IntroductionIntroduction| 00:00 | (music playing)
| | 00:04 | Hi, I'm John Derry, and welcome
to Transforming a Photograph into a
| | 00:08 | Painting with Photoshop CS6.
| | 00:11 | In this title, I'll show you how you
can utilize Photoshop to transform your
| | 00:15 | photos into expressive
hand-painted works of art.
| | 00:19 | We'll examine the vocabularies of
photography and painting, and learn how to
| | 00:24 | expressively interpret one into the other.
| | 00:27 | We'll take an in-depth look at my
brushes and techniques now incorporated into
| | 00:32 | CS6, and teach you how to apply them to
execute your own unique artistic vision.
| | 00:38 | In the first half of this title, we will
go through the process of preparing the
| | 00:42 | photo for interpretation.
| | 00:44 | Then, in the second half, we will
utilize my tool preset brushes and
| | 00:48 | expressively interpret our
prepared photo into a painted result.
| | 00:52 | If you've got a digital camera, from a
phone camera to a DSLR, you can take your
| | 00:57 | picture from digital
image to digital masterpiece.
| | 01:01 | Now, let's get started with
Transforming a Photograph into a Painting
| | 01:05 | with Photoshop CS6.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | If you're a Premium member of the
lynda.com online training library, you have
| | 00:05 | access to the exercise files
used throughout this title.
| | 00:08 | The exercise files are
broken down into chapters.
| | 00:11 | Any content associated with a chapter will
be found in the appropriate chapter folder.
| | 00:16 | If you're a Monthly member or Annual
member of lynda.com, you don't have
| | 00:20 | access to the exercise files, but you can
follow along from scratch with your own assets.
| | 00:26 | Let's get started with Transforming a
Photo into a Painting with Photoshop CS6.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Installing custom content| 00:00 | Before we get started, there's some
housekeeping we need to do, and what I
| | 00:04 | want to do is set up things so that what
you have on your screen are the same as mine.
| | 00:10 | We're going to install a Custom Workspace.
| | 00:12 | So, if you already have workspaces that
you work with, you won't be losing any
| | 00:16 | of your settings, you'll just be
adding a new workspace to your workspaces
| | 00:21 | that you already have and then we're
also going to install some other items
| | 00:25 | that match the course.
| | 00:27 | So, what we want to do, is go into
Exercise Files, and I'm just showing you this
| | 00:32 | because we're going to, in a moment,
be actually doing this within Photoshop.
| | 00:35 | So, from the Exercise Files, there's
Custom Content, and then there's this
| | 00:40 | Cloning Layers Extra Lynda edition.
| | 00:43 | That's the folder that we're
going to be targeting in Photoshop.
| | 00:46 | So, just so you know, that's where it is,
and this is the path you're gonna have
| | 00:51 | to follow to get to it.
| | 00:52 | So, let's go to Photoshop and we'll go to
the Edit menu and we go down to Presets here.
| | 00:57 | We're going to open the
Export/Import Presets dialog.
| | 01:01 | Here it is, and we want to
click on the Import Presets tab.
| | 01:06 | When that's highlighted, then the Select
Import Folder button shows up, so let's
| | 01:11 | click on that, and what we have to do
now then is go through and get to this
| | 01:17 | folder right here and we'll say Open.
| | 01:21 | So, these are the presets that we're
going to add, so we're going to say Add All
| | 01:25 | and let's say Import Presets, OK, OK.
| | 01:32 | Now, we need to quit Photoshop and then
open it back up for that to be present.
| | 01:37 | So, let's go ahead and quit Photoshop.
| | 01:39 | So now, we'll go down and reopen Photoshop.
| | 01:44 | Now, this is something that threw me
off and I want to let you know this.
| | 01:47 | If you don't see it here, it's because
it's actually up above and you have to
| | 01:51 | kind of scroll up to get to this,
and that can be a little confusing.
| | 01:55 | So, let's go ahead and do that.
| | 01:56 | Now, we've now set all of our content
up, and let's check swatches, and if we go
| | 02:02 | here, you'll be wanting to adjust to
and get to the Traditional Oil Colors, and
| | 02:07 | you'll find out more about those
later, but those are important.
| | 02:11 | We've also now got our settings.
| | 02:14 | This how I like to have things set up.
| | 02:15 | I will be referring to the Actions
Palette several times and here's our custom
| | 02:20 | actions that are now installed.
| | 02:23 | Within our Tool Presets, we also
have several sorted versions and I'll be
| | 02:29 | talking about those in the title as well.
| | 02:32 | So that's the custom
installation of the Photoshop extras.
| | 02:35 | In the next movie, I'm going to talk
about how to install the Wacom preferences
| | 02:40 | so that you have the correct settings
on your Wacom tablet to follow along.
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| Setting up Wacom express keys| 00:00 | In this movie and in the next two following
it, I'm going to go through customizing
| | 00:05 | the Wacom tablet, so that you have a
set of commands that are available to you
| | 00:10 | right on the control
surface of the Wacom tablet.
| | 00:13 | I'm going to break it down into three segments.
| | 00:15 | So we're first going to take a look at
the ExpressKeys customization, then we'll
| | 00:20 | take a look at the Touch Ring, and
finally I'll show you how I customize the
| | 00:25 | buttons on the barrel of the Wacom pen itself.
| | 00:27 | So, the first thing that we need to do
is to install the customized version of
| | 00:36 | the Wacom preferences, and if you go
into the Exercise Files folder, Custom
| | 00:42 | Content, you'll see right here I've
got some Customization for the Intous.
| | 00:48 | I've got it for both the Intous4 and
the Intous5, and you'll see there's a
| | 00:54 | left-handed and a
right-handed version for both of them.
| | 00:57 | Let's take my example, I'm left-handed.
| | 00:58 | So in my left hand, I'm typically
going to have the stylus and that leaves my
| | 01:03 | right hand available to use the control
surface, which means, for me, it needs to
| | 01:09 | be, it needs to be on the right side of
the tablet, and based on most people's
| | 01:14 | preferences, the right-handed world,
you're going to want that control surface over
| | 01:18 | on the left side, so that while
you're holding the pen in your right hand,
| | 01:23 | you'll have your left hand
available to access these commands.
| | 01:26 | So, basically just select the
preferences for your tablet, and which hand you
| | 01:33 | are, and I'm going to go ahead and do my
Intuos five left-handed here, so I'll
| | 01:38 | just double-click this, and this will
launch the Wacom on tablet utility, which
| | 01:45 | comes with your tablet.
| | 01:46 | So you'll have it on your system,
it's automatically installed.
| | 01:48 | And I'm going to go ahead and say
Replace, and it's done its job, so we can go
| | 01:54 | ahead and close this up.
| | 01:55 | And now let's go into Photoshop.
| | 01:58 | With our customized Wacom settings
installed now, we can access these custom
| | 02:03 | commands I've given you.
| | 02:04 | And I'm showing you now, the
ExpressKey heads-up display, and you'll see that
| | 02:10 | there's a set of commands available to us.
| | 02:13 | The first two I'm going to show you actually
relate to this Top button and the fourth button.
| | 02:21 | So if we kind of break this
down before we get too far.
| | 02:24 | This top set of buttons, the four
buttons you see here that I'm highlighting,
| | 02:29 | these are buttons that in one way or another
access and give you a way to get to Color controls.
| | 02:37 | In the next video, we'll look at the
next four, which involve Brush controls.
| | 02:41 | But in this movie, we're going to
concentrate right here, and the first two
| | 02:46 | buttons I'm going to show you actually
work in tandem with another, and what these
| | 02:50 | two buttons are going to give me is the ability
to call up the Photoshop Heads-up color display.
| | 02:56 | And you can do this with keyboard
commands in Photoshop, but it's a real handful.
| | 03:02 | On the Mac, for example, you have to
hold down the Control, Option, and Command
| | 03:05 | keys to bring it up, and then you need
to hold down the Space key at the same
| | 03:10 | time, when you want to switch between
the Hue Ring and the Saturation Value
| | 03:14 | square that we'll see here in a second.
| | 03:16 | I think it's a little bit easier to do
this, and typically I use my index finger
| | 03:22 | on the top key here, which is going to
bring up the Heads-up Color Display, and
| | 03:26 | then I use my thumb to access this
fourth button, which is the focus, and I'll
| | 03:31 | show you what I mean here, so let's go
over here, and I'm going to hold down
| | 03:35 | that top key, and it
immediately brings up our color picker.
| | 03:40 | Now one of the things that you can't
do with one finger is, if you want to
| | 03:45 | switch over to here,
| | 03:47 | I can, but you see what happens
is, I lose the focus over here.
| | 03:50 | Let's say I want to have a
certain shade or value in here.
| | 03:55 | I would prefer to keep that right where
it is, and then be able to go over here
| | 04:00 | and then change my hue.
| | 04:01 | But you can see what happens, as you
move between these, you have to literally
| | 04:05 | move this to jump over to here,
and that's what the other key does.
| | 04:10 | So the fourth key down, if I
press it, changes the focus now.
| | 04:14 | See how I can now move this without
this moving, and when I let up, I'm now
| | 04:19 | focusing in this square.
| | 04:21 | So let's say I want to get, you know, full
saturation value, I hold down now the fourth key.
| | 04:27 | That lets me switch over, and
then when I let up, I can select it.
| | 04:32 | So it takes a little bit of practice to
learn how to do this fluidly, so you can
| | 04:36 | move back and forth between the two,
because you've got to be pressing a key
| | 04:40 | and then un-pressing a key
to switch back and forth.
| | 04:42 | I know it took me a little while to get
used to it, but once you do, it's a very
| | 04:47 | good command for having color,
literally, at your fingertips.
| | 04:50 | So, those are the first two commands.
| | 04:52 | Let's look at this display again,
and the next one is for the standard
| | 04:58 | Adobe Color Picker.
| | 05:00 | So if we go over here, and I press down
the second key down, this brings up the
| | 05:05 | standard Adobe Color Picker.
| | 05:07 | So, some people are more comfortable
with this, and this is the way to get
| | 05:11 | one key-press access
to this Adobe Color Picker.
| | 05:15 | Now to dismiss this Color Picker, you
need to say either OK or Cancel in
| | 05:20 | order to get out of it.
| | 05:23 | The third command is for Sample One Color,
and I'm going to show you what this lets
| | 05:28 | me do, and to do this, I'm
going to put some color onto here.
| | 05:32 | So, let's just mix up a few colors.
| | 05:40 | Here's why I put this in here.
| | 05:41 | When you're in the mixer brush,
which many of these tools are in our tool
| | 05:45 | presets, when you press down on the
option key, what happens is you get this
| | 05:51 | little target, and what this is intended
for is to allow you to click down and then
| | 05:57 | when you draw, what you've done is
you've picked up multiple colors, which is
| | 06:02 | very useful for a lot of painting techniques.
| | 06:04 | But what if you just want a single
color when you're in the Mixer Brush?
| | 06:08 | The normal hold down the Option key
doesn't work, so what I've done with this
| | 06:14 | third key, Sample One Color,
| | 06:16 | when I press it, it switches
temporarily to the Eye Dropper.
| | 06:20 | So now I can press on a single key, I let that
up, and now I'm selecting with a single color.
| | 06:26 | So with this third key on the Wacom
tablet, this gives you the ability to sample
| | 06:33 | one color, as well as have the ability
to sample multiple colors, and I'll show
| | 06:38 | you in the third movie when we look at
the buttons on the barrel of the Wacom
| | 06:43 | pen, how we can even make this a little simpler.
| | 06:45 | But for now, the idea here is to show
you that this third button then gives us
| | 06:51 | the ability to sample one color.
| | 06:53 | So, we've gone ahead now, and
we've looked at these four top keys.
| | 06:57 | We're now going to focus on the four
bottom keys, and this is where you start to
| | 07:01 | get some control over the
behavior of the brush itself.
| | 07:06 | And I'm going to select a different
tool here, just to show you what's going
| | 07:10 | on with these tools.
| | 07:12 | When I'm painting, a lot of times I
will want to reload my brush, or clean it
| | 07:19 | off, for example, and that's what these keys do.
| | 07:22 | You can see the first two keys here are
to load the brush, and to clean the brush.
| | 07:27 | Now typically, if you wanted to do this
the long-handed way, you'd have to go up
| | 07:32 | to your Color Display in the Mixer
Brush property bar, and you can see here,
| | 07:38 | you've got Load Brush, and Clean Brush,
and so normally these controls are
| | 07:42 | stored here, but for all of these
controls I'm putting onto the Wacom tablet,
| | 07:46 | my intention is to minimize the amount
of interface time you have to take to go
| | 07:51 | up and select these items.
| | 07:53 | It interrupts your flow.
| | 07:55 | What I'm trying to do here is keep
our workflow fairly centered on the
| | 08:00 | screen, so not having to go up to
various parts of the interface makes the
| | 08:04 | workflow much more fluid.
| | 08:07 | So, if I'm painting here, and
let's say I pick up multiple colors.
| | 08:13 | And in some cases, I may run out
of paint, or I need to reload this.
| | 08:19 | Particularly, let's take
something like a dirty brush.
| | 08:23 | So, let's take the Flat Smeary Dirty brush,
and let's just take a look at what this does.
| | 08:28 | So let's say I'm coloring with a brush
that is blue, and I happen to go into
| | 08:33 | something like this yellow.
| | 08:35 | Because this is a dirty brush,
when I go over here, see how it's
| | 08:39 | contaminated that stroke.
| | 08:41 | Now, there's times when you want that,
but let's say you're painting with this
| | 08:45 | brush, and now, you don't want that to happen.
| | 08:47 | If I do Load Brush and click on that,
now I'm back to the original color
| | 08:52 | that was on my brush.
| | 08:54 | So, being able to reload the brush is
something you're going to want to do, depending
| | 08:59 | on how the style of the
current brush you're using is set up.
| | 09:03 | Also, I may want to clean the brush, and
when I clean the brush by clicking that
| | 09:08 | second button, you can see it over here,
| | 09:10 | see how there's no color on there anymore?
| | 09:12 | That's because I've cleaned it, so,
it's temporarily become a smeary brush,
| | 09:16 | but as soon as I pick it up and start
to paint again, it's back once again to
| | 09:21 | being that dirty brush.
| | 09:22 | So, the two commands of Load Brush and
Clean Brush are just shortcuts for being
| | 09:29 | able to temporarily alter
the behavior of your brushes.
| | 09:33 | Now, the other tool I'm going to show you
here, and it's going to take a layer here to
| | 09:37 | show you this, is a lot of times, when
I'm working with a tool, a lot of times
| | 09:42 | when I'm working with a brush.
| | 09:44 | In this case, I'll be painting, and I'm
on a layer, but I may find I want to not
| | 09:53 | only sample this red color on this
layer, and if I do right now, if I sample
| | 09:58 | with my multiple colors, what happens
is, see, what it did, it only picked up
| | 10:03 | the colors on this layer.
| | 10:06 | So we have to have some way to be able
to sample multiple layers, and as long as
| | 10:10 | you're in the Mixer Brush, right up
here there is a command, Sample All Layers.
| | 10:16 | But, once again, just like we were
looking at some of the commands earlier, to
| | 10:20 | switch to that means that I've got to
interrupt my flow, go up here, turn it on.
| | 10:24 | Now I can sample multiple layers, and
when I paint with it, you'll see that both
| | 10:28 | of those colors are in there.
| | 10:31 | However, and this isn't as bad as it
used to be, but when you have Sample All
| | 10:35 | Layers turned on, and your'e working on
a large, high resolution document, you
| | 10:40 | can find that Sample All Layers being on,
when you start painting with it, can
| | 10:45 | really slow down your brushes.
| | 10:47 | And so, you want a way to very
quickly turn this on and off, just to
| | 10:51 | temporarily turn it on, to sample
loadable colors, and then be able to
| | 10:55 | immediately turn it off.
| | 10:56 | And that's what this button does, right
here, the toggle SAL, which is short for
| | 11:01 | Sample All Colors, allows me to do that.
| | 11:04 | And if we watch up here, I'm going to
click it, see how it's off and on?
| | 11:08 | That's all happening now,
because I'm doing it from my button.
| | 11:12 | So normally, like I'm saying, I'd
probably want to just be not sampling all
| | 11:16 | layers when I'm painting on a multiple-
layer environment, but then if I want to be
| | 11:20 | able to quickly sample multiple layers
I would click that on, Sample Multiple
| | 11:27 | Colors, shut it off, and now I'm
painting with whatever colors I've picked up,
| | 11:32 | as long as I was temporarily
in my Sample All Colors mode.
| | 11:36 | So, once again, this is a quick way to
be able to enable and disable Sample All
| | 11:41 | Colors while you're working,
and stay within your workflow.
| | 11:45 | The final one we're going to
look at is Sharpen Erodible Tip.
| | 11:49 | And to show you that, I'm going
to switch over to the Dry Media.
| | 11:54 | So now I'm in the Dry Media Brushes,
and let's for example go to the Soft
| | 11:59 | Opaque, and what I want to show you, and
let's go ahead and I'll get rid of this
| | 12:04 | layer, and let's clean off the
background so we can see this.
| | 12:09 | So I'm going to go ahead and select a tool
here, and I'm also going to temporarily
| | 12:16 | turn on the Brush Heads-up Display.
| | 12:18 | So we'll go around here, and what I
want to show you is, when I use erodible
| | 12:24 | media, you can see what's
starting to happen in that display.
| | 12:30 | It's starting to wear away the
surface of the erodible media.
| | 12:36 | Which means, over time, the shape of
this is going to change, and that's one way
| | 12:40 | that this acts like a very traditional media.
| | 12:44 | The shape is changing over time, but
there's times where you're going to want
| | 12:48 | to quickly sharpen it.
| | 12:49 | And typically, we'd have to go, once again,
over here, and we can say Sharpen Tip.
| | 12:55 | However, if we go ahead and look at our
commands here, Sharpen Erodible Tip is here.
| | 13:01 | So, if I've been eroding this over time,
we can watch here, if I click on that,
| | 13:08 | it immediately returns it to its full size.
| | 13:12 | So, the Sharpen Erodible Tips is for use
in conjunction with any of the erodible
| | 13:17 | media that you may be working with.
| | 13:19 | So that covers the
ExpressKeys on the Wacom tablet.
| | 13:25 | In the next video, we're going to take a
look at the customizations that have been
| | 13:29 | added to the Wacom Touch Ring.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Setting Wacom touch ring preferences| 00:00 | In this video we're going to take a
look at the Wacom Touch Ring functions
| | 00:04 | that I've customized, and I'm going
to go ahead and click on my Touch Ring
| | 00:08 | here, so you can see this.
| | 00:10 | I've set it up so I've got
four different commands available.
| | 00:13 | And the first one here we'll
look at is Auto Scroll and Zoom.
| | 00:17 | So, this lets me Zoom in and out of my images.
| | 00:22 | So, that's a nice quick way to be
able to adjust the magnification of your
| | 00:27 | imagery as you're working on it.
| | 00:30 | The next one is Rotate, and I use
this one all the time, particularly when
| | 00:35 | you're having to draw certain angles,
for example, a horizontal, is not
| | 00:41 | necessarily an easy angle to draw on when you're
working, especially the way I have my tablet.
| | 00:46 | It's right in front of me and it
gets a little difficult to do this.
| | 00:50 | So, being able to rotate is just one
way that you can really get the maximum
| | 00:54 | angle on a particular
stroke that you want to make.
| | 00:57 | I will tell you, too, one thing,
sometimes it's a little dicey to get back to
| | 01:01 | zero on this, or to, you know,
the unrotated version of your image.
| | 01:06 | When you're in this, if you even have it
at some cockeyed angle, if you just hit
| | 01:10 | the Escape key, that will quickly
put it back in its normal orientation.
| | 01:16 | The next one we'll take a look at is
Brush Size, and you can see here how I'm
| | 01:20 | quickly addressing Brush Size.
| | 01:21 | So, once again, this is just
another shortcut that eliminates your hand
| | 01:25 | having to go up to the keyboard in order to
quickly make an adjustment to your Brush Size.
| | 01:31 | And then finally, we have Undo and
Redo History, and I find this to be very
| | 01:35 | useful, too, because one of the things
I like to provide myself is a safety net,
| | 01:41 | and knowing that I can quickly go back
and visualize what did that look like
| | 01:46 | before I made those changes,
| | 01:48 | this gives me a good way to be able to do it.
| | 01:51 | And depending on how you set your
number of Undos in the Preferences, you can
| | 01:57 | either just go back a few or very far.
| | 01:59 | So, it's up to you how you set
the number of Undos in Preferences.
| | 02:04 | So, that covers the Touch Ring.
| | 02:07 | In the next video, we'll take a look
at the buttons on the barrel of the
| | 02:12 | Wacom stylus.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Setting Wacom stylus preferences| 00:00 | In this segment, we're going to take
a look at the two buttons on the Wacom
| | 00:04 | Stylus, and I'll show you how I've
got these set up to give you a couple
| | 00:08 | functions that are close at hand.
| | 00:10 | And, the first one is the Forward button.
| | 00:13 | When I press on it, I've got it set so that I
can select multiple colors in the mixer brush.
| | 00:20 | So, if I click on it, as you're
seeing there, that calls up the Mixer
| | 00:23 | Brush Multi-Color target, and when
I click on that, I now have selected
| | 00:29 | multiple colors from there.
| | 00:31 | So, the reason I did this, it seems
like that button being so close to the tip
| | 00:36 | of the Stylus, it just made perfect
sense to me that this would be the place
| | 00:41 | where I would want to quickly address
switching the color out on the tip of that Stylus.
| | 00:46 | So that's just one way to
be able to quickly do that.
| | 00:51 | So that's the Forward button.
| | 00:52 | Now, another control we have, and it
actually has to do with the Wet command here.
| | 00:57 | When I click the Back button on
the pen once, and if you watch up here,
| | 01:02 | see how it just switched to 100%?
| | 01:05 | That temporarily switches the brush
behavior into being a smeary brush.
| | 01:08 | So now, it wants to still add color,
but it also wants to pick up and mix color
| | 01:14 | that it finds underneath of it.
| | 01:16 | Now, if I want to get out of that behavior, I
have to click the button twice in a row quickly.
| | 01:22 | So, I'll go one, two.
| | 01:23 | See how it went back to zero?
| | 01:25 | And now I'm back to my normal behavior.
| | 01:28 | And so, what this does it just gives
you a way to toggle between an opaque
| | 01:34 | brush, which is zero wetness, and then
clicking that rear button once, alters it
| | 01:41 | to a 100% smeary brush.
| | 01:44 | And then, clicking it twice in
succession puts it back to being an opaque brush.
| | 01:52 | So, these are just a couple of
behaviors that you have right at your fingertips,
| | 01:56 | literally, for adjusting
the behavior of your brush.
| | 02:00 | These last three movies have given you
an insight into how to take advantage of
| | 02:05 | all of the different
customizations you can do to a Wacom Tablet.
| | 02:10 | If for some reason you are unable to
take advantage of these custom settings,
| | 02:16 | you can also refer to this PDF that I'm
supplying you, and we'll take a look at this.
| | 02:22 | This gives you all of the same information
that I've just gone over in the last three movies.
| | 02:27 | But, this shows you what the commands
are, where I've added them, and just
| | 02:32 | basically explains to you in a
visual sense exactly what we've done.
| | 02:37 | So, you've also got this
Intuos mapping document.
| | 02:40 | Even though it's for the Intuous4
and CS5, all of the commands still apply.
| | 02:47 | So, if you are working in CS6, as
most of you should be since this is a CS6
| | 02:52 | title, or if you are working with an
Intuos5 tablet, then this is still
| | 02:59 | useful document for you to access.
| | 03:02 | So, the upshot of these three videos
is that I really encourage you to take
| | 03:06 | advantage of the customization feature
of the Wacom's control surface and barrel
| | 03:12 | buttons to get the most out of your
workflow so that you're not constantly
| | 03:17 | having to jump out of it and go
somewhere into the interface to make changes
| | 03:21 | that can easily be right at your fingertips.
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| Division of labor: Image prep and painting| 00:00 | I'm dividing this title into two
distinct phases, image preparation and
| | 00:05 | expressive interpretation.
| | 00:07 | I'm taking this approach because of
a significant difference between
| | 00:11 | traditional painting and the
workflow I'm teaching in this title.
| | 00:15 | In traditional painting, these
two interrelated functions are
| | 00:19 | simultaneously accomplished.
| | 00:21 | The artist is largely describing the
image content while at the same time,
| | 00:25 | expressing himself through the
manner in which he applies paint to the
| | 00:29 | canvas with a brush.
| | 00:31 | By contrast, with digital
expressive interpretation, the image content,
| | 00:36 | typically a photograph, is prepared as a
separate function apart from the brushstrokes.
| | 00:42 | Once the image content is
constructed according to the artist's wishes,
| | 00:46 | expressive brushwork is applied by
utilizing the prepared photo as the color palette.
| | 00:52 | In other words, the image flows through the
brush as the artist focuses on expressivity.
| | 00:58 | By separating the image content and
brushwork into two phases, the artist is
| | 01:03 | free to focus exclusively on each function.
| | 01:07 | This presents a workflow in which
image elements like color, composition,
| | 01:12 | and storytelling are initially
portrayed via a thoughtfully prepared image,
| | 01:17 | and then, personal emotional
expression is later communicated via
| | 01:21 | hand-wrought brushwork.
| | 01:23 | It's not my intention to somehow look
down my nose at traditional painting and
| | 01:27 | its associated techniques, quite the opposite.
| | 01:30 | Traditional painting techniques have a
long and storied history that continues
| | 01:34 | to be a viable method of image creation.
| | 01:37 | Thankfully, traditional
painting isn't going away anytime soon.
| | 01:41 | With the explosion of digital camera
technology, literally everybody now has a
| | 01:46 | convienent tool for capturing an
amazing sunset, dramatic street scene, or
| | 01:51 | compelling portrait.
| | 01:52 | A wide diversity of observations from
life are all potential subjects of the
| | 01:57 | easily transported camera.
| | 02:00 | It is my goal to provide a workflow
that begins with these captured moments and
| | 02:05 | interprets them into an expressive,
hand-rendered, digitally-painted result in
| | 02:10 | an environment that encourages
both experimentation and risk-taking.
| | 02:15 | Taking this a step further, the
final artwork can be inkjet printed with
| | 02:18 | archival inks on both canvas and paper.
| | 02:22 | The result is a physical object that,
like a traditional painting, becomes a
| | 02:26 | treasured embodiment of personal
emotion and expression, which to me, sounds
| | 02:31 | quite a bit like art.
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|
|
1. Photographic Reality vs. Expressive InterpretationVisual vocabularies| 00:00 | Throughout this title, I'm going to
be referring to visual vocabularies.
| | 00:04 | What do I mean by a visual vocabulary?
| | 00:07 | Each visual medium, sculpture, painting,
photography, and so on, has a set of
| | 00:12 | unique features that defines it.
| | 00:15 | For example, the medium of painting
has expressive brush strokes, canvas, and
| | 00:19 | paint texture, a simplified
representation of reality, and so on.
| | 00:24 | These visual elements are the
nouns and verbs that make up the visual
| | 00:28 | vocabulary of paint.
| | 00:30 | Likewise, photography has a unique
visual vocabulary that defines it.
| | 00:35 | Sharp focus, lens distortion,
depth of field and so on.
| | 00:39 | I'm going to use the notions of these
mediums' visual vocabularies to show you
| | 00:44 | how to translate one medium into another.
| | 00:47 | In effect, using Photoshop, you'll be
interpreting a photograph into a painting
| | 00:53 | using your own expressive voice.
| | 00:56 | Let's use these two examples for
comparison, to show you what I mean.
| | 01:00 | Both are of the same subject, a
classic turn-of-the-century mansion in the
| | 01:04 | Scottish Baronial style.
| | 01:06 | Let's start with the photograph and take a
look at some of the key vocabulary elements.
| | 01:11 | A wide-angle lens was
used to take this photograph.
| | 01:15 | As a result, the optics of the lens
severely distort the building, exhibiting a
| | 01:20 | lens artifact known as keystoning.
| | 01:22 | This is when the verticals of the
architecture are all oriented towards an
| | 01:26 | imaginary vanishing point
located some place up in the sky.
| | 01:31 | Now look what happens in
the distance, at the right.
| | 01:33 | The carriage house retreats
and there's little detail.
| | 01:36 | We can tell that the architectural style is
similar to the mansion, but not much more.
| | 01:41 | Looking closely at the photograph, we
can see that the camera records detail
| | 01:46 | in a continuous fashion, making no judgement
with regard to what is important in the scene.
| | 01:52 | Now, lets compare how the painting
handles detail and subject focus.
| | 01:56 | Like the photograph, the painting uses detail
to draw the attention of the viewer's eye.
| | 02:01 | However, unlike the photo,
the detail is not continuous.
| | 02:05 | Rather, it is indicated through a simplified
rendering of the scene via brush strokes.
| | 02:10 | Compared to the fine detail of the
photograph, the painting is not nearly as complex.
| | 02:15 | The artist has simplified the scene by
indicating with brush strokes which areas
| | 02:19 | have greater importance.
| | 02:21 | The artist has added new elements to
the scene: a tricycle, ball, a young child
| | 02:25 | in the upper turret window have been added.
| | 02:28 | These additional objects introduce a story-telling
element to the image. Who is this girl?
| | 02:34 | Why is she inside and not playing with her toys?
| | 02:36 | Is she being punished? Is she a ghost?
| | 02:39 | This is left up to the viewer's interpretation.
| | 02:42 | Both of these mediums portray the
same subject matter, yet how each renders
| | 02:46 | meaning to draw the attention of
the viewer's eye is very different.
| | 02:50 | The photographer has utilized the
camera's wide-angle lens to emphasize and
| | 02:54 | distort the perspective of the mansion,
giving it an imposing down-the-nose appearance.
| | 02:59 | The artist's painting has interpreted
the unflinching continuous focus and
| | 03:04 | distortion of the camera, and
rendered it to a simplification of form and
| | 03:08 | brushwork that indicates
a greater level of detail.
| | 03:12 | Unlike the photograph's perfect recording
of detail, the painting supplies enough
| | 03:16 | detail, like dots, for the
viewer's mind to connect.
| | 03:19 | It is this additional creative
playfulness that imbues the painting with the
| | 03:23 | expressive interpretation of the artist.
| | 03:26 | By understanding how each medium uses
it's vocabulary elements to create a
| | 03:31 | scene to be viewed, we can translate one
medium's vocabulary element into another's medium.
| | 03:37 | In this case, photography and painting.
| | 03:40 | As we go through this title, I'll
describe the various key vocabulary elements
| | 03:44 | of each, and show you how we can
translate a photograph into a painting.
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| The vocabulary of photography| 00:00 | Photography looks like photography,
because of its unique visual vocabulary.
| | 00:04 | We can dissect and isolate these
vocabulary elements to provide a consistent
| | 00:09 | framework for interpreting a photo
into a convincing painted result.
| | 00:14 | Failure to properly eradicate an
image's photographic language will result in a
| | 00:18 | painting that has references to both
vocabularies and weaken the final image.
| | 00:23 | Knowledge of both vocabularies is
essential for a satisfying result.
| | 00:27 | In this video, we'll examine the
visual vocabulary of photography.
| | 00:31 | Now, the first one I'm going to talk
about here is sharpness, sharp detail.
| | 00:37 | Particularly, if you come from a
photographic background, this is your gold
| | 00:41 | standard, your stock in trade.
| | 00:43 | Typically, you want to
portray detail in sharp focus.
| | 00:48 | That's why there's so many different lenses
for cameras, and good lenses, and bad lenses.
| | 00:52 | The better the lens, the better the focus,
and so a photographer typically works
| | 00:57 | very hard to get all of
this sharp focus in an image.
| | 01:02 | But the difference, and we'll talk
about this more when we talk about painting,
| | 01:05 | is not all about sharp focus.
| | 01:07 | So when I say sharp focus, what do I mean?
| | 01:10 | Another way to look at an image is in
terms of what they call frequency domain.
| | 01:16 | And in frequency domain, high
frequencies are detail, and that's where there are
| | 01:23 | rapid changes in contrast.
| | 01:25 | So wherever there's a light and a dark
close to one another, that is an area of
| | 01:30 | sharp focus, and that is high frequency detail.
| | 01:34 | In other areas of the image, and in this
image just to start off, we can use the sky.
| | 01:39 | There are not rapid changes in the
contrast of the image, and that is what's
| | 01:45 | called low frequency information, where
there are low amounts of change in the image.
| | 01:51 | And just to show this off, I've
created a sharpness map, and I just used some
| | 01:56 | filtering to do this, and let's zoom
up a little bit so you can see this.
| | 02:00 | I'm going to turn on this sharpness map,
and this shows you, these are the sharp
| | 02:05 | areas in this image, and this is
typically, you'll see it looks like a drawing,
| | 02:10 | because a drawing is, by itself, all
composed of high frequency information.
| | 02:15 | So, by filtering out everything except
the high frequency detail, you get what
| | 02:20 | essentially looks very much like a drawing.
| | 02:23 | And so, all of these areas are
the sharp focus within that image.
| | 02:28 | Anywhere where you're not
seeing anything is not sharp focus.
| | 02:33 | And so you can see that, basically,
what you would think of as a drawing is
| | 02:37 | largely the sharpness in an image.
| | 02:39 | So, that is what you want to largely get
rid of is all of this sharp detail, and
| | 02:46 | it's very hard, especially from a
photographer's perspective, to eliminate that
| | 02:50 | detail since they worked so hard to achieve it.
| | 02:53 | But that's one of the things you need
to understand, that sharpness is the
| | 02:56 | enemy of a painting.
| | 02:59 | Next we'll take a look at another element
of photography, and that is motion blur.
| | 03:05 | The camera captures a moment in time,
and depending on how long the aperture of
| | 03:11 | that lens is opened will determine
how much of a slice of time you capture.
| | 03:16 | So, image like this, where there
was motion within the image, it gets
| | 03:21 | captured because the lens was left
open long enough for the trains in this
| | 03:26 | scene to change position.
| | 03:28 | But then the people standing there, and the
columns in the subway don't change at all.
| | 03:33 | So in this case, the photographer's
taking advantage of contrasting motion
| | 03:39 | with static detail.
| | 03:41 | And it, so it gives an interesting
illusion of motion within the image, as well
| | 03:46 | as highlight the static parts of the image.
| | 03:48 | So, motion blur is
distinctly a photographic verb.
| | 03:52 | It's something that is part
of the language of photography.
| | 03:55 | You can paint in such a way to kind of
create the look of a blur, but then at
| | 04:00 | that point, you're borrowing from the
language of photography and applying it to painting.
| | 04:04 | And I'm not saying you can never do
that, but if you want to eliminate the
| | 04:08 | language of photography from an image,
so things like motion blur and even depth
| | 04:14 | of field are the items that you want
to eliminate from an image prior to
| | 04:19 | translating it into a painting.
| | 04:20 | And then we're just going to talk
about how a photograph looks, and why it
| | 04:25 | looks like it does.
| | 04:26 | And in this case, this is an
image straight out of the camera.
| | 04:30 | And so, the range of densities that we
see in it, even some of the colors are
| | 04:35 | photographic in nature.
| | 04:37 | Every sensor, just like film used to do,
has a certain bias of color within it.
| | 04:43 | And so, images from photographic devices,
will retain some of that color quality.
| | 04:50 | And so there's always a basic range of
color that is associated with a photograph.
| | 04:56 | Now, what I've done is I've taken this
same photograph, and used HDR, or High
| | 05:02 | Dynamic Range, allows you to stretch a
lot of what's going on in a photograph to
| | 05:06 | get much more out of it.
| | 05:08 | And so, here's that same image, and I'll
toggle it on and off, but look at the difference.
| | 05:13 | There is the way the camera sees it.
| | 05:15 | Playing with HDR, and this is
something we look at in the course here, is you
| | 05:19 | can use HDR to start to break out of that
photographic look that is common from cameras.
| | 05:27 | So you want to take advantage of
techniques, like we'll look at in the title
| | 05:32 | here, High Dynamic Range photography,
to be able to break away from strict
| | 05:38 | photographic color.
| | 05:39 | Now let's go a step further and take
a look at this image as a painting.
| | 05:44 | Here's another painting, I mentioned
Kathryn Stats earlier, here's Kathryn's
| | 05:47 | work, and similar subject matter.
| | 05:50 | We'll turn this on and off, this is
little out of a typical photograph, but it's
| | 05:54 | still photographic in nature.
| | 05:56 | When you look at a painting, it's what I
call indication, and we'll be looking a
| | 06:01 | great deal at indication.
| | 06:03 | An artist indicates, they
don't draw every leaf on a tree.
| | 06:08 | They don't draw every branch on that tree.
| | 06:11 | They don't draw every
pebble and rock in the scene.
| | 06:15 | They do it through an economy of
stroke, where very little amount of stroke
| | 06:20 | can say a lot, and part of being an
artist is learning how to indicate more
| | 06:26 | than is really there.
| | 06:28 | The human mind and brain and visual
system delights in connecting the dots.
| | 06:34 | It's like a puzzle, and one of the
things that creates interest in a painting is
| | 06:40 | when there's some of this connect-the-dots
aspect of the image built into it.
| | 06:45 | The brain will just engage, it wants to
connect the dots, it's just natural for
| | 06:49 | our visual systems to do this.
| | 06:51 | So by providing a painting that says
enough to distinguish it as a tree, but
| | 06:58 | not provide every leaf on that tree
provides the dots for the mind to connect
| | 07:04 | in order to see a tree in this image, even
though it's in fact, very, very, almost abstract.
| | 07:11 | So these are some of the elements of
photography, and we're next going to look
| | 07:16 | at some of the aspects of painting, and
the goal then is to, once you understand
| | 07:22 | these two vocabularies, what we are
going to be doing is essentially acting as
| | 07:26 | an interpreter between photography and
painting, and you are going to translate
| | 07:31 | expressively that language,
photography, into this new language, painting.
