Overlay, and notice that just goes
ahead and drops out all those grays.
| | 04:46 | We keep the highlights and the
shadows and we get what is ultimately a very
| | 04:51 | nice sharpening effect.
| | 04:53 | So this is the original version of the
squirrels, if I turn that layer off and
| | 04:57 | this is the High Pass version
of the squirrels right there.
| | 05:00 | Let's go ahead and compare that to what we
were able to achieve using Smart Sharpen.
| | 05:05 | This is the Smart Sharpen effect and we
had to go through all those hoops, right.
| | 05:09 | We had to apply those Advanced settings
that don't make a ton of sense and then
| | 05:14 | we had to reduce the Opacity to 70%,
and we had to apply an Amount value while
| | 05:20 | there was no amount value
associated with High Pass.
| | 05:22 | So we just got some decent
results right off the bat.
| | 05:26 | Now if you look closely at this image you
will see that there is something of a difference.
| | 05:30 | I will go ahead and zoom in on the fur.
| | 05:31 | Notice that we do have some
wandering color problems here inside of the
| | 05:37 | squirrels fur, even though we went
ahead and applied our modification, that is
| | 05:42 | we applied Smart Sharpen
just to the luminance data.
| | 05:45 | But if I turn off that Advanced (70%)
layer, you can see that we've got a lot of
| | 05:49 | color going on with High Pass as well
for the exact same reason that we had
| | 05:54 | weird colors coming out of the Emboss
filter, because there are some colors
| | 05:59 | still at work in that High Pass layer.
| | 06:01 | If we want to get rid of them, then this time
we won't switch back to Normal and all that jazz.
| | 06:04 | We will just leave High Pass set to the Overlay.
| | 06:07 | Go ahead and make sure that layer is active.
| | 06:09 | Then I want you to watch
these colors inside the fur.
| | 06:12 | Go up to the Image menu, choose
Adjustments and that ends up covering up a lot
| | 06:17 | of those fur details.
| | 06:18 | But still, then I will go
down here to Desaturate.
| | 06:21 | Choose that command and you'll
notice that a lot of those colors go away.
| | 06:25 | So this is before, we have all kinds of
weird colors going on inside of the fur
| | 06:31 | here and this is after I apply Desaturate.
| | 06:34 | So there are still some aberrant colors
at work, but that's just because we are
| | 06:39 | exaggerating the color
distinctions that were already there.
| | 06:42 | Anyway, that's what you do.
| | 06:44 | I will go ahead and zoom out.
| | 06:45 | Now let's say that you want to increase
the intensity of this sharpening effect.
| | 06:50 | Why then you can switch from
Overlay to one of two other modes.
| | 06:54 | You can either take it up a notch by
moving up to Hard Light, that will give you
| | 06:59 | more pronounced effect.
| | 07:00 | Let's go ahead and zoom in
to a 100% so we can see that.
| | 07:03 | So this is the result of Overlay like so
and then this is the result of Hard Light.
| | 07:08 | I'm showing you the difference just by
pressing Ctrl+Z or Command+Z on the Mac.
| | 07:12 | Then if you really want up the ante
you switch from Hard Light, go ahead and
| | 07:15 | skip this guy and switch
to Linear Light, like so.
| | 07:19 | Then you're going to get a very
pronounced effect out of the filter.
| | 07:22 | You can always modify the
Opacity value if you want to.
| | 07:25 | Now if Overlay is too much, you can
reduce the Opacity or you can also try
| | 07:31 | switching to Soft Light.
| | 07:32 | Now Soft Light is not just the lower
opacity version of Overlay, but it does
| | 07:36 | provide a more nuanced effect.
| | 07:38 | So I will go ahead and choose Soft
Light and then if I turn off High Pass, this
| | 07:41 | is the original version of the image,
this is the, ever so slightly sharpened
| | 07:45 | version of the image, so not
all that different, but still.
| | 07:48 | Anyway, I am going to go ahead
and switch back to Overlay here.
| | 07:51 | The other thing to note where the
differences between these variations are
| | 07:55 | concerned, if I go ahead and turn
Advanced (70%) back on, not only do we have a
| | 08:01 | stronger effect inside of the fur; notice that.
| | 08:04 | So this is Advanced (70%)
applied using the Smart Sharpen filter.
| | 08:08 | This is the High Pass variation which
notice doesn't have any clipping going on.
| | 08:13 | So we are not clipping the heck out
of the highlights and shadows here.
| | 08:16 | Also however, notice that we are
retaining the whiskers quite nicely.
| | 08:21 | So we didn't have to sacrifice the
whisker detail with High Pass where we did
| | 08:25 | with those Advanced settings here at 70%.
| | 08:29 | So there are some differences going on.
| | 08:31 | Notice that the whiskers are little more
pronounced or least they would be if we
| | 08:35 | were to switch to a different blend mode.
| | 08:36 | Let's go ahead and knock this up from
Overlay to Hard Light and see there we get
| | 08:41 | the whisker detail back.
| | 08:42 | We are still not clipping
the highlights or the shadows.
| | 08:46 | Now notice the difference here with
Advance 70%, that's what I was hoping to
| | 08:49 | show you right there.
| | 08:50 | That goes ahead and clips out the
whiskers, because of those advanced
| | 08:53 | modifications we made, whereas with
High Pass we still get that whisker detail.
| | 08:58 | So if you're really interested in
avoiding clipping where sharpening is
| | 09:02 | concerned, and this is very useful for
portrait sharpening, why then High Pass
| | 09:08 | tends to be the better way to go.
| | 09:09 | High Pass with whatever radius value you
would normally apply using Unsharp Mask
| | 09:14 | and then go ahead and set that layer to
one of the contrast modes whether it be
| | 09:19 | Overlay, Hard Light, or Linear Light.
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| The new and improved Sharpen tool| 00:00 | All right, as usual I've gone ahead
and saved the results of my previous
| | 00:03 | exercise, this time I've
saved it as High Pass vs SS Adv.
| | 00:07 | That is Smart Sharpen Advanced.psd, so
that you can compare the distinctions for
| | 00:12 | yourself and if you want to, you can
go ahead and switch the High Pass layer
| | 00:17 | back and forth between the various
Blend modes that is Overlay, Hard Light, and
| | 00:21 | Linear Light each one increasing in intensity.
| | 00:24 | All right, I am going to go ahead
and escape out of there and switch to
| | 00:27 | the final image, which is the very first
image that we looked at, Macro butterfly.jpg.
| | 00:33 | So I can show you yet another way to
sharpen images inside of Photoshop CS5 that
| | 00:38 | does not involve a filter.
| | 00:40 | This time it involves a tool.
| | 00:42 | I am going to go ahead and zoom the
image to 100%, move the insect's head into
| | 00:47 | the Image window there.
| | 00:49 | The tool in question is this
guy right there, the Sharpen tool.
| | 00:52 | So by default this tool looks like a
little drop like so and that's the Blur tool.
| | 00:56 | The Blur tool can be useful by the way for
blurring distinctions inside of masks and so on.
| | 01:01 | I don't use it super often.
| | 01:03 | It used to be prior to Photoshop
CS5 I used the Sharpen tool never.
| | 01:08 | It was the worst tool, I am not kidding you.
| | 01:11 | The worst tool by a mile inside of
Photoshop has been since it was introduced.
| | 01:16 | It's always been an awful, awful tool.
| | 01:18 | Much worse than anything
else you might come up with.
| | 01:21 | Much worse than the Magic Wand
tool, which is great by comparison.
| | 01:24 | Much worse than Brightness/Contrast
was, when it was the worst color
| | 01:28 | correction tool ever.
| | 01:30 | I will show you what I mean.
| | 01:31 | I'll go ahead and grab the Sharpen tool,
and let's increase the size of this brush.
| | 01:35 | It's a brushing tool.
| | 01:36 | So you go ahead and brush inside the
image in order to apply sharpening.
| | 01:40 | Now in order to see the way it used to
work, we've got this check box right here
| | 01:44 | called Protect Detail.
| | 01:45 | Turn it off and that turns the
tool into its awful old self.
| | 01:49 | Then just go ahead and paint
over the butterfly's face, like so.
| | 01:53 | Pretty soon you'll reduce the face to a
pile of colorful iron filings like this.
| | 01:59 | It's like you're shaking the
image inside of an Etch-a-Sketch.
| | 02:03 | It just turns it into absolute craziness.
| | 02:06 | This doesn't resemble
sharpening at all. It's a mess.
| | 02:09 | Anyway, this is way the tool
has worked for more than 20 years.
| | 02:11 | Isn't that awesome?
| | 02:12 | No wonder, nobody has ever told you
how to use it, because it's awful.
| | 02:17 | All right, I will go ahead and
press Ctrl+Z, Command+Z on the Mac.
| | 02:20 | Well, here's the weird thing.
| | 02:21 | You may not have known this, because
Adobe didn't tell anybody, they did this
| | 02:26 | until the absolute last minute.
| | 02:27 | I found this out from product manager John Nack.
| | 02:30 | Like about three days before the
program shipped that they had gone ahead and
| | 02:34 | fixed the Sharpen tool.
| | 02:36 | Here's how it works.
| | 02:37 | By default, Project Detail is turned on.
| | 02:40 | So if you go ahead and drag inside the image,
you get a fairly decent sharpening effect.
| | 02:47 | All right, so it's not perfect, but
that's okay, because there's an even
| | 02:50 | better way to work.
| | 02:51 | I am going to press Ctrl+Z,
Command+Z on the Mac.
| | 02:54 | You shouldn't work directly
on the Background layer, right.
| | 02:58 | That's a destructive modification.
| | 02:59 | So I suggest you grade a new layer by
pressing Ctrl+Shift+N or Command+Shift+N
| | 03:04 | on the Mac and let's go ahead and
call this sharpen tool and then click OK.
| | 03:09 | There is nothing to sharpen.
| | 03:10 | If I try to drag on this sharpen tool
layer, I am not going to do anything,
| | 03:14 | because there's nothing on that layer to
sharpen unless I turn on Sample All layers.
| | 03:19 | Then I will go ahead and copy the
detail as I sharpen it onto this sharpen tool
| | 03:24 | layer, which is ideal.
| | 03:26 | So turn on the Sample All layers check box.
| | 03:28 | You can increase the Strength if you're
starting to get impatient with the results.
| | 03:32 | I don't suggest you work that way.
| | 03:34 | I do, however, suggest you go ahead
and change the mode to Luminosity so that
| | 03:38 | you're just sharpening the
luminance information inside the image.
| | 03:42 | Then go ahead and paint
inside the image, like so.
| | 03:46 | I am going to go ahead and zoom in so that
we can see the effects up close and personal.
| | 03:50 | I am getting some weird artifacts there.
| | 03:53 | That's to be expected.
| | 03:54 | I might just go ahead and
paint down in this region as well.
| | 03:58 | Now something you need to bear in
mind is you have no radius control.
| | 04:01 | So this is not a print sharpening tool,
this is more of a screen sharpening tool.
| | 04:05 | So this is good if you're going to the
web or you're just trying to enhance some
| | 04:08 | small details like around eyes
inside of a portrait shot. Take it easy;
| | 04:14 | be patient, you may end up
getting halfway decent results.
| | 04:17 | Then when you're through sort of
painting around inside the image, what I
| | 04:21 | suggest you do is you
switch over to your Eraser tool.
| | 04:24 | Now you can go to the effort of
applying a layer mask if you want to, but the
| | 04:28 | Eraser tool seems fine for this purpose.
| | 04:30 | After all we are just painting
in a quick sharpening effect.
| | 04:34 | We can go ahead and erase away
the effect as well, it seems to me.
| | 04:37 | I am going to increase the size of my
cursor by pressing the Right Bracket
| | 04:40 | key and they'll press Shift+[
| | 04:42 | a couple of times in order to reduce the hardness just a little
bit, because by default the Eraser tool is set to a Hardness of 100%.]
| | 04:42 | Then I will paint inside of this
background region here in order to get rid of
| | 04:57 | the bad sharpening that I have applied
to the background, because I don't want
| | 05:01 | to exaggerate the noise.
| | 05:02 | You could even select regions using
something like the Lasso tool if you want to
| | 05:07 | and delete those areas.
| | 05:08 | I will press Shift+[
| | 05:16 | a couple more times to reduce that hardness even
further, so we have a Hardness value of 0% at this point.
| | 05:16 | Then I will paint away this
region of background there.
| | 05:19 | Then when you feel like you've got all
the background touched up like so, then
| | 05:24 | switch back to one of your selection
tools like the Marquee tool for example,
| | 05:28 | and then you might press let's say the
6 key to reduce the Opacity value to 60%
| | 05:33 | so that we have a more
mitigated sharpening effect.
| | 05:37 | So this is before, this is after.
| | 05:40 | If you feel like you've still gone too
far like I think I'm bringing out some
| | 05:43 | weird pixel detail inside the eyes,
then I would switch once again to the
| | 05:47 | Eraser tool and this time I will
reduce the Opacity of the Eraser by pressing
| | 05:51 | the 5 key for 50% for example and
then I will paint in the eyes in order to
| | 05:56 | back off the effect right there.
| | 05:58 | So it's not a perfect tool by any
means, but my goodness, what a top secret
| | 06:04 | hidden addition to Photoshop CS5, we
are making nothing out of the fact that
| | 06:09 | they have taken the worst tool
absolutely ever inside of the program and made
| | 06:14 | it much, much better.
| | 06:15 | That my friends is our tour de force
of sharpening inside of Photoshop CS5.
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|
|
16. Noise and TextureEdge's evil twin: noise| 00:00 | In the previous chapter we looked at
edges, areas of rapid contrast organic to
| | 00:06 | an accurately rendered photograph.
| | 00:08 | Now we look at noise, areas of rapid
contrasts that weren't actually there.
| | 00:12 | More specifically noise is random
fluctuations in luminance or color
| | 00:17 | between neighboring pixels.
| | 00:19 | The noise was not part of the
actual scene that the camera captured.
| | 00:22 | The camera added the noise in its
attempt to evaluate or enhance light.
| | 00:27 | Noise is to digital
images what grain was to film.
| | 00:31 | The Sharpening filters from the
previous chapter can't distinguish between
| | 00:34 | real edges and noise.
| | 00:36 | As they draw forth the edges, which are good,
they draw forth the noise, which is bad.
| | 00:42 | Noise lies in wait ready to wreak havoc.
| | 00:45 | Noise is like a virus that infects edges.
| | 00:48 | Noise disguises itself as an edge,
but it is in fact the edge's evil twin.
| | 00:53 | Fortunately, Photoshop arms you with
commands designed to defeat noise, reduce
| | 00:58 | noise, Median, Dust & Scratches, and
the Blur filters all offer unique ways to
| | 01:03 | defeat or partially resolve noise.
| | 01:05 | You can even exploit noise
to make an image look better.
| | 01:09 | These movies explain how.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Color vs. luminance noise| 00:00 | The topic of this chapter is smooth and
surface, and the idea is that there're
| | 00:04 | certain kinds of surface details, such
as digital noise, for example, that you
| | 00:09 | need to smooth away inside of an image,
there's other times that you might want
| | 00:13 | to enhance or add surface details.
| | 00:16 | We're going to see how this
works with this butterfly right here.
| | 00:19 | Go figure, I'm obviously something
of a frustrated nature photographer.
| | 00:23 | I especially like the idea of macro
photography, where you can take these
| | 00:27 | delicate small creatures and blow them up,
that is make them larger, not explode
| | 00:31 | them, here inside Photoshop.
| | 00:33 | The name of this image is Long feelers.jpg.
| | 00:36 | It's found inside the 16_smooth folder.
| | 00:39 | This image contains all kinds of noise.
| | 00:42 | We've got color noise.
| | 00:43 | We've got luminance noise inside the shadows.
| | 00:45 | I'll explain the differences between
those kinds of noise in just a moment.
| | 00:50 | We also have all kinds of wandering
colors and exaggerated saturation levels
| | 00:54 | inside the shadow details as well.
| | 00:57 | That kind of stuff is very
common, for reasons I will explain.
| | 01:00 | We're going to take this image and we
will ultimately sharpen it as well, so you
| | 01:05 | want to smooth out all the imperfections
inside the image before you sharpen it.
| | 01:09 | We'll end up with this composition
right here, and it's called Final
| | 01:13 | feelers.psd, also found
inside the 16_smooth folder.
| | 01:17 | It's in much better shape, as you can see.
| | 01:19 | We don't have nearly the
color problems in the shadows.
| | 01:23 | We've got much better detail,
as well it's holding up better.
| | 01:27 | It's not a noiseless image by any means.
| | 01:29 | You don't entirely get rid of the noise,
because if you did that, you'd get rid
| | 01:32 | of some details as well.
| | 01:34 | Instead, it's all about mitigating that
noise and mitigating the color problems as well.