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| The vocabulary of painting| 00:00 | A painting is an object crafted by human hands.
| | 00:03 | Its visual vocabulary
reflects this hand-wrought sensibility.
| | 00:07 | Rather then machine-like percision,
painting reveals the hand of its maker via
| | 00:12 | small imperfections and accidents.
| | 00:14 | The viewer then senses a painting as
unique object rather then a reproduction.
| | 00:20 | By understanding the visual
elements that make up the vocabulary of a
| | 00:24 | painting, a photograph can act as a
source framework upon which to replace its
| | 00:28 | language with that of paint.
| | 00:30 | In this video, we'll take a
look at the vocabulary of painting.
| | 00:34 | Well, first and foremost, the granular
element that makes up painting is brush
| | 00:40 | strokes, or what I
sometimes refer to as brush work.
| | 00:43 | So it is this brush work that is the
assimilation of the image, and is what the
| | 00:48 | viewer senses and is able to read as
imagery when they look at the final work.
| | 00:54 | In this example this is a Van Gogh
painting, and if we zoom up on it, a bit,
| | 01:01 | you can see how his brush
work was very distinctive.
| | 01:05 | It's almost impossible to not
recognize a Van Gogh painting.
| | 01:09 | Even though this is one of his earlier
works, and not necessarily one that you
| | 01:13 | think of in his later period.
| | 01:15 | However, it's still the same
| | 01:17 | approach, and that is that it is done
with a very, what I call economy of stroke.
| | 01:23 | He doesn't over-elaborate through a lot of
application of strokes to define his imagery.
| | 01:28 | Here's an example.
| | 01:29 | I keep using this example of a
tree doesn't have every leaf in it.
| | 01:32 | Well, here's a tree in this scene, and
we certainly recognize it as a tree, but
| | 01:37 | if you really look at it close up, you
know, you don't even know what that is
| | 01:42 | when you get too close to it.
| | 01:43 | However, you can see how just by some
different dabs of paint applied in a sort of
| | 01:50 | mottled manner, he's able to give us
the impression of a tree so that when we
| | 01:55 | look at this in the overview of the
image, there is no doubting that that is a tree
| | 02:00 | within the scene, but up close you can
see how little is really there to define the
| | 02:04 | fact that that is a tree.
| | 02:06 | So brushwork is first and foremost the
component of painting that is basic to it.
| | 02:14 | Then we get into how a painting is
constructed, and the approach I use here
| | 02:20 | and is also used in traditional
painting, is you begin often with what's
| | 02:24 | called an under-painting.
| | 02:25 | And I'll give you an example of that.
| | 02:27 | This is an under-painting.
| | 02:28 | This is a version of the
image we're gonna be working on.
| | 02:31 | Now, we can tell this is a, a building
outside, but you don't know much beyond
| | 02:37 | that, and that's because, at
the stage of the under-painting,
| | 02:40 | you are basically describing the
compositional nature of the artwork.
| | 02:45 | So, at this point, it's really very flat.
| | 02:48 | There's not a real great attempt yet to
actually define 3-dimensionality within the work.
| | 02:54 | It's basically just dividing
up the planes of the canvas
| | 02:57 | into its major compositional components,
and once that's applied, the under-painting
| | 03:02 | then acts as a
framework that we build upon.
| | 03:06 | So the next step beyond the under-
painting is starting to apply the
| | 03:10 | intermediate detail.
| | 03:11 | What we're doing, essentially, is replacing the
photographic high detail with selective detail
| | 03:19 | that the artist applies
by slowly building this up.
| | 03:22 | So he starts from a very vague
representation, as we see with the oil painting,
| | 03:27 | and then it starts to proceed forward
to where more detail and more bits of the
| | 03:32 | imagery are added to it.
| | 03:34 | And this is a continuation of just
slowly, selectively returning detail to the
| | 03:41 | image, but rather than photographic,
| | 03:44 | precise detail, it's this selective
detail that the artist is just applying
| | 03:50 | within certain regions.
| | 03:51 | So once we get closer to the finished
version of this work, now enough detail
| | 03:56 | has been applied here that we
recognize the surface, that it's brickwork.
| | 03:59 | We recognize the countryside, that
there's some houses out there and some
| | 04:03 | fields with trees in them.
| | 04:05 | It's this continual refinement of
the image from this very base image,
| | 04:10 | up to finishing it with enough detail
that the eye recognizes it and reads it,
| | 04:16 | and the trick of applying this detail
is doing it in such a manner that it's in
| | 04:21 | this indicative way that I've described.
| | 04:23 | You are providing the dots so that
the viewer can put those together and
| | 04:29 | assemble it into a final image. And
the more you let the viewer connect those
| | 04:34 | dots, the more it engages the brain and
becomes a source of interest that leads
| | 04:39 | the viewer into the work.
| | 04:41 | So, being able to apply this
selective detail takes a little bit of time to
| | 04:45 | learn how to do without overdoing it,
but that's the key to really ending up
| | 04:49 | with a good painting is understanding
how to apply selective detail, to apply
| | 04:54 | just enough dots so that the user
has to connect the rest of them.
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| Looking at reality through a mental painting filter| 00:00 | When you're out shooting photos, an
essential skill to utilize is to look at the
| | 00:05 | world as if it were painted.
| | 00:07 | I call it my mental painting filter.
| | 00:10 | This skill goes hand in hand with
taking the time to look at and analyze
| | 00:14 | traditional painted imagery.
| | 00:16 | One of the best ways I can recommend
for improving your eye for painting is to
| | 00:20 | look at painting, lots of them.
| | 00:22 | Study the compositions, colors,
subject matter, brushstrokes, and the like.
| | 00:26 | A lot can be learned from simply
searching the web for examples of genres,
| | 00:31 | styles, and artists that interest you.
| | 00:33 | Some museums' online websites have
representations of paintings that can be
| | 00:37 | navigated in high resolution, and that lets
you get your nose up close and see the detail.
| | 00:43 | Later in this course, I'll show you
how to incorporate some of these physical
| | 00:47 | surface effects into your paintings.
| | 00:49 | This technique works especially well
when finished artwork will be viewed on
| | 00:54 | a display or the web.
| | 00:55 | Take note of how lighting
affects a painting's appearance.
| | 00:59 | Look at how physical paint
has a third dimension, depth.
| | 01:03 | Some artists exploit this via the
technique of impasto, which is intentionally
| | 01:07 | applied thick paint.
| | 01:09 | Observe how the painting
incorporates the canvas weave into a painting's
| | 01:13 | physical quality, as well as how thinly
applied paint allows canvas texture to be visible.
| | 01:20 | A traditional painting projects an
aura of physicality that is a part of
| | 01:24 | its perceived value.
| | 01:26 | Projecting some of these physical
qualities into a digital painting can intimate
| | 01:31 | some of this value into the artwork.
| | 01:33 | Another important observation is to
look at paintings both up close to examine
| | 01:38 | its physical characteristics, as
well as stepping back to see how these
| | 01:42 | characteristics' interpretation
change with distance.
| | 01:45 | For example, a few seemingly abstract
daubs of paint, viewed up close, can
| | 01:51 | become well-delineated
foliage with highlights and shadows.
| | 01:55 | This is something that
many digital painters ignore.
| | 01:58 | When painting, you must be aware of both close
and far interpretations of painted artwork.
| | 02:03 | Another very useful activity is to simply
play with your digital paint brushes.
| | 02:08 | You don't need a subject or goal in
mind, the idea is to explore the breadth
| | 02:12 | and variety of marks the brush is
capable of. Experiment with how different
| | 02:16 | colors mix and interact.
| | 02:19 | In essence, know your brushes,
they are the voice of your expression.
| | 02:23 | The more you study and absorb the
language of painting, the better your results
| | 02:28 | will be when interpreting a photograph.
| | 02:30 | Armed with this knowledge and experience,
you can effectively look through the
| | 02:34 | lens of a camera, with your mental
painting filter in place, and reactively
| | 02:38 | adjust how you choose to frame,
compose, and light your subject matter.
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|
|
2. Image Preparation: Working with the Source PhotographRemoving lens distortion with the Adaptive Wide Angle filter| 00:00 | Every lens distorts the scene
whose light passes through it.
| | 00:04 | Some more some less.
| | 00:06 | The fact of the matter is, that a
photograph does not record what we see but how
| | 00:10 | the lens optics bend the light
onto the plane of a camera sensor.
| | 00:14 | The Adaptive Wide Angle filter, also
known as AWA, provides a tool for massaging
| | 00:20 | various lens distortion effects out of an image.
| | 00:23 | In this video, we'll take a look at how
to take advantage of this useful tool.
| | 00:27 | To find Adaptive Wide Angle filter, go
to the Filter menu, and go down right
| | 00:31 | here to Adaptive Wide Angle.
| | 00:33 | This will open up its own dialogue that
is a little world we're going to work in
| | 00:37 | while we're in Adaptive Wide Angle.
| | 00:39 | I have it on auto and that's
generally where you want to put this.
| | 00:43 | What its doing is its actually using
from your camera, and you may wonder where
| | 00:48 | it gets that information?
| | 00:49 | Formats like JPEG, TIF, RAW, all encode some
of this camera specific data into the file.
| | 00:56 | If we look down here at the
lower left corner, you'll see it knew that
| | 01:00 | this was my Canon 5D.
| | 01:02 | It knows that its actually 17-40mm lens.
| | 01:06 | So, it has all the information about this lens,
and using that, it's applying it to this image.
| | 01:12 | So we're all, we've seeing some
distortion in there, but with a knowledge of what
| | 01:17 | the lens actually is doing to this
image, and these tools, we can massage these
| | 01:23 | errors out of the image.
| | 01:25 | And in the case of this image, I'm
approaching this whole project from a more of
| | 01:31 | what I call an illustrative point of view.
| | 01:34 | And by that, I mean, I am not going to
utilize the keystoning, as it's called,
| | 01:40 | where the lines of perspective in this
image, particularly the vertical lines of
| | 01:45 | perspective, all seem to have
a point off up in the sky somewhere.
| | 01:49 | I want all of those lines to be straight.
| | 01:52 | Much like an illustrator would draw this,
as we talked about in the language of
| | 01:56 | photography and painting earlier, I
mentioned that these are things that our eye
| | 02:01 | typically doesn't see.
| | 02:02 | As artists, we tend to remove these
errors out of the image and that's what
| | 02:07 | we're going to do here.
| | 02:09 | So, in order to make this l ook
like a painting, I have to breed this
| | 02:13 | photographic vocabulary out of the image.
| | 02:15 | And how do we do that?
| | 02:17 | Basically, we're going to be using
the Constraint tool up here at the top,
| | 02:20 | that's the key tool to this.
| | 02:22 | And you'll see I'm going to start from
one edge here, I'm going to draw across.
| | 02:26 | Now notice, see how that line's bending?
| | 02:27 | That's because it has the formula for
this particular lens and it knows that
| | 02:32 | that has a natural angularity to it.
| | 02:35 | When I let go, it goes ahead
and it straightens this out.
| | 02:37 | The thing I want to do, and by just
selecting any area near the line if I
| | 02:42 | click with my right mouse key, I can
decide how I want this to be oriented.
| | 02:47 | And, in this case, I want it to be exactly
horizontal, so I'm going to say Horizontal.
| | 02:51 | And you might have seen there,
it just did a slight shift.
| | 02:54 | So, once that turns to yellow, that
tells us this is an exactly horizontal line.
| | 03:00 | So the first part of this is to go
through and go through some of the key areas
| | 03:05 | of this image, and straighten these out,
and in each case I'll go back and I'll
| | 03:10 | say, I want this to be horizontal.
| | 03:12 | And so, it's really a pretty much
kind of a rote exercise to go through and
| | 03:18 | set each of these up.
| | 03:20 | Now, you can do as much or
as little of this as you want.
| | 03:23 | I tend to be a little bit
obsessive about it and I will go through,
| | 03:27 | and if I want this to be very rigidly
horizontal and vertical lines, then I
| | 03:32 | have to make sure that anywhere I see
something that doesn't seem correct is corrected.
| | 03:37 | And so, it's just a matter
of going through all these.
| | 03:41 | So, I'm going to go ahead and go
through this and get all of the horizontals done,
| | 03:45 | and then we'll come back and
I'll go ahead and do the verticals.
| | 03:50 | So, I've done all of the
horizontals that I basically want to do here.
| | 03:54 | I may need to add one or two once I
start putting the verticals in, but I do
| | 03:58 | want to show you, if you turn on the
mesh here, you can start to see how it's
| | 04:02 | bending that mesh around to conform the
image to the horizontals that I want to do.
| | 04:08 | So, it's actually doing quite a bit
under the hood here, but the visual
| | 04:13 | aspect of it is fairly clear.
| | 04:14 | It's just setting
everything up so it's on horizontal.
| | 04:18 | Now, I'm going to go through and I'm going
to start dealing with all of these verticals.
| | 04:21 | So, same thing here, we go
ahead and click and drag.
| | 04:27 | And, just as I did before, I right-
click on that line and I set it to Vertical,
| | 04:33 | and that sets it to purple.
| | 04:34 | So whenever it's purple, that's
telling us that it is a exact vertical line.
| | 04:41 | So, I'm going to go through and do all
of the verticals here, and then we'll
| | 04:47 | take a look at what we've got
once it's all finished. Okay.
| | 04:51 | So, I'm pretty much done here.
| | 04:52 | I do want to show you just one little
trick that I didn't mention at the outset
| | 04:57 | and that is, when you make a line, I've
actually removed one here temporarily so
| | 05:00 | I can straighten it out.
| | 05:02 | If I hold down the Shift key, whether
I'm doing a vertical or a horizontal, see
| | 05:06 | how it's already yellow?
| | 05:07 | That's telling it that this is supposed
to be a horizontal line, in this case.
| | 05:12 | So, if you want to not make this into
a two step operation where at first you
| | 05:17 | apply the line, then go back, right-click
to tell it whether you want it to be
| | 05:21 | horizontal or vertical, you can go ahead
and utilize the Shift key to do that in
| | 05:25 | advance of making it be a
vertical or horizontal line.
| | 05:30 | So, we've gone through this and the
last thing I do wanna say here is that I
| | 05:34 | was being pretty obsessive about this, and
this is also a very unusual subject in that
| | 05:38 | it's really got a lot of horizontal and
vertical elements in it that, at least,
| | 05:43 | I want to make horizontal and vertical.
| | 05:45 | So, different subject matter, you may
not have to go nearly to the length of the
| | 05:49 | number of lines that I've
ascribed to this particular image.
| | 05:53 | It's all very image-dependent and its
up to what you ultimately are looking for
| | 05:58 | vision-wise in your image.
| | 06:00 | So, once you are done with
this go ahead and say, okay.
| | 06:04 | And it will apply all of these
calculations to the image, so that we end up
| | 06:09 | with a corrected image.
| | 06:11 | So, if I do a before and after here,
you can see how we've taken all of that
| | 06:16 | distortion that the lens
introduced, being a wide angle-lens,
| | 06:19 | and I've straightened it up to more like
the way I would have sat and drawn this image.
| | 06:24 | I wouldn't have drawn it, as I said
earlier, with all of these lines going off
| | 06:28 | into some perspective.
| | 06:30 | I would have drawn it more like that.
| | 06:32 | So, the Adaptive Wide Angle filter
rids and image of lens distortion, but it
| | 06:36 | also enables user-dictated adjustments.
| | 06:39 | In our example, we altered a lens-distorted
image to a more illustrational style of
| | 06:44 | orthogonal rendering.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Removing distractions| 00:00 | It's very useful to add visual
elements to an image to tell a story.
| | 00:04 | And we're going to be doing that in this title.
| | 00:07 | But there's another thing
that's equally important.
| | 00:09 | And that is to remove anything in a
photograph that doesn't serve the subject.
| | 00:13 | This gets into the whole mindset of
a photograph being true to reality.
| | 00:18 | We're telling a story here, and
this is going to end up being a painting.
| | 00:22 | It's not a representation of reality.
| | 00:24 | So, you need to keep in mind that you
want to remove things that may somehow
| | 00:29 | confuse the viewer or do something that
leads them astray from looking at the image.
| | 00:34 | When I'm working on an image, I
apply what I call the What's That rule.
| | 00:39 | And by that, I mean, if you're working on,
or looking at an image, and you see something,
| | 00:43 | and your first response to
seeing it is, what's that?
| | 00:47 | You want to get rid of it.
| | 00:48 | Because, just as sure as
you didn't know what it was,
| | 00:51 | the viewer's not
going to know what it is either.
| | 00:53 | And you want to eliminate anything that
distracts from telling a story, or cleanly
| | 00:58 | telling exactly what this image is.
| | 01:00 | Effectively, you're going to be creating
an image that the viewer is going to read.
| | 01:05 | And if you throw oddball words and
phrases and sentences into that image that
| | 01:10 | make it hard to understand what it is,
then you need to get rid of that.
| | 01:14 | And I'm going to show you a
couple areas in here that have that.
| | 01:17 | If we go ahead and zoom up on here,
right here towards the top, there's this guy.
| | 01:23 | And when I first saw that you
know what I said? What's that.
| | 01:27 | And it took me a while to figure out
that's actually a spotlight that is used to
| | 01:32 | light the exterior of the
building in front of it.
| | 01:34 | It made me say, what's that, and
therefore it's something that needs to be removed.
| | 01:38 | And this is pretty simple.
| | 01:40 | This is really just a
basic cloning technique here.
| | 01:42 | So I'm going to go and ahead and get
my Cloner tool, and I'm going to go
| | 01:45 | ahead and hold down the Option
key, and that sets our Source.
| | 01:49 | So let's just grab an area right here.
| | 01:51 | Let's just go in and start to eliminate this.
| | 01:54 | Now, you don't have to be real
precise here, because remember, we are going to
| | 01:58 | ultimately paint over this.
| | 01:59 | But I do sort of exercise, and I'll
probably say this more than once throughout
| | 02:04 | the title, I do try to clean up my
photograph prior to painting it, to make it
| | 02:09 | as clean and sharp and
as good of a photo as it
| | 02:11 | can possibly be. Even though I'm
going to turn it into a completely
| | 02:16 | non-photographic image, I feel the
closer and more precise you get this image,
| | 02:21 | the more it's going to translate
into a painted result later on.
| | 02:25 | Here's another area.
| | 02:26 | We need to fix this, and
it's got a shadow over it.
| | 02:29 | So, what I'll often do, especially in
architecture, is look around, and sure
| | 02:33 | enough, here's another piece of
element that is exactly that same little
| | 02:38 | architectural detail.
| | 02:39 | So, once again, I'm going to hold
down my Option or Alt key here,
| | 02:43 | and grab that curved corner and then
we'll just go right here and this lets me
| | 02:48 | basically paint that in.
| | 02:50 | I need to get the rest of the shadow out,
so I'm just going to utilize this area over
| | 02:55 | here. And remember, as I'm saying,
| | 02:57 | this is not photo re-touching we're doing here.
| | 02:59 | It does not have to be
| | 03:01 | absolutely perfect.
| | 03:02 | So that's pretty much enough.
| | 03:05 | I see, I guess, the standard that
this light was on, it's still there.
| | 03:09 | So we'll get rid of that.
| | 03:10 | So basically, this is just using
little local areas of the image to remove
| | 03:16 | the offending area.
| | 03:17 | So, that's pretty much gone.
| | 03:19 | Now, I do see, there's still a
little bit of noisy residue here.
| | 03:23 | So let's just grab the top of
this window right next to it.
| | 03:28 | And use it just to clean that off. There we go.
| | 03:31 | So, we've gotten rid of this one
element that was a What's That element.
| | 03:35 | The other one is going to be a
distraction and it's right here.
| | 03:38 | Now, I'm going to tell you a little bit
in advance that we are actually going to
| | 03:42 | be removing this entire castle image from
its environment and put it in another image.
| | 03:47 | So, knowing that in advance, I'm not
going to worry about all of this tree, but
| | 03:53 | this area right here, that is
actually in front of a little a bit of the
| | 03:57 | architecture, I want to remove it.
| | 04:00 | And I'm going to take advantage of the
Content-Aware fill, but I first need
| | 04:04 | to select these areas.
| | 04:06 | And how do I select such
slender little elements?
| | 04:09 | Well, I like to switch over to Quick-Mask
mode, so I'm going to switch right here, and
| | 04:13 | what that does is let me use black and
white to be able to paint in these areas,
| | 04:18 | and then eventually turn the
painted mask into a selection.
| | 04:22 | So, let's go ahead and grab a simple
brush here, and I'm going to go ahead and
| | 04:27 | use a hard-edged brush.
| | 04:32 | And let's go ahead and reduce that size.
| | 04:34 | I'm also going to zoom up.
| | 04:36 | When you're working on something very
| | 04:37 | small like this, it helps to get even
over 100%, so let's get really close, and
| | 04:43 | I'm going to reduce my brush size.
| | 04:45 | And normally, when you see me reducing
brush size during this course, I'm using
| | 04:49 | the left and right bracket keys.
| | 04:50 | Left bracket to reduce size, and
the right bracket to enlarge. So,
| | 04:55 | I typically, as I'm working, will have
my hand resting on those keys so I can
| | 04:59 | very quickly adjust the brush size.
| | 05:01 | So, I'm going to make this just a little
larger than the size of the branches, and
| | 05:06 | make sure that I'm painting wtih black.
| | 05:09 | And so now I can just go in here.
| | 05:11 | And paint these areas.
| | 05:13 | So, I'm going to go through here and paint
all these and then once we're done, I'll
| | 05:19 | show you what the next step is.
| | 05:22 | Okay, so I've pretty much gone through
here and covered all these areas where
| | 05:27 | the offending branches are.
| | 05:29 | One little trick I did.
| | 05:31 | And this is from a knowledge of having
used Content-Aware Fill in the past, is
| | 05:36 | where there's this junction between
the branch in front of the building, and
| | 05:41 | then going into the sky.
| | 05:42 | I tend to stop just short of the
building and not crossing over it, because
| | 05:46 | that's going to confuse the
Content-Aware Fill Algorithm.
| | 05:50 | And I want to be as kind to my friend
Mr. Content-Aware Fill as I can.
| | 05:56 | So, we've covered that up.
| | 05:58 | Let's back out here a little bit so you
can see how much I did, and now there's
| | 06:01 | a couple tricks we have to do here.
| | 06:03 | First of all, we're going to switch
back to Selection mode, so now we've
| | 06:06 | selected, but if you look up here,
actually what we've done is selected
| | 06:12 | everything but the branches, so we need
to do a reversal here, and I'm going to use
| | 06:18 | Shift+Command+I to switch that
around, so now I've truly selected those
| | 06:23 | paint lines that I've drawn.
| | 06:25 | It's a little confusing that
the way Photoshop works.
| | 06:28 | Once you've used the Quick Mask, and
you go out of it back into the selection, it's
| | 06:32 | actually reverse from
what you think you just did.
| | 06:35 | And once you've done it a few times
you get used to it, and you'll
| | 06:39 | correct it on the way out.
| | 06:40 | If, for some reason, things seem
backwards to you, you haven't inverted the
| | 06:44 | selection after you've painted it.
| | 06:45 | So, let's go ahead and do the Content-Aware
Fill and to quickly get to that, if
| | 06:49 | I just hold down the Shift key and hit
Delete, that brings up our Fill command,
| | 06:55 | and we've got Content-Aware
selected, so I'll go ahead and say OK.
| | 06:59 | And now it's just analyzing the image and
let's go ahead and deselect, and there, it's gone.
| | 07:04 | So, we've been able to pretty much, taking a little bit of
time to be careful about drawing these lines, get rid of them.
| | 07:11 | You could've used, say, a cloning tool, but
| | 07:13 | trust me, trying to do that with a
cloning tool would have been much more time
| | 07:17 | intensive, whereas here it's just a
matter of covering up the element that you
| | 07:22 | want to remove and it pretty much
removes it for you. And keep in mind too
| | 07:27 | that while I play this game of, I
want this to be as good of a photograph as
| | 07:33 | I can before I paint it,
| | 07:34 | I also have to balance that with the
fact that I do know I'm going to paint this.
| | 07:39 | So, once we get into painting over all of
this, all of this detail is going to go away.
| | 07:44 | Your playing a little bit
of a balancing act here.
| | 07:46 | Yes, you want to correct it, make it as
fine as you can, but on the other hand,
| | 07:51 | don't sweat trying to
make this absolutely perfect.
| | 07:53 | Because this is going to be a painted
image, you're going to lose a lot of the
| | 07:57 | detail anyway. But it does pay to try
to get this as close as you can to the
| | 08:02 | photograph you want to work
with going forward into a painting.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Don't be a slave to the original photograph| 00:00 | If you come from the world of
photography, you very likely have a bias towards
| | 00:04 | preserving the veracity of a photograph.
| | 00:06 | You need to put your painter's beret on
and understand that you are painting a
| | 00:11 | visually compelling story.
| | 00:12 | In this light, it is acceptable, no,
required, to prep your image with
| | 00:17 | compositional and storytelling elements
that serve the subject. Forget the photo.
| | 00:22 | It's a painting and you're a painter.
| | 00:25 | Now, if you don't get anything else out
of this particular video, I want you to
| | 00:30 | understand that you don't want to
be afraid of changing a photograph.
| | 00:33 | You're telling a story, and you can do
anything you want to tell that story.
| | 00:38 | You are not a slave to the photograph.
| | 00:41 | So, let's consider what we've done so far.
| | 00:43 | We've got our castle image,
we've straightened it out.
| | 00:45 | We've removed any distractions, and now
what I want to do is start to change things up.
| | 00:52 | And for this, I'm actually going to
take this castle, and maybe not even all of
| | 00:57 | the castle, and replace
the environment at its end.
| | 01:01 | The first thing I'm going to do is
go in and I'm going to crop this.
| | 01:05 | And I want to maintain this aspect ratio.
| | 01:07 | So I'm not going to change that. And if
I hold down the Shift key, as I adjust
| | 01:11 | this, it will maintain the
aspect ratio we have here.
| | 01:14 | So, I'm going to start to squeeze
this in a little bit, and I'll tell you
| | 01:18 | right here, one of the things I'm
going to do, this whole extension to the
| | 01:22 | castle, I don't care about.
| | 01:23 | I only care about, really, this main area here.
| | 01:26 | All of this background is going
away, and so I want to center the castle
| | 01:32 | pretty much in the image.
| | 01:33 | So, knowing that now, I can go ahead
and start to use my guides here to more
| | 01:38 | or less center this.
| | 01:39 | I want to get the doorway pretty much
kind of right in the center here, and I can
| | 01:44 | also adjust this so that we don't
need so much of this foreground.
| | 01:48 | I'm going to remove it to about here.
| | 01:51 | Again, keeping in mind that I want to
more or less center this within
| | 01:55 | my image. And I can fix things that are
going to be in a mess up here in a little bit.
| | 02:01 | Let's go ahead and say OK.
| | 02:03 | So now, I've reduced this and
what I want to do is twofold.
| | 02:08 | I want to cut this out so that I've
literally got a separate element that
| | 02:13 | is just the castle.
| | 02:15 | So that's my first task.
| | 02:17 | The second task then will be getting
the background image, which you'll see
| | 02:21 | here after we cut this out, and applying it to
the background, so that it's in a new environment.
| | 02:27 | We're going to take it from this more
kind of urban environment and place it
| | 02:30 | out in the country.
| | 02:31 | Because as I introduce some more of
the little storytelling elements in this,
| | 02:35 | you'll see that kind of the idea, the
feeling of being isolated and not so
| | 02:40 | comfortably surrounded by buildings
and architectural elements is going to
| | 02:45 | help tell my story.
| | 02:46 | So, there are no end to the different
tools that you hear about being able to
| | 02:50 | instantly extract and cut things out.
| | 02:53 | But I can tell you from years of
experience, the best tool for me is still
| | 02:58 | the good old Pen tool.
| | 03:00 | We've got a number of different
conditions going on this image that, you
| | 03:03 | know, simply using the blue sky
background isn't going to work because we've
| | 03:08 | got non-blue areas here,
| | 03:10 | we've got areas instead of very close in value.
| | 03:13 | It's just, its not going to work to
do all of these other kinds of tricks.
| | 03:18 | In certain images, some of the newer
kind of image isolating tools are great.
| | 03:23 | But probably with respect to most images,
I find that I spend more time playing
| | 03:28 | around with these filters trying
to get it to cut something out.
| | 03:31 | In the same amount of time, I could've
just gotten the Pen tool and cut it out.
| | 03:35 | So, that's what I'm going to do, and again,
this is going to take a little bit of time.
| | 03:40 | But it's really the way to do it.
| | 03:42 | So, I'm going to zoom up here
and I want to get really close.
| | 03:45 | At least, let's go switch here so we
could see, we're at 100%, I'm going to take
| | 03:49 | it up to at least 200%, and
we'll go up to this edge here.
| | 03:53 | And I'm just going to cut the building
out starting here, so that we're going to
| | 03:57 | get the left forward edge of the
building and go around and follow, more or
| | 04:02 | less, its silhouette.
| | 04:03 | So, I'm just going to begin doing this,
and we'll follow along here for a
| | 04:07 | little bit, but then I'll probably cut
you loose and you'll come back when we're
| | 04:11 | on the other side of this.
| | 04:13 | But I generally go through and, one of
the things I'll do and, in fact, I might even
| | 04:18 | go a little closer here so you can see this.
| | 04:21 | When I use the Pen tool, what happens
when you enlarge this much, you can see
| | 04:26 | there really is no distinct edge.
| | 04:30 | There is this work,
and if we get even closer, there's
| | 04:33 | always kind of an
indefinite edge in a pixel image,
| | 04:37 | where it's sort of an in-between, and
as I'm working, what I kind of do is
| | 04:42 | place my line about halfway through
what is the building and what is the
| | 04:47 | not-building, in this case.
| | 04:48 | And I just go through and I also use my
arrow keys here to adjust a point that
| | 04:53 | I've applied, if it's
not exactly where I want.
| | 04:55 | Also we're so close now, you kind of
lose sight of what is the building and
| | 04:59 | what is the background.
| | 05:00 | So, you got to find the best
spot in the magnification that's going to
| | 05:04 | work for your image.
| | 05:06 | But then, I just go around and I
follow this edge all the way through and I
| | 05:10 | think there's one or two spots in this
image where I may have to deal a little
| | 05:14 | bit with cutting out an element or two so
that we're not seeing part of the old background.
| | 05:21 | But basically, I'm going to go through
and do this and I will see you on the
| | 05:25 | other side once I've got
this completely isolated.
| | 05:29 | Okay, so I've gone through and
I've completely outlined the castle.
| | 05:34 | I did have to make a second element
right here, which is actually kind of looking
| | 05:38 | through that portico into the
background, so I've cut that out.
| | 05:41 | And by selecting all of this now, I can
go ahead and, while I'm in the Pen tool,
| | 05:46 | if I hold down the right mouse
button, I can make a selection.
| | 05:51 | So, we'll make a selection.
| | 05:52 | I'm going to do zero pixels so we'll
get a nice clean anti-aliased edge, and
| | 05:56 | we've now got a selection that
exactly matches the area that I've cut out.
| | 06:02 | I'm going to go ahead and copy and paste.
| | 06:06 | So I did Command+C or Control+C and then Command
or Control+V, and if we look over in the
| | 06:13 | Layers Palette, you'll see
there is now a separate element.
| | 06:15 | In fact, we can shut the background off,
and you can see that I've now got a
| | 06:19 | nicely cut out version of
this building, but it's isolated.
| | 06:24 | And now, I'm free to drop a new
background into it. So, let's do that.
| | 06:30 | I'm going to go temporarily here to
the desktop, go to our Exercise Files
| | 06:36 | for Chapter two here.
| | 06:37 | And if we go into the folder for the
third video, we have a background here.
| | 06:42 | No, this is a raw file, so when I
open it up, it's going to open it up
| | 06:47 | into Adobe Camera Raw.
| | 06:48 | And the reason I want to do this is I
want to show you there are some things I
| | 06:52 | can do before I even convert
this into a normal file.
| | 06:57 | And this is a little bit blown out so
I've got some controls here that I can
| | 07:02 | take advantage of to play around a bit
with the contrast within this image and
| | 07:08 | so if I, for example, drop down my
Highlights, see how I'm getting much more
| | 07:12 | detail in the clouds.
| | 07:14 | We can also adjust the Shadows here,
| | 07:16 | either up or down, as you can see.
| | 07:18 | And what I want to do is, this is going to be a
background image, so I'm going to lighten it up.
| | 07:23 | And I'll probably, at some point,
even lighten it up some more so that we
| | 07:25 | introduce almost the effect of
atmospheric distance where color starts to get
| | 07:30 | desaturated with distance.
| | 07:32 | And I might shoot the Vibrance up a little bit.
| | 07:36 | If we shoot it way up here, see how
it's too much, the sky is just kind
| | 07:40 | of unbelievably blue.
| | 07:41 | Although, in a painting, you don't
have to stay necessarily constrained to
| | 07:46 | photographic-style colors.
| | 07:48 | We'll be playing around with that in
a later chapter but don't be trying to
| | 07:52 | necessarily make this be a
100% accurate to a photograph.
| | 07:55 | This is a bit much, so I'm going to
turn it down a bit. I'm not even
| | 07:59 | watching the values on the slider, I'm
just looking visually at what I'm seeing
| | 08:02 | in the image, and that looks pretty good.
| | 08:04 | So, let's go ahead and we'll say, OK.
| | 08:07 | And now we've got our second image, and
I'm going to go ahead and do a Select
| | 08:12 | All and then Command or Control+C to copy this.
| | 08:15 | And let's move back to our other image.
| | 08:18 | I'm going to go back into full screen
here, and I want to place it behind this so
| | 08:22 | I'm going to select the background so
that it positions it one layer above
| | 08:27 | it, which will put it behind our background.
| | 08:29 | So, I'm going to do Command or Control+V
to paste, and there's our background.
| | 08:34 | Now, it's probably not in scale,
let's just take a look here.
| | 08:37 | Actually, that's not too bad.
| | 08:39 | And so, what I can do now,
is kind of play with this.
| | 08:42 | And what I want to do more than
anything is just to make sure that
| | 08:47 | perspective-wise, it seems fairly correct.
| | 08:50 | You know, if this was like way up here,
that looks a little odd to my eye.
| | 08:54 | If I take it way down here, assuming we
had more sky, that looks a little low so
| | 08:59 | you have to kind of play around with
what just looks fairly correct to your eye.
| | 09:04 | And I like what I'm seeing here.
| | 09:07 | So, I've now combined these two images
and we're on our way now to starting to
| | 09:13 | take this original photograph, in fact,
two original photographs, and use them
| | 09:18 | in completely different ways
| | 09:20 | to start to create an environment,
a mood, a story, whatever you want to
| | 09:25 | call it. One thing I do want to
point out here that's very important.
| | 09:28 | When you're going to start doing this
kind of compositing, it's very important
| | 09:33 | to pay attention to lighting.
| | 09:36 | The light on the building is coming
from a sun that is somewhere, you know, off
| | 09:42 | in the distance, of course.
| | 09:43 | But it's about, I'd say,
about this high in the sky.
| | 09:46 | And you can tell that from the shadows,
how they're casting the angles of them.
| | 09:49 | So you've got a sun that's kind of like that.
| | 09:52 | When I was considering adding a
background to it, I looked through a lot
| | 09:57 | of different images to find a sky
in a scene, which in this particular
| | 10:02 | image, I remember from shooting it,
that the sun was off basically in
| | 10:06 | that same direction.
| | 10:07 | If you don't match the lighting
amongst the various elements you're going to
| | 10:12 | composite, the brain is pretty good at
picking those little inconsistencies up
| | 10:16 | and it would be noticeable.
| | 10:18 | So, you do want to make sure that
when you start to add things together,
| | 10:22 | particularly photographic like this,
that you do pay attention to the lighting,
| | 10:26 | because if you don't, you will get these odd
sort of mismatches that the eye can pick up on.
| | 10:32 | It might not even know what's wrong,
it'll just know something is not right
| | 10:35 | and I want to fix it.
| | 10:37 | So in finishing up here, just
remember that you don't want to let a
| | 10:40 | photograph's supposed veracity be an
impediment to crafting a compelling
| | 10:45 | interrelationship of visual elements,
particularly when you want to tell a
| | 10:48 | story or communicate a message.