| | 01:39 | Obviously, it requires a few layers,
but it's not that tough, as we'll see.
| | 01:43 | And then finally, just for fun, we're
going to add a paper texture in order
| | 01:47 | to create a painterly effect right here, and
the name of this composition is Fly paper.psd.
| | 01:54 | Note by the way that it relies on a
couple of filter effects that are set
| | 01:59 | on separate layers.
| | 02:00 | So in the background here, we have
a flattened version of that final
| | 02:04 | composition, that we can see if I
Alt+click or Option+click on that eyeball in
| | 02:08 | front of the Background layer.
| | 02:09 | Then we just add in a few additional layers,
apply some Blend modes, and we get this effect.
| | 02:15 | So very easy to pull off this kind of stuff.
| | 02:18 | Also, fairly satisfying as well, you may find
yourself inspired to try out other techniques.
| | 02:24 | All right!
| | 02:24 | So I'm going to switch back to Long feelers.jpg.
| | 02:27 | I'm going to zoom in on this image,
so that we can see it in all of its
| | 02:31 | tragic clarity here.
| | 02:33 | Notice that we have a ton of noise
going on, which are of course random
| | 02:37 | variations in terms of color and
luminance levels between neighboring pixels.
| | 02:42 | I'm going to go ahead and zoom in to
200%, so that we can see that noise
| | 02:46 | up close and personal.
| | 02:47 | Now, I should tell you that I've done
everything in my power to make sure this
| | 02:52 | noise is every bit as bad as it can be.
| | 02:55 | I haven't added any noise whatsoever.
| | 02:57 | This is all noise that was
captured along with the image.
| | 03:00 | I've just done everything in my power
to nurture it along, so that you can see
| | 03:05 | it very easily inside the videos,
because otherwise, thanks to the way video
| | 03:08 | compression works and so on, we could
end up losing some of this noise detail.
| | 03:12 | Also, by the way, I want this to be
the noisiest image you ever run into.
| | 03:17 | That way, if you're able to pull off
the techniques I show you here, then
| | 03:21 | you can apply these same techniques with
even better results to your less noisy images.
| | 03:27 | By the way, they don't have to be insects.
| | 03:29 | Doesn't matter what the subject of the
image is, it could be a landscape, it
| | 03:32 | could be a portrait, these
same techniques apply. All right!
| | 03:35 | So two varieties of noise;
| | 03:37 | we've got color noise, which are
random variations in terms of Hue and
| | 03:41 | Saturation between neighboring pixels.
| | 03:44 | So for example, in this creature's
compound eyes, we've got dark blue, we've
| | 03:48 | got light blue, we've got violet and purple
and red and brown, all kinds of colors going on.
| | 03:54 | You can see a wild variety of
colors in the background as well.
| | 03:58 | It's a kind of color static that's going on.
| | 04:01 | It shouldn't be there, because
it wasn't there in real life.
| | 04:04 | This is something that the camera made up.
| | 04:06 | It didn't find all these little magical
differently colored squares in the air
| | 04:10 | and captured them, it is a function
of the way that the camera captured the
| | 04:15 | scene in the first place and then
converted the scene into an RGB color image,
| | 04:20 | which brings us to our second kind of
color here, which is luminance noise,
| | 04:25 | random variations in terms of
the brightness of the pixels.
| | 04:29 | We have all kinds of luminance noise
showing up inside the shadow detail, both
| | 04:34 | along this creature's neck or
whatever you call it on a butterfly.
| | 04:38 | Also, down here, notice these shadows
have lots and lots of noise in them.
| | 04:43 | And by shadows, I mean the
darkest details inside the image.
| | 04:46 | This is very common where digital
photographs are concerned, and here is why.
| | 04:51 | When your digital camera
captures an image, it actually captures
| | 04:54 | grayscale information.
| | 04:56 | This is the way it works with 99.9
% of the digital cameras out there.
| | 05:00 | There are a few exceptions, but very few.
| | 05:03 | So it captures this grayscale image
that comes with filtering information, so
| | 05:07 | that the Camera or Photoshop
can convert that image into RGB.
| | 05:12 | Now, along the lines, the image has to be
brightened, because it starts off very dark.
| | 05:16 | It's captured by the camera.
| | 05:18 | It is a very dark photograph.
| | 05:19 | By the way, the camera does this
automatically, when it converts the image
| | 05:22 | to JPEG, or if you capture a RAW image,
then something like Camera RAW does
| | 05:28 | this automatically.
| | 05:30 | By the way, we will be discussing
Camera RAW, which is a utility that ships
| | 05:34 | along with Photoshop CS5, very powerful
little utility by the way, very, very useful.
| | 05:39 | We'll be talking about it at the end of this
course in the final chapter of this course.
| | 05:44 | But in the meantime, either the Camera
or Camera RAW are going to automatically
| | 05:49 | elevate the Midtones inside the image
in order to make the image brighter, so
| | 05:53 | that it looks the way
that we perceive the scene.
| | 05:56 | In doing so, the Camera or Camera RAW
ends up compressing the heck out of the
| | 06:00 | highlight information.
| | 06:01 | So it takes all this wealth of
luminance information and turns it into
| | 06:06 | highlight data, which means that you have more
than enough information to cover those highlights.
| | 06:11 | So it's unlikely that you're going to
see much in the way of luminance noise
| | 06:14 | in the highlights, but it has to stretch out
the data that's associated with the shadows.
| | 06:20 | And as a result of extending that
luminance information, you end up
| | 06:23 | revealing luminance noise. All right!
| | 06:25 | So that's where you want
to look, inside your images.
| | 06:28 | If you're worried about noise, which well,
you should be, you should look in those shadows.
| | 06:33 | Also, by the way, the shadows have a
tendency to turn the wrong color sometimes.
| | 06:39 | This is a less common problem,
but it still does happen.
| | 06:42 | So notice down here in this green stuff,
that the butterfly is standing on, that
| | 06:46 | we have these warmer shadows.
| | 06:49 | Then inside of the butterfly, we end up
having these very cool shadows, that are
| | 06:54 | trending toward blue or even violent.
| | 06:56 | Again, a very common problem.
| | 06:58 | This is also a common problem
with scanning photographs by the way.
| | 07:02 | So those are the issues that
we're going to be dealing with.
| | 07:06 | We're going to start things off using
a very powerful Noise Removal filter
| | 07:10 | inside of Photoshop.
| | 07:11 | It's available here under the Filter menu.
| | 07:13 | You go down to Noise and you choose
this guy right there, Reduce Noise, just as
| | 07:18 | we will do in the very next exercise.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Reducing color noise| 00:00 | The Reduce Noise Filter provides
separate options for getting rid of Color Noise
| | 00:04 | and luminance noise.
| | 00:05 | So it's very possible, depending on the
nature of your photograph, that you may
| | 00:10 | be able to mitigate the noise across
the entire photo in a single operation,
| | 00:15 | just one pass of Reduce Noise and that's it.
| | 00:18 | However, our noise problems are so
endemic, we've got Color Noise across the
| | 00:22 | entire image, we've got lots of
luminance noise, mostly relegated to the
| | 00:25 | shadows, we're going to have
to take a two-tiered approach.
| | 00:29 | So we're going to apply two passes of
Reduce Noise, which don't overlap each
| | 00:34 | other, as you'll see.
| | 00:35 | So everything is going to be hunky-dory.
| | 00:37 | You may find that this
two-tiered approach works for you as well.
| | 00:41 | I'm still looking at Long feelers.jpg,
found inside that 16_smooth folder, and
| | 00:45 | I'm viewing the image at the 100% view size.
| | 00:48 | Something I want you to notice is,
just look at how big that noise is.
| | 00:53 | Some of the noise details
are just pretty ginormous.
| | 00:56 | They really standout.
| | 00:57 | They're every bit as big in terms of
being mistaken for detail by a filter as
| | 01:05 | these little hairs on this
fellow's leg right there.
| | 01:08 | So in other words, we have some very
fine details that we need to protect inside
| | 01:12 | this image while getting rid
of some pretty big problems.
| | 01:17 | As you can see in this Final feelers.
jpg image, we managed to do just that.
| | 01:21 | So you can see that the noise is
smoothed away like crazy in the background here
| | 01:25 | and we still have every single one of
those hairs intact in the foreground.
| | 01:30 | In fact, they're stronger than ever.
| | 01:32 | So you can see that they have been
nicely sharpened, whereas they started life
| | 01:35 | out, this way right here. All right!
| | 01:37 | So how do we achieve such miraculous results?