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| Correcting image adjustments| 00:00 | So, we're to the point now
where we've got our composite of our
| | 00:03 | foreground, which is our castle, and
we've got the background now, which
| | 00:07 | is out in the country here.
| | 00:09 | But I noticed there's a couple of things
that I need to correct before we go any
| | 00:13 | further, and one of them is
pretty obvious right here.
| | 00:16 | It's this, kind of, the edge
of the world just falls off.
| | 00:19 | We need to fix that.
| | 00:21 | So, I need to somehow add material
that's not there, and the quickest way to do
| | 00:26 | that is probably to just
stretch this, the segment of this out.
| | 00:29 | I'm going to select the
layer that has the castle on it.
| | 00:32 | Let's get our Select tool, and I'm
going to go ahead and just select this area,
| | 00:38 | and I'm going to do Command or Control+T
to put this into Transform mode.
| | 00:43 | And now I can take this, and I can
just stretch it out, so it goes beyond the
| | 00:48 | border of our edge, and hit Return, and
then if I do a Command or Control+D to delete
| | 00:55 | this selection, we're done with that.
| | 00:57 | So, very simple, easy to fix.
| | 00:59 | The other thing I saw, and let's zoom
up here a bit, is right here, in
| | 01:06 | aligning all of these horizontals and verticals.
| | 01:09 | This particular area here got
stretched kind of weird, because this is a
| | 01:13 | rounded tower element.
| | 01:15 | And when you get down here, all of a
sudden, that stretched out in some strange
| | 01:19 | way that obviously isn't correct anymore.
| | 01:21 | So I need to fix that a bit.
| | 01:23 | Always keeping in mind, with every one
of these I do, you've always got to be
| | 01:27 | cognizant of the fact that
this is going to be a painting.
| | 01:30 | So, I will fix it, but I don't
necessarily have to make it perfect, because this
| | 01:34 | isn't like we're retouching a photograph.
| | 01:37 | And the way I'm going to do this is, I'm
going to go up and use the Liquefy tool, and
| | 01:42 | we're going to address this area down here.
| | 01:44 | So I'm going to go ahead and zoom up, quite
a ways, and I'm going to use very small here.
| | 01:53 | And, again, we're not trying to
necessarily do a retouching job here.
| | 01:58 | I just want to kind of
reestablish a little bit of that roundness.
| | 02:01 | So I'm not going to be perfect.
| | 02:03 | You always got to be aware of the fact
that you are creating the painting here,
| | 02:08 | and that's close enough.
| | 02:10 | It doesn't have to be perfect, right,
just it was one of those What's That
| | 02:14 | moments, and if it make you think, what's that,
you probably need to think about fixing it.
| | 02:18 | So.
| | 02:19 | I can see a little divot in there, but
it's, it's no big deal, because once we
| | 02:22 | paint this, those edges
are going to be all changed out.
| | 02:25 | So it's no big deal.
| | 02:26 | So, we've taken care of a couple
little hiccups that were in our image, and
| | 02:32 | it's always good to stop along the
way and take time to look at some of these.
| | 02:36 | I would've encountered that at some
point anyway, but just to stop and take a
| | 02:41 | look at the image and assess it and see,
you know, what are some things that I
| | 02:45 | might be able to adjust.
| | 02:46 | It's the kind of thing that your'e going to
want to do on a regular basis as you're
| | 02:51 | working through an image.
| | 02:52 | So, small changes, but just little
things that are going to smooth the road, as
| | 02:56 | we move forward.
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| Telling a story with added image elements| 00:00 | At this point, we've now got
our scene basically set up.
| | 00:04 | We've got our building in a new environment.
| | 00:07 | we've made some corrections to it.
| | 00:09 | Now comes the storytelling aspect of this.
| | 00:13 | And, when I was putting this together
I got essentially to this point and I
| | 00:17 | started to try to think, you know, what
can I do to this to add a level, a new
| | 00:22 | level of interest, a storytelling so to speak.
| | 00:24 | One of the tricks that an artist will often
employ is what I call connecting the dots.
| | 00:29 | And, I'm going to probably actually use
that in a couple different meanings as
| | 00:33 | we go through this course.
| | 00:34 | What I'm referring to at this point is,
you can put things into a scene in such
| | 00:40 | a manner, some of it has to do with
the actual content, what they are, how you
| | 00:45 | compose them within the scene, how they are
relating to one another, based on that composition.
| | 00:50 | All of these things can come together, so that
the parts start to add up to a greater whole.
| | 00:55 | And in this case, what we want to do is,
start to build a storytelling element or
| | 01:00 | a set of elements here, that will lead
the reader into the image to where they
| | 01:05 | start seeing
relationships between these elements.
| | 01:08 | And the way these relationships are
positioned within the image, the viewer can
| | 01:13 | actually start to create
a story in their own mind.
| | 01:16 | You may have a specific story you're
telling, but part of the enjoyment of art
| | 01:21 | is that each person takes
away from it something different.
| | 01:24 | So, you can have two people standing
right next to the same image looking at
| | 01:28 | it, and when you asked each one of them,
what's the story you get out of looking at this?
| | 01:33 | You'd be amazed how you could
get two totally different stories.
| | 01:36 | And that's OK, because that's part of
what you're trying to do here, is just
| | 01:39 | you're trying to open the
viewer up to interpreting things.
| | 01:42 | And how they interpret it is up to them,
and that brings them into the scene.
| | 01:46 | So, I've got some image elements that
I want to work with here, and let's start
| | 01:50 | with one that's a little
difficult to deal with, that's this one.
| | 01:54 | I need to cut this out.
| | 01:55 | Now, when I shot this, this
is actually a little model.
| | 01:59 | It's very small, it's
only like three inches tall.
| | 02:02 | And I shot it intentionally on a
fairly neutral background, because I knew by
| | 02:07 | doing so, I could take advantage of a
Selection tool in Photoshop to be able to
| | 02:12 | grab this very quickly.
| | 02:13 | You'll remember when I cut out the castle
earlier, I was really promoting the Pen tool.
| | 02:19 | Now, you could do this with the Pen tool,
but look at how many little negative
| | 02:23 | counterspaces there are within this image.
| | 02:26 | It would take you a long time to isolate
and describe each one of these with the
| | 02:31 | Pen tool, so that you
eventually end up with just the tricycle.
| | 02:35 | And so, by putting it on this
background, I can take advantage of the Select
| | 02:40 | menu's Color Range tool.
| | 02:43 | And let's go through, and I'll
show you how easily you can do this.
| | 02:46 | Now, what it lets me do is I can start
to select colors, and you can see I've
| | 02:51 | almost isolated the tricycle.
| | 02:53 | There's some other stuff going on here.
| | 02:55 | So, to start to include more of this
tonality, I'm just going to hold down my Shift key.
| | 03:00 | And you can now see how that's created a plus.
| | 03:03 | And by referring to the image, I can
start to see like, there's some grays in
| | 03:07 | here that aren't captured.
| | 03:08 | Let's grab right there, and
now we've got some shadows.
| | 03:12 | I can start to get rid of most of them.
| | 03:15 | I can see I'm just starting to, some of
the same tonalities that were in an area
| | 03:20 | I've selected, are now starting to
grab some of the highlights in here.
| | 03:23 | So I don't want to go any further.
| | 03:25 | The rest of it I will do by hand.
| | 03:27 | I can later on erase that shadow.
| | 03:30 | But let's go ahead and say OK, and
what I've now done is selected this
| | 03:34 | neutral background.
| | 03:35 | So I've selected everything but the trike.
| | 03:37 | So what I need to do is invert that selection.
| | 03:40 | So if I just do Shift+Command or Control+I,
that inverts that selection.
| | 03:47 | So now we've inverted the selection.
| | 03:49 | And one thing I could do at this point,
| | 03:51 | because we do have some areas
where that selection is there.
| | 03:54 | If I grab my Lasso tool, and go in here,
and hold down the Shift key, I can now
| | 04:01 | include some of these areas
in here that were missing.
| | 04:04 | So now, I'll just go around where I
see a few of these marching ants inside my
| | 04:09 | selection, and I think
those are the big offenders.
| | 04:12 | So, I've now got this cut
out, or ready to cut out.
| | 04:15 | So I'm going to do Command or Control+C, and
let's go over to our castle image, and I'm
| | 04:21 | going to do a Command or Control+V to paste it.
| | 04:24 | It happened to be in a different color space,
but we're just going to go ahead and say OK.
| | 04:28 | It's just making it be in the same
Adobe RGB that the rest of the image is in.
| | 04:33 | So let's go ahead and move this guy down here.
| | 04:35 | And now, to resize it, I'm
just going to use the Transform tool.
| | 04:39 | So Command or Control+T, holding down the Shift key
will constrain that to the same aspect ratio.
| | 04:46 | And let's just pick this up and kind of
position it, maybe just a little bigger.
| | 04:51 | Something like that.
| | 04:53 | And so I'm going to hit the Return key,
and we've now got this in place.
| | 05:00 | The next thing I'm going to do is, I
have another element, which is this ball.
| | 05:04 | And I've already pre-selected it.
| | 05:05 | So all I need to do at this point,
is, do a Command or Control+C to copy it.
| | 05:10 | We go back to our image, and we paste,
and once again, it's out of scale.
| | 05:16 | So doing the same trick here with the
Transform tool, I'll just reduce this in scale.
| | 05:22 | Something about,
| | 05:23 | it would seem like about that size.
| | 05:25 | So I'm just kind of estimating here
what I would think these would be,
| | 05:29 | scale-wise in this scene.
| | 05:32 | Now, we've reduced this ball in size.
| | 05:34 | But you'll notice that, remember our
lighting is coming from somewhere off
| | 05:39 | here to the left side.
| | 05:40 | And this ball is lit as if
it's from the right side.
| | 05:42 | So I need to correct that.
| | 05:44 | So all I need to do is make
sure I've selected the ball.
| | 05:47 | And let's go into Edit. We'll transform.
| | 05:50 | And all I want to do, at this case,
is just flip it horizontal. See,
| | 05:54 | now we've got shadow and highlight
on this consistent with the rest of the
| | 05:58 | scene, and it all seems to be in place.
| | 06:01 | The other thing I could quickly do
here is, I'm just going to select the layer
| | 06:05 | between the castle, and between
these two objects we've just added.
| | 06:10 | So I've got a new blank layer.
| | 06:12 | I can go ahead and take a Airbrush tool, make
it a little larger here, and get black.
| | 06:18 | So we've got black here. And I'm
just going to reduce my opacity down, way
| | 06:26 | down, to maybe something like, around
15, 20%, and I'm just going to
| | 06:32 | airbrush a little bit of shadowing in here.
| | 06:35 | It doesn't have to be perfect, because again,
we're going to paint it, but I just want to
| | 06:39 | have it in there as reference,
| | 06:40 | so when I do paint, I'll remember that
I have a little bit of shadow in here.
| | 06:44 | And you can see, I'm actually using a
very crude brush to do this, but it's just
| | 06:49 | enough to give a sense of grounding
of this element so that they seem like
| | 06:53 | they're in the scene.
| | 06:54 | Remember, painting all of this is going
to change the character of all this anyway.
| | 06:58 | And the last element I want
to grab is this little girl.
| | 07:03 | And I already pre-cut her out, so
let's go ahead and copy and go back to
| | 07:09 | our image, and paste.
| | 07:11 | And I want to put her in that window.
| | 07:13 | So, she's obviously too large.
| | 07:15 | So we're going to do a couple things here.
| | 07:17 | Let's reduce her opacity.
| | 07:18 | I'm just, I'm in the Move tool.
| | 07:20 | And by pressing on the 5 key in this case,
| | 07:23 | that reduces her to 50%.
| | 07:24 | So I can see her but I
can also see the background.
| | 07:27 | And that means that I can now go ahead
and play with transforming her down to a
| | 07:33 | scale that would be appropriate for this window.
| | 07:37 | And I guess it would be something like that.
| | 07:39 | So let's go ahead and
commit by hitting our Return key.
| | 07:43 | And I'm just going to grab my Eraser tool.
| | 07:46 | Enlarge it a little bit here, and just
erase this just so that she's peeking out
| | 07:51 | of the window without being in front of it.
| | 07:54 | So, right about like that. OK.
| | 07:58 | And she looks like maybe she's a little large,
so I'm going to take her down just a little bit more.
| | 08:03 | About like that.
| | 08:06 | And then I'll use, while I'm in the Move
tool, I can use my arrow keys here, and
| | 08:10 | I'll just use that to place her.
| | 08:12 | Something like that.
| | 08:13 | And, when I did this the first time, it
turned out by having her opaqueness down
| | 08:18 | like this, around 50%, it
does a couple of things.
| | 08:21 | One, it makes her seem like she's
on the other side of that window, rather
| | 08:25 | than just being that, that just
seems too, too much in the foreground.
| | 08:29 | So, reducing her Opacity makes her
seem behind the window, but the secondary
| | 08:33 | effect it had on me when I look at it is,
it almost seems like she's a ghost, you know.
| | 08:38 | Is she there, real?
| | 08:39 | Or is she there as an apparition?
| | 08:42 | And when we combine that with the
rest of the elements we've put in there,
| | 08:47 | we're now starting to have
a bit of a story going on.
| | 08:50 | You know, we've got these toys out here.
| | 08:52 | And they're obvious.
| | 08:54 | We see those, they're bright colors.
| | 08:55 | They're eye-- the eye is attracted to them.
| | 08:58 | So as the viewer is going to read this image,
they're going to spend time looking at this.
| | 09:04 | And it may actually take them a while to
encounter this little waif up here in the window.
| | 09:08 | And what's kinda neat about that is, it's
like she wasn't there, but boom, it's there.
| | 09:13 | And so there's, there's this
kind of apparition quality about it.
| | 09:16 | And so, as we look at this image, you
start to wonder, you know, is, is that
| | 09:20 | a girl from long ago?
| | 09:21 | And she's wishing she could
be out playing with her toys?
| | 09:24 | You know, what is
the story behind this?
| | 09:28 | And it isn't a precise story.
| | 09:30 | It's a story open to interpretation,
particularly kind of this ghostly
| | 09:34 | apparition sort of thing that happened when
I reduced her opacity. So I like that.
| | 09:40 | And I felt, that's kind of the
storytelling element that's going on in here, is,
| | 09:44 | you're not sure of, you know,
| | 09:46 | the reality of her.
| | 09:47 | Is she really there, or is it an apparition?
| | 09:49 | You know, whatever.
| | 09:50 | But that opens up an interesting
storytelling element to the story.
| | 09:55 | So now, we've got our story.
| | 09:57 | We've got all of our elements prepared.
| | 10:00 | In the next chapter, we're going to start
looking at how to adjust the tonality
| | 10:04 | of all this so that it kind of really
starts to interlock together really precisely.
| | 10:09 | So that's what we'll be doing
when we move on to the next chapter.
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|
|
3. Image Preparation: Modifying TonesThe eye has a better sensor than a camera| 00:00 | While the human eye and a camera
have similarities, how each sees the world
| | 00:05 | is vastly different,
| | 00:06 | particularly when it comes to dynamic range,
| | 00:08 | the tonal difference between the
brightest brights and the darkest darks.
| | 00:12 | Because of this, you should adjust
a photograph's tonal range prior to
| | 00:16 | interpreting it into a painting.
| | 00:18 | In this chapter, we'll take a look at
how both the camera and the eye portrays
| | 00:22 | the world, and how you can modify a
photo to look more like how the eye of the
| | 00:26 | artist sees it, a key attribute
towards successful interpretation.
| | 00:30 | What we're looking at here is a
photograph, and what I want to show you here is
| | 00:35 | how a camera is essentially a dumb
device, and by that I mean it can only see
| | 00:40 | the world by the way that we instruct
it, or how some instructions within the
| | 00:44 | camera tell it to look at the world.
| | 00:46 | The human eye, on the other
hand, is constantly adjusting.
| | 00:49 | This is one photograph set at one
setting, and this setting was designed to
| | 00:54 | expose for the shadows.
| | 00:57 | So that means that the portico in the
center of the image is bright enough so that
| | 01:01 | we see the detail in it.
| | 01:02 | However, because the camera is
essentially a dumb device, it can only expose for
| | 01:07 | the shadows, and what happens is all
the highlight areas get blown out, so we
| | 01:11 | get this washed-out looking image.
| | 01:13 | Now by comparison, the human eye
standing in front of this building and looking
| | 01:17 | at a scene, the iris constantly adjusting.
| | 01:20 | It's always making changes,
depending on where we're looking, so that the
| | 01:26 | highlights and shadows are being adjusted.
| | 01:28 | So, what we compose in our mind as we
look around is not a scene that looks like
| | 01:32 | this, but one that takes
into all of the dynamic changes.
| | 01:36 | Now, let's just for example, look at
the other side of what the camera can do.
| | 01:41 | It can expose for the highlights.
| | 01:43 | So, in this case, the highlights look
good, but all of the shadows are now
| | 01:47 | starting to plug up, so
that we see no detail in them.
| | 01:50 | High dynamic range photography, also known
as HDR, is one way to compensate for this.
| | 01:56 | By taking multiple exposures and
sandwiching together these exposures, you can
| | 02:01 | then get all of the highlights, all of
the shadows in one shot, and what we'll
| | 02:06 | end up with is this.
| | 02:08 | And this is more how we perceive an
image when we look at it, because the
| | 02:12 | brain is constantly taking all of
these different parts, and assembling it
| | 02:16 | into a contiguous whole.
| | 02:19 | And so, what we want to be able to do
is not use a photograph straight out of
| | 02:24 | a camera without any of these adjustments,
because it's going to look like a photograph.
| | 02:28 | And remember, part of what we're doing
throughout this course, is replacing the
| | 02:32 | language of photography
with the language of painting.
| | 02:35 | So we want to erase this camera-dumb
artifact of only being able to see one
| | 02:40 | exposure setting at a time and combine them so
that we get a dynamic range like we see here.
| | 02:47 | So the idea behind this is that you
modify a photograph's dynamic range to more
| | 02:52 | closely resemble the way human vision sees.
| | 02:55 | That means that you're adding another
important ingredient to the recipe for
| | 02:59 | successful interpretation into a painting.
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| Adding natural shadows with Field Blur| 00:00 | If you're a motion picture fan,
particularly, if you like film noir, you're
| | 00:04 | probably aware of the cinematic lighting
technique of dramatic shadow patterning
| | 00:08 | that was used in these
Hollywood crime thrillers.
| | 00:11 | The use of such a cinematic device is
often employed to introduce an additional
| | 00:15 | layer of mystery or intrigue to a scene.
| | 00:18 | This lighting pattern, known as a
cucoloris, or cookie for short, is projected
| | 00:23 | onto a scene, background, or character.
| | 00:25 | For our image, we are going to add a
raking shadow of leaves and branches
| | 00:29 | across the facade of the castle to
introduce an additional layer of texture and
| | 00:33 | a sense of mystery.
| | 00:35 | The presence of the shadow additionally
serves to anchor the building into the scene.
| | 00:39 | Let's see how we can add a cookie to our scene.
| | 00:42 | We are going to cast the shadow, but we only
want it to occur on the facade of our castle.
| | 00:48 | It's not going to go everywhere in
the image or it would look funny.
| | 00:52 | It wouldn't look correct.
| | 00:53 | So what I need to do is isolate
where that shadow is going to appear, and
| | 00:58 | because we only want it on the castle,
we conveniently have that as a layer
| | 01:03 | in our layer palette.
| | 01:04 | And if I hold down my Command or
Control key, and position it over the
| | 01:08 | thumbnail, you'll see how the cursor
changes so that it will let me, when I
| | 01:12 | click, select that particular layer.
| | 01:15 | So now we've got a selection, and what
we're going to take advantage of in a
| | 01:19 | minute here, but I'm going to show you
where it is, so you'll know where we're going.
| | 01:24 | We are going to be going into
Paste Special and do Paste Into.
| | 01:27 | And what happens is, when we paste the
other element we're going to look at in a
| | 01:31 | moment, it will only go into that selection.
| | 01:33 | And it will be floating on its own layer,
| | 01:36 | so that we'll be able to
move it and position it.
| | 01:38 | That may sound a little bit like mumbo jumbo.
| | 01:41 | But you'll see here in a
moment exactly how this works.
| | 01:43 | So we've prepped our image by having it
selected in advance of pasting something into it.
| | 01:48 | We're going to move to the image of a
tree branch and limbs that I shot, and the
| | 01:53 | trick here was, you want
to shoot this against sky.
| | 01:56 | So we have a very definite background
that is a different color than anything
| | 02:01 | else in the scene, which is the
tree and the branches and the leaves.
| | 02:04 | So, now, we need to somehow
isolate only the branches and remove that
| | 02:09 | background, and a very convenient way to do
that is to go over to the Channels palette.
| | 02:14 | So we're going to switch here, and
you can look at each one of these, and
| | 02:18 | see which one already has the most separation
between the background and the foreground.
| | 02:23 | And that looks better.
| | 02:24 | Oh, but look at blue.
| | 02:27 | Blue really has a real strong separation,
so what we are going to do is we are
| | 02:32 | going to crunch this into a high
contrast version of the branches, and then use
| | 02:37 | that selection to construct a shadow
pattern that we will then transport back
| | 02:42 | over to our other image.
| | 02:43 | So what I want to do here is, with this
blue channel selected, I'm going to use
| | 02:48 | the curves command on that blue channel,
and we're just going to really kind of
| | 02:52 | crunch down highlights and shadows.
| | 02:57 | So that we're going to end up with a
very, almost kind of just black and
| | 03:01 | white, with very little definition in it.
| | 03:03 | And I don't need to worry a whole lot
about some of the structure within the
| | 03:08 | shadow peeking through like that.
| | 03:10 | It's not going to be a big deal,
because as a shadow you won't even notice all that.
| | 03:14 | So, the trick here really is to
just get it very high contrast.
| | 03:18 | That looks pretty good.
| | 03:20 | Now that we've done that, we're going
to use the same trick we used a moment
| | 03:24 | again by holding down the Command or
Control key and then going to that blue
| | 03:27 | channel thumbnail, I can
select that particular element.
| | 03:30 | Now this is backwards, it's selecting
all of the background rather than the
| | 03:34 | actual construction of the branches.
| | 03:37 | So I need to invert that selection, so I'm
going to use Shift+Command or Contrll, and I for invert.
| | 03:44 | And now, we've transposed that around.
| | 03:46 | Now, let's go back and look at our
regular image over on the Layers Palette.
| | 03:51 | I'm going to create a new layer, and
because I have this selection created, all
| | 03:56 | I need to do now is fill
this layer in with black.
| | 04:00 | So let's go ahead and fill this with black.
| | 04:03 | And I'm going to undo my selections
with Command, or Control+D. And we can
| | 04:07 | even turn off this background.
| | 04:08 | So you can see that there I now have
a very nice selection in black and
| | 04:13 | white of our tree.
| | 04:14 | When a shadow rakes across the facade
of a building, it's not going to be clear
| | 04:19 | and crisp like this.
| | 04:20 | It's actually, it's going to be
distorted, depending on, you know, how the
| | 04:23 | light is hitting this element,
and it's also going to be softened.
| | 04:28 | So we're going to take advantage of a
new feature in CS6 called Field Blur, and
| | 04:33 | let's go ahead and go to that.
| | 04:34 | This will open up a dialogue
that this is going to be in.
| | 04:38 | What this let's me do is adjust how soft
a shadow is, and it's going to do it in
| | 04:43 | a continuous change across the image.
| | 04:45 | So, I'm going to use this little icon to
plant a new point of focus here, and as
| | 04:51 | I adjust this little ring element,
you can see I can make it get much more
| | 04:55 | softer or I can make it get back to harder.
| | 04:58 | So this allows me to control how soft
this is, in fact when you pick this up
| | 05:02 | and move it you can see how it
interactively actually changes where that
| | 05:06 | softness is happening.
| | 05:08 | So let's take this other one and we're
going to move it over here, and I'm going
| | 05:12 | to reduce the softness.
| | 05:15 | So now we've go this transposition
from fairly sharp to soft, and if you see
| | 05:21 | how a shadow rolls across a facade,
you'll get it where the closest element is
| | 05:27 | going to be less soft, and as it gets
farther away from the actual element
| | 05:31 | that's casting the shadow,
it gets continuously softer.
| | 05:34 | So, we're introducing the look of a
shadow, by creating this change of
| | 05:40 | focus from sharp to soft, and once
we've got this set up the way we want,
| | 05:45 | and this looks pretty good.
| | 05:46 | I'm going to go ahead up here and say OK,
and it will apply that to the branch element.
| | 05:51 | Now, all I need to do at this point
is get this over to the other image.
| | 05:57 | And again, I'm just going to hold down my
Command or Control key over the layer thumbnail.
| | 06:02 | This lets me select all of that
area, so we'll do Command or Control+C.
| | 06:08 | Let's go back to our image, and now I
am going to use the Paste Into command,
| | 06:14 | which is under Paste Special, under
the Edit menu, say Past Into. And now we've
| | 06:19 | got our element contained
within the facade of that building.
| | 06:23 | We are not finished yet though.
| | 06:24 | Now because this is not locked, you see
right there how there is a lock, it is
| | 06:29 | not locked when it comes in.
| | 06:31 | That means I can now pick this up.
| | 06:33 | See how I can move that around?
| | 06:35 | So now, I've got the ability to position
this and orient it exactly the way I want to.
| | 06:41 | I'm going to reduce this down a
little bit, because now that I've got this in
| | 06:45 | here, I can go ahead and transform it,
and start to adjust it, so that it
| | 06:49 | looks even more like a shadow.
| | 06:50 | Remember, these things are always
rather distorted, so I'm going to
| | 06:53 | really elongate this.
| | 06:55 | I can also kind of rotate this to get the
angle of the branches they way I want it to look.
| | 07:02 | And see how I can just move this around, I
can just see how that pattern affects my image.
| | 07:07 | I kind of like the way that looks.
| | 07:09 | So I'm going to go ahead and hit
Return and that will commit my transform.
| | 07:14 | Now, what I want to do is just
start to play with the opacity of this.
| | 07:18 | So I'm going to start turning down the
opacity, and you can see here how I can
| | 07:22 | start to get that nice
look of a shadow on there.
| | 07:25 | Now, here's the trick with this.
| | 07:26 | You don't want this to be
something that calls attention to itself.
| | 07:31 | And I find that you really have to
turn this down more than you think.
| | 07:35 | The way you see how it's working is to
turn it down, and then turn it on and off.
| | 07:40 | Now, it's there, but Ithink it
could use a little more emphasis.
| | 07:44 | So I'm going to turn this back up a ways,
somewhere around here, so I'm what, at 30% or so?
| | 07:52 | See now the difference is, when it's
not there, and when I turn it on, it
| | 07:56 | definitely makes a difference.
| | 07:57 | But also, with it on right now, as I
look at it, I don't find myself paying a
| | 08:02 | lot of attention to it.
| | 08:04 | Like, oh, why is there that pattern on there?
| | 08:06 | It just naturally seems to be
part of the scene at this point.
| | 08:09 | And that's what we want.
| | 08:11 | So, what we've done here is added
another dimension of mystery to our scene.
| | 08:16 | And remember, as I said in an earlier
video, you don't want to be a slave to the
| | 08:20 | original, so this is yet another step
that we're removing this from its original
| | 08:25 | context, and we're adding this kind of
sense of mystery to the overall image, so
| | 08:30 | that now it's starting to reinforce the
storytelling aspect of this little girl,
| | 08:36 | who may be a ghost, or may not be in
the scene. And it just starts to seal the
| | 08:43 | image into this kind of mood that we want.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Shadow/Highlight adjustment filter| 00:00 | So, up till now, we've been
basically building our story elements.
| | 00:04 | We've been putting pieces together and
creating this overall scene that tells a story.
| | 00:11 | Now its time to start kind of locking
down things and begin to prepare it for
| | 00:17 | the painting aspect of all this.
| | 00:19 | And so what I want to do now is, while
I still have all of these elements in
| | 00:24 | various layers, is start to play
around with the tonality of them, somewhat.
| | 00:28 | And again, this will be in the service
of basically adding or strengthening the
| | 00:35 | mood that I want to impart within this scene.
| | 00:37 | We're going to use a couple tricks here
in the next couple segments to be able
| | 00:41 | to work on a couple different parts
of this image just to start to get what
| | 00:46 | my vision of it is.
| | 00:47 | And, keep in mind, my vision of this and
your vision of this could be different,
| | 00:52 | and especially if you take some of the
lessons that you get out of this course
| | 00:56 | and apply it to an idea that you have,
| | 00:59 | your vision of it is going to be completely
different than mine, so what you're getting
| | 01:03 | throughout this course is, you know, a
thin slice into my way of doing things,
| | 01:08 | and it's very unique to the way that I do it.
| | 01:11 | You may find that these techniques work
great for you, but you'll apply them and
| | 01:15 | use them in totally different ways.
| | 01:16 | So, don't feel like what I'm showing you
here is, this is the one way to do things.
| | 01:21 | This is just a way to do things, and
hopefully, some of these techniques can
| | 01:25 | parlay themselves into the way that you
want to affect an image or tell a story.
| | 01:30 | Now, what we're going to start
with is the castle itself.
| | 01:34 | And I'm going to take advantage of
the shadow and highlight feature that
| | 01:39 | allows me to play with kind of
adjusting each component of that, the shadows
| | 01:44 | and the highlights.
| | 01:45 | And I'm going to start off by kind of
going to the castle layer here, and we'll go
| | 01:50 | up to our Image menu to
Adjustments to Shadows/Highlights.
| | 01:54 | And I want to show you a couple things right here.
| | 01:58 | Did you see how that
changed when that opened up?
| | 02:00 | I don't like the way this changes every
time it opens up, and that's because by
| | 02:05 | default, Photoshop has the shadows turned up.
| | 02:08 | You know, if no adjustment's been
made yet, its going to look like this.
| | 02:12 | That's how it looked before we came to it.
| | 02:14 | If you don't want to see that change
every time you open up Shadows/Highlights,
| | 02:19 | go down here to the bottom and you
may have to open up your dialog.
| | 02:22 | It shows up like this by default, so
you might want to open this up with the
| | 02:27 | Show More Options option, just make
sure you have everything turned down and
| | 02:30 | then you can say Save As Defaults,
and so we can say Cancel now.
| | 02:34 | And now when I go to Shadows/Highlights
it doesn't change. That's the way I like it.
| | 02:42 | So that's, that's a little
thing that I wanted to show you.
| | 02:45 | Now, I want to start to darken up this
scene a bit give, it a little more mystery.
| | 02:49 | And so with the highlights, see how I can
start to turn this down? But there's one
| | 02:53 | thing that's wrong, and this is where
we're going to have to start considering
| | 02:57 | the layers and how they interact.
| | 02:58 | You can see in the shadows that we've
applied with the tree limb, see how they're
| | 03:03 | turning kind of brown, that's
because that's on a different layer.
| | 03:07 | So it's going to act differently than
if it were all of a single layer.
| | 03:12 | So the first thing I want to do is,
rather than just adjust the castle, I'm going to
| | 03:17 | cancel out of this, and I'm
going to collapse these two together.
| | 03:20 | Now, as we go throughout this title,
keep in mind that at various spots in the
| | 03:27 | process, it's going to become
necessary to collapse things.
| | 03:31 | Sometimes, in fact in a little while here,
we're going to collapse this whole thing
| | 03:35 | down to a single layer.
| | 03:36 | I really advise you to keep track as
you go forward of anything that you think
| | 03:42 | you may want to adjust later on and go change.
| | 03:45 | You always want to make sure that you're
keeping a layered version around so that,
| | 03:50 | rather than have some major surgery,
| | 03:53 | it's very difficult to correct
something, you could think of it as, oh, if I
| | 03:57 | just had that on an individual
layer it would have been so much easier.
| | 04:00 | Always keep that in mind as you go
forward, so that you keep a version
| | 04:05 | that's layered. And I can tell you that
having gone through this process to do
| | 04:09 | this image already, you wouldn't believe
how many versions of this image I have.
| | 04:13 | I probably have 20 or 30
versions of the image from beginning to end.
| | 04:17 | And that's all so I can always get
back if I want to just go back a couple of
| | 04:22 | steps. The more you save layered
versions of images as you move forward, you
| | 04:27 | want to be able to have those
so that you can make changes.
| | 04:30 | And one way to think of it is, any
time you think you may want to get back to
| | 04:34 | something or any time you're going to
collapse things, always save the image
| | 04:39 | first, and then collapse, and
that way you can always get back.
| | 04:42 | So, that's just a little lesson,
but it's hard learned, because you'll
| | 04:45 | eventually do it and not save it and
you'll realize how much more convenient it
| | 04:49 | would have been to have
saved the layered version.
| | 04:52 | What I want to do is here is I'm going to
collapse my shadow layer down onto the
| | 04:56 | castle, so I select that layer and I'm
just going to use Command or Control+E to
| | 05:01 | drop that onto the layer
beneath it, which is the castle layer.
| | 05:04 | So now, I now have the shadow and
the castle as all part of one layer.
| | 05:10 | And now I can go back to my
Shadows/Highlights and not get that funny
| | 05:14 | coloration that we saw before.
| | 05:16 | So we'll go back to Shadows/Highlights
and I'm going to adjust my highlights.
| | 05:23 | Now, see, now that's not, you know,
I'll over do it, but you can eventually,
| | 05:27 | with Shadows/Highlights, make colors look
funny anyway, but it's not as much of a
| | 05:31 | problem as it was before.
| | 05:32 | So I'm going to do that.
| | 05:33 | Let's also take a look at
shadows, I was just going to check both.
| | 05:37 | See how I can now kinda open
up those shadows a little bit.
| | 05:40 | So, there's no right or wrong answer to this.
| | 05:42 | I always call this kind of work
seasoning to taste. Everybody's going to have a
| | 05:46 | different way they want this to look.
| | 05:48 | So, season to taste is just where it's
open to interpretation how you want to
| | 05:52 | do it. And I'll always check with
turning this on and on to see what I've done.
| | 05:57 | And remember, too, that what we're
trying to do here is move this farther and
| | 06:01 | farther away from how a camera looks at
it and more how human vision looks at it.
| | 06:06 | So, now that I look at that, earlier, I
thought it looked fine, but when I start
| | 06:11 | to see it kind of crunched down
a bit there In the dynamic range,
| | 06:14 | I like that more, so I'm going to go with that.
| | 06:17 | And I can also go to the background layer,
and I can also do the same thing with
| | 06:22 | it, and just see if it's
going to make any difference.
| | 06:24 | So once again, we'll go to
Shadows/Highlights and let's see.
| | 06:28 | Yeah, see how that, we're getting much
more definition in the sky? I like that.
| | 06:34 | I'll also just check what the shadows do,
and actually, that kind of has a nice look.
| | 06:40 | Because what we want to do here is,
this background is farther away, and so
| | 06:45 | there's going to be some
atmosphere between us and those elements.
| | 06:49 | And the more distant items become, the
more they kind of lose color and get lighter.
| | 06:55 | So by actually kind of turning this
down, you can see how it's effecting the
| | 06:59 | landscape back there.
| | 07:01 | I can actually use this
to kind of lighten that up.
| | 07:03 | So I'm going to go with
something like that. There we go.
| | 07:09 | So, what we've done here is we've used
Shadows/Highlights in a way that lets us
| | 07:15 | kind of interactively adjust the look of this.
| | 07:18 | And in fact, if I go back a couple of
steps here, temporarily, see, that's where
| | 07:24 | we were, and there's where we are now.
| | 07:28 | So now we've got this adjusted more
to a way that, again, according to my
| | 07:32 | vision, the way I want to
see this appear, looks correct.
| | 07:35 | So, we're going to with this and then in
the next video, we're going to take advantage
| | 07:40 | of yet another tone correcting feature,
and then we'll be pretty much ready to
| | 07:45 | start the process of painting.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the HDR Toning filter| 00:00 | While the Shadow and Highlight
adjustment filter does a good job at reigning
| | 00:04 | in a photo's tonal range, the HDR toning filter
does this, plus sharpens detail at the same time.
| | 00:10 | We'll eventually remove much of the
fine detail in the next chapter, but I am a
| | 00:14 | big proponent of initially getting
as much out of an image as possible.
| | 00:17 | The higher the starting quality,
| | 00:19 | the better the result.
| | 00:20 | Let's take a look at the HDR toning filter.
| | 00:22 | Now, the first thing I'll tell you is
that the HDR toning filter requires
| | 00:26 | that it be flattened.
| | 00:28 | So, I'm going to go ahead and flatten
my image, and we can do that by going up
| | 00:31 | to Layer, and just jump down to
the bottom here to Flatten Image.
| | 00:36 | So now we've got a flat
image that it can work with.
| | 00:39 | Next we'll go to the HDR toning
filter itself, which is right here under
| | 00:44 | Shadows/Highlights.
| | 00:46 | And it's going to put some sort of
mumbo jumbo on it to begin with, which isn't
| | 00:52 | what I want, so I'm going to need to
start kind of playing around with this.
| | 00:56 | One of the things that it does for me
that I don't want, is it's just way too
| | 01:00 | bright, so I'm going to initially
just play with the exposure here and just
| | 01:04 | start to turn it down.
| | 01:05 | I want this to be a little darker of an
image. And we can also play with Gamma
| | 01:10 | here, a little bit, just to see if
that pushes a little more range out of it.
| | 01:16 | Okay, and I'm always going to be
checking this with the preview on and off,
| | 01:21 | to kinda see where I'm going with this.
| | 01:24 | I'm going to turn Detail up way too high for a
second, because I want to show you something.
| | 01:29 | This is the kind of cliched HDR
look you see on the web all the time.
| | 01:33 | Some people may want to work with it,
but you see it overused like this all the
| | 01:38 | time, and for my liking, I
don't want it to be this over the top.
| | 01:43 | However, this is a season to taste
operation, and depending on where you are
| | 01:47 | going with painting, you may want to do this.
| | 01:50 | I don't want to, but I just wanted to
show it to you, so that you'll know you
| | 01:54 | can go to an extreme like this if you want to.
| | 01:57 | Remember that all along the way,
everything we're doing here, the idea is to
| | 02:01 | take this image and drain it
of its photographic qualities.
| | 02:06 | So, you could say, well, this certainly
is starting to get away from looking like
| | 02:10 | a normal photograph, but what it
happens to be getting into, in this case, is,
| | 02:14 | it is getting into that
cliched world of overdone HDR.
| | 02:18 | So, for me, I don't want it to be that
extreme, but again, this is a highly
| | 02:23 | subjective filter, and everybody's
going to have a different opinion or sense of
| | 02:28 | how they want their image to look.
| | 02:30 | So while I'm telling you I don't want
you to do this, if you feel like you want
| | 02:34 | to, that's up to you.
| | 02:35 | But I'm going to just kind of turn this down
a ways. I don't quite want it that extreme.
| | 02:40 | And again, I always keep checking,
this way with the filter on and off just
| | 02:47 | to see where its at.
| | 02:48 | I may play with highlights here a little bit.
| | 02:51 | And again, I sometimes don't even know,
you know, which way is going to work
| | 02:54 | better, so I'll just try turning it up,
turning it down, see if, you know, if there
| | 03:00 | is one of those, I definitely don't like that.
| | 03:02 | That's just kind of neutralizing things.
| | 03:04 | So, I'm going to bring it
back, and that looks good.
| | 03:09 | OK, so I'd say that's a pretty good result.
| | 03:13 | Sometimes saturation can be a bit much,
but the other thing about these images
| | 03:18 | is, I don't want these to be in a color
space that is associated with what you
| | 03:23 | see on photographs, because sensors in
a camera tend to have a certain look to
| | 03:28 | them, just like a traditional film used to have.
| | 03:31 | And so the idea here, once again, in
moving this away from it's photographic
| | 03:36 | origins is to perhaps, and
I'll try it out here a little bit,
| | 03:40 | just crank up the saturation a little bit.
| | 03:42 | That's a bit much, but again, what I
want to do is kind of get it into a -- the
| | 03:47 | feeling that I want for this scene,
and I'm liking what I see here now.
| | 03:51 | So you can see it, it does change the
quality a bit, but not necessarily taking
| | 03:57 | it into that world of extreme HDR.
| | 04:00 | So I'm going to go with that. And
now we finally are at the point where
| | 04:04 | we've got this image adjusted in such a way
that it's ready to be the basis for painting.
| | 04:11 | So, everything we've done up until
now is really all about adjusting and
| | 04:15 | controlling this image to be the basis
for our vision of how we want this to
| | 04:21 | look when it's painted.
| | 04:22 | And I can tell you in advance, that
you'll see as we start painting, when you
| | 04:26 | start mushing different colors around,
they're going to tend to dull down a bit.
| | 04:31 | So, if this looks a little bit
over-attenuated in terms of some of the
| | 04:36 | qualities of it, you'll be surprised
how much of that is actually going to get
| | 04:39 | removed as we paint.
| | 04:41 | So sometimes going maybe a little bit
overboard, while I just on the one side of
| | 04:47 | my mouth I just told you, you know,
don't do that, on the other side of my mouth
| | 04:51 | I'm going to tell you that through
experience you'll learn, sometimes if you
| | 04:55 | overcompensate a bit at the beginning
of the painting process, you'll find that
| | 04:59 | as you paint and these colors start to
dull down a bit, some of the gaudiness,
| | 05:03 | maybe is the right word here,
| | 05:05 | will tend to diminish a bit. And you
always have the option throughout your
| | 05:10 | process, especially at the end,
to do some final tonal adjustments.
| | 05:14 | And we'll be talking about that
later on in the title, so that you can
| | 05:17 | compensate for things that may have
happened along the way of painting this to
| | 05:22 | get to your final image.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Image Preparation: Modifying Color and DetailResolution is in the brushstrokes| 00:00 | If you've ever reproduced a
photograph with an inkjet printer, you've most
| | 00:04 | likely learned the lesson that, as
output size increases, greater image
| | 00:08 | resolution is required.
| | 00:10 | Most of us learned this lesson the
hard way, by printing a low resolution
| | 00:13 | image at a large size.
| | 00:15 | The result is a blurry rendition of the
image that looked sharp and crisp on-screen.
| | 00:19 | The prevailing rule of thumb is that a
photograph destined for printing must
| | 00:23 | contain sufficient resolution
for output at a specific size.
| | 00:27 | These are wise words when printing a
photograph, but you'll be surprised to
| | 00:30 | learn that you can cheat this
supposed commandment when interpreting a
| | 00:34 | photo into a painting.
| | 00:35 | So what I want to do here is enlarge this
image, so I can print a very large size
| | 00:40 | of it out when I print it on a inkjet printer.
| | 00:42 | And let's take a look at the current image size.
| | 00:45 | So, 240 is a good resolution for
inkjet printing, and right now if I printed
| | 00:50 | this image out it would be roughly
sixteen by ten inches, which is okay, but
| | 00:54 | I want a larger image.
| | 00:56 | In fact, I want this to be twice as large.
| | 00:58 | So I'm going to go ahead and break this
commandment, and I'm going to take this
| | 01:02 | and make this 200%.
| | 01:04 | So it's going to be
essentially twice as large as it was.
| | 01:07 | So let's go ahead and apply that,
and let's go up to 100%, and sure
| | 01:10 | enough, there it is. Look at it.
| | 01:12 | It's kind of soft and fuzzy.
| | 01:14 | This would not make a good print.
| | 01:16 | But here is the beauty of working with painting.
| | 01:19 | For a photographic output, this is insufficient,
and we can see it right in the image itself.
| | 01:25 | It's too soft.
| | 01:26 | However, we are going to be
replacing this image with brush strokes.
| | 01:31 | Now, they're still made up of pixels,
but when we start applying brush
| | 01:35 | strokes at this newer resolution, the
brush strokes are now going to be the
| | 01:39 | carrier of the resolution.
| | 01:40 | And being applied at this resolution,
it's going to work out just fine, and let me
| | 01:45 | show you what I mean. Here's a sample.
| | 01:47 | This image has been resized to 200%,
and if we look over here, you can see,
| | 01:51 | here's the painted version of that image.
| | 01:53 | Because all of this photographic
softened detail has literally been replaced,
| | 01:59 | and this color's been used in
the brush strokes, this looks fine.
| | 02:03 | This is absolutely perfect, sharp,
crisp resolution for an image twice the
| | 02:08 | resolution that we've been working at.
| | 02:10 | So the lesson to be learned here is that,
while you do need to have a specific
| | 02:14 | starting resolution with a photograph
when you're going to print it out to a
| | 02:18 | specific size, you can actually take
advantage of the fact that you are going to
| | 02:21 | be replacing photographic detail
with brush strokes in your final image.
| | 02:26 | And by enlarging the image prior to
the application of brush strokes, you can
| | 02:31 | take this image, which, yes I totally
agree, not sufficient resolution for large
| | 02:36 | output as I want to do, but after I've
applied the brush strokes to it once I've
| | 02:41 | enlarged it, it's perfect.
| | 02:43 | So this is at trick you can use.
| | 02:45 | You don't necessarily have to have a
high resolution image to start with
| | 02:49 | when you're painting.
| | 02:50 | Certainly the smaller the image it is
and the larger you enlarge it, the more
| | 02:55 | softer and blurry this is going to
become, but remember that you are just
| | 02:59 | using this as a palette of color that is
going to be interpreted through the brush strokes.
| | 03:04 | So that soft, blurry image, when that
color's picked up and funneled through
| | 03:09 | the brush stroke, it's going to become a nice,
sharp, finished image at the higher resolution.
| | 03:15 | So, keep in mind that this is a nice
little trick you can use to get around
| | 03:20 | this supposed resolution limit that
you're faced with when you're normally
| | 03:24 | printing with a photograph.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Surface Blur filter| 00:00 | After enlarging our image by 200%,
we're now going to pre-sharpen the image a
| | 00:05 | bit to restore some detail.
| | 00:06 | Then, we're going to apply Surface Blur. What?
| | 00:09 | Blur an image after sharpening it?
| | 00:11 | That doesn't make any sense, or does it?
| | 00:13 | Surface Blur protects edges, while
simultaneously blurring areas of little
| | 00:18 | contrast differentiation.
| | 00:19 | This technique is essentially a
simplifying filter that drains much of the
| | 00:23 | language of photography's
detail, yet enhances sharpness.
| | 00:27 | Let's see how it's done.
| | 00:28 | Now, as I said, we are first going to
pre-sharpen this image, and I'm going to
| | 00:32 | use an interesting technique that's not
always in the mainstream but does a good
| | 00:37 | job of sharpening overall image detail.
| | 00:41 | And to do that, we are going to create a
copy of our image, so I'm going to drag
| | 00:46 | it down here onto the New Layer
icon and we've now got a copy.
| | 00:51 | Next, let's go and switch it to Overlay.
| | 00:54 | Now, this is going to temporarily
make it look a little strange, but for the
| | 00:58 | technique we're going to apply, we do
need to have it in Overlay mode. And that
| | 01:02 | technique is to go up to the Filter
menu and we are going to go down to the
| | 01:06 | mysterious Other category, and go to High Pass.
| | 01:10 | And what we'll see here now is a
version of the image that is using this High
| | 01:17 | Pass filter on the duplicate to apply
a sharpening to it, and what's going on
| | 01:23 | here is the High Pass filter,
depending on this radius, actually attenuates
| | 01:28 | detail in the image and it's a little
difficult to see unless you're at a 100%,
| | 01:34 | so I'm going to go all the way up to 100% here.
| | 01:37 | Remember, we're now working with an
image that's twice as large as it was.
| | 01:40 | And if we turn Preview on and off
here, you're not going to quite see the
| | 01:45 | correct information because when I
turn Preview off, now we're looking at the
| | 01:49 | overlaid version of the image on itself,
which is over-attenuating all of the
| | 01:54 | tonality and value
in it, so it looks goofy.
| | 01:57 | So, you do have to have a
bit of a leap of faith to do this.
| | 02:01 | But when it's on now, we can see how, if I
turn it all the way down, nothing is happening.
| | 02:06 | But as I start to turn this up, you
can see how, you know, don't watch in the
| | 02:10 | Preview, watch on the image, you
can see how this starts to sharpen.
| | 02:14 | I'll do an exaggerated version of it.
| | 02:16 | But you can see it's definitely sharpening.
| | 02:18 | And so, I'm going to do
around eight or so pixels here.
| | 02:21 | And again, kind of turn it on and off
and this isn't really going to tell us
| | 02:25 | what we need to know, so let's use that
leap of faith to go ahead and apply it.
| | 02:30 | And the best way to probably see this is
if I go down a ways and turn this layer
| | 02:35 | off and on now, see the difference?
| | 02:37 | See how much sharper that appears?
| | 02:39 | What it's doing is it's
accentuating the edges of contrast.
| | 02:44 | So, wherever there's a dark and a
light, it's going to attenuate that.
| | 02:48 | And our eye and brain
perceives that as increased sharpness.
| | 02:52 | So, we've brought a little bit
of sharpness back into this image.
| | 02:55 | I'm now going to go ahead and
drop this copy because I like what I see.
| | 03:00 | And here's where we're now going to blur it.
| | 03:02 | But this is a special version of blur.
| | 03:04 | This is Surface Blur.
| | 03:06 | Let's go ahead and take a look at it.
| | 03:08 | It's under the Blur category under Filters.
| | 03:10 | Right down here, Surface Blur.
| | 03:12 | And this is another one
| | 03:13 | we want to be up at 100% here, so
let's make sure we're at 100%, and let's
| | 03:22 | turn this on and off.
| | 03:23 | And you can see what's happening if we
just kind of examine this area right here.
| | 03:27 | See how nice and flat and
smooth that is now with Preview on.
| | 03:31 | When I turn it off, see how
we're getting all that grainy noise?
| | 03:34 | Because this is an area that doesn't
have wide dynamic range changes in, like it
| | 03:40 | does say right here where this little
carved element is, this is going to get
| | 03:44 | basically smoothed out by the blur, OK?
| | 03:47 | But areas where there's high
contrast, it's protecting those areas.
| | 03:51 | And so, what this does is it
simplifies the image and yet, it's basically
| | 03:56 | protecting the
sharpness that is in the image.
| | 03:59 | And as you kind of look around in
different parts of the image, like right in
| | 04:03 | here for example, turn it on and off,
you can see how we're getting rid of some
| | 04:07 | of that noisy detail.
| | 04:09 | And you can play around with the
radius and threshold to see if you can
| | 04:14 | improve upon it, but you'll start
to get different kinds of effects.
| | 04:18 | So, as I call many of these
effects, they're what I call, season to taste.
| | 04:22 | Now, I'm kind of looking at what's
going on in here and it's really smooshed
| | 04:26 | out so I want to reduce this down a bit.
| | 04:29 | And I know this filter tends to
work better at lower settings rather
| | 04:32 | than pushing it way up.
| | 04:33 | So, I'm just kind of observing at
what's happening in some of these areas.
| | 04:39 | And also you can, if you turn the
Threshold down, it's as if nothing is
| | 04:43 | happening and as you start to turn it up,
it starts to affect more and more of a
| | 04:47 | range of pixels in the image.
| | 04:49 | You can see right there, see, look how
perfectly nice and sharp that looks.
| | 04:52 | And when you turn everything else off,
because it doesn't have that grainy, high
| | 04:57 | frequency information to compare it to,
what is sharp even appears sharper.
| | 05:01 | So, it's actually kind of a sin of
omission, is what we're doing here.
| | 05:05 | By removing some of that noisy detail,
the areas that have some sharpness in it
| | 05:10 | actually are reinforced and the eye
picks it up as looking even more sharp.
| | 05:14 | So, you're playing a little
game here but it turns out, it's a great
| | 05:18 | trick for kind of prepping
this image in advance of painting.
| | 05:22 | Let's go ahead and say OK.
| | 05:24 | And I'm just kind of look around the
image a little bit just so I can see what I
| | 05:28 | basically have at this point.
| | 05:29 | So, I just move around here a little
bit and look at areas of the image.
| | 05:34 | If we Undo and Redo here, we can
see there's before and there's now.
| | 05:40 | But you can see how that just, what
is sharp appears sharper because we're
| | 05:44 | getting rid of that high
frequency noise that's basically scattered
| | 05:49 | throughout the image.
| | 05:50 | So basically, you can really take
advantage of this Surface Blur tool as a
| | 05:55 | technique for getting rid of some of
the noise in an image and yet, it will
| | 05:59 | retain the sharpness in the high-
contrast areas that are already in the image.
| | 06:04 | And by removing that noise, to be there,
to compare by your brain and eye with
| | 06:10 | what's already sharp, it makes
what is sharp even look sharper.
| | 06:14 | It's an illusion, but it works.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Displacement filter to add imperfections| 00:00 | A photograph is a record of reality.
| | 00:03 | Other than lens artifacts, a camera
records everything with precision.
| | 00:08 | Artists, on the other hand, are
capable of, and often do, introduce small
| | 00:12 | imperfections when rendering a scene.
| | 00:14 | Straight lines wobble a bit.
| | 00:16 | Circles are somewhat elliptical.
| | 00:18 | Perspective is skewed.
| | 00:20 | These visual flaws are part
of the language of painting.
| | 00:23 | Take a look at any Van Gogh, and you'll see
an extreme example of what I'm talking about.
| | 00:28 | We can inject a bit, or a lot, of
imprecision into our image with the
| | 00:32 | displacement filter. Let's see how.
| | 00:35 | What we're going to do here is almost
make it as if we're looking through this
| | 00:39 | image through some slightly imperfect glass.
| | 00:42 | And it's going to make the image kind
of have a little bit of a waviness in it.
| | 00:46 | But you want to do it at a level that is very
| | 00:49 | low, you don't want this to
turn into a fun-house mirror.
| | 00:52 | But the idea here is, is that we're
just going to de-straighten, if that's a
| | 00:57 | word, some of the lines within the image.
| | 01:00 | And we want to do it at a low enough
level that it's there, but it's not obvious.
| | 01:05 | And so many of these
effects kind of work that way.
| | 01:08 | When it's done right,
| | 01:09 | you don't notice it, and yet if it's
not there you'd see something or sense
| | 01:13 | something different about the image.
| | 01:15 | And that's what we're going to do here.
| | 01:17 | We're just going to, and again, I'm
making this word up, we're going to
| | 01:20 | imperfectize our image, just a little bit.
| | 01:24 | And we do that with the displacement filter.
| | 01:27 | And what this is, is a map that
this image is going to look at
| | 01:31 | and use the texture in the displacement
map almost as if it is that, that piece
| | 01:38 | of glass with a pattern or a texture in
it, and affect our image by using that
| | 01:44 | as a way to make the pixels move
about, and again, in a subtle manner.
| | 01:49 | I'll show you an extreme version of it
while we're doing it, but I want to keep it
| | 01:54 | pretty simple here.
| | 01:54 | So we're going to now create a displacement map.
| | 01:58 | So I'm going to create a new file.
| | 02:00 | And its going to be 1000 by 1000. OK.
| | 02:07 | Now, we are going to create a
displacement map in this space.
| | 02:11 | And to do that, we go to
Filter > Render > Clouds.
| | 02:16 | Now, you'll wonder, why Clouds?
| | 02:17 | But really, what this is, it creates a
seamless fractal pattern. There it is.
| | 02:22 | So, it's very quickly created.
| | 02:24 | The thing about this that is
interesting is that the way this is created, this
| | 02:29 | is actually a tile, and anything
that's on this edge actually picks up on the
| | 02:33 | opposite edge, so we can use
this as a tile, and it's not.
| | 02:37 | Going to have obvious edges
in it, because it is seamless.
| | 02:42 | So we want to go ahead and save this.
| | 02:44 | So lets save, and will save this in
our Chapter four Video three area.
| | 02:48 | So I'm just going to call this Displacement.
| | 02:51 | OK, and we'll save that,
and we can go ahead and close it.
| | 02:56 | Now we are going to apply our map to
our image, and to do that, we have to go to
| | 03:02 | Filter > Distort > Displace.
| | 03:05 | And I know, from playing
with this, we don't want this.
| | 03:08 | Well, actually, I am going to go ahead.
| | 03:10 | Let's try this rather large one point.
| | 03:13 | Let's make it 50 pixels.
| | 03:15 | Because you're probably going to be
interested to see what you can do with this.
| | 03:19 | And although this isn't as
extreme as we want to go,
| | 03:22 | it's valuable for you to see how this
filter works, and you may find once you
| | 03:26 | understand it that you
would want to use it somewhere.
| | 03:29 | And I do want to set the Tile and Wrap Around
Options, those are important for this to work.
| | 03:34 | So let's go ahead and say okay.
| | 03:36 | Now, it's going to ask us, what
map do you want to use, and we just made
| | 03:40 | this, so we select it, and we
open it, and there we are. See?
| | 03:44 | It's a bit extreme.
| | 03:45 | That's more than I want.
| | 03:46 | But it's very interesting that it
actually can do this kind of thing.
| | 03:51 | And, as I said, I don't want to use it
this extreme for our particular exercise.
| | 03:57 | But if you are looking for an
interesting way to distort an image,
| | 04:01 | the displacement filter is pretty unique.
| | 04:05 | And what's interesting about it is,
| | 04:07 | depending on what that source displacement
map is, you can get wildly different results.
| | 04:12 | For example, what if it
was an image full of text?
| | 04:14 | You'd get something very
different than what we're seeing here.
| | 04:17 | But for our purposes, it's
this waviness that we want.
| | 04:20 | We just don't want it so extreme, so
let's undo and we'll go back to this place
| | 04:25 | again, Distort > Displace.
| | 04:27 | And I know from experience that I
want this to be more like three.
| | 04:31 | And again, season the taste, you may
find you want something different, but this
| | 04:36 | is the, what I found works, and
again you want Tile and Wrap Around, for,
| | 04:39 | because our image is much larger than
1000 pixels, it's taking that 1000 pixel
| | 04:45 | tile and just reapplying it
| | 04:48 | throughout the image.
| | 04:49 | And because it's seamless, we don't
see an obvious edge in the displacement.
| | 04:54 | And let's go ahead and say okay.
| | 04:55 | Choose our Displacement Map,
and it just applied it.
| | 04:59 | Did you see it change it? No, you didn't.
| | 05:01 | Let's go ahead and zoom up.
| | 05:02 | And I'll do, I'll undo and do-- no.
| | 05:06 | Let just look, like, right along, right here.
| | 05:10 | And I'll undo.
| | 05:12 | See what's happening?
| | 05:14 | It's almost
imperceptible, but it is there.
| | 05:18 | And that's what I want.
| | 05:19 | I want these little imperfections in the image.
| | 05:23 | Imagine if I was drawing this
| | 05:25 | by hand on my canvas prior to painting.
| | 05:29 | Now, yes, there's a wide range of
techniques artists will use and some may
| | 05:34 | rigidly stick to using straight edges
and T-squares and everything to get
| | 05:39 | everything perfect, but a lot of
artists are also going to just draw these lines as
| | 05:45 | they're applying them to the canvas,
and they are going to introduce these
| | 05:50 | little imperfections, and that's
what I want to show up in here.
| | 05:54 | Its not an obvious effect, but its cumulative.
| | 05:57 | A person looks at the finished
image and these little imperfections are
| | 06:01 | scattered throughout.
| | 06:02 | It just gives a sense of hand-wrought
quality to the image.
| | 06:07 | And that's what we want to do.
| | 06:09 | Remember, we're trying to drain the
photographic qualities out of this image
| | 06:14 | so we can replace them with painterly
activity, and painterly activity is going
| | 06:18 | to have imperfections like this in it.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Oil Paint filter| 00:00 | A large part of the image preparation
phase relates to draining the language of
| | 00:05 | photography from our image.
| | 00:07 | The Oil Paint filter is new in CS6, and
it offers an interesting technique for
| | 00:11 | replacing the precision of
photography with the variability of paint.
| | 00:15 | By the time we get to the second phase,
interpreting an image with hand-applied
| | 00:19 | brushwork, our job will be easier
because we have applied several photograph-
| | 00:23 | draining steps, and replaced them
with paint-leaning visual attributes.
| | 00:27 | The Oil Paint filter acts as a
major step in this transformation.
| | 00:32 | First and foremost, I want to explain,
just like some of the other things
| | 00:35 | we've been doing here in this chapter, these
are often try and undo types of procedures.
| | 00:40 | And there's never one correct result.
| | 00:42 | So I can't necessarily give you a set of
values that you would want to apply and
| | 00:47 | use every time on every image.
| | 00:48 | It's always going to be variable,
and getting back to the vision concept
| | 00:52 | that I've talked about,
| | 00:53 | what your vision is and what my vision
is could diverge, and you just will see
| | 00:58 | something different that you like.
| | 00:59 | So, don't take every step that
I'm showing you here as bible.
| | 01:02 | You can decide to use this particular
step, or you might not want to, or any
| | 01:07 | of the other steps, for that matter.
| | 01:09 | So, this is all in that whole season to
taste environment that I like to talk about.
| | 01:15 | So, what we're going to do here is
apply the Oil Paint filter, and we don't
| | 01:20 | have to do anything in advance of that
other than, I will say that you want to
| | 01:24 | look at this at 100%, so I'm going to
just double click my magnifying glass so
| | 01:28 | I see this at 100%.
| | 01:30 | The other thing that I will tell you is,
when applying this filter, you want to
| | 01:35 | probably be observing a part of the
image that has some detail in it that you
| | 01:41 | know you want to retain.
| | 01:42 | And I know that this metal scroll work
in the door is something that I don't
| | 01:47 | want to see get totally obliterated.
| | 01:50 | So, I'm going to focus on that
particular portion of the image as I apply this
| | 01:54 | filter. And what happens
in other parts of the image,
| | 01:57 | I can certainly look around at it, but
whatever I do, I do want to make these
| | 02:01 | adjustments, so that I don't somehow lose the
meaning of this scroll work that I see in the door.
| | 02:07 | So let's go to the Oil Paint filter.
| | 02:09 | It's under Filter, its right here
at the top level under Oil Paint.
| | 02:13 | And there's some things
that I want to tell you about.
| | 02:16 | Now let's also put this up to 100%
so that we're seeing it just like I
| | 02:20 | described a minute ago. There we go.
| | 02:22 | There are these lighting filters.
| | 02:24 | However, if shine is at zero, none of
these have any effect. Let me show you.
| | 02:29 | If I turn this up, see how it kind of
gives a raised, three-dimensional effect?
| | 02:34 | That's a cool effect, and there are
times where if I were just using this image
| | 02:38 | on its own, I would want to retain that effect.
| | 02:41 | However, I think it kind of interferes
with our process and so I don't actually
| | 02:46 | want shine turned on.
| | 02:48 | But because it's going to be down I
just want to again show you this.
| | 02:51 | When Shine is enabled, something like
Angular Direction changes the supposed
| | 02:56 | highlight and shadow
angularity of that three-dimensionality.
| | 03:01 | Also, you get into what's called
Bristle Detail. You can see how that changes,
| | 03:05 | it's kind of like sharpening the focus
as you turn it up and it just becomes a
| | 03:08 | little more obvious.
| | 03:10 | Also, the scale slider,
see how scale is changing.
| | 03:14 | Now, these are all neat attributes, but
for my purposes, and possibly for yours,
| | 03:19 | I don't want all of that going on,
it gets a little too noisy.
| | 03:23 | So, I'm going to turn Shine down. But
by turning that down, remember that now
| | 03:27 | Angular Direction, Bristle
Detail, and Scale have no meaning.
| | 03:30 | They only are functional if Shine is above zero.
| | 03:35 | So, by turning this down we're really
now focusing only on the Stylization
| | 03:40 | and Cleanliness sliders, and
let's take a look at what those do.
| | 03:43 | Now, I'll just crank it up
here so we'll see what happens.
| | 03:46 | See how the image is getting more and
more kind of softened and some of the
| | 03:50 | detail is going away.
| | 03:52 | Same with Cleanliness, as we turn
this up, it tends to soften things.
| | 03:56 | Now see, that's an interesting pattern,
but now I've lost all of the detail
| | 04:01 | that was in that scroll work.
| | 04:03 | So I need to turn this down, and, like I keep
saying, this is one of those sweet spot things.
| | 04:11 | I'm just kind of looking to where I
still get the sense that, that is the scroll
| | 04:15 | work, but it's not so lost I don't read it
| | 04:18 | as scroll work anymore.
| | 04:20 | So I'm kind of looking for somewhere
right around in here, and let's just kind
| | 04:25 | of look at the image in a few
areas so we see what's happening.
| | 04:29 | Unfortunately, there is no preview in
here, so you, you see it or you don't.
| | 04:36 | And, that's one of the
things that would be nice,
| | 04:39 | would be a little bit of a way to turn this
on and off so you could see the differences.
| | 04:44 | However, let's go ahead and apply that,
and I'll be able to undo and redo
| | 04:49 | here, so we can just see
what we got out of this.
| | 04:53 | okay, so I'm going to undo-redo.
| | 04:56 | See what happened there?
| | 04:57 | Now, it is doing an interesting effect,
and for some imagery it may be fine.
| | 05:03 | But I discovered a little trick, 'cause I
wanted to see what's going on with this
| | 05:08 | Oil Paint stylization, more
than it actually seems to show now.
| | 05:12 | You can see in these areas, that
looks pretty cool. I like that.
| | 05:15 | That's very interesting.
| | 05:17 | But I somehow want to introduce more of
this effect in these areas and it's all
| | 05:22 | flattened out, especially like in the sky.
| | 05:24 | Not much really seems to be happening.
| | 05:26 | So, let's undo this.
| | 05:28 | And the trick I figured out was, by
adding a pattern to this image, we can
| | 05:33 | introduce an extra level of detail
that the Oil Paint filter is going to
| | 05:38 | resolve itself around.
| | 05:40 | We saw what it did without it and
it's a pleasing effect, but I want to add
| | 05:44 | to it a little bit.
| | 05:45 | So the way to do that, is, we're
going to go down here and select the
| | 05:49 | pattern adjustment layer.
| | 05:50 | So we'll go right down here.
| | 05:52 | Right up here, we have pattern.
| | 05:54 | So let's go ahead and click on this, and what
this lets me do is fill this with a pattern.
| | 06:00 | And, by default, when you open this
up for the first time, the patterns are
| | 06:05 | going to be the default patterns, and
these aren't any of the patterns I want.
| | 06:08 | So what we have to do is
load another library up.
| | 06:11 | And so, we click on the little gear here.
| | 06:14 | And we want to go down and
get the Erodible Textures.
| | 06:17 | So click on Erodible Textures, and
we'll just go ahead and replace, and the one
| | 06:23 | I'm interested in here is Pebble Board.
| | 06:25 | Okay, so can see now, this is actually
also used with some of the charcoal and
| | 06:30 | chalk-based brushes that are in Photoshop.
| | 06:33 | But for our purpose, we're using
it primarily for its granularity.
| | 06:38 | What we do have control of here is
scale, and I'm going to just turn it up a
| | 06:43 | little bit, 'cause I did play with it
earlier and I know that at a 100% it didn't
| | 06:47 | quite seem as aggressive as I wanted it.
| | 06:49 | But again, you may want to play with
different scales to see, what does it look
| | 06:53 | like based on the scale, 'cause it does
change the quality of how it looks.
| | 06:58 | So, let's go ahead and apply that.
| | 07:00 | Now, what we need to do is, we want to
merge this with the image, so we're going
| | 07:05 | to switch this to overlay.
| | 07:06 | Now we've got our image as well as this texture.
| | 07:10 | And in order for this to work, we have
to flatten this, so that it's all
| | 07:14 | part of a single image.
| | 07:15 | It won't recognize that
pattern layer if we tried to do it.
| | 07:19 | It has to be embedded in the image.
| | 07:21 | So, I'm going to drop this, and
now we've got a flattened image with
| | 07:26 | that texture in it.
| | 07:27 | Now, let's go back to the Oil Paint filter.
| | 07:32 | And let's go back up to 100%. Now look at that.
| | 07:37 | See how there's much more fluidity
kind of happening in all of these areas.
| | 07:41 | Even, remember, the sky had
nothing going on. Now, it does.
| | 07:44 | So, we've now introduced a technique to
be able to have this sinewy kind of oil
| | 07:50 | paint texture embedded all throughout our image.
| | 07:54 | And once again, I want to make sure
| | 07:56 | I do still have the same settings, so
far we don't have to change them much.
| | 07:59 | But I'll just kind of play around with
both of these to see what I get.
| | 08:04 | As I turn Cleanliness down,
its getting closer and closer to
| | 08:07 | that original image. And I don't want that.
| | 08:09 | So, I'm going to turn it up, just
to kind of start softening things up.
| | 08:13 | But again, remember, my goal here is to
make sure that I don't lose sight of
| | 08:18 | the fact that I want to retain the
look of this metal scroll work that's on
| | 08:22 | the front of the door.
| | 08:23 | Lets just adjust Stylization a little bit,
this is where we're really going to see it
| | 08:28 | kind of slowly move away, from
being readable as that pattern.
| | 08:32 | And so I'm going to turn this
down till I get right around in here,
| | 08:36 | where there's enough of it there
that it does give us a good sense of what
| | 08:41 | that originally was.
| | 08:42 | And being that that's probably the
most detail-oriented area of the image,
| | 08:46 | everywhere else should
fall into place just fine.
| | 08:50 | Okay, now that we've done that, let's
just kind of look at some parts of this.
| | 08:54 | I noticed over here.
| | 08:55 | Oh, look how cool this looks.
| | 08:57 | I really like the way that it's turned
into this. And what's interesting about
| | 09:01 | this, let's go back to the overview
of the image and look at the whole thing.
| | 09:07 | You'd think, oh, those are making huge
changes, and this is what happens with a
| | 09:11 | lot of people working on high resolution images.
| | 09:13 | Especially in painting.
| | 09:15 | When you're working way up close, you
think oh I'm making huge changes to the
| | 09:18 | image, but as we back out to this,
it doesn't look like much is going on.
| | 09:22 | And in a way, that's actually a good
thing because we do know at the granular
| | 09:26 | level, at the very close-up
level of this image, we have made
| | 09:30 | major changes to it, we
can see them in the image.
| | 09:33 | But as we get away from it, it's not as
overriding of the original image as you would think.
| | 09:40 | So, we've found a nice sweet spot
here, where the image is changed.
| | 09:44 | and when we start applying brush strokes,
they're going to be picking up those
| | 09:47 | changes in tonality across the brush
stroke and introduce more complexity
| | 09:52 | within each brush stroke.
| | 09:53 | So, while at the moment, it may only
look like something's going on when you
| | 09:58 | zoom up to this at 100%,
| | 10:00 | when we start applying brushstrokes,
the differentiation at the cellular
| | 10:05 | level, if you want to call it that,
that we see at 100%, that will impact how
| | 10:09 | the brushstrokes look.
| | 10:10 | Now, the last thing I want to
change here is, I do notice that this got
| | 10:15 | brightened up a bit.
| | 10:16 | So I want to show you how this has changed
the tonality somewhat, and every texture
| | 10:21 | is going to influence the overall
tonality of the image a bit just based on
| | 10:26 | its, you know, how much darker or
lighter than medium gray it is, essentially.
| | 10:32 | And so if we go back here, that's what we had.