| | 01:41 | Well, the first thing I'm going to have you
do is jump the image to protect the original.
| | 01:45 | So press Ctrl+Alt+J or Command+Option+J
on the Mac in order to bring up the
| | 01:50 | New layer dialog-box.
| | 01:51 | Let's call this Color Noise, because
we're going to get rid of the Color
| | 01:54 | Noise on this layer.
| | 01:56 | Click OK, and that's just a
duplicate of the Background there.
| | 01:59 | Now go up to the Filter menu,
choose Noise, and choose Reduce Noise.
| | 02:04 | Notice I've given you a keyboard
shortcut, if you loaded dekeKeys, of Shift+F9.
| | 02:09 | The Reduce Noise dialog box is a lot
like Smart Sharpen, that is, it has the big
| | 02:14 | whopping preview inside of it.
| | 02:16 | It also offers you the
option of saving your settings.
| | 02:18 | Now, it has the exact same drawbacks
and features by the way as Smart Sharpen.
| | 02:24 | So the preview has the same
problems associated with it.
| | 02:28 | When saving settings, you really have
to be careful about how you approach it.
| | 02:31 | So I'm going to suggest that we save
every single modification as a new setting,
| | 02:37 | because we do want to preserve our
defaults right here, even though I have yet
| | 02:41 | to ever apply these default
settings to one of my photographs.
| | 02:44 | I just actually don't find this
particular group of settings to be very useful.
| | 02:48 | But let me explain what's going on here.
| | 02:49 | Strength removes luminance noise.
| | 02:52 | So this first guy, even though he's not
called reduce luminance noise, he should
| | 02:56 | be, because that's what he's doing.
| | 02:58 | Notice when I hover over the
option, it says Enter the strength for
| | 03:01 | reducing luminance noise.
| | 03:02 | That's totally what it does.
| | 03:04 | Higher values are going
to get rid of more noise.
| | 03:06 | Lower values are going to get rid of less noise.
| | 03:08 | Working against that option is Preserve Details.
| | 03:12 | So Preserve Details is
kind of a threshold function.
| | 03:15 | Remember threshold from
Unsharp Mask in the previous chapter.
| | 03:19 | Basically what its doing is it's
finding neighboring pixels that are
| | 03:23 | significantly different enough from each
other in order to not smooth them over.
| | 03:29 | So it protects pixels that are
sufficiently different from each other from
| | 03:33 | the Strength value.
| | 03:34 | Higher values are going to protect more pixels.
| | 03:36 | Lower values are going to protect fewer pixels.
| | 03:39 | Next, we have Reduce Color Noise,
which is going to get rid of the Color
| | 03:42 | Noise inside the image.
| | 03:43 | It's measured as a percentage.
| | 03:45 | I'm not really sure why Strength is
measured from 0 to 10 here and Reduce Noise
| | 03:51 | is measured as a percentage,
but that's the way it is.
| | 03:54 | Then we don't have anything to
counteract Reduce Color Noise.
| | 03:57 | We don't have a Color Details slider,
instead we've got Sharpen Details, which
| | 04:02 | takes the Preserve Details and then
turns around and sharpens them, but you
| | 04:07 | don't have a Radius value, and so
you don't really have any control.
| | 04:10 | So I'm going to make this pronouncement.
| | 04:13 | In my opinion, if you want my recommendation,
always shove this guy down to 0. I never use it.
| | 04:19 | The reason is, because later
you'll go back and apply your own custom
| | 04:23 | sharpening, so why sharpen on top of
previous sharpening, it just doesn't make
| | 04:28 | sense, and in my
experience it doesn't work well.
| | 04:30 | Finally, you have this
Remove JPEG Artifact check box.
| | 04:34 | If you're working with a heavily
compressed JPEG image, for example, you found
| | 04:39 | an image on the web and you are trying
to work it into a composition and it's a
| | 04:44 | public domain image, blah, blah, blah,
why then, you may make the image look
| | 04:49 | better by removing the
JPEG compression artifacts.
| | 04:51 | Don't expect it to completely get
rid of the compression artifacts.
| | 04:55 | That's fairly impossible.
| | 04:57 | It's just going to work in
a slightly different way.
| | 04:59 | It's going to apply the Strength value
in a different way, essentially in a more
| | 05:03 | geometric pattern to match
JPEG compression artifacts.
| | 05:06 | Anyway, that's not our
problem in the case of this image.
| | 05:09 | So here's what I recommend you do,
because for starters here, we just want to
| | 05:13 | attack the Color Noise.
| | 05:15 | So let's take the Strength value down to
0, because we don't want to do anything
| | 05:20 | to the luminance noise at this point.
| | 05:21 | That gets rid of Preserve Details
because there's nothing to preserve anymore.
| | 05:25 | I already moved Sharpen
Details down to 0%, as I always do.
| | 05:29 | Then I'm going to start pumping
up this Reduce Color Noise option.
| | 05:33 | Let's check out what's happening here
inside of the preview in the dialog box.
| | 05:37 | In fact, we may want to go ahead and
zoom a little bit farther in, so that we
| | 05:42 | can see that Color Noise in detail here.
| | 05:45 | Now, remember, where these previews
are concerned, when you click and hold,
| | 05:48 | you see the before version of the image, and
when you release, you see the actual preview.
| | 05:54 | So when I click and hold, I can see
the Color Noise, and I don't know if you
| | 05:56 | can make it out, but it's there across
that background, when I release, goes
| | 06:01 | away, at least at 83%.
| | 06:02 | I really have that value cranked high now.
| | 06:05 | And now I'll scroll over to
the inside of the insect's head.
| | 06:08 | Notice when I click and hold, I can see
tons of colors inside that compound eye.
| | 06:12 | When I release, the
colors are much more uniform.
| | 06:15 | We have some violets.
| | 06:17 | We have some lower saturation colors
here, some grays going on, little bit of
| | 06:22 | blue information, but that's about it.
| | 06:23 | Now, the thing you have to watch, it's
very tempting to just max this value out
| | 06:27 | and say, goodbye Color Noise, it's all
out of there, but if you go that high,
| | 06:32 | you're going to have a lot of
colors bleeding into each other.
| | 06:34 | So you're going to have these violets
bleeding out of the eye into what should
| | 06:38 | be neutral white areas.
| | 06:40 | Notice this color bleed that's
happening at the top of the insect's eye, over
| | 06:44 | here in its eyebrow.
| | 06:46 | I don't know what that thing is.
| | 06:47 | Anyway, I suggest we take this value
down, to taste of course, but where this
| | 06:54 | image was concerned, I
decided I wanted it at about 70%.
| | 06:57 | Now, before we go any farther, it's
very important that we save off our
| | 07:01 | settings, because otherwise we're
going to wipe out the default settings.
| | 07:04 | So I'll click on my trusty floppy disk.
| | 07:06 | I'll call this guy Color noise
70%, let's say, and click OK.
| | 07:11 | Then of course, after I get done
saving off the setting, that's not enough, I
| | 07:15 | need to choose it from the Settings
pop-up menu, like so, and then I'll go ahead
| | 07:20 | and click the OK button in
order to apply my modifications.
| | 07:24 | Now, just for the sake of demonstration
here, I'll go ahead and zoom in farther.
| | 07:28 | This is the original color
noisy version of the image.
| | 07:32 | Check out the inside of the eye.
| | 07:34 | Check out the background as well.
| | 07:36 | This is the low Color noise version
of the image, thanks to the specific
| | 07:40 | application of a single value
from the Reduce Noise dialog box.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Reducing luminance noise| 00:00 | I've gone ahead and saved my changes
as Color noise defeated.psd, so called
| | 00:05 | because we did manage to utterly and
completely defeat the color noise inside this image.
| | 00:10 | But we've still got lots of
luminance noise left over.
| | 00:13 | It's found inside the 16_smooth folder.
| | 00:16 | In this exercise, we're going to attack the
luminance noise globally across the entire image.
| | 00:21 | Then in the next exercise, we'll
relegate our modifications to just the shadows.
| | 00:26 | So, what I'd like you to do is make sure
the color noise layer is selected, then
| | 00:29 | press Ctrl+Alt+J or Command+Option+J on the Mac.
| | 00:32 | I'm going to call this
duplicate layer lum noise, like so.
| | 00:36 | Then I'll click OK.
| | 00:37 | Notice I am working from that color noise layer.
| | 00:39 | I'm just keeping the original image in the
background in case I want to refer to it later.
| | 00:43 | So don't duplicate the background image in
other words, duplicate color noise to build on it.