And after the Oil Paint filter has been applied,
| | 10:39 |
See how it's brightened up? So what I want to do
is go in here, and I'll use the Curves adjustment.
| | 10:46 |
And I'm just going to kind of eye-ball it,
but I want to start to drop this down
| | 10:50 |
closer to what I saw previous.
| | 10:54 |
And that looks much better.
| | 10:56 | And again, remember, every time
I look at this, I'm applying a
| | 11:00 | subjective judgement to it.
| | 11:02 | I'm just deciding, you know,
| | 11:04 | I like the way this looks.
| | 11:05 | It's not necessarily, this
looks exactly like it did earlier.
| | 11:09 | It just looks good to my eye.
| | 11:11 | And as you work through an image like
this, you will learn, if you haven't
| | 11:15 | already, to trust your eye.
| | 11:17 | And what looks good to you is a
good aesthetic decision for your image.
| | 11:21 | So, trust your own vision of what looks good,
| | 11:25 | and decide that that's what you want to go with.
| | 11:28 | And that's exactly what I've done here.
| | 11:30 | So this may be a little lighter, or
a little bit darker. I just noticed
| | 11:33 | that it did get lighter, and I want to make
sure that I didn't fall too far away from it.
| | 11:38 | Now, in the final video in this
chapter, we're going to look at this even a
| | 11:42 | little greater detail.
| | 11:43 | And just do some final, overall
adjustments to this image
| | 11:46 | so we've got the image exactly the
way we want it before we start painting.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Making tonal and color corrections| 00:00 | In the course of running our image
through several filters in the past few
| | 00:04 | videos, the color and tonality has
probably drifted from the original.
| | 00:08 | The next step is going to be replacing
this image with brush strokes, so this
| | 00:13 | is the point in the process in which we can
tweak the image's color and tone prior to painting.
| | 00:18 | We're not just going to try to return
the image to its original appearance,
| | 00:22 | rather, we are going to subjectively
adjust color and tone to suit our vision.
| | 00:27 | Now, I was thinking about this and one
way to think of what we're doing here is
| | 00:31 | since we're actually separating the
two aspects of a painting that an artist
| | 00:37 | traditionally would do simultaneously
would be, they would be mixing paint and
| | 00:41 | applying it to the
canvas to construct the image.
| | 00:44 | We, on the other hand, are doing all of that
color mixing prior to applying the brush strokes.
| | 00:50 | So another way to think of what we're
going to do here is we are essentially
| | 00:55 | mixing our oil paints right now.
| | 00:57 | And if you think of an artist, let's
say he sat and he tried to make the
| | 01:02 | same painting three different times.
| | 01:03 | And each time he had to mix
his paint to paint that image.
| | 01:06 | He's not going to squeeze out and mix
exactly the exact same colors every time.
| | 01:11 | They are going to change somewhat.
| | 01:13 | Some of that is based on emotion, how
awake you are, what the lighting is you're
| | 01:18 | in, what time of day it is,
how much caffiene you had.
| | 01:21 | All of those things are going to
affect your judgment, and how you are going
| | 01:25 | to mix those colors.
| | 01:27 | So, like the traditional painter,
mixing colors on a palette, we are the
| | 01:31 | digital equivalent,
| | 01:32 | and we are mixing or adjusting our
colors in situ, so to speak, so that the
| | 01:38 | image is the palate.
| | 01:40 | And anything we do now will affect what
the brushstrokes are going to look like.
| | 01:45 | I will give you a little preview of later on,
| | 01:48 | and tell you that we still have,
| | 01:50 | for each of the painting
layers we're going to be working on,
| | 01:52 | there is a non-destructive hue and saturation
| | 01:57 | adjustment layer associated
with each of those painting layers.
| | 01:59 | So, you'll still have the ability to
further adjust it, but think of the
| | 02:04 | initial, original painting technique.
| | 02:07 | Once they painted it, it's
there baby, there's no changing it.
| | 02:10 | Whereas, we are in this world where
it's completely changeable at any time, and
| | 02:15 | that's really the beauty of
the whole digital process is.
| | 02:18 | We have many more opportunities to make
decisions or rethink decisions that are
| | 02:25 | just not possible in the traditional
world. So what we are going to do now are
| | 02:29 | just some subjective color adjustments to this.
| | 02:32 | And if I did this in an hour from now,
I might adjust it little differently
| | 02:35 | than the way I am going to do it right now.
| | 02:38 | So, like I keep saying, there is no one
way to do this, it's completely seasoned
| | 02:42 | to taste, and like chefs, you are never
going to put exactly the same amount of
| | 02:47 | salt in a recipe, it might be different
each time and that's the beauty of art,
| | 02:51 | is it always comes out a little differently.
| | 02:53 | Alright, let's get to work.
| | 02:55 | So, I'm going to back
this out so we can see this.
| | 02:58 | And the first thing I'm
going to play with is Vibrance.
| | 03:03 | OK, Vibrance filter adjusts
colors without over-saturating.
| | 03:07 | And we can do this non-destructively,
although we are ultimately going to
| | 03:11 | flatten this out, but it's one way to
work so you can interplay with some of the
| | 03:15 | different adjustments.
| | 03:16 | So let's apply the Vibrance filter, and
I'm, let's just, you know, what the heck,
| | 03:21 | let's crank it all the way up, see what we get.
| | 03:24 | Okay, very rich color, but probably a
bit much, so I'm just going to back it off
| | 03:29 | a ways, and in fact, just kind of take
it down to zero, and I just like to kind of slide
| | 03:34 | like this and see what's
happening with the overall image.
| | 03:37 | You can see how there's kind of this
overall yellow tint that's happening to
| | 03:40 | all of the brickwork.
| | 03:41 | And, but in other areas, like the
autumn background and the sky, I like what's
| | 03:47 | going on there, so I'm
going to crank this up a ways.
| | 03:50 | Let's go ahead and leave that there.
| | 03:52 | Now, I can also use curves to adjust,
so let's get a curves adjustment layer
| | 03:56 | here, and it looks like I have more
headroom if I wanted to lighten this up som
| | 04:01 | e more, which I don't think I do.
| | 04:03 | It's just, I like a little bit
more of a darker tonality to this.
| | 04:06 | So, I'm going to just drop the curve
in the middle here a little bit just to
| | 04:10 | darken things up, and then we can turn
this on and off to see how much we're
| | 04:15 | actually affecting the image.
| | 04:16 | That looks pretty good to me.
| | 04:19 | But like I'm saying, I could look at this in
an hour and decide, oh I want to change this.
| | 04:23 | So this isn't necessarily the right answer.
| | 04:26 | It's an answer based on my subjective judgement.
| | 04:29 | The third one I'm going to show you here, and
this one a lot of people kind of shy away from,
| | 04:34 | but it's a really
powerful tool, is Selective color.
| | 04:36 | So let's take Selective color.
| | 04:38 | And this is where I can work on just
certain color ranges within the image
| | 04:43 | without affecting other areas. And in
this particular image, and let's maybe
| | 04:46 | just move this off to the side just a
little bit, I can play around with, in this
| | 04:51 | case, all of those reds that are
happening in this, I can adjust these.
| | 04:56 | And one way to work with, and I think
this is why it confuses people, a lot of
| | 05:00 | people are comfortable and are used
to working in RGB--red, green, blue, the
| | 05:04 | three components in the
pixels that make up the color.
| | 05:07 | The opposite of that, which you
normally use in the print, is cyan,
| | 05:11 | magenta, yellow. OK, so if you're used RGB,
cyan, magenta, yellow is like another language.
| | 05:17 | So, here's an easy way to think about this.
| | 05:19 | RGB is the opposite of cyan, magenta, yellow.
| | 05:25 | So the opposite of red is cyan.
| | 05:27 | The opposite of green is magenta.
| | 05:30 | The opposite of blue is yellow.
| | 05:32 | So, if I'm in my reds here,
and I want to remove some red.
| | 05:36 | That means red is-- the opposite of red is cyan.
| | 05:40 | I want to add cyan.
| | 05:41 | So if I crank cyan up,
| | 05:44 | see how I'm losing a lot of
that over-rich red tonality?
| | 05:48 | Here, I'll move it back up so you can see it.
| | 05:51 | See, now this is
basically where it was.
| | 05:54 | It looks really reddened, overall, to me,
and so I can take some of that out.
| | 05:58 | But I'm only affecting the red areas in
the image, not any other range of color.
| | 06:04 | I can also, it's got some yellow in it, so I can
play around with it. Do I want to take yellow out?
| | 06:09 | It kind of gets a little funky looking.
| | 06:12 | And If I add to it, it's just kind of
going to get us back to where we were.
| | 06:17 | So, I'm not going to change that.
| | 06:18 | The other thing you can play
with it just to see what black does.
| | 06:22 | If you add black, it's going
to add more density of that color.
| | 06:25 | See how it's changing it?
| | 06:27 | And if I take it the other way it kind
of washes it out. But it's only in the
| | 06:31 | reds, or what it considers to be a
primarily red pixel. And so, you know,
| | 06:35 | I don't really see much need to change this.
| | 06:37 | But I just wanted to show you
how you can play with this.
| | 06:41 | Now, let's go to the blues, for
example, just to see what happens here.
| | 06:45 | And this is another,
| | 06:46 | this is one thing that is
a little weird about this.
| | 06:49 | We see all this color in here.
| | 06:50 | I'd say for sure, oh, that's blue.
| | 06:52 | And I would say, for sure, that's cyan.
| | 06:54 | But sometimes the way it calculates
what it thinks the difference, say, between
| | 06:58 | a blue and a cyan is, isn't
what your eye thinks it is.
| | 07:01 | So let's just try it.
| | 07:02 | Let's go to the blues.
| | 07:03 | And what I want to see
| | 07:05 | what it considers to be the color
I have targeted, blue in this case.
| | 07:09 | I normally will just go down to the
black slider and just push it up, and can
| | 07:14 | you see it's only doing it really up
there in the upper right corner, very
| | 07:18 | little is changing, there's a
little bit of blue in here, but not much.
| | 07:22 | If I take it the other way,
see how it washes it out.
| | 07:25 | And of course if I had cyan to that,
it's so saturated with it now, it hardly
| | 07:32 | impacts it to add more.
| | 07:34 | Now, also remember, the opposite of
blue is yellow, so if I take yellow out of
| | 07:39 | it, it's going to want to
push it more towards blue.
| | 07:44 | So, and a lot of times I'm not even
necessarily thinking in these, the terms
| | 07:49 | I'm describing to you.
| | 07:50 | I'm just, I'll just grab the slider
and move it and see, you know, what does
| | 07:54 | it do, do I like it or not?
| | 07:56 | And so I don't necessarily have to think in
terms of calculations of blue versus cyan versus
| | 08:01 | red versus, you know, magenta or whatever.
| | 08:04 | It's a visual process,
that's the really nice thing about these
| | 08:08 | sliders, you see the result as you
change it, so it's not like you need to
| | 08:12 | necessarily even understand what it does.
| | 08:14 | Just change it, and see what it does.
| | 08:16 | And if you like it, keep it.
| | 08:18 | Otherwise, return it to it's original value.
| | 08:20 | And here's a little trick
that a lot of people don't know.
| | 08:23 | If you adjust this out, sometimes it's
really hard to get it back right at zero.
| | 08:28 | It's just, it can be a little clumsy.
| | 08:30 | One thing you can do in the
adjustment layers is, if you double click,
| | 08:36 | it pops it back to zero.
| | 08:37 | So that's a real easy way to test
adjustments and see if you like them or
| | 08:42 | not, and if it gets way out of whack,
just double-click on the title of that
| | 08:47 | slider and it will get you back to a zero state.
| | 08:50 | And let's also maybe look at
| | 08:52 | a couple other ones.
| | 08:53 | Neutrals, for example.
| | 08:55 | Now, that's going to affect a lot of this image.
| | 08:58 | And I'll show you what I mean.
| | 09:00 | Let's turn it down. See, look at that.
| | 09:02 | It just washed the image out to nothing.
| | 09:04 | That could be an interesting image,
and an interesting way to get that look.
| | 09:07 | But that's not the look I'm after.
| | 09:09 | And if I go the other way,
it's going to over-darken it.
| | 09:12 | But I wanted to show you how
overarching the neutral slider set can be when
| | 09:16 | you are set to neutrals.
| | 09:18 | So, like right here.
| | 09:19 | Here, I'll just do another.
| | 09:21 | See, it's just going to create a way,
| | 09:23 | overall color cast. But if I want to,
for example, add a little bit of, like,
| | 09:29 | sunlight on there, if I pull
cyan out, see how the whole image is now
| | 09:36 | getting kind of that cyan look.
| | 09:37 | The issue with this though, is that it's
going to pretty much do an overall job,
| | 09:42 | at least on this image.
| | 09:44 | There are, can be images that
only have specific areas that are going to
| | 09:48 | respond to the neutral sliders, but I've
found over time that almost all images
| | 09:53 | tend to be affected pretty
globally by the neutral slider.
| | 09:57 | We could also check out the whites,
| | 10:00 | because we do have the
highlights in all of the clouds.
| | 10:04 | And again, I'll just slide the
black up and down to see, yep,
| | 10:06 | see how that's affecting.
| | 10:08 | That's generally where the whites are.
| | 10:10 | I'm seeing the white highlights on
the tricycle are also getting affected.
| | 10:14 | But this also gives you the opportunity
| | 10:16 | then knowing what it's going to affect.
| | 10:18 | I could, you know, add more cyan to it.
| | 10:22 | Doesn't look good, I don't want that.
| | 10:24 | Could take it the other way,
which tends to add red to it, because
| | 10:27 | we're removing cyan.
| | 10:28 | So, this is another one I
really don't need to change.
| | 10:31 | And let's just click on this, so you can
see the main thing I've done here,
| | 10:36 | was I just wanted to get rid of some
of the, what I'm thinking of is, is a
| | 10:40 | little bit too much red
| | 10:42 | in the image, and so by just
affecting the red sliders only we've gotten a
| | 10:47 | pretty good effect here.
| | 10:49 | So, don't be afraid of Selective color.
It's actually very powerful, and if
| | 10:54 | you just go at it thinking, well all
I'm going to do is change through some of
| | 10:59 | these colors that I'm
interested in that are in the image,
| | 11:01 | and then start sliding
the sliders for that color,
| | 11:04 | You'll see what it's doing, you don't
have to know in advance that turning up
| | 11:07 | cyan is going to remove red, or vice versa.
| | 11:11 | All you need to do is slide the slider and
see visually what it does, and that tells you.
| | 11:16 | So, we've made a few changes here and
what I'm going to do is just group the
| | 11:20 | three of these together,
so I can just turn it off.
| | 11:23 | And there, we can see, overall,
what I've done to that image.
| | 11:26 | And the other thing I could do, now
that these are all grouped, you know,
| | 11:31 | if nothing else, you could just play
with the opacity, overall. You know?
| | 11:34 | There's the image before we changed it.
| | 11:36 | If I want to get it, you know,
maybe not 100% of what I just did,
| | 11:40 | maybe more like 50%, I could as well.
| | 11:42 | And then I could turn it off and on,
| | 11:44 | just to see, you know, how much
of an effect does that have.
| | 11:48 | And I actually like that, because when I
put these together and turned it on and off,
| | 11:52 | I thought that's a bit extreme.
| | 11:53 | So by dialing down the overall opacity
of these three effects, I've now gotten
| | 11:57 | it dialed in to exactly where I want it.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Using Nondestructive Layer PaintingNondestructive layer painting (NDLP): Your creative safety net| 00:00 | If you were a high-wire tightrope artist,
you'd prefer a safety net, wouldn't you?
| | 00:05 | I know I would.
| | 00:06 | Likewise, when interpreting a
photograph into a painting, a safety net can
| | 00:10 | provide the ability to back out of
undesirable results, as well as embolden you
| | 00:15 | to experiment and try out
ideas you'd otherwise avoid.
| | 00:18 | In this video, we'll take a look at my
solution for a creative safety net, while
| | 00:22 | interpreting photos into paintings.
| | 00:24 | I call it non-destructive layer painting.
| | 00:26 | Now, what I've created here is just a
little schematic, so I can show you,
| | 00:30 | conceptually, how this works.
| | 00:33 | And we are starting with our source
photograph, and in this case, it's the image
| | 00:37 | we've been working on up 'til now.
| | 00:39 | This actually is not exactly that
image, but let's presume that this is the
| | 00:44 | image that we will be starting with,
that we've been working on, in the whole
| | 00:47 | first phase of our title.
| | 00:49 | So, you have a prepared photograph as a layer.
| | 00:53 | What's going to happen when we apply
the action that is included in Photoshop,
| | 00:58 | that will create a set of non-destructive
painting layers, is it will first, at
| | 01:04 | the bottom, right above our prepared
photograph, create an Underpainting layer.
| | 01:08 | And you can see here, I've kind of
created the look of that underpainting.
| | 01:12 | Underpainting essentially is, just in
broad strokes, kind of describing the
| | 01:17 | overall composition and color of your image.
| | 01:21 | Next up is going to be the Intermediate Strokes.
| | 01:25 | These are the strokes where you're
starting to go in and apply detail, and
| | 01:29 | it's not real specific to how much
detail that is, because the next layer is
| | 01:33 | called the detail layer, and this is
where you really start to get the finest
| | 01:38 | strokes within the image.
| | 01:39 | And it's somewhat indeterminate
| | 01:41 | where, where does the intermediate strokes on
that layer end and where do the Detail Strokes
| | 01:46 | on that layer begin?
| | 01:48 | But it just gives you the ability,
more or less, to divide up your work in a
| | 01:54 | layer-wise fashion, so that the, the
beauty of this is, let's assume that we've been
| | 01:58 | working on the detail layer here.
| | 02:00 | There may be something going on in the
Intermediate Strokes that you wish, oh, I
| | 02:04 | wish I could change that.
| | 02:05 | In a traditional painting, you couldn't,
it's all flat on the canvas, but in
| | 02:09 | this non-destructive layer painting
technique, you can actually keep this, you
| | 02:15 | know, visible and open but just address
the Intermediate Stroke layer, and go in
| | 02:19 | and paint on it, and you'll
see it changing in real time.
| | 02:22 | You might even be painting
under some of your Detail Strokes.
| | 02:25 | Try doing that on a traditional painting.
| | 02:27 | So, by breaking this up into individual
elements means that you have all of the
| | 02:33 | flexibility to go back at any time and
make adjustments to each of these layers.
| | 02:38 | And knowing that you have this safety
net in place, it's going to free you up
| | 02:43 | to try things out you'd otherwise be afraid
to try out, especially in traditional media.
| | 02:47 | Once you apply a brush stroke to the
canvas, it's there, and it's very difficult
| | 02:52 | to change, if at all.
| | 02:53 | Whereas, in this environment, because
you have the safety net of non-destructive
| | 02:57 | layers in place, you can try out things
on each of these layers, knowing that,
| | 03:01 | if I don't like it, I can get back and I
can undo it, and go forward from there.
| | 03:06 | So it gives you this
really powerful environment.
| | 03:08 | Then you can finally get into
Finishing Strokes, and what those will be won't
| | 03:12 | be images derived from the source image,
like the Underpainting, Intermediate,
| | 03:18 | and Detail strokes do.
| | 03:20 | It will be where we'll start
applying our own brush strokes.
| | 03:22 | Remember, we want to take this
away from being a photograph.
| | 03:26 | So, one of the tricks will be, yes,
we will rely on a large part of this
| | 03:31 | painting to take the existing color
embedded in these layers, and have it flow
| | 03:37 | through our brush, as if we were painting it.
| | 03:39 | But to really get fully away from
it being strictly derived from that
| | 03:44 | photograph, the finishing touch layer
is where you start to put in some of
| | 03:47 | your own brush strokes.
| | 03:49 | So you really are starting to move
it beyond simply a reinterpretation of
| | 03:54 | colors in the photograph.
| | 03:56 | You begin to actually add
additional content to it
| | 03:59 | that is, again, more of your inner
emotion and feeling and concept about how
| | 04:04 | this image should work.
| | 04:05 | And then finally we'll talk about a
canvas layer that we can apply to this, so
| | 04:09 | that there actually will be a sense
of tactility to the finished image.
| | 04:14 | It will look as if it were a photograph
of an actual oil painting, in which you
| | 04:19 | do start to see the canvas weave,
some of the brush strokes on the canvas.
| | 04:25 | All of that is part of what makes
a painting look like a painting.
| | 04:28 | So we will actually have
an optional canvas layer.
| | 04:31 | You don't have to use it if you don't want to.
| | 04:33 | This canvas layer will enable you to
have essentially a slight three-dimensional lift
| | 04:39 | to the image. And just like you see
that when you stand and look at a painting,
| | 04:43 | say in an art gallery, you will
see that in the finished image.
| | 04:47 | Because it's non-destructive, if you go
on to say, print this on canvas, you may
| | 04:52 | or may not want to keep that effect on there.
| | 04:54 | But particularly, in a case where
you're going to say, show this on the web, to
| | 05:00 | be able to impart that physicality to
your image is just yet another part of the
| | 05:05 | vocabulary of painting that we are
essentially adding to this image.
| | 05:10 | The one thing I didn't show in this
layer stack, that I will talk about later in
| | 05:15 | the chapter, is there is also a reference layer.
| | 05:17 | Because, as we are working, you're
going to need to know, well where is the
| | 05:21 | tricycle exactly in the image
when I apply my brushstrokes?
| | 05:25 | You need to be able to see that, so
there will be a semi-transparent reference
| | 05:29 | layer that you can turn on and off at any time
| | 05:32 | that is there to help you and aid you in
brush stroke placement as you work on the image.
| | 05:38 | So this non-destructive layer painting.
| | 05:40 | The ability to segregate the build up
of a painted image via layers is a very
| | 05:45 | powerful technique that encourages you
to take creative chances, and it is in
| | 05:49 | this anything-goes environment
that we often best express ourselves.
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| Setting up the Mixer Brush cloning action| 00:00 | The Mixer Brush Cloning Paint Setup
action, I'm happy to say, was developed by
| | 00:05 | yours truly, and is now an action
in CS6's default action library.
| | 00:09 | This action works in concert with Mixer
Brush-based cloner brushes, which we'll
| | 00:14 | cover in depth in the next chapter on brushes.
| | 00:16 | For now, we'll focus on the inner
workings of the cloning action and see
| | 00:20 | what makes it tick. Let's get started.
| | 00:22 | So we want to go up to the actions
panel here, and if we go into default
| | 00:27 | actions, right here we have, and
I'll expand this out so you can see it,
| | 00:33 | it's a real mouthful.
| | 00:34 | The Mixer Brush Cloning Paint Setup Action.
| | 00:37 | This is the action that you run on an
image that you want to convert into a painting.
| | 00:42 | So I'm going to select that, and then
I'll just, we'll close this down too so
| | 00:46 | it's not occluding our image, and I
will go ahead and run this, and the first
| | 00:52 | thing you'll see here is it's just
going to give you a couple of warnings.
| | 00:56 | It's going to let you know, it's
goig to flatten any existing layers.
| | 00:59 | It has to be a flattened image, and
you're going to want to use, as I mentioned,
| | 01:02 | cloner brushes, and we'll get into
that in great detail a little bit later.
| | 01:07 | You are also going to want to make
sure that Sample All Layers, and right now
| | 01:11 | I don't have the Mixer Brush, but I'll
show it to you as soon as we run the action.
| | 01:16 | You want to have Sample All Layers is
disabled, because if it's on, it can cause
| | 01:20 | a bit of a slowdown performance-wise,
and that all depends on, you know, how much
| | 01:24 | memory you have, what kind of
processor your system has, all of those things.
| | 01:27 | And I can tell you too that with the
introduction of CS6 it doesn't seem to cause as
| | 01:32 | much of a performance hit as it did in CS5.
| | 01:35 | So it's not as bad as it used to be,
but it's probably still a good practice
| | 01:39 | to make sure that Sample All Layers is
disabled, and I'll show you that in just a minute.
| | 01:45 | So let's go ahead and run it, and
we've now got our set of actions.
| | 01:48 | And let's, at this point, we can just look at
this, and let's talk about what has happened.
| | 01:53 | So, it looks like what we've basically got
here is a somewhat light version of our image.
| | 01:57 | What that actually is, is this Reference Layer.
| | 02:00 | So I can turn that on and off, and
we'll get into looking at the optional
| | 02:05 | content that I offered you at the
beginning, and show you how to install it.
| | 02:09 | But, I have some tools here, so you'll
be able to turn it on and off with just a
| | 02:14 | couple clicks of the keyboard.
| | 02:16 | So, we've got this Reference Layer.
| | 02:18 | And to begin with it's set, it's set
up to run on the underpainting layer.
| | 02:23 | Let's go ahead and get
one of the cloner brushes.
| | 02:26 | So I'll just take this flat fan brush,
and let's Zoom up so we can see
| | 02:31 | this, because you're really, probably
working mostly at 100% as you use this image,
| | 02:36 | and what happens is, when I start to
paint on this layer, these colors are
| | 02:42 | actually being derived from what
appears to be the underlying image.
| | 02:47 | It's actually, and I'll talk about
this in a little bit more detail, how this
| | 02:51 | cloning layer works in the next video.
| | 02:53 | But for now, just enjoy the magic of
the fact that you can paint on this layer,
| | 02:57 | and this literally applies
the color from the photograph.
| | 03:02 | So if we turn this
reference layer off, for example,
| | 03:05 | see, now that's where the colors are coming from.
| | 03:07 | If I don't have the Reference
Layer on, how do I know where to paint?
| | 03:11 | Well that's why you have the Reference Layer.
| | 03:13 | It's going to be important for a lot of
the time to have this enabled, but you
| | 03:17 | will be able to turn it on and off
with a shortcut so that you don't have
| | 03:21 | to always see it, because I do find it
to be very valuable to be able to see
| | 03:26 | it both on and off.
| | 03:27 | So see in here, we're going to
get some different coloration.
| | 03:30 | I'm not trying to paint
really any meaningful way at this point.
| | 03:33 | I'm just showing you the technique
of how this particular layer works.
| | 03:38 | So in each of these ares, its
color is coming from the image.
| | 03:42 | See if I, if I continue painting,
it's all there, all those colors.
| | 03:46 | It's just I don't know where I'm
getting the color from at this point.
| | 03:50 | And that's why the reference layer
becomes so important as a tool, and an aid,
| | 03:55 | to let you know where to place your brushes.
| | 03:58 | The next thing you do, say if
we were working on this image.
| | 04:01 | Let's just, for an example here, you know.
| | 04:04 | We've got this area where
there's a little bit going on.
| | 04:06 | So, let's say, for my underlayer,
underpainting layer, I just want to basically
| | 04:12 | get broad strokes that define that area. OK?
| | 04:16 | Now, let's go to the intermediate layer.
| | 04:18 | Now, I'll probably want to turn
my brush size down a little bit.
| | 04:21 | But now I'm on a different layer.
| | 04:23 | So now I can start to paint these areas
with more approaching the detail of it.
| | 04:27 | So I want to use smaller brush strokes,
and again, we're going to do this in
| | 04:32 | a very abbreviated fashion right now, so
you can see what essentially is happening.
| | 04:37 | So that this is just a small little
test of it, but let's go ahead and once again
| | 04:42 | turn off the reference layer. Now see
how that is on a different layer.
| | 04:45 | So now I've added some intermediate
strokes to this. To the eye, it looks like
| | 04:50 | it's a flat painting, but in fact each
one of these is their own separate layer.
| | 04:55 | And then finally you get to the detail
strokes, which is where you're going to
| | 04:58 | use the smallest brushes.
| | 05:00 | And I probably didn't chose the best
area here, because there's not really not much
| | 05:03 | more detail going on, but
we'll just try a little bit here.
| | 05:07 | So, you know, I might go in
and just grab this and this.
| | 05:11 | And again, I wouldn't work at
this fine of a detail necessarily in this
| | 05:16 | image, but I'm just wanting to give
you a little hint of how each of these
| | 05:21 | layers can be
incorporated into the overall image.
| | 05:24 | So again, very, very small amount of
effort here, but, maybe we'll do a
| | 05:28 | little bit more there.
| | 05:32 | So now I've got this third level of
detail going on, and what I can also do, is
| | 05:39 | with each one of these, for example,
the underpainting layer, one of the things
| | 05:42 | that you can do to create
emphasis, is to adjust these layers.
| | 05:46 | Right now, they're all using the same
degree of saturation and value, whereas I
| | 05:52 | can now nested in this Underpainting Layer
group, is a hue saturation adjustment layer.
| | 05:59 | So I can go in here, and let's say,
maybe I should lighten that up a little
| | 06:03 | bit, or maybe I want to
desaturate it by a little bit, OK.
| | 06:06 | And let's go to our Detail
Layer and let's do the opposite.
| | 06:10 | Let's go to the Detail Layer and I
could say, well, here, I want to push
| | 06:14 | saturation up, and maybe I
want to lighten it a little bit.
| | 06:18 | So now the way I'm dividing up these
layers and emphasizing or deemphasizing the
| | 06:24 | various layers, is done by adjusting
things like the hue and saturation.
| | 06:29 | And these are just adjustment layers,
they're the ones that I felt were the
| | 06:33 | most valuable for making these kinds of
adjustments, but any adjustment layer is fair game.
| | 06:39 | So, if you wanted to add
different adjustment layers, you could.
| | 06:43 | So any adjustment layer can be added
into these to even give it more flexibility
| | 06:49 | than is offered by default.
| | 06:50 | And then finally, as I said, the
reference layer is just there to be able
| | 06:55 | to just check where things are.
| | 06:57 | Now, I've created a very nonsensical
image here, and as we go through the real
| | 07:01 | image doing it, you'll see in much
better detail how all of these three come
| | 07:05 | together to work as a unified whole.
| | 07:08 | So, the fact that we've got these
layers is the key part of understanding
| | 07:13 | how the Cloning Layers work.
| | 07:15 | In the next chapter I'm going to
describe to you exactly how a Cloning Layer does
| | 07:19 | work, because I've gotten a lot of inquires
over that in the last year and a half or
| | 07:24 | so that this has been around.
| | 07:25 | People are like, well how does that even work?
| | 07:27 | Well, I'll show you in the next video.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using cloning layers| 00:00 | A Cloning Layer contains the secret
sauce that enables painting with a
| | 00:04 | photograph, or any image for that matter.
| | 00:07 | Using Cloning Tool or Presets, source
imagery is deposited on the Cloning Layer,
| | 00:11 | utilizing the character of the
brush and texture being employed.
| | 00:15 | In this video, we will take a look at
how Cloning Layers work as well as what
| | 00:19 | you can and can't do with them.
| | 00:21 | So, here's the basic
schematic for how this works.
| | 00:23 | And just to preface this, the reason
it works at all, happens to do with the
| | 00:28 | extreme sensitivity of the Mixer
Brush to color that is on a layer.
| | 00:34 | And you can have as little as one
percent of a color on a layer and the
| | 00:38 | Mixer Brush will see it and not only
pick up that color, but just paint it
| | 00:42 | with full intensity.
| | 00:43 | This was almost considered a bug during
the pre-release of CS5, but when I hit
| | 00:48 | upon the way this works and found out
how this technique would work, I implored
| | 00:52 | the engineers, please do not remove
this, this is like a Northwest Passage.
| | 00:56 | And so, they did keep it in there and
essentially what's happening is, the
| | 01:01 | action is taking a copy of the actual
color image and it's reducing it down on a
| | 01:07 | layer to 1% Opacity, and that's
such light Opacity that it essentially
| | 01:12 | doesn't even look like
there's anything on the layer.
| | 01:15 | Now, that layer by itself wouldn't
work because in order to turn down the
| | 01:18 | Opacity to zero, you essentially have to
decrease the Alpha Channel's Opacity to
| | 01:24 | zero for that to happen.
| | 01:25 | So now, you've got this 1%
of Opacity in the RGB component of the
| | 01:30 | layer, but you now have no reserve
of Alpha Channel left, because you've used
| | 01:34 | it to lower down to that 1%.
| | 01:36 | So, what has to happen is, a second
layer that is just a normal layer that does
| | 01:41 | have its 100% Alpha Channel intact
has to be merged with that image layer.
| | 01:47 | And so, when you combine the two, you
end up with a single layer that has a full
| | 01:51 | 100% Alpha Channel available to be
able to show and make visible any painting
| | 01:57 | that you do on that layer.
| | 01:58 | But it also has, in its RGB component,
that 1% of image that is nearly
| | 02:04 | invisible, you can see it, especially
when you have three of these stacked up.
| | 02:08 | If you really look, you can just see
the slightest ghost of the image being
| | 02:14 | created by those three
overlapping versions of the image.
| | 02:17 | But it's so light, it is not useful
for seeing where to make positional
| | 02:21 | placements of your brush.
| | 02:23 | And that's where the Reference Layer
becomes useful, because that is adjustable
| | 02:27 | and you can make it as
opaque or transparent as you want.
| | 02:31 | But it's just this vagary of the Mixer
Brush that it's so sensitive to color
| | 02:36 | in the RGB component of a
layer, that it's able to paint.
| | 02:40 | And by retaining or giving back to that
1% Image Layer, your are giving
| | 02:46 | it the full Alpha Channel so that just
touching that with one of these Mixer
| | 02:50 | Brush set up to be a cloner will
actually start painting with it.
| | 02:54 | So, that's the secret
sauce behind how this works.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with adjustment layers| 00:00 | The key behind non-destructive layer
painting is to provide a safety net that
| | 00:04 | enables you to experiment without fear
of losing critical creative activity.
| | 00:09 | This concept is expanded further through
the use of Adjustment Layers in concert
| | 00:14 | with the Cloning layers.
| | 00:15 | By adding an Adjustment Layer,
you're provided with greater edibility.
| | 00:20 | And in the parlance of Martha
Stewart, that's a good thing.
| | 00:24 | So, I quickly sketched out a little
section of our painting just to have an
| | 00:29 | example here so I could show you how in
concert with each of the three layers,
| | 00:34 | the Underpainting, Intermediate, and
the Detailed layer, the Hue-Saturation
| | 00:38 | Adjustment Layer works with each one of these.
| | 00:41 | So, lets take a look at,
first of all, what we have.
| | 00:44 | So, I've got the Background Layer, and
actually, I want to show you this this way.
| | 00:50 | I just went in and
smeared around really quickly.
| | 00:52 | If we turn on the reference there,
yes, there is a tricycle there, but by
| | 00:56 | stroking and just kind of basically
eliminating the tricycle more or less, I was
| | 01:01 | able to largely describe more what
is the background and not so much be
| | 01:06 | delineating or describing the
tricycle that actually is in that scene.
| | 01:10 | So, all I did was I started painting,
picking up the color outside of the
| | 01:15 | tricycle, and just smeared it
across where the tricycle was.
| | 01:18 | But it continues to basically use the
colors that it picked up at the start
| | 01:23 | of that stroke, and in effect, it lets you
essentially paint out the tricycle on that layer.
| | 01:29 | And then, the next layer
was the Intermediate strokes.
| | 01:31 | I've lowered the size of the brush down,
I am painting in the basic
| | 01:37 | areas of the trike, and then finally,
the Detail Layers are right there.
| | 01:42 | And so, at each level, the brush
strokes get smaller and start delineating
| | 01:47 | less and less of the area.
| | 01:48 | If you turn this off the other way,
you can see there's really very little to
| | 01:53 | the Detail strokes, but if they
are not there, it is noticeable.
| | 01:59 | So, each of these layers contributes
to the totality of the finished image.
| | 02:04 | But now, I want to play
around with this a little bit more.
| | 02:07 | Because each one now is in its native
setting of, you know, how the Saturation came
| | 02:13 | out of the brush, I want to enhance
that and change it and I played with this a
| | 02:17 | little bit earlier, but it is worth
looking at a couple of times, just so it
| | 02:20 | sinks in how this works.
| | 02:23 | I want to take that Background Layer and
I'm going to desaturate it a little bit.
| | 02:27 | And, in fact, see the more I
desaturate it, because color comes forward, it
| | 02:32 | becomes more important when it's against a
background that isn't as saturated as the foreground.
| | 02:38 | Now, I'm overattenuating it here, I
wouldn't want to do this to the entire
| | 02:42 | Background Layer of this image.
| | 02:43 | But if this was the only image I was
working on, I do probably want to lower
| | 02:49 | it down a little bit.
| | 02:50 | And then, the next area I would go to
actually would probably be the Highlight area.
| | 02:55 | So, I'm going to go there
and make sure it's turned on.
| | 02:58 | And I'm going to increase the lightness
of this and I may really overemphasize
| | 03:01 | it just to see where it is.
| | 03:03 | But you can see how that really adds to
the quality of reflection and the
| | 03:09 | little highlights on it.
| | 03:11 | And then finally, I can go to the
Intermediate Layer, I may or may not want to
| | 03:15 | do anything to that.
| | 03:16 | One thing you could do, not that you
always want to do this, but since most of
| | 03:20 | the color information is on there, I
could play with Hue in this case. See how
| | 03:24 | I can start to change completely
the color of the bike if I wanted to.
| | 03:28 | Now, I normally won't use it
that aggressively, but there are times
| | 03:31 | where I've found just slightly
changing the hue from what was the original
| | 03:35 | colors picked up off the layer and just
even moved by a couple points or two can
| | 03:40 | be just enough to change the character
of that image in the way that it reads.
| | 03:45 | So sometimes just playing
with hue on a layer works.
| | 03:49 | So, each of these layers
contributes to the overall total image and the
| | 03:55 | fact that these are all in layers means that
this is a total non-destructive environment.
| | 04:01 | We haven't altered at all the original
image, it still exists, and you can always
| | 04:06 | get back to it if you need to.
| | 04:08 | But in this environment, it not only
gives you that safety net so that you're
| | 04:13 | encouraged to try things out.
| | 04:15 | The other thing that it does is, like
we just saw here, after the fact, I may
| | 04:19 | come back an hour or a day later and
look at it and realize, you know what, like
| | 04:23 | right now, let's say I look at this and I'd
say, you know, I kind of dulled up that
| | 04:27 | background quite a bit.
| | 04:28 | I'm going to go the Underpainting Layer
and maybe I want to bring back a little
| | 04:33 | saturation, or maybe a
lightening it up a little bit.
| | 04:35 | There, see now that pulls it
forward and it's not as desaturated.
| | 04:38 | So, these are totally adjustable
and they're not one-time adjustments.
| | 04:43 | You'll see, when we get to the end of
our painting before we drop the layers,
| | 04:48 | we'll probably take great advantage
of the fact that we can go in and tweak
| | 04:52 | these as we want to.
| | 04:54 | Now, the one last thing I want to
tell you about, and this really doesn't
| | 04:58 | belong in this particular video but
it's important to note that you cannot
| | 05:04 | erase a Cloning Layer.
| | 05:06 | If you erase from it, you are
eliminating the alpha and everything from it and
| | 05:12 | so it cannot be brought back.
| | 05:13 | So, how do you get around that?
| | 05:15 | Well, let's go to my Intermediate Layer,
and I erased this out. As long as I have
| | 05:21 | enough Undos to get back,
I can always return to it.
| | 05:25 | If however, you did something and
then ten minutes later after dozens of
| | 05:29 | brushstrokes, you can't get back to it,
the only recourse you have is to create
| | 05:36 | another Cloning Layer and
Redo that area of the image.
| | 05:39 | That's the one Gotcha about these
Cloning Layers is because of the special way
| | 05:43 | they are created, erasing from them
does cause a destruction of the image.
| | 05:50 | So, I am just letting you know that
that is something that can happen, and in
| | 05:54 | fact, when I am painting the image, I
will probably do it again on purpose just
| | 05:59 | to reiterate to you that erasing is a no no,
| | 06:02 | basically. You can, as long as you know
you have the ability to Undo, in case you
| | 06:07 | do want to get back to where you
were before you did some erasures.
| | 06:11 | So, just letting you know in advance,
that is a hot portion of the oven you do
| | 06:16 | not want to put your hand on.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
6. Working with BrushesUsing tool presets and not brushes| 00:01 | They act like brushes, they work like brushes.
| | 00:04 | Why aren't they called brushes?
| | 00:07 | There are some intrinsic
differences between brushes and tool presets.
| | 00:11 | In this video, we will
get things straightened out.
| | 00:14 | Now, the primary reason I'm putting
this into the title is that having sold my
| | 00:20 | brushes to a lot of people, one of
the questions that comes up repeatedly,
| | 00:26 | particularly when people are kind
of doing a custom installation, they'll
| | 00:30 | put the files of the brushes into the
Brushes Preset folder and then I'll get an email.
| | 00:36 | I put them into the Brushes Preset folder,
but I don't see them. Where are they?
| | 00:40 | Well, here's the thing, Brushes in
Photoshop, previous to the Mixer Brush, were
| | 00:47 | the sole brush engine in Photoshop.
| | 00:51 | But in order to do some of the things
that the Mixer brush does, particularly
| | 00:55 | the very intricate kind of smearing
and blending that it does, and
| | 01:01 | this is done in combination with the bristle
tips, which can be used with just normal brush.
| | 01:06 | But the idea here is that the Mixer
Brush required a whole new brush engine.
| | 01:11 | So, there's now two
different brush engines in Photoshop.
| | 01:14 | You have what has been in Photoshop
forever, those are brushes, those even are
| | 01:18 | abbreviated by .ABR for Adobe Brush.
| | 01:22 | So, that is a brush preset, but there are also
Tool Presets, and I use those. Why do I use them?
| | 01:30 | Well, I'll show you.
| | 01:31 | If we look on the left side here, a
Brush Preset saves certain things.
| | 01:37 | And it saves everything
that's in the Brush panel, OK,
| | 01:40 | which makes sense, you know, it's a brush.
| | 01:42 | Everything in the Brush panel should be saved.
| | 01:45 | However, Brush Presets do not
save crucial Mixer Brush settings.
| | 01:50 | If we look over here on the Brush panel side,
yes, it saves everything in the Brush panel.
| | 01:55 | However, beyond that, it also saves things
that are in the option bar for the Mixer Brush.
| | 02:03 | For example, you've got the wetness, the
load, the mix, the flow, sample all layers.
| | 02:08 | All of these things are specific to the
Mixer Brush engine and the brush preset
| | 02:16 | is not going to save it
because it doesn't know about it.
| | 02:19 | It takes the tool preset to kind of
have another layer of saving information in
| | 02:25 | order for the mixture brush presets
to work the way I've designed them.
| | 02:30 | And so, you've got the Option Bar
Settings, plus, and here's another thing that
| | 02:35 | it will do that you can't do with the
Brush Preset, is that you can even save the
| | 02:39 | color of the brush along with it.
| | 02:41 | So, these extra elements become
important to the Mixer Brush, and as such, I have
| | 02:48 | to save them as Tool Presets.
| | 02:51 | And that's the reason that you'll
find all of the brushes are over here in
| | 02:55 | the Tool Presets panel.
| | 02:57 | If you go over to where brush presets are,
you're not going to find that information.
| | 03:02 | And it's confusing to people who have
a long-time relationship with Photoshop
| | 03:08 | that are very used to brushes and Brush Presets.
| | 03:11 | It became a little out of their
comfort zone when all of the sudden, here's
| | 03:16 | these really great brushes, but I
can't find them, that's because they're not
| | 03:19 | brush presets, they're Tool Presets.
| | 03:21 | So, the basic idea I want to get across
here is that you can call them brushes
| | 03:26 | if you want to, I do.
| | 03:28 | To me, they are brushes, but in
reality, they are Tool Presets.
| | 03:32 | And if you don't know that, you're going
to run into some things that won't seem
| | 03:36 | right without understanding
the nature of a Tool Preset.
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| Categorizing and organizing brushes| 00:01 | When you start amassing a large
variety of brushes, organizing them can get
| | 00:05 | pretty messy if you don't have some
sort of system for categorizing them.
| | 00:10 | Well, I've done the heavy lifting
for you and I've come up with a naming
| | 00:13 | convention that makes it easy to quickly
locate the brush you want. Let's take a look.
| | 00:19 | Now, I'm going to be describing
specifically four Tool Preset libraries, and let's
| | 00:24 | open up the fly-out menu on the
Tool Preset panel to see that.
| | 00:28 | The ones we're going to be
concentrating on are the category Airbrushes,
| | 00:32 | Artists' Brushes, Dry Media,
and Pencil Mixer Brush.
| | 00:37 | Now, why are those important?
| | 00:38 | Well, each one of those has the
crucial Cloner category of brush in it that
| | 00:44 | needs to be used in concert with the
Cloning Layer action that's over in
| | 00:49 | the Actions palette.
| | 00:51 | There's no big signage here in
Photoshop to tell you, hey, get this over here
| | 00:55 | and use it over there.
| | 00:57 | You need to be taught to do that, and that's
why you're looking at this title right now.
| | 01:01 | I'm showing you how you use these two
components in two different places in
| | 01:07 | Photoshop to bring them
together and utilize them.
| | 01:10 | If you don't find this out, you're
going to look at each one of them
| | 01:14 | individually, and have no idea what
the meaningfulness of it is. Okay.
| | 01:17 | So, we know that we have
these categories of brushes.
| | 01:20 | By default, the way I initially
organized these brushes was by their tip type,
| | 01:25 | and let's look at the mixer brush right here.
| | 01:29 | We have these ten tip types.
| | 01:32 | And really, there's only five tip types, but
you have a round variant and a flat variant.
| | 01:36 | So you've got Point, Blunt, Curve, Angle,
and Fan, and then they're repeated just
| | 01:42 | so they can have a flat
set and a round set of them.
| | 01:45 | But, when the Mixer Brush came out
this seemed to be the most important
| | 01:49 | component of the Mixer Brush for organization.
| | 01:52 | And as a result, the brushes by
default are organized that way, they're
| | 01:56 | organized by Angle, then the
Blunt, the Fan, and the Point.
| | 02:01 | And if we look at this little chart I've
created, you can see exactly how it was done.
| | 02:07 | Shape is most important, so I use that
as the primary way to identify a brush,
| | 02:13 | and then we go into, you
know, are they flat or round?
| | 02:16 | And next, what kind of function do they have?
| | 02:18 | Are they a Blender? Are they Opaque?
| | 02:20 | You know?
| | 02:20 | Whatever that behavior was,
that was how it was organized.
| | 02:24 | And then, the final component
of behavior is are they Dirty?
| | 02:29 | A Dirty brush, for example, is set
up so that each time you apply a brush
| | 02:34 | stroke, whatever color was underneath
the brush at the end of that stroke, when
| | 02:38 | you pick up the brush and go to create
another stroke, some of that color will
| | 02:43 | be blended along with
whatever your current color is.
| | 02:46 | And it sets up what is a
very realistic scenario.
| | 02:50 | What happens in the physical world,
you paint, and whatever paint is
| | 02:54 | underneath that brush when you pick it
up, it's going to be on the brush the
| | 02:58 | next time you apply a stroke.
| | 03:00 | It's great in the real world and it's
nice to have that here in Photoshop, but I
| | 03:06 | don't use it a lot because I prefer to
not have that real world capability and
| | 03:10 | it's nice to not have Dirty brushes.
| | 03:12 | And you get into Dry brushes, which
are a short stroke, they quickly run out
| | 03:16 | of paint and so on.
| | 03:18 | So you've got these behaviors that you
work with and that was the rationale for
| | 03:23 | the original organization of these Tool Presets.
| | 03:28 | However, after using these for over a
year or almost two years now, it became
| | 03:34 | obvious to me that I really wanted
to organize these according to their
| | 03:39 | behavior, so what I came up
with was a behavior-oriented list.
| | 03:44 | So, I want to say find a Cloner, for
example, especially if I'm cloning, OK,
| | 03:48 | there's one, then there's one
down here. There's one here.
| | 03:53 | You can see it's a little hard to
find that behavior, whereas, if they're
| | 03:57 | organized by behavior, there they are,
the Cloners are all organized together.
| | 04:02 | And I simply reorganize these so that
I go from brushes that fully lay color
| | 04:06 | down to apply less and less color till
you finally get down to a blender that
| | 04:11 | doesn't even have color, it just
mixes color it finds underneath the brush.
| | 04:15 | And then finally, the Cloner category itself.
| | 04:18 | So, the behavior-based brushes
are another way to organize how these
| | 04:24 | brushes appear in the list.
| | 04:26 | So, if you've installed the optional
content, and if you haven't, you want to go
| | 04:29 | back to the introductory chapter and
look at the video about installing the
| | 04:35 | optional content, you will
now find the sorted version.
| | 04:39 | So if I click on this and replace it,
there's my list according to behavior.
| | 04:46 | And so, each one of those
categories we looked at will have a sorted
| | 04:51 | variant library associated with it in your
list after you've installed that optional content.
| | 04:57 | Another thing that's very important to
point out here, is when you're working
| | 05:01 | with the Tool Presets, by default,
Current Tool Only is going to be turned on.
| | 05:07 | You don't want that turned
on and I'll show you why.
| | 05:09 | If I go to another tool, like the Move
tool, my Tool Presets just disappeared.
| | 05:15 | And so, even though I could be in the
Move tool, I may want to go over and select
| | 05:20 | a brush and start working.
| | 05:22 | I can't when this is enabled.
| | 05:23 | If I turn it off, it will be on
no matter what tool you're in.
| | 05:27 | So, when I select, say, a Cloner, Flat Fan
brush, it switched to that brush for me.
| | 05:33 | So, the whole idea behind this is,
this gives you one click access to the
| | 05:37 | brushes. No matter what tool you're in,
as long as you have Current Tool Only
| | 05:42 | disabled, you will be able to work
within any tool and still have this list
| | 05:47 | available and you'll be able to quickly
click on it to select a specific tool.
| | 05:52 | So, I've just given you a quick
overview of how these brushes are organized, as
| | 05:58 | well as an optional way by behavior,
you can have these brushes organized.
| | 06:03 | So, it's up to you which one seems
to be the better way for your working
| | 06:07 | methods, but you now have a choice over
which one of these types of organization
| | 06:12 | you're going to work with.
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| Adding canvas texture| 00:00 | The artist brushes provide the
authentic appearance of a traditional brush.
| | 00:04 | But brush strokes are often influenced
by the Texture of the applied surface,
| | 00:08 | which is typically canvas.
| | 00:10 | The artist brushes come with a set of
six canvas textures, and enabling these
| | 00:15 | textures adds a whole new level of expressive
quality to applied strokes. Let's take a look.
| | 00:22 | Now, I'm going to just start off and
just paint a few strokes with the brush
| | 00:26 | without any texture, so you can see,
you know, it's a nice brush. I like it.
| | 00:30 | And I happen to be using the Flat
Fan brush right now, the opaque, to do this.
| | 00:36 | Now, let's go to the Brushes panel
and you'll see right here, one of the
| | 00:41 | options we have is Texture.
| | 00:42 | And I'm going to enable Texture.
| | 00:44 | I'm also going to take a look at
this sub-panel, and there are six textures
| | 00:50 | associated with this particular brush.
| | 00:53 | Right now, I actually have the textures
that are associated with the dry media
| | 00:58 | brushes, but if we go into the fly-out
menu here, you'll see that you have some
| | 01:04 | different textures, like we are
using the Erodible Textures right now.
| | 01:08 | What I want right now are the
Artist Brushes Canvas textures.
| | 01:12 | So, I'm going to click on those and
we'll just go ahead and replace them.
| | 01:16 | And here now are a set of textures that
work with, in this case, the artist brushes.
| | 01:23 | So, I'm going to select this
#10 heavy, that just happens to be
| | 01:28 | a favorite of mine.
| | 01:29 | And let's paint with it now.
| | 01:31 | Now, see how there's a texture
being included into the brush.
| | 01:36 | So, not only is it applying color in the
striations of this particular brush, but
| | 01:41 | it also is incorporating the texture.
| | 01:44 | So now, we've got a whole other
level of modeling and approximating a
| | 01:50 | traditional brushstroke by including
texture as part of that stroke, and you can
| | 01:55 | see what a huge difference it
makes in the character of that stroke.
| | 01:59 | So, being able to use texture is really
an important additional component to how
| | 02:06 | artist brushes work.
| | 02:07 | One thing that's really important
to note is that you've got this lock.
| | 02:12 | By locking it, that means that no matter
which brush I select, it's going to use
| | 02:16 | the exact same settings that we have in here.
| | 02:19 | For example, I might want to decrease the
scale by a bit, so let's take it down to say, 25%.
| | 02:25 | And maybe that's too fine for the way
that I particularly want it to look, so
| | 02:29 | I'll just take it up a bit.
| | 02:30 | There's kind of a nice
intermediate level of granularity of that
| | 02:35 | particular texture.
| | 02:37 | Another thing we can do is we
can play with the depth setting.
| | 02:41 | If I turn this down, and it's nice to
have this little preview down here, you get
| | 02:46 | an idea of what's going to happen.
| | 02:48 | If I want to just kind of brush along
the very top of the texture and not be able to
| | 02:53 | work all the way down,
| | 02:55 | see, I'm pressing as hard as I can,
| | 02:57 | I'm not working all the
way down into that texture.
| | 02:59 | I can do that with the Depth slider.
| | 03:02 | You can also use the Minimum Depth
slider. By turning this down or up, you're
| | 03:06 | adjusting what is the minimum depth in this
landscape of this texture that I'm addressing?
| | 03:13 | One way you can think of all of
these textures, it's almost like a little
| | 03:16 | mini mountain range.
| | 03:17 | And depending on how I have this set, as I do
right now, let's just use a different color.
| | 03:22 | It's almost like I'm only skipping along
the very tops of the mountain range and
| | 03:26 | just adding color up on the top of the mountain.
| | 03:30 | Whereas, as I start to increase depth,
I can work more and more down into
| | 03:35 | the valleys as well.
| | 03:36 | So now, with this particular setting, I
can either, with a very light touch, just
| | 03:40 | kind of get the tops of the grain, or
with a heavy pressure, I can go all the way
| | 03:46 | down into the valleys as well.
| | 03:48 | So, utilizing pressure and adjusting
the Depth slider, you can really get into
| | 03:54 | utilizing pressure then to
change the character of the stroke.
| | 03:58 | So right here, I'm doing light strokes,
but now I increase pressure, I'm getting
| | 04:03 | much more solid strokes.
| | 04:05 | So, the Depth slider is very
important in the way this works.
| | 04:08 | But you want to keep this texture
locked because as you go from brush to brush,
| | 04:13 | you want to have the exact same
placement of that texture for every brush.
| | 04:18 | And that's key to being able to
simulate the look of a traditional brush.
| | 04:23 | So, make sure that you lock this
texture and just keep it locked.
| | 04:27 | That way, you'll always get the exact same
texture appearance in all of your brushstrokes.
| | 04:33 | So, to wrap this up, the appearance
of the canvas weave is integral to the
| | 04:38 | vocabulary of paint.
| | 04:40 | You may choose to keep it subtle or
pump it up to be a very major visual
| | 04:44 | component of your expressive style.
| | 04:46 | Either way, the Artist Brushes
Canvas Textures are there to enrich
| | 04:49 | your paintings.
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| Using Sample All Layers| 00:01 | The combination of layers and a Mixer
Brush uses a lot of processor power.
| | 00:05 | So much so that sampling the color
found on underlying layers can slow
| | 00:10 | down brush performance.
| | 00:11 | In this video, we'll take a look at the
Mixer Brush Sample All Layers option and
| | 00:16 | see how we can avoid potential
interruptions in your creative flow.
| | 00:20 | First and foremost, we want to see,
| | 00:22 | well, where is this Sample All
Layers thing you're talking about?
| | 00:25 | If you're in the Mixer Brush and you go
up to the Options bar, you'll see right
| | 00:29 | here, you have the option
to enable Sample All Layers.
| | 00:34 | Why wouldn't you want to turn this on?
| | 00:36 | Well, it used to be a bigger problem
in CS5, but they've done some work under
| | 00:41 | the hood so it's not as bad as it
used to be, but it's all tied up in how
| | 00:47 | much memory do you have,
| | 00:49 | what kind of processor you have,
| | 00:50 | are you running under multiple processors?
| | 00:53 | All of that is part of the equation
that will dictate whether or not you are
| | 00:57 | going to encounter some kind of slow-down
when Sample All Layers is enabled.
| | 01:03 | And I'll show you how I've
come up with a workaround for it.
| | 01:06 | Here's some layers and I've just
kind of created an artificial situation.
| | 01:09 | So from one point of view, this may
look like it's just a single layer, but if
| | 01:13 | we look over here, you can see these
are components on different layers.
| | 01:17 | And in a real painting, you're going
to quite often run into that situation.
| | 01:22 | So, the first question becomes, well why
would I want Sample All Layers on at all?
| | 01:27 | Well, if Sample All Layers is not
enabled, and if you've installed the optional
| | 01:32 | content that I have, I've set up things
on the Wacom tablet so that when I press
| | 01:37 | the little button, the Forward
button, it allows me to pick up color.
| | 01:41 | So, if I pick up color here,
for example, nothing happens.
| | 01:46 | Why didn't anything happen?
| | 01:48 | Well, I'm actually on a layer on top
of all of these layers, that doesn't
| | 01:52 | have anything on it.
| | 01:53 | Because it can't sample all
the layers, I picked up nothing.
| | 01:57 | If I go to, say, this middle
layer and I go and sample color.
| | 02:02 | Okay, well now, I've picked up
some but not all of the color.
| | 02:06 | What happens if I say Sample All Layers,
and then up here and I sample it. OK.
| | 02:11 | I'll sample there.
| | 02:12 | See now, I pick up all of that color
on all of those layers, and that's whats
| | 02:18 | important, particularly if you want to
emulate loaded brush strokes, which are
| | 02:22 | multiple colors across the face of your
brush so that you get these more complex
| | 02:28 | combinations than you do with
just, say, a solid color stroke.
| | 02:32 | You know, if I do this, that's very
interesting, but it's also not nearly as
| | 02:36 | interesting as being able to pick up
what in, like I say, in traditional
| | 02:40 | painting is called a loaded brush.
| | 02:42 | You go and you pick up color off of
your palette where there are multiple
| | 02:46 | colors, and then you paint
with those multiple colors.
| | 02:49 | So, this isn't nearly as
interesting when it's just a solid color.
| | 02:53 | I'm also going to go in here and just
slightly adjust my depth up. There we go.
| | 02:58 | So, how do we get around this problem?
| | 03:01 | Well, one of the things that I
installed and I show you in the tablet video in
| | 03:07 | the introduction is I've
got a button on my tablet.
| | 03:11 | And you'll notice now I'm turning
that on and off, I'm not actually going up
| | 03:15 | here and turning it on and off, I've
been able to enable and disable that.
| | 03:19 | So, if I'm in a situation where I
temporarily want to pick up multiple colors,
| | 03:24 | you know, let's say, I'm painting away,
and it's like, oh, I'd love to grab this
| | 03:28 | combination of colors here.
| | 03:30 | I just press the button on my Wacom
tablet, I'm temporarily in Sample All
| | 03:35 | Colors, I press the Forward button on
my Wacom tablet, press down, disable with
| | 03:42 | my button on my Wacom tablet, Sample
All Colors, and now I am painting away with
| | 03:47 | that particular combination.
| | 03:48 | So, I can very quickly go over,
enable sample, I've got a different set
| | 03:54 | of colors on my brush.
| | 03:56 | Go over, temporarily enable sample, and
now I'm painting with that set of colors.
| | 04:02 | So, the combination of the Front button
of the Wacom tablet being able to pick
| | 04:08 | up color, as well as the ability with
a button on the control surface of the
| | 04:14 | Wacom tablet, to be able to temporarily
enable Sample All Colors, gives me a workflow
| | 04:19 | where I can quickly go in and pick up the
various colors on my multilayered painting
| | 04:26 | surface and get those multiple colors
so that I can paint with a loaded brush.
| | 04:31 | So, that's a long winded way of saying,
I can very quickly paint in a very
| | 04:35 | natural way with a couple of
modifications to the buttons on my tablet pen as
| | 04:43 | well as the tablet surface
to get this kind of behavior.
| | 04:47 | So, the Sample All Layers can be very
useful for blending colors on overlapping
| | 04:52 | multiple-layer underlaying color.
| | 04:55 | But in doing so, you can also
dramatically affect your brush performance.
| | 05:00 | So, being able to have this built-in,
on and off capability embedded in the
| | 05:05 | control surface of your Wacom tablet,
gives you a way to work as if you have
| | 05:10 | Sample All Layers on all the time.
| | 05:12 | But you're able to dictate when and
why you have it enabled with that button
| | 05:18 | on your Wacom tablet.
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|
|
7. Expressive Interpretation: The Underpainting LayerYou must destroy detail| 00:00 | I've taught expressive interpretation
classes to a lot of photographers, and the
| | 00:04 | number one mistake they typically make
is to not initially remove enough detail
| | 00:09 | from the source photograph.
| | 00:11 | Let's keep in mind, a key element in
the language of photography is sharp
| | 00:15 | focus and fine detail.
| | 00:17 | It's very hard for the photographer who
has spent a lifetime achieving that goal
| | 00:21 | to let go of this element.
| | 00:23 | As a result, too much detail is
often retained in the translation.
| | 00:27 | And the so called painting
continues to look photographic.
| | 00:31 | You always have access
to the source photograph.
| | 00:35 | Always remember that.
| | 00:36 | There's nothing you can do that you're going
to lose information that you can't recall back.
| | 00:43 | It's always there.
| | 00:44 | In this environment that we're
working in, you can always get it back.
| | 00:48 | And just keep that tucked
away in the back of your mind.
| | 00:51 | So if you flub and make a mistake, don't worry.
| | 00:53 | If nothing else, you have
Undo to help you get back.
| | 00:57 | But we have all these mechanisms in
place that will enable you to go ahead
| | 01:01 | and try things out.
| | 01:02 | And that's the basis really, of what I'm
trying to teach you here in this video.
| | 01:07 | Now, I want to show you a variant of
this same image that I worked on prior to
| | 01:12 | recording this just to give you an idea.
| | 01:14 | Here's what an under-painting should look like.
| | 01:17 | So you can see, we recognize what it is,
but it's very loose, and there's really
| | 01:22 | a lot of detail missing.
| | 01:24 | I do recognize that it is this castle
structure that we've been working with,
| | 01:28 | but beyond that it gets pretty sketchy.
| | 01:30 | We're not really aware of
exactly what everything is.
| | 01:33 | So this is at least a level of looseness and
breakdown of the image you want to achieve.
| | 01:40 | If it has more detail than what you're
seeing here, you're probably being too
| | 01:45 | fastidious, and you want to
really keep it very loose.
| | 01:49 | So, in the next video, we're going to
take a look at how to look at this image,
| | 01:54 | actually this image, in more of a flat
structure composition as opposed to the
| | 02:00 | actual photographic
details that we're looking at.
| | 02:04 | So, we're slowly getting closer to
actually applying paint to our canvas,
| | 02:07 | but not quite yet.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Establishing compositional structure| 00:00 | OK. We know that we have to eliminate detail.
| | 00:03 | But do we just smear away
the photo into oblivion? No.
| | 00:06 | This is the step in which you establish the
major compositional structure of the painting.
| | 00:12 | This is not rocket science.
| | 00:13 | The composition is already
established in the photograph.
| | 00:16 | The goal here is to highlight the composition
through an almost-abstraction of the image.
| | 00:22 | In this segment, we'll look into
breaking down the photo's composition.
| | 00:26 | OK, so here we are, we've got our image.
| | 00:29 | And, I'm just going to show you just a
little exercise that really is a good way
| | 00:33 | to stop looking at this image as the
photographic elements that it is and to
| | 00:38 | start thinking of it more in, just
flat planes, almost an abstraction.
| | 00:43 | And so, we're not even at the point yet of
establishing all of our layering and everything.
| | 00:48 | I'm just using the base photograph and I'm
going to create a new layer on top of it.
| | 00:53 | And I'm going to grab one of my brushes,
probably the Round Blunt, and the Opaque
| | 00:58 | Round Blunt is a good one.
| | 01:00 | And all I'm going to do here,
make sure I have black,
| | 01:03 | I'm just going to start to break this
image down into what are kind of the major
| | 01:09 | structural elements of it.
| | 01:11 | You can see this background is actually
a pair of rectangles, more or less, then
| | 01:14 | we've got this area here.
| | 01:17 | Obviously, we have the building, and it
is at least this shape, and then we've
| | 01:21 | got things protruding
out of that main rectangle.
| | 01:26 | Now, the thing is, you can keep doing
this and getting more and more granular in
| | 01:32 | what you're describing in here.
| | 01:33 | And I don't want you to go all the
way down to doing the eyelashes on the
| | 01:37 | little girl, but we just want to start to take
anything that really stands out as an element.
| | 01:42 | In this case, all the windows
certainly seem to be an element that pops out.
| | 01:48 | This doorway, again this window over
here, here's another kind of division of
| | 01:53 | the building, you know, we've
got little things happening here.
| | 01:58 | I don't want to get too boiled down,
as I said, into detailed level.
| | 02:03 | So, right there, if we turn off our
background, well, there's our basic
| | 02:09 | structure within this image.
| | 02:11 | That's how simple this image actually is.
| | 02:15 | And at the underpainting level,
we're not going to get much more than into
| | 02:19 | describing these shapes.
| | 02:21 | The brush will obviously pick up the
color that is in that area of the image.
| | 02:27 | Actually, here's another little
kind of division we can do right here.
| | 02:31 | But the idea is that we're really
not looking at this as a castle-like
| | 02:36 | structure, in a background,
and blue sky on the horizon.
| | 02:41 | We're looking at it as a series of shapes.
| | 02:45 | And they're just flat.
| | 02:46 | They're flat shapes on a plane.
| | 02:47 | And, by breaking this down and looking
at it this way, before you even start
| | 02:53 | applying the brush to the canvas, this
kind of gives you an idea of really how
| | 02:58 | skeletal the underpainting should be.
| | 03:01 | In traditional painting, the underpainting
is often used to establish some of
| | 03:05 | the composition of the image and some
of the basic tonal characteristics that
| | 03:10 | are going to be employed in
the image as it's finalized.
| | 03:13 | But really, it's there
as a structural framework.
| | 03:18 | So, don't think at this point that
you're painting a building, or painting sky,
| | 03:22 | or anything in particular.
| | 03:24 | All you are painting is flat planes
that are ultimately going to represent
| | 03:29 | elements in the image.
| | 03:31 | But at this point, it's
basically an abstraction.
| | 03:34 | Just keep in mind, underpainting is
the stage of translation in which you
| | 03:37 | reduce the source photograph to
its essential, constituent parts.
| | 03:41 | Remember, ignore the details and
you'll selectively restore them later.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Determining a style and sticking to it| 00:01 | The style of brushwork done on the
underpainting basically defines the style of
| | 00:05 | brushstroke used for the rest of the painting.
| | 00:08 | Everyone has a different style, so I'm not
going to try to tell you how to define yours.
| | 00:13 | But I do recommend using a
loose versus a tight style. Why?
| | 00:18 | Because a tight style tends to
meticulously follow the shapes and detail of
| | 00:23 | the source photograph.
| | 00:24 | What is the result?
| | 00:25 | A painting that looks like a photograph,
which is what we're working to avoid.
| | 00:29 | A loose style places a premium on
spontaneity, the antithesis of photography,
| | 00:35 | and a key vocabulary
element of expressive painting.
| | 00:38 | Let's take a look at
painting with a loose style.
| | 00:41 | So, I keep saying this, but always remember,
that the underpainting is not the detail layer.
| | 00:46 | This is where you really get to be
crazy, and do the loosest brush strokes
| | 00:51 | you're probably going to do on the whole image.
| | 00:53 | Now, let's go ahead, and I'm
going to run the action here.
| | 00:56 | So let's go down to Mixer Brush,
Cloning Paint Setup, and here I am, I'm on my
| | 01:02 | underpainting layer.
| | 01:03 | Now, one of the things I'm going to
show you here is some of the things that I
| | 01:07 | would suggest you try
before you even get started.
| | 01:10 | So you may find that this is just
going to be play time or test time.
| | 01:14 | You're not really going to necessarily
start painting, but I'm going to grab
| | 01:18 | a brush, and now for me, and this isn't
necessarily you, I like the Flat Fan brush.
| | 01:24 | And we talked about this a bit in the
Wacom chapter, but, and I'm going to
| | 01:28 | enlarge this, so I can talk about this.
| | 01:30 | If you don't have the art pen, then
you're not going to be able to do what I'm
| | 01:35 | doing here, and you can see how, with my
cursor, that I'm rotating the barrel of
| | 01:39 | my brush and it's actually
rotating the tip of the brush itself.
| | 01:44 | If you don't have that, you're
probably not going to want to work with any of
| | 01:49 | the flat variants, it'll make more
sense to work with the round variants,
| | 01:52 | because they are symmetrical, and you
don't have the ability to turn the brush
| | 01:58 | to get a narrow versus a
wide angle on your brush.
| | 02:01 | So you'll probably be more
comfortable working with the round.
| | 02:06 | But I do have the art pen, and I always
say to people, I recommend it if you're
| | 02:10 | going to do expressive work.
| | 02:11 | It really adds to have
that barrel rotation there.
| | 02:14 | But that's just a little thing that I
wanted to mention though, as I start
| | 02:18 | working, 'cause some of you won't have this,
and you'll be wondering, how is he doing that?
| | 02:21 | I have the art pen.
| | 02:23 | OK, so one of the things you don't
want to do, is to start somewhere, and you
| | 02:28 | know, you may want to follow some of
the angles in here and that's fine, but
| | 02:33 | then, once you get done doing
something like this kind of stroking, don't go
| | 02:39 | over here and now, oh, I'm going
to start doing this over here.
| | 02:43 | Because what's going to happen, and again,
let me just even make this a little more obvious.
| | 02:48 | Then I come over here, and it's
like I'm going to apply these kind of
| | 02:52 | strokes, just little dabs.
| | 02:55 | Okay, now when you turn off the
reference, it looks like someone's been kind of
| | 02:59 | playing with their brush, and there's
no cohesion to these different strokes.
| | 03:03 | And you want to think about, the
strokes are almost the atomic level of a
| | 03:08 | painting, and there has to be some
kind of coherence in that atomic level.
| | 03:13 | If there isn't, you're going to end
up with this kind of busy work that's
| | 03:17 | disconnected, and obviously,
we're looking at it here isolated.
| | 03:21 | But if you did this in several
different places, several different kinds of
| | 03:25 | brush strokes, the end result
is not going to hold together.
| | 03:28 | It's just going to look
like a bunch of random strokes.
| | 03:31 | So, part of establishing the style is
to think about how you want to approach
| | 03:37 |
| | 03:37 | the brush stroking of your image,
the brushwork, as I often call it.
| | 03:42 | It's far less expressive at this level.
| | 03:45 | Yes, you are expressing yourself through
the strokes, but it's much more of just
| | 03:49 | kind of this overall
coverage of the image, initially.
| | 03:53 | And so, once you start working with a
certain kind of style, you're going to
| | 03:59 | want to pretty much stick with it.
| | 04:02 | Now I've been doing it for so long that
I don't even have to think about how I
| | 04:06 | do this, but if you're just starting out,
you may find that it is a bit hard to
| | 04:12 | figure out, what's the right way to do this.
| | 04:15 | And like so much in art, there is no right way.
| | 04:19 | There are different ways, but you
can't see that there is a wrong way.
| | 04:22 | In fact, someone could break the rule
I'm telling you of always using the same
| | 04:26 | brush stroke, and probably do a
successful painting without using, you know, the
| | 04:32 | same style brushstroke twice
in the whole underpainting.
| | 04:36 | So, you know, rules are made to be
broken, but if we're starting out here
| | 04:41 | in this, at the beginning of learning how to
do this, you do want to try to maintain a style.
| | 04:47 | Now, you can see sometimes, I'm not
even thinking about it, but now that I'm
| | 04:51 | watching myself, I am sometimes kind of
describing these shapes that we looked
| | 04:57 | at in the last video, and that
doesn't hurt at all, and that ultimately
| | 05:03 | becomes part of a style.
| | 05:05 | The thing about style is, you
can't necessarily be conscious of it.
| | 05:10 | A style evolves over time, and it just
is part and parcel of your personailty,
| | 05:18 | your habitual way of doing things.
| | 05:22 | Some people tend to be very organized,
some people are very disorganized.
| | 05:27 | You know, all of those things are part
of what is the mountain peak of all of
| | 05:33 | those different emotions and feelings
and habits, are what define a style.
| | 05:38 | And so, you know, if you're doing this
for the first time you probably are not
| | 05:43 | going to have a style. And the other
thing is, once you have a style, you
| | 05:48 | almost don't see it.
| | 05:50 | It's the way you do things.
| | 05:51 | Oh, someone else will look at it and go,
oh yeah, I like that style you're doing.
| | 05:55 | And it may hit you like, what
is he talking about? What style?
| | 05:59 | But it's true that a style is almost
something you don't see or recognize in yourself.
| | 06:04 | Art students and people kind of
starting out are very conscious of it.
| | 06:08 | One of the early things people will do
is they'll try to imitate the styles of
| | 06:13 | other artists they appreciate and like.
| | 06:16 | And that's a great way to get started.
| | 06:18 | But, you know, you ultimately don't
want to look exactly like Van Gogh, even
| | 06:21 | if he's your favorite painter.
| | 06:23 | You may take elements of their style,
but it's not necessarily something that
| | 06:28 | you're going to want to do in
terms of looking just like a Van Gogh.
| | 06:32 | What would be the goal in having
people look at your work and say, wow you
| | 06:36 | look just like Van Gogh?
| | 06:37 | You don't want that, you
want it to be your style.
| | 06:40 | So, style is an elusive animal, and
it's almost kind of hard to pin it down and
| | 06:47 | put a true definition on it for each
individual person. But the best thing I can
| | 06:53 | tell you is, you want to make sure
that once you start applying strokes in a
| | 06:58 | certain manner, you don't want to all
of a sudden decide, oh well I'm going to
| | 07:02 | do it differently now.
| | 07:03 | That just is going to end up in
a cacophony of unrelated strokes.
| | 07:09 | So remember that the underpainting is
the appropriate time to get loose and
| | 07:13 | bring out the Willem de Kooning,
or the Jackson Pollock in you.
| | 07:17 | As we move forward towards more detail,
the painting will tighten up some.
| | 07:22 | A loose underpainting will make for a
good contrast against which to paint
| | 07:27 | with more precision.