| | 00:48 | So now we've got a luminance noise layer,
the last filter we applied was Reduce Noise.
| | 00:54 | It should appear here at the
top of the Filter menu. It does.
| | 00:57 | So I can bring it back up by
pressing Ctrl+Alt+F if I want to, or
| | 01:01 | Command+Option+F on the Mac.
| | 01:03 | Then I'm going to reduce that Reduce
Color Noise value to 0 because we don't
| | 01:07 | want to reduce the color noise any further.
| | 01:10 | So we'll zero out that value.
| | 01:11 | Now I want to maximize the Strength
value in order to get rid of as much
| | 01:15 | luminance noise as possible.
| | 01:17 | Now, depending on your image, you may
find that a lower Strength value works for
| | 01:21 | you, but in the case of this image here,
we need the maximum strength possible.
| | 01:26 | Notice it does make a big difference.
| | 01:27 | This is before and this is after.
| | 01:30 | I'm going to go ahead and zoom-in, so that
we can see that up close and personal here.
| | 01:34 | Here's the indigenous
luminance noise inside the image.
| | 01:37 | As soon as I release,
this is what happens to it.
| | 01:40 | So we are smoothing over
those details quite nicely.
| | 01:42 | We do still have some noise
artifacts showing up here and there.
| | 01:47 | If that bothers us inside certain
details, there are ways to get around it.
| | 01:50 | I'll show you what those are.
| | 01:52 | But I'm going to go ahead and scroll
down just so I can check out some other
| | 01:55 | details inside the image.
| | 01:56 | Notice that we're doing a pretty darn
good job of smoothing away those problems.
| | 02:00 | The next step is to go ahead and
increase this Preserve Details option.
| | 02:06 | I recommend you do so very slowly.
| | 02:08 | You can press for example Shift+Up-arrow
in order to restore a lot of details
| | 02:13 | inside the image, and details by the way
are neighboring pixels that have pretty
| | 02:18 | darn different luminance
levels associated with them.
| | 02:21 | So where there is a lot of difference
in luminance levels between neighboring
| | 02:25 | pixels, you will no longer smooth them,
and where the neighboring pixels are
| | 02:30 | pretty similar to each other,
you will continue to smooth them.
| | 02:32 | Now if you take this value all the way
up, you're pretty much going to lose all
| | 02:37 | the smoothing you're
applying with the Strength value.
| | 02:39 | So I don't recommend you go
very high with Preserve Details.
| | 02:42 | In fact, I regard 10% as a very high
value because we're bringing out a lot
| | 02:47 | where this image is concerned.
| | 02:49 | I might even take it down a little bit.
| | 02:51 | If you're going to arrow down like I am,
I am just pressing the Down-arrow key,
| | 02:54 | not Shift, so I'm reducing
this value in 1% increments.
| | 02:59 | Just keep an eye on that preview there in
order to make sure you like what you see.
| | 03:03 | So once I get it down to about let's
say 7% where this image is concerned, I
| | 03:08 | might scroll around inside the image to
make sure that all the good details like
| | 03:12 | these fine hairs on the creatures
leg, make sure those are holding up.
| | 03:16 | But we really are just concerned with
the details inside the shadows, because
| | 03:22 | we're going to mask away the rest
of the effect in the next exercise.
| | 03:25 | Now of course, once you've done your thing,
you'll think all right, time to click OK.
| | 03:29 | Don't!
| | 03:30 | Because again, we've got the Settings,
you're going to wipe out those Settings.
| | 03:34 | They'll no longer be Color noise 70
%, if you click OK, they will now be
| | 03:38 | these settings here, because
Photoshop is constantly updating the settings
| | 03:42 | when you click on the OK button which is
madness in my opinion, but that's the way it works.
| | 03:46 | So you want to click on
the floppy disk once again.
| | 03:49 | This time, I'm going to go ahead and
call these guys, let's say Lum noise for
| | 03:54 | example and I'll say 10/7%
like so and then I'll click OK.
| | 04:01 | Then of course I will choose those
settings from the Settings pop-up menu.
| | 04:05 | Then I will click on the OK
button in order to apply the filter.
| | 04:10 | Just to give you a sense of what we
were able to do in that step, I'll zoom-in
| | 04:14 | once again on this gargantuan scary
butterfly and then Alt+Click or Option+Click
| | 04:20 | on the eyeball in front of Background.
| | 04:21 | This is the original version of the image.
| | 04:23 | This is the image with the color noise
removed and finally, this is the image
| | 04:28 | without the luminance noise;
| | 04:30 | still needs to be massed however so
that we don't lose any of the good
| | 04:33 | detail inside the image.
| | 04:34 | For example, right now these little
light hairs, or whatever they are, bristles
| | 04:39 | next to the creature's eyeball,
they're kind of going away on us.
| | 04:43 | So this is the way those
bristles look before which is good.
| | 04:46 | We've got a lot of detail in
there and this is how they look now.
| | 04:49 | Thanks to the
eradication of the luminance noise.
| | 04:52 | We have to do something to restore those
details, and that something is going to
| | 04:55 | be a layer mask which we'll
create in the next exercise.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Relegating an effect to the shadows| 00:00 | In this exercise, we're going to
create a layer mask that relegates our
| | 00:03 | modifications to adjust the shadow
details inside the image, protects the
| | 00:07 | highlights and we're going to do so
using what's known as a Density Mask.
| | 00:11 | Now, first it's going to seem like a
fairly subtle modification, but over time
| | 00:15 | it will make a big difference.
| | 00:16 | I've saved my changes as Luminance noise
squished.psd found inside the 12_smooth folder.
| | 00:22 | I want you to make sure that the lum
noise layer is active and then we're going
| | 00:26 | to switchover to the Channels panel
and I want you to check out the various
| | 00:30 | color channels that are available to you.
| | 00:32 | This is the Red channel inside the
image, this one right here is the Green
| | 00:36 | channel and finally, we have the Blue
channel all of which are standard inside
| | 00:40 | of an RGB photograph.
| | 00:42 | Now, the think to bear in mind is that
we are seeing what amounts to masks if
| | 00:49 | you want to look at it that way.
| | 00:50 | Masks that reveal the highlights,
remember that white reveals and black conceals
| | 00:55 | so where the channels are concerned
we're revealing the highlights and we're
| | 00:59 | concealing the shadows.
| | 01:00 | And that's what's known as Luminance
Mask by the way you're just using the
| | 01:03 | natural luminance information
inside the image to mask an effect.
| | 01:08 | However, what we want is the opposite
of that we want to take one of these
| | 01:11 | channels and invert it so that we're
protecting the highlights with black
| | 01:15 | and we're revealing the shadows with white
and that's what's known as a Density Mask.
| | 01:19 | Now, you can select the channel that
you think is going to work best for you by
| | 01:23 | reviewing the various
channels and selecting one.
| | 01:26 | When in doubt the best channel is going
to be the Green channel because that's
| | 01:29 | your detail channel.
| | 01:31 | And the green channel is going to
work especially well, if you're editing a
| | 01:34 | landscape, or a still life,
or something along those lines.
| | 01:37 | The one exception is if you're editing
a portrait shot in which case, the Red
| | 01:42 | channel might end up serving you better,
but this guy is a cold-blooded animal
| | 01:47 | so red is not really all that useful
to us I'm going to stick with Green.
| | 01:51 | And in order to load Green as the
selection outline which is what we need to do,
| | 01:55 | you want to Ctrl+Click or Command+Click
on that thumbnail loads that Green
| | 02:00 | channel as the selection outline.
| | 02:02 | Then go ahead and click on RGB in order to
return to the full color composite image.
| | 02:07 | Go to the Layers panel make sure the
lum noise layer is active now, if you were
| | 02:12 | to dropdown here to the Add layer mask
icon and just click on it why then you
| | 02:17 | would create a luminance mask.
| | 02:19 | That is to say you would reveal the
highlights and you would conceal the shadows.
| | 02:23 | That's exactly the
opposite of what we want however.
| | 02:25 | So often times if you want to turn
things on their head inside Photoshop then
| | 02:30 | you press the Alt key or the Option key
and that's what we're going to do here.
| | 02:33 | So Alt+Click or Option+Click on this
layer mask thumbnail and you end up
| | 02:38 | creating an inverted version of that
selection outline and this is what it looks like.
| | 02:43 | I'll go ahead and Alt+Click or Option+Click
on that layer mask thumbnail and
| | 02:47 | what we're seeing is an inverted green
channel so we're revealing the shadows
| | 02:51 | and we're concealing the highlights.
| | 02:53 | Now, problem is we have a
variety of gray values going on here.
| | 02:57 | We don't have nice bright whites and
we don't have nice rich blacks, so we're
| | 03:02 | not really doing a great job of
concealing or revealing anything at this point;
| | 03:07 | which means we need to increase the
contrast, but before we do that I'm going to
| | 03:11 | suggest that we set things up so that
we can preview our changes both in the
| | 03:15 | layer mask and inside the composite image.
| | 03:19 | So I'm going to go up to the Window menu,
choose the Arrange command and choose
| | 03:22 | New Window for Luminance noise squished.psd
which creates a new window into this image.
| | 03:28 | Let's go ahead and zoom in on that
image so that we can see it at a 100% and
| | 03:33 | notice now we are seeing the full
color composite view of the image.
| | 03:36 | I'm going to go up here to the Arrange
icon in the application bar and I'm going
| | 03:40 | to switch to the two up display, like so.
| | 03:42 | And for some reason Photoshop has
his amazing habit of doing this of
| | 03:47 | switching the two windows with each
other, but anyway now we've the RGB
| | 03:50 | image, the RGB composite over here on
a left-hand side and we have the mask
| | 03:54 | over here on the right-hand side.
| | 03:56 | Fine by me and I really don't care,
but this way by having two views into the
| | 04:00 | image, we can keep track of what's
going on with the mask and the composite
| | 04:04 | image independently.
| | 04:05 | So now, what you want to do?
| | 04:07 | With the mask active very important here,
inside the Layers panel, go up to the
| | 04:11 | Image menu and then choose
Adjustments and choose Levels.
| | 04:14 | And we're applying a static command by
the way because we're working with the
| | 04:17 | mask and we're going to discussing
masks by the way and the all kinds of detail
| | 04:22 | in the mastery portion of the series,
but in the meantime you've got a work with
| | 04:25 | the static adjustment.
| | 04:27 | So choose Levels or press
Ctrl+L, Command+L on a Mac.
| | 04:30 | I'll move this guy over so
we can see what we're doing.
| | 04:32 | And what I need to do is protect more
of the highlights inside the image and
| | 04:38 | notice I do that by dragging my black
slider triangle over to the right, to
| | 04:42 | increase that black point value.
| | 04:44 | And at this point I'm saying because
my black point value is 163, I'm saying
| | 04:48 | anything that has the Luminance Level
of 163 or darker inside of the mask,
| | 04:52 | protects those highlights.
| | 04:54 | So we are protecting more and more
highlights inside of the image and
| | 04:58 | we're revealing those little whiskers for
example around the eye which are very important.
| | 05:03 | Now, I don't think you should go quite
that high, I'm going to suggest 150 as
| | 05:07 | being an ideal setting.
| | 05:08 | Now, then we're also protecting too
much of this compound eye here which means
| | 05:13 | that we're bringing noise back into
the eye which I don't want so, I want to
| | 05:18 | bring in more of the noise reduction.
| | 05:20 | And notice, when I do this just keep
an eye not only sort of look out of the
| | 05:24 | side of your eye what's happening here
inside the layer mask, but I really want
| | 05:28 | you to look at the butterflies eye
here in the composite view and see what
| | 05:32 | happens as I move this white
slider triangle over to the left.
| | 05:37 | And notice, that I'm revealing, it's
a fairly subtle manipulation, but I'm
| | 05:41 | revealing more and more noise reduction.
| | 05:44 | So when I say reveal, I'm actually
getting rid of noise inside of that eye.
| | 05:49 | Anyway, I suggest you to take this
white point value down to 200 works pretty
| | 05:54 | well for this effect.
| | 05:55 | And then go ahead and click the OK
button in order to apply these settings.
| | 05:59 | So 150 for the black point value 200,
for the white point value, leave gamma
| | 06:03 | alone, you don't need to mess with that.
| | 06:04 | Click OK in order to accept that
setting and then if you want to bring out more
| | 06:09 | of the noise reduction inside the eye
because we are protecting the eye to a
| | 06:13 | small extent right there.
| | 06:14 | Then you can select the eye
independently of the rest of the image.
| | 06:18 | And I'll show you how to do exactly that
using the Elliptical Marquee tool could
| | 06:22 | not be easier, but involves a
special trick in the next exercise.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Switching between layer and mask| 00:00 | In this exercise, I'm going to show you
how to select an eye using two or three
| | 00:03 | passes of the Elliptical Marquee tool.
| | 00:06 | And then we'll use this selection to
get rid of this protective junk that's
| | 00:09 | going on inside the insect's
eye here inside the layer mask.
| | 00:13 | And then having successfully protected
the highlights inside the image, we're
| | 00:17 | going to further reduce the Luminance
Noise because I don't think we've quite
| | 00:21 | got it down to where we want it yet.
| | 00:23 | I've saved my progress as Initial density
mask.psd found inside the 16_smooth folder.
| | 00:29 | And notice that I've got two
windows into the same image.
| | 00:32 | I'm going to make sure the RGB window is
active and then I'm going to switchover
| | 00:36 | to the Elliptical Marquee tool.
| | 00:38 | And the reason I'm working inside the
RGB image is because that's where I can
| | 00:42 | actually see the eye.
| | 00:44 | I can see where it begins.
| | 00:45 | I can see where it ends and so on.
| | 00:47 | All right, so I'm just dragging
with the Elliptical Marquee tool.
| | 00:50 | I'm pressing the Spacebar right now in
order to move it into a better position.
| | 00:54 | Now notice that the insect's eye is
not entirely round or elliptical, it
| | 00:59 | actually sort of cuts off as
it goes into the insect's face.
| | 01:03 | So it's somewhat round but then it
indents into its inter-skeleton and whatever
| | 01:08 | it's got going there,
I'm no biologist obviously.
| | 01:11 | Anyway, I'm going to go ahead and
draw our first ellipse like so, once I've
| | 01:16 | got that ellipse more or less in the
place on the left side of the visible
| | 01:20 | portion of the eye anyway.
| | 01:22 | Then I'll release, and I don't have to
get it exactly right along this side.
| | 01:26 | I could good work harder to do so if I
needed to, but you can see that this side
| | 01:30 | of the eye is just fine inside the layer mask.
| | 01:32 | Then I'll press the Shift and Alt keys
or Shift and Option keys on the Mac and
| | 01:36 | that allows me to create another
selection outline that will intersect with
| | 01:40 | one I've drawn so far.
| | 01:42 | So Shift+Alt+Drag or Shift+Option+Drag
like so, as soon as you've begun that new
| | 01:46 | elliptical marquee, you can go ahead
and release the Shift and Alt keys because
| | 01:49 | they've done their thing.
| | 01:51 | Now, I'm using the Spacebar here in
order to align this new marquee with the
| | 01:57 | right side of this eye and this looks
pretty good right about there and I'll go
| | 02:02 | ahead and release in order to
create the shape right there.
| | 02:07 | So basically, two passes of the
Ellipse tool, the second pass, I'll press the
| | 02:11 | Shift and Alt keys here on the PC, the
Shift and Option keys on the Mac and that
| | 02:15 | gives me the intersection
of two different shapes.
| | 02:17 | And you can imagine that this would
work just as well for any eye regardless of
| | 02:22 | the animal including human beings, by
the way you can select eyes this way as
| | 02:26 | well with a great deal of success.
| | 02:27 | All right, now I'm going to go up to
the Select menu, choose the Modify command
| | 02:31 | and choose Smooth in order to smooth
away the corners and a Sample Radius of 4
| | 02:36 | pixels works out well for this I'll click OK.
| | 02:39 | And then I'm going to go back to the
Select menu, choose Modify and this time
| | 02:44 | choose the Feather command and having a
Feather Radius of 1 pixel is just fine.
| | 02:48 | I'll go ahead and click OK.
| | 02:49 | I just need a little bit of feathering.
| | 02:51 | Now, you may look at this and
say hey Deke, here's the problem?
| | 02:54 | You're selecting the RGB image;
| | 02:56 | you want to modify the layer mask
how are you going to get this selection
| | 03:00 | outlined over to the layer mask.
| | 03:01 | Well it's already there.
| | 03:03 | Bear in mind that we have two
windows into the exact same image.
| | 03:06 | All I have to do is click in the other
window there is the selection outline
| | 03:10 | because it actually exists inside the
image regardless of how we look at it.
| | 03:15 | So there is that selection outline,
all I need to do now is make sure that my
| | 03:20 | background color is white which it is.
| | 03:22 | And then I'll press the Backspace key
and of course the layer mask is active.