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| Painting in progress: Finishing the underpainting layer| 00:00 | OK. So, I'm going to go ahead now and
complete this underpainting, and then I'll see
| | 00:04 | you on the other side.
| | 00:15 | OK, so I'm finished now with my underpainting,
and as you can see it is very simple.
| | 00:22 | if somebody walked in the room and
haven't seen the image, they might look at
| | 00:25 | this and, well I guess they could tell
it's a building, but it would be kind
| | 00:30 | of like, what's that?
| | 00:31 | Whereas we've been working with this and
we know pretty closely what the image is.
| | 00:35 | So, we recognize it but you can still
see that it is very much of a pretty much
| | 00:39 | flat representation of all of these
kind of key compositional elements in it.
| | 00:45 | Now, one thing I want to mention
and I failed to do this when I started
| | 00:48 | painting, is, I don't have texture
enabled on my brush at this point.
| | 00:53 | It's going to become a little bit more
important in the intermediate phase to
| | 00:57 | enable texture, and the reason I'm
telling you that is, that by not employing
| | 01:02 | texture in the underpainting,
| | 01:04 | when I do start to apply texture as an
intermediate step, the fact that that
| | 01:09 | texture has more detail in it, it
starts to make those areas appear a little
| | 01:15 | bit more prominent.
| | 01:16 | And we'll get into seeing how
texture is a valuable component of the
| | 01:19 | intermediate step that we'll
be looking at in the next video.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
8. Expressive Interpretation: The Intermediate LayerUnderstanding simplified indication| 00:00 | Simplified ndication is my term for
representing visual elements with a minimum of detail.
| | 00:06 | I refer to this as my connect-the-dots
theory of engaging the viewer.
| | 00:10 | Our brain delights in filling
in detail to create meaning.
| | 00:15 | A painter, for example, does not
typically paint every leaf on a
| | 00:18 | representation of a tree.
| | 00:20 | Rather, he creates an under painting of
light and dark areas to model the volume
| | 00:25 | of the tree, then applies a few well-placed
brush strokes to fool the eye into
| | 00:30 | seeing greater detail.
| | 00:32 | The viewer then connects the dots and
reads the imagery as a tree with leaves.
| | 00:36 | Simplified indication is yet another
element of the vocabulary of painting.
| | 00:41 | Let's take a look at it.
| | 00:42 | So we've finished our underpainting,
and hopefully you worked on it zoomed out
| | 00:48 | like I've got here, you
don't want to be close up.
| | 00:50 | But going forward, we are now going to
start to get closer and closer to the
| | 00:55 | painting as we work.
| | 00:56 | And if this was a real painting, it would
be something like 30 or 40 inches at least.
| | 01:02 | So its a fairly large painting.
| | 01:03 | And just like a real painting, you're
going to want to get up close to it as you
| | 01:09 | start to work on the detail.
| | 01:10 | And if you've ever watched an artist
in a studio, they will very often step
| | 01:15 | back, get an overview of the painting
where it is, decide what they're going to
| | 01:19 | do, and then they will go forward,
get up close to the painting, work on an
| | 01:23 | area, then they'll once again go back,
see how that fits in to the overview of
| | 01:28 | the image, and they'll do this little
dance back and forth from the canvas.
| | 01:32 | So they're close up, then
they go back, they're close up.
| | 01:35 | Presumably, you'll be doing a lot of
that too, and it's a good practice.
| | 01:39 | Because you want to see all the
detail you're instilling into the image.
| | 01:43 | But you also want to be
cognizant of, how does this look as the
| | 01:46 | total representation.
| | 01:47 | So, as I'm working, I find myself
constantly zooming in, and zooming out.
| | 01:53 | And it's just a good practice to do that.
| | 01:56 | So let's go ahead and turn our
Reference back on, and do just as I said here.
| | 02:01 | I'm going to start to zoom in a bit
'cause we're talking about indication.
| | 02:06 |
And, one of the tricks of my simplified indication theory
is that you want to apply it with the minimum of strokes.
| | 02:16 |
Remember, we're still not to the detail layer. And you
just want to put enough information there to start to
| | 02:23 | fill in the blanks for the user.
| | 02:27 | In the underpainting, we merely
blocked out this building, for example.
| | 02:30 | But now, our next job is to start to
indicate, what is that building made of?
| | 02:36 | And it's obviously made of this
stonework, and so we need to cognizant of the
| | 02:40 | fact that we are going to start to
somehow indicate that this building is
| | 02:45 | actually composed of stone. And I
might even go in a little bit closer here.
| | 02:52 | So, we want to first of all make
sure that we're now going to be on the
| | 02:57 | Intermediate Layer, remember we
worked on the underpainting layer before.
| | 03:01 | Now we are going to be
on the Intermediate Layer.
| | 03:03 | So make sure that you are in the
Intermediate Layer before you start painting.
| | 03:07 | And here is my brush stroke that I
was using earlier, really big brush.
| | 03:11 | I want to make it smaller, and I'm
using my left and right bracket keys to be
| | 03:16 | able to control getting smaller with the left
bracket or getting larger with the right bracket.
| | 03:21 | So I'm going to make this, you know, I'm
looking at these bricks, and I want the
| | 03:25 | brush to be no wider than those
bricks, and maybe even a little bit less.
| | 03:29 | And what I can do now, is go in and
start to delineate these bricks, and when
| | 03:35 | you watch me, you're going to probably,
first comment you'll make to yourself is,
| | 03:39 | he's going to do that to
every brick in the building?
| | 03:42 | Yes, I am, that's what painting's about.
| | 03:45 | It's not going to happen in an instant.
| | 03:47 | This is going to take awhile.
| | 03:48 | In fact, when we're done with this
painting, I'll try to give you a pretty
| | 03:51 | accurate estimate of how long it
actually took me to paint this.
| | 03:55 | So you'll get at least a sense of
scale of OK, a painting with that much
| | 03:59 | detail at that scale takes x amount of hours,
| | 04:02 | roughly. Now keep in mind too, the more
experienced someone is, they're going to
| | 04:07 | be able to do it quicker, and as a
first timer, you may find it takes you two,
| | 04:12 | three times that to get to it, but we'll
keep track of the time and let you know
| | 04:17 | roughly how long it took as we go through this.
| | 04:20 | So, I'm going to just start here and
I'm going to put a little slice there and
| | 04:26 | there, and one of the things I want
to do is check to see, you know, what
| | 04:30 | does that look like?
| | 04:31 | See what it did there?
| | 04:32 | Not a lot, but it's going to start to
build up our image, and I can see maybe I
| | 04:37 | need to make my brush a little bit larger.
| | 04:39 | So, I will make a few beginning
strokes, just to see what I'm getting here.
| | 04:43 | I still want that to be a little larger,
so I'm going to go up. One of the things
| | 04:48 | about this, it's a rounded brush,
you can see here as a tip it, and what
| | 04:51 | happens is, even though that brush may
look wider than the individual bricks are,
| | 04:56 | what happens is some of the outer
edges of that brush is not actually
| | 05:01 | contacting, it depends all on how
hard I'm pressing and all of that.
| | 05:05 | But I can see that I may need to
adjust my brush size so that I'm getting a
| | 05:10 | stroke roughly equivalent to the
width of these courses of stone work.
| | 05:14 | So, I'm just going to try a few more here.
| | 05:16 | Yeah, let's see how that
looks, that's looking better.
| | 05:21 | So, you can see how it's picking up.
| | 05:23 | This is the result of having put that
texture, that finer texture that we did,
| | 05:28 | and then use the Oil Paint filter on.
| | 05:30 | What happens is, when the brush picks
that up, and especially now with this
| | 05:34 | smaller scale, it's starting to get a
loaded style brush, and one of the things
| | 05:40 | that is, a loaded brush technique is often used for is,
instead of it just being flat color,
| | 05:46 |
it's actually got this range of colors in it. And that
is a trick to produce more detail in that stroke
| | 05:54 |
than it would be if it were simply a flat stroke. Hopefully,
after this title, you'll start looking at paintings
| | 06:00 |
in a bit more detail, and you'll see how loaded
brushstrokes are a way to portray much greater detail
| | 06:07 | than you really are adding, and it all
| | 06:10 | has to do with the fact the brush
stroke is painting with multiple colors.
| | 06:15 | And unfortunately for us, the way this
all works, is it actually does emulate a
| | 06:20 | loaded brush stroke as you paint.
| | 06:22 | So let's turn this back on, and I'll
just start doing a bit here so you can
| | 06:27 | kind of get the idea.
| | 06:28 | Now you can see these are individual
bricks, and there is a gap between them.
| | 06:32 | When I get to my detail layer, I'm
going to be addressing those little cracks,
| | 06:36 | but right now I'm just wanting to more
or less address the mass of the brick,
| | 06:41 | and not necessarily that outline.
| | 06:44 | And I'm also going to turn down my brush
because the bricks do get a bit smaller here.
| | 06:50 | And I am not overly concerned about
exactly filling in the shape of that brush.
| | 06:56 | Remember, we're indicating,
| | 06:57 | we're not trying to exactly detail the
rusticated uneven surface of these stones.
| | 07:05 | We're simply indicating that there
are individual blocks here and,
| | 07:11 | I continue to turn this on
and off to see where I have it.
| | 07:14 | I'm taking advantage of the optional
actions here so that I'm actually using
| | 07:18 | my F14 and F15 keys to be able to
quickly turn off and on the Reference Layer,
| | 07:24 | and it really helps.
| | 07:26 | Because otherwise I would have to be
going over here and constantly turning it
| | 07:29 | on and off. And I'm going to mainly just
pay attention to the bricks themselves.
| | 07:33 | There are other kinds of things going on.
| | 07:35 | But the first goal in this is
going to be to go around and do this.
| | 07:40 | And you look at this now,
and it doesn't look like much.
| | 07:42 | But that's another thing I'll warn
you about if you haven't done a lot of
| | 07:47 | paint work in the past.
| | 07:49 | There are points in a painting where it
absolutely does not look good or finished or
| | 07:55 | whatever you want to call it.
| | 07:56 | For that reason, lot of people do not
like other people coming into the studio and
| | 08:01 | looking over their shoulder at some very
tender moment like here, 'cause its very easy
| | 08:05 | to look at this and say,
that doesn't look like bricks.
| | 08:08 | I don't understand what you're doing.
| | 08:10 | You have to ignore that and just persevere
forward, and its going to be the
| | 08:14 | aggregation of all of this
together that's going to work.
| | 08:17 | At this small scale, closeup, no,
it doesn't look great at his point.
| | 08:21 | But that's what you drive forward
to, to continue to improve this through
| | 08:26 | the additional layers.
| | 08:27 | So in the detail layer, certainly we'll
be doing more to even delineate this a
| | 08:32 | bit more strongly than it looks now.
| | 08:34 | But, don't be fooled by indication
looking somewhat unfinished at this point.
| | 08:39 | Just persevere, keep going forward, trust
me and yourself, and you'll get it done.
| | 08:45 | Now the last thing I do want to
say is that simplified indication can
| | 08:49 | sometimes fall into the category of
| | 08:51 | I-know-good-simplified-indication-when-I-see-
it-but-I-can't-describe-it-to-you category.
| | 08:57 | One definition may have to do with the
minimum size of the brush strokes used.
| | 09:02 | Remember that the finest strokes are
going to be reserved for the actual
| | 09:06 | detail work later on.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding color: Warm advances, cool retreats| 00:00 | Besides indicating detail with brushwork,
you can also indicate depth and visual
| | 00:05 | importance with color by
controlling its temperature and saturation.
| | 00:10 | Atmospheric or aerial perspective
is a painting technique in which
| | 00:14 | three-dimensional depth is portrayed
by reducing color saturation and tinting
| | 00:19 | retreating colors towards blue.
| | 00:21 | This mimics the effect of
the atmosphere on distance.
| | 00:24 | We can additionally use this optical
cue to place greater importance on subject
| | 00:29 | matter in a painting.
| | 00:30 | In this video, we'll take a
look at how to use this technique.
| | 00:33 | So, just to kind of cover what I'm
talking about here, I've got a couple example
| | 00:38 | here that I want to show you.
| | 00:39 | This is atmospheric perspective, and
in this case, it's actually foggy out.
| | 00:43 | But see how the color in the
foreground is fully saturated and rich.
| | 00:47 | And as distance increases, in this case,
there's particulate in the air in the
| | 00:53 | form of tiny droplets forming the fog.
| | 00:56 | So, as objects get farther away, more
and more of that is between us and that
| | 01:02 | object and as a result, it gets more
and more grayed out and loses detail.
| | 01:07 | Another example here, even on a sunny
day, is right here. This shows you that
| | 01:12 | even in the sunny conditions,
| | 01:14 | once again, you've got all of this
color in this ridge in the foreground, but as
| | 01:18 | we start to move back, in this case,
more and more blue starts to intrude on the
| | 01:24 | scene till you get to that farthest
back mountain range and it's basically just
| | 01:29 | kind of gray with a hint of blue in it.
| | 01:31 | So, the use of color saturation is
great for indicating depth, and that's one of
| | 01:38 | the primary ways it's
used in traditional painting.
| | 01:42 | What we're talking about here isn't so
much depth because of distance, but depth
| | 01:48 | or color used to indicate importance.
| | 01:51 | And this probably isn't the exact
place I would use this, but I just want to
| | 01:54 | give you an example of how powerful this can be.
| | 01:59 | Because we have these hue and
saturation layers associated with each of our
| | 02:04 | Cloning Layers, I can, at any point,
play around with each one of these layers'
| | 02:10 | importance, so to speak.
| | 02:12 | And so, if I go to the underpainting
layer, down here, and use this
| | 02:16 | Hue/Saturation adjustment layer, which
is associated with it, I could go in here
| | 02:22 | and, for example, if I thought this
brick work is more important than the under-
| | 02:27 | painting, well I could start to,
you know, desaturate it a bit.
| | 02:31 | I could play with its lightness a bit.
| | 02:33 | But you see all of a sudden how
that brickwork is now jumping forward.
| | 02:37 | It's not intentional, I wouldn't do that to
this because they really are sort of together here.
| | 02:43 | But as we go through the rest of this
title, you're going to see me taking
| | 02:48 | advantage of these Hue/Saturation layers.
| | 02:52 | And always keep in mind,
these are non-destructive.
| | 02:54 | So, for example, I could even
set this this way right now.
| | 02:57 | So then, as I paint, I am getting a more
clear view of how these look as I paint.
| | 03:02 | And then later on, I can pull the
saturation and lightness back to where they
| | 03:07 | were and they'll merge a little bit better.
| | 03:10 | In fact, I do that all the time, I'll
probably leave it like this so that as I
| | 03:14 | start to paint, my intermediate
layer is going to have greater saturation
| | 03:18 | because we've actually
desaturated the background.
| | 03:21 | So, you can use this in a number of ways.
| | 03:24 | You can use it as a final part of the
image to create importance on certain layers.
| | 03:30 | Or you can use it temporarily, as
I'm describing, and just desaturate a
| | 03:35 | background layer that you don't want
to necessarily have bothering you or
| | 03:40 | interfering with your vision as you're applying
these strokes, in this case, for the brickwork.
| | 03:46 | The use of warm/cool color and
saturation/desaturation is a useful tool for
| | 03:52 | focusing viewer attention to
desired areas within a composition.
| | 03:56 | The trick is to be subtle about it, and not let
it call undue attention for the wrong reasons.
| | 04:01 | And as I just mentioned, you can also
use it as a temporary measure to increase
| | 04:05 | the importance of the layer
that you're currently focusing on.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Painting in progress: Introducing texture to the intermediate layer| 00:00 | As we advance into the intermediate
layer of our translation, it's time to start
| | 00:05 | introducing some texture into the mix.
| | 00:08 | Within the vocabulary of painting, the
appearance of canvas texture is a way
| | 00:12 | of re-establishing the high frequency
detailed destroyed in the underpainting step.
| | 00:17 | We can effectively use this detail to
control the viewer's eye, and weigh the
| | 00:22 | importance of the subject matter
in a scene. Let's take a look.
| | 00:26 | So, here we are, this is where we were at
when last we spoke, and one of the things
| | 00:31 | I realized when I went to do this, is
that now that I'm talking about texture, I
| | 00:36 | wish I had used texture when I
started painting these strokes.
| | 00:40 | So, it brings up an interesting conundrum.
| | 00:43 | How do we now get rid of this, and continue on?
| | 00:47 | Well, I've mentioned this before, but
this is a good practical application of
| | 00:51 | it, so I'm going to show you this.
| | 00:53 | I could certainly go in here then, and use
my eraser, for example, to get rid of this.
| | 00:58 | Seems like the obvious thing to
do, just erase it and start over.
| | 01:03 | So now I'm going to go ahead and pick
my brush to work with, and I'm going to
| | 01:07 | go down here and grab the Cloner Flat Fan and
I'm going to go ahead and start to paint in here.
| | 01:13 | We want to for sure turn on our preference layer,
and I'll go ahead and I'll start painting.
| | 01:18 | Wait a minute, nothing's
happening. What is wrong?
| | 01:23 | I should be painting, shouldn't I?
| | 01:24 | Well, we mentioned this
before, but here's the gotcha.
| | 01:28 | If you erase one of these Cloning
Layers, you are not only erasing the one
| | 01:35 | percent of secret sauce that is in the
layer, which is the image, but you're
| | 01:40 | also erasing the alpha
channel that made it visible.
| | 01:45 | So once we've done that, when I go
back now there is no pixels to get color
| | 01:50 | from, there is no alpha channels,
so it cannot produce color anymore.
| | 01:54 | Now in an area where I
haven't done it, yeah there it is.
| | 01:57 | See if I turn this off you can see my
brushwork there, but over here, we've
| | 02:03 | largely lost it. In fact, it will only
start to show up when we get outside where
| | 02:07 | it can pick up color again.
| | 02:09 | So what do you do, when
something like this happens?
| | 02:12 | Well, you can't fix it unless
you have enough Undos to get back.
| | 02:17 | But I really didn't, because I'd
painted so many strokes, there was no way to
| | 02:22 | ever get back to it.
| | 02:23 | And that's why I have a backup method,
which is one of the optional actions in
| | 02:28 | the Cloning Layer Extras.
| | 02:30 | There's one here, Create Cloning Layer Group.
| | 02:33 | So, I've lost this cloning layer, and
it's unfortunate, and I've lost a little bit
| | 02:38 | of work, but at least I have a
band-aid here that I can put on it.
| | 02:42 | So this intermediate strokes
group is really no good anymore.
| | 02:47 | It is everywhere else, and if that's
the issue then you could just continue to
| | 02:52 | paint everywhere else, but you would never
be able to recover what's going on in there.
| | 02:56 | So we're going to go ahead and we're
going to create this cloning layer group,
| | 02:59 | but I want to show you a couple things here.
| | 03:02 | So I'm going to go ahead and run it,
let's go right here, close that, and run this.
| | 03:08 | Say okay, and we got this strange little,
doesn't work, what's wrong? I don't get it.
| | 03:17 | Okay, so let's stop and, and
here's why you get that error.
| | 03:20 | The Reference Layer is turned off.
| | 03:22 | Just, the way this works, it needs to
have the reference layer on when it makes
| | 03:27 | a cloning layer group.
| | 03:28 | So I'm going to enable it, and
let's run it once again. Say OK.
| | 03:33 | And there now it made our group.
| | 03:36 | So, if you run into that little
hiccup, it means that you didn't have
| | 03:39 | the reference layer on.
| | 03:40 | And now, thinking about it, I think
that's part of what it actually says in that
| | 03:44 | little dialogue that comes up.
| | 03:46 | So, that should warn you to be
sure to have your reference layer on.
| | 03:49 | I wasn't paying attention, and I wrote it.
| | 03:51 | OK, now we've got a new cloning layer group.
| | 03:54 | And it automatically always
places it up here at the top.
| | 03:57 | But we want to go ahead and drop it
down here, just above our intermediate
| | 04:01 | cloning layer group.
| | 04:02 | So now we've got another
cloning layer group we can work with.
| | 04:05 | I can no longer paint on that one
part of the cloning layer in the
| | 04:11 | intermediate group in that area.
| | 04:14 | However, anywhere outside of it, it works.
| | 04:17 | But what I'll need to do is in this area
where I can no longer paint, I can use
| | 04:22 | the cloning layer group.
| | 04:23 | Or in this case, it probably
actually makes more sense just to get rid of
| | 04:27 | the bad intermediate strokes group that we
had, and just use this Cloning Layer Group.
| | 04:33 | In fact, just to make things like they
were, I'm going to rename this intermediate.
| | 04:37 | So, we now have replaced it
with one that is not damaged.
| | 04:42 | Okay, now I can go back to work.
| | 04:45 | And sure enough, my strokes
are now appearing in there.
| | 04:47 | If we turn that off, I can see them there.
| | 04:50 | So, we're back to where we were.
| | 04:52 | I'm going to undo that, just so
I don't have things I don't want.
| | 04:55 | And the other thing we want to make
sure that we're doing, then, is we are
| | 04:59 | going to turn on texture. Yes, it is now on.
| | 05:04 | And just to test it, sometimes it helps to
just temporarily turn this off, and just see.
| | 05:09 | Yep, there, it's showing up.
| | 05:11 | So now, I can go ahead and do this
with texture enabled, which I should
| | 05:16 | have done at the start.
| | 05:18 | But I was giving you a little
demonstration, and we haven't gotten to
| | 05:21 | talking about texture.
| | 05:22 | Hence, the hiccup of painting
those strokes without texture.
| | 05:26 | But, when you get to the intermediate layer,
you do want to start thinking about that.
| | 05:31 | So, I'm going to go ahead now, and I'm
going to start painting and we will see
| | 05:37 | you when we get to the other side.
| | 05:42 | One of the things I want to point out
here is that I tend to stay working on a
| | 05:49 | very similar kind of aspect of the painting,
and I'm varying a little bit out of that.
| | 05:55 | But if you're watching this, you can
see that I'm pretty much paying most of my
| | 06:01 | attention to the brickwork.
| | 06:02 | The a reason I do that, there's
a certain kind of rhythm that you get
| | 06:06 | into as you're putting these
little indications of each of the stones
| | 06:11 | together as you paint.
| | 06:13 | And I find that if you start doing
something very different, like a window, all
| | 06:17 | of a sudden your rhythm is kind
of changed and it gets interrupted.
| | 06:20 | So I try to, as much as possible, just
keep working on one aspect of the painting.
| | 06:27 | Like after I'm done with all this,
perhaps I'll go work on the windows.
| | 06:32 | And then maybe the grounds in the
background, and the sky, but each one of
| | 06:37 | those has some probably different
kinds of technique involved in the way the
| | 06:41 | brushwork is applied.
| | 06:43 | And I've just found that you get a
better result if you kind of stick to doing
| | 06:47 | one type of brush work consistently
throughout, and then when you change, you're
| | 06:53 | not trying to necessarily
do the same kind of style.
| | 06:56 | So, just keep in mind that it makes
sense to focus on each type of brush stroke,
| | 07:03 | and combined with whatever
element it is you're working on.
| | 07:07 | And don't go changing
back and forth a whole lot.
| | 07:09 | I think you'll see that you get a
better result as you stay focused on just one
| | 07:15 | particular aspect of the painting,
rather than jumping all over.
| | 07:26 | On a situation like this, I'm kind of
having a make up the brickwork because
| | 07:32 | it's actually covered in the foreground
by some branches and weeds.
| | 07:37 | I'm going to indicate those later on
the detail layer, but I still want to have
| | 07:43 | whatever amount of brickwork will be
seen behind the detail work that I'm going
| | 07:49 | to add when I get back to that level of detail.
| | 07:52 | So, this is basically kind of made-up brickwork.
| | 07:56 | I know from working with the
image kind of what's going on there.
| | 07:59 | So I'm doing my best to just
put an indication of brickwork.
| | 08:03 | And then, most of this is going to get
hidden by some branches and the weeds
| | 08:08 | that I'm going to draw there later.
| | 08:10 | So, that's what's going on right here.
| | 08:27 | You may have noticed that I have
rotated the screen, and that is part of the
| | 08:33 | Wacom preferences that I will be giving
you that enable you to assign rotation
| | 08:40 | to the scroll wheel on the Wacom tablet.
| | 08:43 | And I find it very useful, it's easier,
| | 08:46 | I'm left-handed, but it's just far
easier to painting strokes at an angle,
| | 08:52 | rather than trying to do it if the
image were to be completely horizontal.
| | 08:58 | So, take advantage of
screen rotation when you can.
| | 09:02 | The other thing, while I'm right here,
you'll notice that I am not at this point
| | 09:08 | painting in the trike or the ball.
| | 09:12 | So, one way to not paint it is
basically to grab color outside of it, and
| | 09:17 | just paint over it.
| | 09:18 | And if I turn this off, you see it picked up
a little color, but not enough to be damaging.
| | 09:24 | So, I'm going to save painting the
tricycle and ball for the detail layer.
| | 09:30 | So I'm not really worried at this
point about what happens with it.
| | 09:35 | So, I'm just basically painting it out and
then I'll concentrate on it on the detail layer.
| | 09:59 | OK, I'm pretty much done with my
intermediate painting here, here we see it.
| | 10:03 | I can see a couple things
I'm going to want to fix.
| | 10:06 | Obviously, down there where I was
trying to scrub out the tricycle and the
| | 10:10 | ball, I've got some color
contamination that I'll have to deal with.
| | 10:14 | But this is what it looks like and it's
a very skeletal kind of thing when you
| | 10:19 | look at it separately because what I did,
| | 10:21 | and I don't know if you noticed this,
but as I got started, I shut off the
| | 10:26 | underpainting layer because it kind
of interferes and if you want to focus
| | 10:29 | exclusively on a particular layer,
in this case the intermediate layer, it
| | 10:34 | helps to turn that off.
| | 10:36 | So, this is what it looks like without
it, but watch, when we turn it on, see
| | 10:39 | how much more this is now coming together.
| | 10:42 | It also shows how much more that color
contamination has to be dealt with in the foreground.
| | 10:46 | But we'll zoom up here a little bit,
and now you're starting to see there's a
| | 10:51 | combination of the solid, non-textural
brushstrokes, and overlying them now are
| | 10:58 | the textured brush strokes.
| | 11:00 | So, it just starts to put a
degree of interest into the image.
| | 11:04 | The more finer detail there is in an
image, the more the human visual system
| | 11:10 | will seek it out and try to
evaluate it, and look at it.
| | 11:14 | So, even at this point, the addition
of texture in that intermediate layer
| | 11:20 | starts to add that degree of
detail in there that we're going for.
| | 11:25 | And not to mention, now the next step
may not be the final layer, but the detail
| | 11:30 | layer is where we're going to
start to really delineate things.
| | 11:34 | And I'll probably be using a couple
other non-cloning layers as a way to have
| | 11:41 | another layer to apply
some of my own brushwork.
| | 11:44 | But you can see now, we're pretty
much getting on our way to having this
| | 11:48 | image become a painting.
| | 11:50 | It's not done yet, it's going to take
a little bit more work, but I'm pretty
| | 11:54 | happy with the way it's turning out so far.
| | 11:57 | I did time this, and I think this was
slightly under two hours it took me to do that.
| | 12:01 | Now, don't use that as
something you need to try to match.
| | 12:05 | I do this so often, I'm pretty fast at it.
| | 12:07 | One of the things I do like to mention,
is that as you start to learn how to
| | 12:13 | do this type of work,
| | 12:15 | every time you encounter a
problem, you've got to stop.
| | 12:18 | You've got to figure out how to get
around it or what technique you can evolve
| | 12:22 | to make it work, and then you continue on.
| | 12:25 | But the next time that same problem
crops up, you don't have to do that,
| | 12:30 | because now you have in your bag of tricks the
technique that you used the last time to do that.
| | 12:35 | And what happens is, as you
continually do these, and you encounter more and
| | 12:39 | more of these little hiccups in the workflow,
| | 12:42 | you figure out how to get around it, and it
becomes another arrow in your quiver of tricks.
| | 12:46 | And so after a while, you
develop a pretty big bag of tricks.
| | 12:50 | And once you get really good, it's
like your bag of tricks is so full, that
| | 12:55 | there's almost nothing that you
encounter that you can't quickly get around, if
| | 12:59 | not just almost automatically fix it.
| | 13:01 | So, don't be discouraged if it takes you
quite a long time to do this, initially.
| | 13:07 | It's going to be practice, and
repetition is where you start to encounter all of
| | 13:12 | these little technical issues that
you'll slowly absorb and figure out how to
| | 13:16 | correct much quicker.
| | 13:18 | And then once you've got that big
bag of tricks, you can go really fast.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
9. Expressive Interpretation: The Detail LayerThe play's the thing| 00:00 | While I have been stressing the importance of
using detail to direct the viewer's interest,
| | 00:05 | it is equally important to utilize
areas of contrasting non-interest.
| | 00:10 | An image with no rest areas becomes
fatiguing to look at, and confuses the
| | 00:14 | viewer's eye as to what is
important within the scene.
| | 00:18 | In this video, we'll take a cue from the
world of stage and theater to clarify things.
| | 00:23 | When the play opens up, the whole
stage is lit up and you've got all the
| | 00:27 | actors on the stage.
| | 00:29 | You're allowed to see whatever the
backdrop and scenery is on the stage at the
| | 00:35 | outset, so it gives you a sense of
place and environment that the actors are
| | 00:40 | in. But once the play starts, the
lights will dim down, and the spotlight will
| | 00:46 | be solely on the actor and all of
that other background is in darkness.
| | 00:52 | Your concentration, by virtue of
the fact that the actor is lit and
| | 00:57 | everything is dark,
| | 00:58 | puts full attention on that item.
| | 01:01 | What I do, when I am working on an image,
| | 01:04 | whenever I find myself kind of
spending time working on something, I have to
| | 01:08 | stop and ask myself, is this
the actor or is this the stage?
| | 01:11 | And if it's the stage, I should stop
working on it right away because I'm
| | 01:17 | fussing over an area that is not important.
| | 01:19 | We need to look at this image, and determine,
you know, who are the actors on the stage.
| | 01:24 | And I've just temporarily turned on
the reference, so we can kind of
| | 01:28 | see the overall image.
| | 01:29 | For sure, the building being the
largest element, that's kind of our backdrop
| | 01:33 | for this whole thing.
| | 01:35 | And then, in a less general way, we have
the full outdoors that is in the distance.
| | 01:41 | And then, even beyond the building,
| | 01:43 | the true actors on this stage, I would
say, are the ball, the tricycle, and the
| | 01:48 | little girl up in the window.
| | 01:50 | That's ultimately the most
important elements in the scene.
| | 01:54 | While we're here, quite the opposite, but a similar
kind of problem, is that you don't want distractions.
| | 02:01 |
And we've talked about this before. If you
have to say, what's that? That's a problem.
| | 02:05 | And right now, for me, are these smeary things
that happened where the trike and the ball are.
| | 02:11 | They're colors that don't make any sense there.
| | 02:14 | And once we paint those objects there,
what it's going to look like is there's
| | 02:19 | a bunch of smeariness of the colors
that the actual actors possess that are
| | 02:24 | somehow smeared around them,
and we don't want that.
| | 02:27 | So I need to come up with a little trick here
| | 02:30 | to figure out, how do I get rid of that?
| | 02:33 | Here's how I figure is the best way to do it.
| | 02:35 | I'm in the Intermediate layer, lets also zoom
up on it, so we have full access to what
| | 02:41 | we've got to fix, right there and over here.
| | 02:44 | I'm going to go ahead and create a new layer.
| | 02:47 | We've got now a new latent layer
sitting there that I can paint on.
| | 02:52 | It's not a Cloning Layer, but what
we're going to do is pick up some color
| | 02:56 | adjacent to these colors that we want to
get rid of, and then we'll paint with them.
| | 03:01 | But we can take advantage of all
of the color that's already there to
| | 03:04 | essentially do a patch job.
| | 03:05 | So what I need to do is grab a regular brush.
| | 03:09 | I'm going to get an Opaque Flat Fan,
and that's the same brush I was using
| | 03:14 | as cloner, remember.
| | 03:15 | So rather than get lots of
different brushes, I'm pretty much
| | 03:18 | staying consistent.
| | 03:19 | I'm just now using a brush that's
actually going to apply its own color.
| | 03:22 | As opposed to the Cloning brush, which
literally has the colors of the image
| | 03:26 | coming through it. So you may
remember from an earlier video that I've
| | 03:31 | assigned a key on the Wacom tablet that
lets me toggle on and off, Sample All Layers.
| | 03:36 | You can see it up here at the top.
| | 03:38 | I'm clicking on that to turn it on and off.
| | 03:40 | So what I want to do is
temporarily sample all layers.
| | 03:44 | So I am going to enable it,
| | 03:46 | and then, the other thing I've done
that's part of the optional material you're
| | 03:52 | getting with this tile is the
front button of my Wacom pen.
| | 03:56 | When I click on it, it allows me to sample
all colors when I am in the mixture brush.
| | 04:01 | So I'm just going to grab
| | 04:03 | a color right here, and I'm
going to disable Sample All Colors.
| | 04:08 | And now I can paint on this layer,
which is resting immediately above this, and
| | 04:12 | start to paint out these colors.
| | 04:14 | And so I'll, a few times here,
need to enable Sample All Colors.
| | 04:19 | Sample an area, like right here.
| | 04:21 | And then just paint into it.
| | 04:23 | And so it takes a few samples to start
to stroke this out and make sure that we
| | 04:29 | don't have this oddball color combination.
| | 04:34 | So it'll just take a few of these
samples to get adjacent color picked up.
| | 04:38 | And, I can use it then to
paint with on the cleanup Layer.
| | 04:44 | See that, I didn't turn off Sample All Layers.
| | 04:47 | You see how slow my brush was?
| | 04:49 | That's why you'd want to
disable Sample All Layers.
| | 04:53 | Here I'll do it again. Now watch this.
| | 04:56 | That's because Sample All Layers is on.
| | 04:58 | Now I'll turn it off and disable Sample
All Layers, and there, it's painting fine.
| | 05:04 | That's the importance right there of
having Sample All Layers off when you're
| | 05:09 | painting in this layered environment.
| | 05:11 | I'll get this all cleaned up, and then
in the next video, we'll continue talking
| | 05:15 | about the Detail Layer.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Focusing on the subject through detail| 00:00 | We talked about simplified indication
earlier in chapter eight, and to a degree,
| | 00:05 | this video is a
continuation, but on a smaller scale.
| | 00:08 | Now that we are working on the detail layer,
| | 00:11 | it is time to focus on the subject
and utilize small brush size in order to
| | 00:15 | provide the greatest amount of detail.
| | 00:19 | As we know, the eye seeks out
detail, so by imbuing the subject with
| | 00:23 | this greatest degree of detail, we
can control where the viewer will
| | 00:28 | focus his attention.
| | 00:30 | But to focus on the subject at hand
here, probably one of the things that
| | 00:34 | deserves a great deal of attention at
this point is right here, this is our
| | 00:39 | actors right here in the front.
| | 00:42 | We want to make sure that
we're on the detail layer.
| | 00:44 | I'm also going to want to be sure I
have my cloning brush here, so I'm going to
| | 00:50 | once again use my Flat Fan.
| | 00:53 | And I'm going to make this pretty small.
| | 00:55 | I'm looking at, you know, the size of
things here, and I'm going to want to not
| | 01:00 | be much larger, if at all than this
is so that I won't be picking up extraneous
| | 01:04 | colors on the outside.
| | 01:06 | But, let's go ahead and see what happens here.
| | 01:10 | I'm going to go ahead
and start painting in here.
| | 01:13 | As I was doing earlier, especially on
rounded things, this is where rotating to
| | 01:18 | get the best angle is a really good
idea. Because we're now at the detail level,
| | 01:23 | you really want to take pains to do
this carefully, and not inadvertently start
| | 01:28 | picking up colors outside the edge.
| | 01:31 | That's why a small brush size really is helpful.
| | 01:34 | Also, you can paint this, and
think you've touched every area of it.
| | 01:38 | And then, when you turn off your
reference layer, you'll see, oh, I didn't even,
| | 01:42 | I missed this whole area here.
| | 01:44 | Once you've sketched in enough of this and
it's basically kind of a fill in operation,
| | 01:50 | you can almost work without
the reference layer on, because
| | 01:55 | everything's delineated.
| | 01:56 | You're just seeing little spots in the
image that aren't being painted and you
| | 02:00 | can just go touch them up, so you don't
always have to have the reference layer on.
| | 02:08 | But, when needed, it's a
valuable helper in this.
| | 02:14 | I will probably go back with a
separate layer, and I may do this as a very final
| | 02:19 | pass. One of the things that really
helps to lock an image into looking
| | 02:25 | finished, is highlights.
| | 02:28 | And I've always said that you only want
to paint with white for your highlights.
| | 02:33 | Yes, there are some areas in this image
that probably do have whites in them, but
| | 02:37 | when I get into painting little
highlights in certain areas of shiny objects in
| | 02:42 | a scene, I try to never use white
until that point in the painting.
| | 02:48 | Because once again, white is going to
be the highest contrast element in this
| | 02:54 | whole image, and wherever I place white,
even if it's just a tiny little sparkly
| | 02:59 | highlight dot in the image, the eye,
amazingly, will go after that and seek it out.
| | 03:06 | And its not like you're going to stop
thinking about the image and wonder
| | 03:09 | what's that white dot.
| | 03:10 | You'll just notice it and
assimilate it as a highlight in the image.
| | 03:15 | A really good artist knows how to
exactly direct your eye, and you may think
| | 03:20 | you're just looking at the image on your own.
| | 03:22 | But a well-done composition and painting,
actually, you're being directed where
| | 03:28 | to go with the way that the imagery has been done.
| | 03:32 | Let's turn this off and see what.
| | 03:34 | This can be off now and I can
actually kind of paint in here and I don't
| | 03:38 | necessarily need the reference layer on,
because I've got enough information
| | 03:42 | here to see, you know, just where touch
up needs to go, to make sure that things
| | 03:48 | aren't just incongruously hanging out in space.
| | 03:52 | See how that item, for one
thing, it's very saturated in that
| | 03:56 | otherwise non-saturated field.
| | 03:59 | But it's also got lots of little detail in it.
| | 04:01 | So, take your eye and kind of look
at this image, and you'll find that it
| | 04:05 | naturally wants to go down to
that area of saturation and detail.
| | 04:10 | More than anywhere else in the image
right now, that's where the most detail is,
| | 04:14 | so it just becomes a focal point of the image.
| | 04:17 | The idea behind the detail layer, and
it's a tinted additive paint layer, are
| | 04:22 | where you can make or break a painting.
| | 04:24 | Detail strokes are like font characters,
they are meant to be read and understood.
| | 04:30 | This is your opportunity to
really make your subject stand out.
| | 04:33 | Sloppy detailing results in an
inferior image, so take your time during
| | 04:38 | this phase of painting.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using a traditional paint color swatch set| 00:00 | A technique I use, especially in the
final stages of an interpreted photograph,
| | 00:05 | is to apply additional non-photograph-based
color to the painting.
| | 00:09 | To add authenticity to our strokes,
we'll utilize colors associated with the
| | 00:14 | traditional artist's palette.
| | 00:16 | Now, what I'm talking about here is all
the color we've derived from this image
| | 00:20 | up till now has been funneled through
our brush from the photograph, and it's
| | 00:25 | true that we have done a lot of
enhancement work to that photograph, especially
| | 00:30 | in the area of some of the
colors and the dynamic range of it.
| | 00:34 | But even so, it's still nice to be
able to possibly have colors that would be
| | 00:39 | the same kind of colors that you got out
of a regular tube of, say, oil paint, and
| | 00:44 | I've basically done that by creating
a swatch set that has an entire set of
| | 00:50 | colors associated with an artist's oil colors.
| | 00:55 | The way I did this is I basically
went to an online art store and on these
| | 01:00 | websites, they have pages that will
show you for ordering different tubes of
| | 01:04 | paint, the colors associated with each
of these oil colors in the complete set.
| | 01:10 | And so, what I did is I basically just
used a screen capture utility to capture
| | 01:15 | this entire set of all of these colors.
| | 01:18 | Then, I brought that into Photoshop and
I simply used the facility within
| | 01:23 | Photoshop to capture these
colors and put them in a swatch set.
| | 01:28 | See, if I just hold this over one of
the colors, you'll see that not only did I
| | 01:32 | capture the colors themselves, but I
also input the names of the colors.
| | 01:37 | So, for people who are used to
working with tube paint and are comfortable
| | 01:43 | working with the colors by name,
for example, they're all here.
| | 01:47 | My goal really wasn't so much to paint
by picking colors by their names, but
| | 01:53 | just to have this whole set of colors.