| | 03:26 | You can see that here inside Layers
panel, and so that goes ahead and fills the
| | 03:30 | selected portion of the layer mask with white.
| | 03:33 | All right, now that isn't going to make
the most terrific amount of difference
| | 03:37 | to the composite image.
| | 03:38 | This is before, I went ahead and
selected it and filled the eye with white, and
| | 03:43 | this is after, very little difference at all.
| | 03:46 | However, it's going to make a bigger
difference where our future edits are concerned.
| | 03:51 | For example, let's say I'm going to
go ahead and click off that selection
| | 03:55 | outline, return to the RGB image,
actually go ahead and click in the thumbnail
| | 04:01 | for the butterfly on this lum noise
layer there in the Layers panel, so that I'm
| | 04:06 | editing the image as opposed to the layer mask.
| | 04:08 | Let's say I look at this and I think,
you know what, I've still got an awful lot
| | 04:12 | of luminance noise going on inside
the shadow details and by the way I
| | 04:16 | Shift+Spacebar+Drag in order to go
ahead and scroll both of my images at once.
| | 04:22 | I might want to still get rid of those,
after all my highlights are protected so
| | 04:26 | I'm going to harm them. What might I do?
| | 04:28 | Well I could go ahead and apply a second
pass of the Reduce Noise Filter if I wanted to.
| | 04:33 | However, I want to show you some other
ways to get rid of noise inside a Photoshop.
| | 04:37 | So I'll dropdown here to the Noise
submenu once again, and I'll choose this
| | 04:40 | command, another one of my favorites.
| | 04:42 | It's called Median.
| | 04:43 | It's got a keyboard shortcut
Shift+F8, if you load a dekeKeys.
| | 04:47 | And what it does is it goes ahead and
averages the colors of neighboring pixels.
| | 04:52 | So in this case, I'm averaging inside
of a Radius of 6 pixels at a time which
| | 04:57 | grows to a diameter of 12 pixels incidentally.
| | 05:00 | So we're averaging lots of pixels at
once by default this value is set to 1
| | 05:06 | pixel incidentally, but I want to
raise it to 6, if you're following along.
| | 05:09 | Now, something I want you to notice
is that really does wipe out the noise
| | 05:14 | inside the image like crazy, but it also
wipes out detail and it's affecting the
| | 05:19 | layer mask just as it's affecting the
RGB composite image which is really weird
| | 05:24 | because the RGB image is selected,
the layer mask is not so, why is Median
| | 05:29 | affecting both at the same time?
| | 05:31 | Well, because the two are linked
together because of that chain icon Median is
| | 05:37 | going to affect both.
| | 05:38 | And that's not true for all the filters,
I should tell you, it's a little bit
| | 05:43 | weird, but basically your big filters
like Unsharp Mask, and Gaussian Blur and
| | 05:47 | Median and all the old-school
filters, that's how they work.
| | 05:50 | They'll go ahead and attack the image
and the layer mask at the same time, if
| | 05:54 | they're linked together.
| | 05:55 | It's something you got to watch out for.
| | 05:57 | However, other filters don't, but my
advice to you is to make sure if you're
| | 06:02 | going to filter an image or a mask
for that matter, after having created
| | 06:07 | layer mask, make sure that two are not linked
to each other before embarking on the filter.
| | 06:11 | Anyway, that said I do want you to
notice that the Median filter here is wiping
| | 06:16 | out all sorts of
information inside of the image.
| | 06:20 | So we are masking those highlights so
they're preserved, but those shadows are
| | 06:25 | getting gummed up as heck.
| | 06:26 | There is another filter.
| | 06:28 | It's very similar to Median, that's
going to work better for our purposes.
| | 06:31 | It's actually Median with one
extra option, that's all it is.
| | 06:35 | And we're going to take advantage of it here.
| | 06:37 | So go ahead and Cancel out of this
dialog box and then I want you to go over to
| | 06:41 | Layers panel, click on the Chain icon
in order to unlink the image from it's
| | 06:46 | layer mask, don't move him because now
they would move independently of each
| | 06:50 | other we don't want that to happen.
| | 06:52 | However, we can also filter them
independently of each other just as we will do
| | 06:57 | in the very next exercise.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| The Dust & Scratches filter| 00:00 | I've saved my changes as Unlinked mask.psd
found inside the 16_smooth folder, so
| | 00:05 | called by the way because I have
unlinked my layer mask from my layer.
| | 00:08 | I've set up two independent
windows into the same image;
| | 00:12 | in one window I am seeing the RGB
Composite view, in the other window I am
| | 00:15 | seeing the contents of the layer mask.
| | 00:18 | In this exercise we're going to
further quelch the noise inside the shadow
| | 00:22 | region using a Filter that's very
closely related to the Median Filter;
| | 00:26 | the one that we saw in the previous
exercise and to get to it, go to the Filter
| | 00:30 | menu, choose Noise, and then choose
this guy right there Dust & Scratches.
| | 00:35 | Now, the thing you need to know
about Dust & Scratches it's an old-school
| | 00:38 | filter, been around for a long time,
almost as old as Median upon which it's
| | 00:43 | based and it fixes neither dust nor scratches.
| | 00:47 | In fact, it's the most badly named
filter ever because if anything it leaves
| | 00:52 | dust and scratches behind, it
allows you to average away the biggest
| | 00:57 | aberrations inside of an image;
| | 00:58 | so the biggest luminance
differences while leaving the small
| | 01:02 | luminance differences alone.
| | 01:03 | So in other words, we're going to
get rid of the big noise, and leave the
| | 01:07 | little noise in tact.
| | 01:08 | Go ahead and choose the command.
| | 01:10 | Now by default, it's I
believe set to a Radius of 1 pixel.
| | 01:14 | I want you to take it up to a Radius
of 6 pixels, and you will get that exact
| | 01:18 | same effect we saw in the previous
exercise with the exception of modifying the
| | 01:24 | layer mask this time around,
because we've unlinked the two.
| | 01:27 | We're just changing the RGB composite image.
| | 01:30 | But notice that we are averaging
the pixels like crazy at this point.
| | 01:34 | So the big difference where Dust &
Scratches is concerned, it's exactly like the
| | 01:38 | Median Filter, Radius behaves just like
Radius inside Median, and as long as you
| | 01:43 | have Threshold set to 0 you
get the exact same effect.
| | 01:45 | But you do have this Threshold option
and it works the opposite of the way the
| | 01:50 | Threshold option inside the Un-sharp
Mask dialog box works if you remember that
| | 01:54 | from the previous chapter.
| | 01:56 | In this case, if I raise let's say
this value to 6 levels, I'm saying, if two
| | 02:01 | neighboring pixels are less than 6
luminance levels different from each other,
| | 02:05 | then don't change them.
| | 02:06 | If they're 6 or more luminance levels
different from each other, then do change them.
| | 02:12 | So in other words, it's going to
change the big stuff and leave the little
| | 02:16 | differences behind, which results
in a kind of natural level of noise.
| | 02:22 | So it's really great by the way for
smoothing over imperfections inside of an
| | 02:27 | image, and leaving the natural
photographic noise behind, and where this noise
| | 02:33 | is concerned, this big, huge, chunky
luminance noise that we have inside the
| | 02:36 | image, Dust & Scratches works well.
| | 02:39 | Now it goes too far, but we
can always back things off.
| | 02:42 | So I'm recommending 6 for Radius, 6 for
Threshold, so 6 and 6, click OK in order
| | 02:47 | to apply the effect, then to back it
off a little bit, go up to the Edit menu
| | 02:52 | and choose Fade Dust & Scratches or
press Ctrl+Shift+F, Command+Shift+F on the
| | 02:57 | Mac, and I just want you to
take the Opacity level down to 50%.
| | 03:01 | So we're getting a 50% blend of the
image before we applied Dust & Scratches
| | 03:06 | along with 50% of the image after
we applied the filter. All right!
| | 03:10 | Go ahead and click OK in order to
complete the effect, and now I want you to see
| | 03:15 | the big contribution that's being made
by this layer mask here before it was a
| | 03:19 | little hard to tell, before we
had applied Dust & Scratches.
| | 03:22 | Now you can see the difference.
| | 03:24 | But I am going to go ahead and zoom-in
on the image so that we see it up
| | 03:28 | close and personal.
| | 03:29 | We actually don't need this layer mask
thumbnail anymore, so I am just going to
| | 03:32 | go ahead and close this window out.
| | 03:34 | Notice that Photoshop does not ask
me to save my changes because I still
| | 03:38 | have the file open here.
| | 03:40 | All right, in order to turn off layer mask in
Photoshop, you Shift+Click on the thumbnail.
| | 03:45 | So this is what the effect looks like
if we weren't relegating it to just the
| | 03:51 | shadows, we would be applying the effect
that is to say the Noise Reduction, the
| | 03:56 | Luminance Noise Reduction, and Dust &
Scratches heaped on top of each other here
| | 04:01 | across the entire image that's
going to gum up the works significantly.
| | 04:06 | We're not only getting rid of much of
the noise, notice not all of the noise,
| | 04:10 | some of the noise is hanging on
because we did rule out 6 luminance levels of
| | 04:15 | noise there inside of the Dust &
Scratches filter, so some still remains.
| | 04:19 | However, we've done quite the
number on the actual details inside
| | 04:25 | the butterfly's face.
| | 04:26 | It looks like he has a soft serve ice
cream cone mounted to the front of his
| | 04:29 | face, whereas if you Shift+Click on
the layer mask thumbnail once again in
| | 04:33 | order to re-apply that layer mask,
then we have something more closely
| | 04:38 | resembling white bug fur or whatever
that is, and so we've got that good
| | 04:43 | highlight detail protected.
| | 04:45 | So it does make a big contribution to
the quality of this overall composition.
| | 04:50 | In the next exercise, we're going to
rein in some of these intensely saturated
| | 04:54 | colors here in the shadows.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adjusting shadow saturation| 00:00 | I have saved my progress as Saturated
shadows.psd found inside the 16_smooth folder.
| | 00:05 | In this exercise, we are going to take
some of that saturation out of those shadows.
| | 00:11 | We're quite zoomed-in on the image right now.
| | 00:12 | Notice that we have some very purplish
details in the head and inside of those
| | 00:19 | compound eyes where the butterfly is
concerned and then we have these strange
| | 00:23 | warmish colors down below here at the
bottom of the Image window and I'd like to
| | 00:28 | neutralize those colors to a certain
extent without harming the bright vivid
| | 00:33 | colors that we want to keep because
this is naturally a very colorful creature.
| | 00:38 | So here's what we're going to do.
| | 00:40 | We're going to start things off by
making sure that we're working on that top
| | 00:43 | layer and I'll go ahead and widen the
Layers panel just a bit so that we can
| | 00:47 | see that name, and I want that lum
noise layer to be active so that we can
| | 00:51 | constrain the effects of this next
adjustment layer to just that layer and
| | 00:57 | nothing more and this new adjustment
layer will also be bound by the same layer
| | 01:01 | mask and here is how it works.
| | 01:03 | Go ahead and bring up the Adjustments panel
which I can access from my column of icons.
| | 01:08 | You might need to go to the Window menu
and choose the Adjustments command or if
| | 01:11 | you've loaded dekeKeys, you can press F10.
| | 01:14 | The next thing I am going to do is Alt+Click
or Option+Click on this Vibrance
| | 01:20 | icon which is the first icon in the
second row, and by virtue of the fact I
| | 01:24 | Alt+Clicked or Option+Clicked on the icon.
| | 01:26 | I bring up the New layer dialog box.
| | 01:28 | I will go ahead and call this guy
shadows down because I am going to bring down
| | 01:33 | the saturation levels of the shadows and
I am also going to turn on Use Previous
| | 01:37 | layer to Create Clipping Mask, that way,
I'll relegate my modifications to the
| | 01:41 | Luminance Noise layer and nothing more,
because I don't want to affect all of
| | 01:45 | the other colors inside the image.
| | 01:47 | Click OK, and now I am going
to reduce that Vibrance value.
| | 01:51 | Now you can reduce the Saturation
value if you want to, you'll get a bigger
| | 01:56 | effect out of it essentially.
| | 01:58 | However, where this image is
concerned I think Vibrance works really well,
| | 02:01 | because it's something of an equal
opportunity, Saturation modifier meaning
| | 02:06 | that it's going to reduce the
saturation levels and keeping with how high they
| | 02:10 | are in the first place.
| | 02:11 | So if we're working with very intense
saturation levels, it'll reduce them more
| | 02:16 | than lower levels, and that way we keep
the colors that probably or naturally it
| | 02:21 | work inside of this scene.
| | 02:23 | All right, so -50 for Vibrance, 0
for Saturation, go ahead and close that
| | 02:28 | Adjustments panel for now.
| | 02:29 | Now, that does end up affecting if I
zoom out here, and sort of scroll the Image
| | 02:35 | window a little bit.
| | 02:36 | You can see that this option where I
had to turn it off, and then turn it back
| | 02:41 | on, it is affecting more than just the
purple head and the eye and those warm
| | 02:47 | colors down here in this
rock thing whatever it is.
| | 02:50 | We're also affecting the
colors inside of the wings.
| | 02:53 | So again, this is what the wings looked
like before, they were more saturated,
| | 02:58 | and this is what they look like now,
and that's because some of these reds and
| | 03:02 | blues fall inside the shadow range
I've defined using this layer mask.
| | 03:06 | So my suggestion is to go down here to
color noise to this layer, click on it,
| | 03:11 | and to add another Vibrance Adjustment layer.
| | 03:15 | So I will bring up my Adjustments panel
and I will Alt+Click or Option+Click on
| | 03:19 | the Vibrance icon right there, and
I'll call this guy highlights up because
| | 03:24 | after all we're trying to make sure
that the highlights and the midtones for
| | 03:28 | that matter have elevated saturation
levels in order to compensate for the
| | 03:32 | shadows down layer there.
| | 03:34 | I don't need to turn on Use Previous
layer to Create Clipping Mask, because I'm
| | 03:38 | affecting the composite view of
the image from this point downward.
| | 03:41 | So I will click OK, and now I'll
change the Vibrance value to 50.
| | 03:45 | So just the positive version of the negative
value I applied a moment ago, and that's it.
| | 03:51 | Again, if you want to mess around
with the Saturation value, you can;
| | 03:54 | this is all I am going to do.
| | 03:56 | Go ahead and close that Adjustments
panel and just to give you a sense of what
| | 03:59 | we've accomplished in this exercise, I
am going to zoom-in a little bit, so that
| | 04:03 | we can see, there are
fairly wide range of colors here.
| | 04:06 | If I press the F12 key in order to
revert the image, these are the saturation
| | 04:11 | levels we started with.
| | 04:12 | So we have some very obvious purple
colors going on inside the shadows in the
| | 04:17 | bug's head, and these oranges down here
in this rock thing, as well as some good
| | 04:22 | colors inside the wing and then if I
press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z on a Mac, we
| | 04:26 | still have some decent wing colors.
| | 04:28 | They went down in saturation just a
little bit there inside those reds for example.
| | 04:33 | However, we've done a great job of
depleting the saturation levels inside of
| | 04:38 | the bug's head and down here inside of this
green sort of ground cover whatever it is.
| | 04:44 | Now, I haven't completely neutralized
the colors and I'm not sure that I want to
| | 04:48 | and I say am not sure because I don't
have the butterfly in front of me and I'm
| | 04:52 | not enough of an expert at insects
to tell you whether or not this is its
| | 04:57 | natural coloring, so I don't
want to go monkeying with it.
| | 04:59 | I am going to assume for the moment
that he does have some degree of blue and
| | 05:03 | purple going on there.
| | 05:04 | It just wasn't as much as
we saw in the first place.
| | 05:08 | Other times you'll know if you have
purple shadows going on inside of someone's
| | 05:13 | flesh for example, that happens often
times or purple shadows mysteriously
| | 05:18 | appearing on the edges of trees, then
you know you're working with completely
| | 05:23 | the wrong colors in which case you
would create yourself a density mask, just
| | 05:27 | the same way we did a couple of
exercises ago, and then you would use something
| | 05:31 | like a Hue/Saturation adjustment
layer, not only to reduce the saturation
| | 05:36 | levels, but also to change your hue
values to match the original scene.
| | 05:40 | Anyway, by now you should have a sense
of how you approach shadows independently
| | 05:44 | of midtones and highlights inside of an image.
| | 05:46 | In the next exercise we're going to
see how this composition holds up to a
| | 05:50 | little bit of sharpening.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Combining High Pass with Lens Blur| 00:00 | In this exercise we're going to see how
our composition holds up to a little bit
| | 00:03 | of sharpening, because it's when you
sharpen the image, you really get a sense
| | 00:07 | of whether you got rid of all the noise or not.
| | 00:10 | We're going to apply our sharpening
to an independent layer, that way we
| | 00:13 |
|
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