| | 01:56 | In the translation of this, it's not
probably a 100% visually accurate, they may
| | 02:01 | be slightly different, but what is
retained is the relative difference between
| | 02:05 | all of these colors.
| | 02:06 | So, these colors altogether will act
pretty much like the variations in color
| | 02:12 | that you're going to find in a
traditional painting set, in this case, oils.
| | 02:16 | So, by utilizing these colors on the
image, we're going beyond simply employing
| | 02:22 | the colors found in the underlying
reference image, and we're starting to apply
| | 02:27 | some of our own colors.
| | 02:29 | But rather than just use the Color
sliders here to just pick out colors, I'm
| | 02:33 | restricting it to colors that are
associated with an actual color set, and
| | 02:39 | that's really the goal of this.
| | 02:40 | Now, I'm going to go ahead and grab this color.
| | 02:44 | I'm going to make a new layer.
| | 02:46 | I'm not going to be painting from the
source colors, so I don't need to use or
| | 02:51 | want to use the cloning layer.
| | 02:53 | I've got this separate layer here now
nested in the Details Strokes folder and
| | 02:58 | I'm going to use an opaque brush. I'm
going to use my Opaque Flat Fan here.
| | 03:03 | What I'll show you just kind of in a simple mode
here is, right along here is where the sunlight
| | 03:09 | is coming across from the left and it's
starting to hit some of these components
| | 03:13 | of the architecture.
| | 03:15 | And part of the reason I liked this image
when I shot it, was the time of day and
| | 03:19 | the way that the shallow light angle
striking the surface of this building, it
| | 03:24 | really illuminated on one side, and
on the other side, it darkened it.
| | 03:28 | So, that really gives it kind of a nice
3-dimensional effect and I'm just going
| | 03:32 | to go through during the final
rendering of this painting and be doing a lot of
| | 03:38 | that, just enhancing those areas by
bringing out probably a little stronger
| | 03:42 | lighting than was actually in the scene.
| | 03:45 | So for this, I'd probably use something
like that color but maybe a little bit
| | 03:49 | brighter, and it looks like
this is a good sample of that.
| | 03:52 | So, I'll just go in here, and remember
now, I'm not on my cloning layer, you
| | 03:56 | don't want to paint on the cloning layer
if you can avoid it. So that's why we've
| | 04:01 | made this secondary detail layer.
| | 04:03 | But you can see how just putting some of
this on there, and I'll turn it on and off,
| | 04:08 | see how that just all of a sudden, it just pops.
| | 04:11 | We're expanding the dynamic range of
this image by adding a brighter color than
| | 04:17 | was actually in the original scene.
| | 04:19 | So, the use of the color from the
swatch set is yet another way to bring in
| | 04:26 | another element of the vocabulary of painting,
| | 04:29 | in this case, the relationship between
all of these colors as evidenced in a
| | 04:35 | traditional painting.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Painting in progress: Completing the detail layer| 00:00 | What you're seeing me do now is, reintroduce
the high-frequency detail that
| | 00:04 | I keep talking about. And what I
mean by that, it's just, it's the
| | 00:08 | smallest amount of detail.
| | 00:10 | You can almost call it noise, and if you
look at this, there's a lot of movement,
| | 00:14 | energy, and small elements happening and
as a result, it's something that our eye
| | 00:23 | typically will kind of focus in on.
| | 00:26 | Now, I don't necessarily want to make
the grass the subject of this, but we do
| | 00:32 | need to instill a certain amount of
detail in here to at least indicate grass,
| | 00:36 | and there's that indicate word again.
| | 00:38 | So, I'll be doing a lot of detail now
in the foreground, in front of the castle,
| | 00:44 | and then in this background area.
| | 00:47 | This is one of these areas where we
have to ask ourselves, is this the actor
| | 00:52 | or is this the stage?
| | 00:54 | And this is definitely the stage, not
an actor, so I am not going to put a lot
| | 01:00 | of detail into this.
| | 01:01 | But hopefully you're seeing
throughout this that this is all just very
| | 01:05 | indicating type strokes.
| | 01:07 | There, it's really not
delineating specific clouds, for example.
| | 01:13 | It's just providing a textural
element that when we back out and look at
| | 01:19 | this, because all the colors
came from the original sky,
| | 01:22 | they're going to be the right colors in
the right place to help the eye connect
| | 01:27 | the dots and see basically a sky, even though
it's really just a bunch of scribbling at this point.
| | 01:33 | Some of what we talked about, at the beginning,
about not changing your strokes in the middle.
| | 01:41 | This is a definite area, where, you know,
I wouldn't want to start introducing a
| | 01:44 | completely different kind of stroking technique.
| | 01:47 | So, however I started this, which is
just kind of this back and forth diagonal.
| | 01:52 | I don't want to all of a sudden, decide
to do it the other direction or something.
| | 01:58 | You want that consistency of stroke.
| | 02:00 | Now, see how much that looks like
the sky when we back out from it.
| | 02:05 | It's pretty consistent with the
original sky, because we were basically using
| | 02:11 | those colors, so add just a
little more detail to this.
| | 02:17 | Add some interest just to the edge, the
horizon line, so there's a little bit
| | 02:22 | more of a obvious break.
| | 02:23 | And again, you can see I'm not
even looking at the image anymore.
| | 02:27 | I'm just guesstimating based
on what I've already done here.
| | 02:31 | All that prep work we did preparing the
image now makes it fairly simple to paint.
| | 02:37 | Because we are pretty much funneling
those original colors through the brush.
| | 02:42 | And as a result, I don't have to think
about what color to paint in any one spot.
| | 02:46 | I will, when I get onto my layer
that I'm applying my own color.
| | 02:52 | But at this point, it's just what is in
the image is what's coming through the brush.
| | 02:58 | And I just realized when, and why I'm
going back here, I think I do want just
| | 03:02 | a little more detail.
| | 03:04 | And here's another little trick.
| | 03:05 | See, this is why I like the fan brush,
particularly if you have the art pen.
| | 03:10 | I can turn this on edge and without having to
change brushes, I've now got a nice, thin line.
| | 03:17 | And I use this brush so much that I
typically don't even think about the fact
| | 03:21 | that I'm moving it around in my hand to
get from this wide brush, like I did now,
| | 03:26 | to a thin brush like I'm painting with
now, so it gives you a way to quickly get
| | 03:31 | different sizes of brush
without changing to a different brush.
| | 03:37 | OK, now here's this trick
for adding detail that I use.
| | 03:42 | I'm going to switch, and this is the
first time we've actually gone to a
| | 03:46 | different brush or even a library.
| | 03:47 | I'm going to switch over to my
airbrushes and I'm going to use the sorted
| | 03:52 | version where they're
organized according to type.
| | 03:55 | I never change this, because I always
want to make sure that my brushes are
| | 03:59 | exactly the same each
time, so I never save brushes.
| | 04:03 | Unless I do something very
specific that I would want back.
| | 04:06 | What we're going to go to here is the
variable opaque grainy airbrush here, so its
| | 04:13 | opaque, and you'll see here how it
works, and I'll do a little sample of it.
| | 04:17 | In fact, I might do this on a separate
layer, that's another good technique.
| | 04:21 | Whenever you're going to do
something different here, you don't want to
| | 04:24 | necessarily screw up what may be
important information on this, I believe, yeah.
| | 04:28 | See, this has all of the
facade of the building.
| | 04:31 | I may want that layer separate to
adjust it, so I'm going to create another
| | 04:35 | layer, and we're going to use our
airbrush, and you can see the new airbrush.
| | 04:39 | And I'll just do a little sample
spray here with just a obviously wrong
| | 04:43 | color so we can see it.
| | 04:44 | See what it's doing, it's spraying
out, and I'm going to use that to
| | 04:49 | indicate fine detail, like leaves, for example,
and there's a couple things we can do here.
| | 04:55 | One of the things I'll do is, I'll use
my Wacom shortcut to grab a color here.
| | 05:01 | And I'm going to test this out, and I'm
probably going to want to adjust these
| | 05:06 | colors up a little bit.
| | 05:08 | Also, I notice I have Texture
on, and I do want Texture off for this.
| | 05:13 | Now it's going to be way too much.
| | 05:15 | Yeah, see how that's too much.
| | 05:16 | So I'm going to undo that, and
if we go to the brush controls,
| | 05:20 | we can go to the brush tip
shape and I can play with this.
| | 05:24 | For example, we can see how
large the spatter size is.
| | 05:27 | I want to reduce this down so it's
going to be smaller, more like that.
| | 05:31 | I can also adjust how much is
spattering out, by, if I widen the spacing.
| | 05:37 | See how I'm getting less, I want to
have pretty close control over this, so
| | 05:41 | let's try that, there.
| | 05:43 | See now, I'm getting the illusion of a
lot more detail without actually painting
| | 05:50 | every single leaf on that tree.
| | 05:53 | And I'll probably play with my hue here, to
just be able to introduce multiple colors.
| | 05:58 | And once again at this point, I'm not
even paying attention to the real colors
| | 06:03 | anymore, I'm utilizing, and you want
to be spare with these brighter colors,
| | 06:10 | don't want to get them too much.
| | 06:12 | But, the idea here is we're just going
to put some detail in here, so it's going
| | 06:17 | to give a sense of more
detail than really is there.
| | 06:23 | That's the whole thing,
it's all of what indication is about.
| | 06:28 | Put some autumn-like colors in, a
little darker, little more red.
| | 06:33 | And so you can see, it's just kind
of a matter of going around and kind
| | 06:38 | of playing with the colors that are in there,
but just probably a little bit brighter.
| | 06:42 | Now see how that, if I turn that on and
off, see what a difference that makes?
| | 06:49 | It looks so much more detailed.
| | 06:51 | And it's really just that spatter, is all it is.
| | 06:54 | And yet, it's not over-attracting
attention, it's still mostly delegated as a
| | 07:01 | stage element, not a actor element.
| | 07:03 | Let me do just a little bit
in the field here as well.
| | 07:07 | Now for this I'm going to actually grab
that color and probably just juice it up
| | 07:13 | a little bit with saturation.
| | 07:14 | See you don't really even
hardly, let's just test it.
| | 07:18 | Yeah, see it's there, but it maybe needs
to be a little a little brighter. Not much.
| | 07:25 | And I'm not going to worry too much about
hitting the building because I can erase that.
| | 07:30 | Basically what the airbrush is doing
here is, it's introducing noise.
| | 07:33 | We're bring high frequency
noise back in to the image.
| | 07:37 | But it's, it's all artist-added,
not photographically-added.
| | 07:42 | So, while it gives the illusion of
density like you would see in a photograph,
| | 07:47 | it's not created by photographic means,
it's created by artistic means in this
| | 07:53 | case. So over there, I am on one layer.
| | 07:56 | And here I am on this other layer.
| | 08:00 | But look at the difference, in general,
you do get much more detail going on.
| | 08:06 | One thing I noticed when I painted in
using the cloner brush, this railing,
| | 08:11 | particularly over here, just didn't
quite grab the dark color that I wanted.
| | 08:15 | So, I'm going to hand-paint that in,
then I'll just do that in one of these top
| | 08:20 | layers here. And so we're going to
switch back now to our artist brushes.
| | 08:29 | And get the flat fan, make it very small,
and for this I'm going to get real close.
| | 08:38 | And I'm going to grab that color right there.
| | 08:40 | Let's check over here, same thing.
| | 08:44 | Now, here's where I
started talking about highlights.
| | 08:48 | Putting in highlights are going to make
this seem not just like black lines, but
| | 08:55 | actual metal objects, so I'm going to
really reduce my brush size down here.
| | 09:00 | And I'm looking up here.
| | 09:01 | I just want to see how small.
| | 09:02 | I probably don't want to go all the
way to one, but a two brush is probably
| | 09:08 | good enough, and let's just, oh and
I'm going to turn on Texture again, because
| | 09:14 | that helps me to, pressure works a little bit
better when texture is on. I can, there we go.
| | 09:22 | But see how, just these little
highlights on here, you got to keep in mind
| | 09:29 | where the sun is coming from.
| | 09:35 | Want this to be pretty consistently vertical.
| | 09:37 | Yeah, we might as well do it here, right now.
| | 09:45 | And if it's not perfect, I
call these happy accidents.
| | 09:47 | I mean, if it doesn't go exactly the way
you wanted it, that's part of the magic
| | 09:52 | of hand-applied strokes,
| | 09:54 | they're not perfect, and I'm not going
to get obsessive about perfect placement,
| | 10:00 | perfect straight lines.
| | 10:01 | That's what makes it look hand-done.
| | 10:03 | And in fact, if you've watched
this whole thing, it is hand-done.
| | 10:08 | The whole image is hand-done.
| | 10:10 | Yes, I'm using a photo as a guide, but
I'm certainly not totally a slave to it.
| | 10:17 | I need to fix these little
spires at the very top, and add them.
| | 10:23 | So, I'll probably use the detail
layer and a cloner brush to do that.
| | 10:28 | And why isn't that showing?
| | 10:33 | Because we already used that
area to paint the sky, I really don't
| | 10:42 | have access anymore.
| | 10:43 | It's been painted over so the pixels on
this layer are the sky layer, and so what
| | 10:49 | I'll do in that case is
create another layer group here.
| | 10:57 | Let's close this, it's confusing.
| | 11:01 | OK, so I'm going to create cloning layer
group and I want it to happen above this.
| | 11:06 | OK, so now I can go in here
with my brush and pick this up.
| | 11:13 | And this is a good example of where
you do want to have access to additional
| | 11:18 | cloning layers, because even though I'm
going to use it in just one little spot here, it
| | 11:22 | gives me the ability to do this where I
had already kind of used that up for the sky.
| | 11:30 | Though right now it's above the
reference layer, so I'm going to
| | 11:36 | just slide this down here.
| | 11:37 | What we can do is we
don't need this open right now.
| | 11:40 | Just put it in the top of the detail strokes.
| | 11:47 | Actually I'm going to drop it down so
it's below this one little painted detail
| | 11:51 | layer here, right here, and I'm going to use this
| | 11:56 | to do a little painting on these. I
might want to add a highlight or two.
| | 12:01 | And some of my jumping around here may throw
you off, like how do I know which one's which.
| | 12:06 | You get used to this, and I should be
more cognizant of naming these, but as I
| | 12:13 | get going, the worst thing you have to
do is turn it on and off and see,
| | 12:18 | you know, what layer it is.
| | 12:19 | What's on that layer.
| | 12:20 | But not necessarily something
you have to do all the time.
| | 12:23 | So I'm just going to start throwing a little
highlights on here, not that they'd actually be
| | 12:28 | white, but again, we're going for
contrast at this point so whether or not
| | 12:34 | these are truly correct colors is less
important, just little bits and pieces like that.
| | 12:42 | Now, you can see here that I am
basically painting in the stained glass work
| | 12:53 | that's in this door.
| | 12:55 | And rather than painting the iron or
the metal that holds the stained glass in,
| | 13:01 | I'm painting the stained glass, so
it's going to help emphasize it.
| | 13:05 | Now, here's a little trick I'm going to use.
| | 13:09 | Typically, the glass reflection isn't
going to be exactly the same shade all the
| | 13:14 | way through, it's going to
have some variation through it.
| | 13:17 | So I'm taking a secondary color here, I
make this, switch this to HSB.
| | 13:23 | Just to give a feel of changing
light on a reflective surface.
| | 13:29 | Now, you can see as I am going through
here that I'm highlighting the left side
| | 13:39 | of each of these bits of stone.
| | 13:42 | You don't have to follow slavishly
every single brick in the building, but I do
| | 13:48 | want to emphasize it enough so
that it is a detail that can be read.
| | 13:53 | You also have to remember that we do
have some shadowing happening across this
| | 13:58 | building, so it isn't
consistently lit everywhere.
| | 14:01 | And so you got to kind of make a judgment call
about when and where you want to employ this.
| | 14:08 | Basically keeping track of the sun
angle being definitely from the left side.
| | 14:15 | And just wherever I see an element
that would probably catch a highlight, and
| | 14:19 | even if it doesn't necessarily catch a
highlight, every one of these we add,
| | 14:23 | especially if we stay to the left side,
is going to help provide a sense of
| | 14:28 | lighting from the left, and I'll
probably go back and do the same thing, only
| | 14:33 | emphasizing the shadow side as well.
| | 14:35 | So this is actually a two part
operation as you can imagine, it's going to take
| | 14:39 | a little bit of time for this to happen.
| | 14:43 | And while the little girl is a subject,
in this case I don't want to add too
| | 14:47 | much to her, because it's kind of
like, is she there, is she not there?
| | 14:51 | And in a way, I don't want this
to necessarily be the first thing a
| | 14:55 | viewer's going to look at.
| | 14:56 |
I want them to look at this for a
while and eventually at some point go, oh,
| | 15:01 | there's a little girl in there.
| | 15:02 | It's not necessarily something
that you're going to see immediately.
| | 15:06 | Now just looking over at that ball
seems it doesn't have enough shadow on it.
| | 15:12 | So I'm going to add one.
| | 15:13 | I'm just going to grab this darker color
here, and to do this so that I don't over
| | 15:21 | do it, I'm going to go to my texture and
turn this down so I can't get too dark,
| | 15:28 | or I can't go all the way into the grain.
| | 15:31 | There we go, just enough so it
kind of gives a sense of shadowing.
| | 15:36 | Maybe a little bit more right at the edge.
| | 15:41 | Now, one thing that's popping out a
little bit much is this building up here.
| | 15:44 | I want it to be there, but
that's, it's a distraction.
| | 15:48 | If you notice, your eyes probably, even
when you're looking at the building, it
| | 15:52 | kind of goes over here,
because that's such a contrast.
| | 15:54 | So, let's go in and darken that a little bit.
| | 15:58 | See what color it is to begin
with, and just tone it down.
| | 16:03 | There, now it's not nearly as obtrusive.
| | 16:07 | Well, that looks pretty good to me.
| | 16:13 | I'm going to go ahead and say this is
basically done, but we're also going
| | 16:17 | to take a look at a few aspects of things
you'd want to do even after you think it's done.
| | 16:22 | So we'll talk about it in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding surface texture effects| 00:00 | Once you've transformed a photograph
into a painting, you have the option of
| | 00:04 | adding the appearance of physical
surface texture, which is another vocabulary
| | 00:08 | element of painting. What is this?
| | 00:10 | It is a simulation of light on the 3-dimensional
surface of paint, canvas, and varnish.
| | 00:16 | When a physical painting is
photographed or viewed under Gallery Lighting, the
| | 00:21 | lights will cause the painted brush
strokes, particularly impasto style
| | 00:25 | painting, and canvas texture to be
emphasized by highlight and shadow.
| | 00:30 | Applied varnish or a glossy
protective coating will appear as subtle brush
| | 00:34 | strokes delineated by specular highlighting.
| | 00:38 | These visible artifacts make up part of our
perception of the painted physical object.
| | 00:43 | Depending on the wishes of the artist,
gallery or museum, these physical affects
| | 00:47 | can be attenuated or suppressed,
depending on the lighting setup.
| | 00:50 | My technique is non-destructive, so
you have the option of displaying or
| | 00:55 | printing with or without this virtual varnish.
| | 00:59 | I used to think that this surface
effect would not mix well with prints on
| | 01:03 | canvas, but I've been pleasantly
surprised that it can and does work.
| | 01:07 | This is definitely a personal
preference, depending on your style of
| | 01:10 | print reproduction and presentation,
you may or may not wish to utilize
| | 01:15 | virtual surface effects.
| | 01:16 | I'm going to go ahead and add this
varnished layer in this layered document.
| | 01:22 | I'm going to go ahead and go up to the
Actions, and in our cloning layers extras
| | 01:28 | here, I've got a Create Varnish Layer.
| | 01:31 | And while we're here, I want to
mention, too, another shortcut I've put in
| | 01:34 | here is this Clear Layer, which on a full-
sized keyboard, I've got it set up for F13.
| | 01:40 | Now you don't want to ever use this on a
Cloning Layer because as I've mentioned
| | 01:45 | several times, doing so will delete
the information in the Cloning Layer that
| | 01:50 | makes it possible to
paint with the Cloning brushes.
| | 01:53 | I do find it very useful, though,
when I start trying out something on
| | 01:57 | a non-cloning layer.
| | 01:59 | Quite often, I want to get rid of it
real quickly, particularly with something
| | 02:02 | like the varnish layer.
| | 02:04 | Let's go ahead and create our varnish layer.
| | 02:08 | And it's going to tell you here, that
it's going to create a varnish layer, and
| | 02:12 | when the dialog comes up for the
layer style, go ahead and dismiss it.
| | 02:16 | But here's the important part.
| | 02:17 | Because this varnish layer is
going to be in an Overlay mode,
| | 02:21 | the way to paint with clear paint is,
you have to use 50% gray on that
| | 02:26 | layer, and that will apply the affect
of the raised varnish, but it will not
| | 02:32 | add any color to it.
| | 02:34 | So, be sure you switch to 50% gray,
which is, in RGB, that's a 128 R, G, and B.
| | 02:41 | Or, if we're using the HSB sliders
over here, set it to 50%, and you'll have
| | 02:47 | the correct tonality.
| | 02:48 | Now of course, you can experiment and you
may want to play with tinting at the color.
| | 02:53 | Or you certainly could use this as a
tinting varnish if you are so inclined, but
| | 02:58 | in my example here, I'm going to
use it a strictly clear varnish.
| | 03:01 | So let's go ahead and run this,
and we'll go ahead and dismiss this.
| | 03:06 | And here we have our varnish layer.
| | 03:09 | I'm going to go ahead and raise this
so it's just up above all of the other
| | 03:14 | layers and outside of the detail strokes.
| | 03:16 | So I kind of want it independent on its own.
| | 03:18 | We can go ahead and close this up.
| | 03:20 | So, we want 50% gray, and I'm going to
use a rather large brush to apply this.
| | 03:26 | It's up to you what scale or size of
this you want it to look like, but in my
| | 03:32 | own experience, when I applied kind
of a finishing coat on a painting, I
| | 03:36 | generally use a pretty broad
brush and it's mostly for protection.
| | 03:41 | And as a result, they're
rather large brush strokes.
| | 03:44 | But let's go ahead and I'll start
this and I'll show you how I do it.
| | 03:48 | I just start applying, and you can see
it on there, it's subtle, but it's there.
| | 03:53 | And let's also make sure That Texture
is on, and I'm going to zoom up a little
| | 03:58 | bit, so you can see this a little bit closer.
| | 04:01 | It applies that strokes, and you
want to use a light hand on this, you know.
| | 04:05 | You don't want to necessarily be heavy-handed.
| | 04:07 | I'll show you what happens
if you do this really heavy.
| | 04:10 | You may or may not want that look,
but it's obviously going to be very
| | 04:14 | distracting at this level.
| | 04:15 | We also have the option, once we've
applied this, and you'll almost always end
| | 04:19 | up doing this, is turning down the
opacity of this layer, so you can adjust just
| | 04:24 | how visible it is on the image.
| | 04:27 | So I'm going to undo this stroke, and
I'll work up a little closer here at
| | 04:32 | first, so you can kind of see the effect.
| | 04:35 | I'm doing it just like I would
apply it typically on a painting.
| | 04:38 | I just kind of like to move my brush
strokes around and change angles fairly
| | 04:43 | randomly so that there's no
definite trend in the angles of the brush.
| | 04:47 | Now, I'm going to go ahead
and zoom out a little bit.
| | 04:51 | If you do this at 100%, the brush
tends to be kind of slow, whereas when you
| | 04:57 | back out and do it more on an
overview, the brush performance speeds up.
| | 05:02 | I think it has to do with the
bevel and emboss layer effect.
| | 05:06 | It's just something about it.
| | 05:07 | At a 100% it tends to slow things
down whereas, back out like this, it's
| | 05:12 | actually a pretty quick brush.
| | 05:15 | There's two ways to do this.
| | 05:17 | I like to just do this
just general overall look.
| | 05:20 | Another way you could it, is go
in there and try to follow some of the
| | 05:25 | brushwork in the image.
| | 05:26 | Now that would be a rather meticulous
job, but if you wanted to have the strokes
| | 05:31 | in the painting sort of look as if
they're actually more impasto-oriented and
| | 05:35 | raised up, you could do that. But this is
more or less applied more to be kind of
| | 05:40 | like this varnish coat and not
actually emulating an impasto effect as if all
| | 05:45 | the brush work in this image is raised.
| | 05:48 | I'm pretty much finished applying this,
and we're looking at it zoomed out now,
| | 05:54 | so you can see some visual appearance of it,
particularly in some of these areas up here.
| | 06:00 | The way this is adjusted by default, if
we go into the Bevel & Emboss effect,
| | 06:06 | is, by default, I've got it set so it says,
if the lights are directly from above,
| | 06:11 | because I typically want to emulate
pretty much like a gallery setting, and in a
| | 06:15 | gallery, you're generally
going to have lights from above.
| | 06:18 | You can change these, I can put this
in some different angle, and its going to
| | 06:22 | affect how it looks.
| | 06:25 | In my experimentation, I found this
kind of 90 degrees and 15 degrees
| | 06:30 | altitude, tends to be a good
combination. Now, let's also,
| | 06:36 | I'm going to go out of here, I want
to go back and look at this at 100%.
| | 06:40 | You can see, it's bringing the grain out.
| | 06:43 | And we're seeing, you know, these
brush strokes in here. This is so close.
| | 06:46 | We probably actually want
to get back out a little bit.
| | 06:49 | Oh, and there's a spot where I missed,
so I'll just add a little bit right there.
| | 06:53 | See, I can see the brush is acting
very slow here at 100%. But you back out,
| | 06:57 | and curiously enough, it actually is faster.
| | 07:00 | Let's get fairly close, maybe at least 50%.
| | 07:02 | And you can see now, this is way too noisy.
| | 07:07 | If I turn it on and off, you know,
there's our image without it.
| | 07:10 | It's really adding a great deal of noise,
and we do want that noise there, but
| | 07:15 | we don't want it to this degree.
| | 07:17 | So let's go back to the
| | 07:18 | Bevel & Emboss layer effect,
and you do have the recourse here.
| | 07:23 | For example, you can turn down
the opacity of the highlight.
| | 07:27 | You can leave these two, if
you want, at a global level.
| | 07:31 | That's kind of what they're doing in here.
| | 07:33 | If I turn this down, you'll see slight
loss of the shadows, but what I tend to
| | 07:38 | do is, I go ahead and leave this as is.
| | 07:41 | And I play with the opacity of
the actual varnished layer itself.
| | 07:46 | This is one of my little rules,
I always call it my 50% rule.
| | 07:50 | Try taking it to down to probably about
half of what it is, so I'm going to take
| | 07:55 | it down to 50% here, or
in that general vicinity.
| | 07:57 | It's still there, but notice,
it's far less intrusive to the eye.
| | 08:03 | Here, we'll turn it on and off.
| | 08:05 | You want it to be there just about as
much as you would see varnish on a real
| | 08:09 | painting, but you don't want it to be
so glossy and intrusive that it distracts
| | 08:15 | you from the actual content of the image.
| | 08:18 | And so let's go out a little further.
| | 08:20 | And as we back this out, because
Photoshop has to average all of this down, it
| | 08:25 | gets a little less sure, you know,
what you're going to get when you see it
| | 08:30 | zoomed out like this. If we turn it on
and off at this point, you can see it's a
| | 08:35 | very minor addition to the image.
| | 08:39 | So, this is an entirely a subjective
addition. I like to add it and I think it
| | 08:45 | helps give it that extra smack of
reality of a traditional painting.
| | 08:50 | We tend to get enamored by these
effects, and it's all too easy to
| | 08:54 | unintentionally overdo it.
| | 08:55 | So, once you've applied a virtual
varnish to your painting, I really recommend
| | 08:59 | getting away from the image for a good while.
| | 09:02 | When you return, you'll most likely find
that the visual effect of the varnished
| | 09:06 | coat is too strong, and I often apply
my 50% rule to this type of situation.
| | 09:11 | However good an effect looks initially,
it usually looks better at about 50% of
| | 09:17 | its original strength.
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|
|
10. Expressive Interpretation: Final RefinementsIt pays to wait a day| 00:00 | After you've supposedly finished a
painting, you may think you're done.
| | 00:04 | But my advice is to wait at least a
day without looking at the work before
| | 00:08 | reexamining it again.
| | 00:10 | Then, take another look.
| | 00:12 | You're probably going to find a
few small things to change that you
| | 00:15 | haven't noticed before.
| | 00:17 | I believe this fresh look is brought
about by time away from the painting.
| | 00:22 | First and foremost, be sure you take
advantage of a fresh pair of eyes to
| | 00:26 | look at the painting.
| | 00:28 | You also want to use that fresh
perspective to make small adjustments, and an
| | 00:32 | example I see in this image is
right here in the main window.
| | 00:36 | I know that that is a reflection of a
tree branch, but most people probably
| | 00:40 | aren't and they're going to look at it more like,
is that a crack in the window? What is that?
| | 00:46 | So I will probably go in and smear that
around a little bit, just to soften it up
| | 00:50 | to make it more like a reflection,
and not so sharp-edged as it is now.
| | 00:54 | And that's exactly what I'm talking about here.
| | 00:57 | If you have to ask, what is that, you want
to remove it. Clarity reigns in a painting.
| | 01:02 | Now, there's also this concept that I
like to say that a painting is never done.
| | 01:08 | You'll find that, no matter how far you
think you've gone and finished the image,
| | 01:12 | the more time you spend away from it
and come back, you'll find things that
| | 01:16 | you'll say, I could've done better, I
should've done this a little differently,
| | 01:19 | oh, I wish would have used that technique.
| | 01:21 | And those are all good things, actually,
because you're developing your sense of
| | 01:25 | how to do a painting, and you are
establishing for yourself what you want to
| | 01:30 | improve on the next time out.
| | 01:32 | And each time you do that, you'll
probably have some things in the image you
| | 01:36 | wished you could have done better.
| | 01:37 | But just take it as it is, it's what
you're capable of at the time you did it,
| | 01:42 | and just use those little things that
bugged you a little bit and improve on
| | 01:46 | them the next time around.
| | 01:48 | By getting away from the work, you'll
clear your mind and return with a fresh
| | 01:52 | perspective with which to evaluate the painting.
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| Adjusting your importance hierarchy| 00:00 | I've been using the analogy of actors
on a stage to represent the distinction
| | 00:04 | between a painting's subject and background.
| | 00:07 | Now is a good time to
again utilize this analogy.
| | 00:10 | Assuming you are creating some sort of
storytelling element to a painting, you
| | 00:15 | should examine your importance hierarchy.
| | 00:17 | The actors in your scene should be
the beneficiaries of detail, saturation,
| | 00:22 | contrast, composition, all of
the techniques we've discussed,
| | 00:25 | in order to focus the viewer's
attention on them. Everything else is secondary.
| | 00:30 | When I refer to an importance
hierarchy, my hierarchy goes:
| | 00:34 | actors, then secondly any storytelling
elements, and then finally your background.
| | 00:39 | So you want to use that hierarchy to
examine your image and determine, Is
| | 00:44 | my hierarchy correct?
| | 00:46 | Is there anything I can fix to improve it?
| | 00:49 | The image we have here, we've really
worked quite a bit in the preparation
| | 00:54 | stage, so that it's largely set.
| | 00:56 | So, I don't even know if I would
necessarily do what I'm going to show you here.
| | 00:59 | But I want to show it to you, just so
you can see how you can, with just some
| | 01:04 | simple lighting, add a degree of
importance to areas of the image.
| | 01:09 | For this one we're going to kind of
focus here on the tricycle and the ball.
| | 01:15 | I want to somehow just lend a little
more importance to this. And to do this, we
| | 01:21 | need to create a new layer.
| | 01:23 | So I'm going to go over to my Layers
palette, and right down here at the bottom
| | 01:27 | is the new layer icon.
| | 01:29 | If you hold down your Option or Alt
key when you click this, it brings up
| | 01:33 | the New Layer dialog.
| | 01:34 | And what I want to do is for my
mode, I'm going to say Overlay.
| | 01:39 | And we're also going to select this and
check this option to fill it with neutral gray.
| | 01:44 | So when we do that, nothing seems to
have changed, but the thing about these
| | 01:50 | modes, from overlay down to here, is
they treat 50% gray as transparent.
| | 01:57 | And anything you paint onto it, if it's
darker than 50% grey, it's going to add
| | 02:02 | density to the image.
| | 02:04 | If you paint towards white,
it's going to lighten the image.
| | 02:07 | So, it's a way to dodge
and burn non-destructively,
| | 02:10 | essentially, is what we're doing.
| | 02:11 | I'm going to start with overlay, but I
may switch to soft light in the end, and
| | 02:16 | the reason I'm doing that is it's a
little more easy to see what you're doing in
| | 02:20 | overlay mode, but soft light is kind of
that 50% rule that I was talking about.
| | 02:25 | And I'm using now just the normal
airbrush, and I'm going to set my colors
| | 02:30 | to black and white.
| | 02:31 | Let's do black, and I've got
my brush set really large here.
| | 02:35 | I've turned it down to twenty
percent or lower will work for this.
| | 02:39 | And what I want to do is just add a little
more emphasis into the center of the image.
| | 02:45 | So I'm essentially going to
vignette it, and I'm doing it very lightly.
| | 02:50 | In fact, like I said, we'll probably even
tone this down by the time we're done with it.
| | 02:55 | But I just want to add a little bit of
emphasis into the center of the image,
| | 02:59 | and because we seek out highlight and
shadow and detail, just adding that little
| | 03:03 | bit, I'll turn it on and off.
| | 03:05 | See how that makes a difference?
| | 03:07 | Now it's still a little over-
emphasized, and we'll reduce that.
| | 03:10 | But let's do the opposite now.
| | 03:12 | I can just click on my X key here, to
swap between my foreground and background
| | 03:16 | colors. So now I've got white. I'm
going in here and I am just going to add
| | 03:22 | just a little bit of highlight in there.
| | 03:24 | Let's again, turn this on and off so
you can see the difference.
| | 03:28 | See how that is now a
brighter area in the image?
| | 03:31 | The other think I would do, to kind of
de-emphasize this, but keep it there,
| | 03:35 | but make it so subtle, you almost don't
notice it, is I like to go in and soften this up.
| | 03:41 | So, I'm going to the Filter menu.
| | 03:43 | I will go down here to blur,
and we want Gaussian blur.
| | 03:46 | I want to crank this up quite a bit,
and you can see it a little bit, it's
| | 03:51 | pretty subtle what happens, but I know
by cranking this up 100 or more pixels,
| | 03:56 | it just softens the image.
| | 03:57 | Now let's turn it on and off.
| | 04:00 | Still there, and still a little bit
obvious, so the last thing I generally do is
| | 04:05 | I'll switch this to soft light.
| | 04:08 | Now, lets try turning it on and off.
| | 04:10 | Now, it's even more subtle.
| | 04:12 | And, the final thing you can do is,
you can play with opacity here.
| | 04:16 | Let's take it down about
50%, turn it on and off.
| | 04:21 | Now it's even more subtle, and yet it's there.
| | 04:24 | It is adding some light to our
subjects and we are adding a little bit of
| | 04:29 | darkness around the edges of the image,
| | 04:31 | which helps lead the viewer's eye into
the central part of the image. And that's
| | 04:36 | basically the trick.
| | 04:37 | So, by evaluating a painting's
importance hierarchy, we can make decisions about
| | 04:42 | what adjustments may need to be made
to the image in order to further control
| | 04:46 | the viewer's eye in reading the image.
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| You'll never paint the same thing twice| 00:00 | So here's our finished image, and I
mentioned at the outset of the course
| | 00:04 | that I might want to compare what I
did during this course compared to what I
| | 00:09 | did with the same image previous to
the course, just so we can see the
| | 00:13 | differences between mood, and
feeling, and how I was performing.
| | 00:18 | All of those things go into what
constitutes a painting and how you approach it.
| | 00:23 | So here's the image we just finished,
and there's the image that I did before.
| | 00:28 | So there's some major differences.
| | 00:30 | In this case, it's much brighter,
it's got more saturated color.
| | 00:34 | I also cropped this in such a way that
the castle is much larger in the image.
| | 00:40 | Now let's go back and look at the other one.
| | 00:42 | Here it is, and actually I have put a
filter on it. That's what it looked like
| | 00:47 | when we finished it.
| | 00:48 | I went ahead and I thought it'd be interesting to
try to match up with the other one a bit.
| | 00:53 | Here is truly the one that I did, and
just having looked at the other one, I
| | 00:58 | realized, oh, maybe this a
little muddy, a little dark.
| | 01:01 | So, here's one of those cases of where
waiting a while and looking at something,
| | 01:07 | you may benefit from it.
| | 01:09 | So now, seeing the other one and
looking at this I realize it stands well to
| | 01:14 | have applied a little bit of a curve
to it, to brighten the overall image up.
| | 01:19 | The other thing is, the
castle is smaller in the image.
| | 01:23 | That environment that it's in this,
this country scape seems much larger and
| | 01:29 | what it does is it tends to make
this castle seem more isolated.
| | 01:33 | Maybe that improves this by giving that
sense of isolation that this one lacks a
| | 01:40 | bit, because there's not much going
on against the edges of the castle.
| | 01:44 | The landscape is somewhat diminished
by the fact that it's been cropped out.
| | 01:49 | You'll never do the same image
exactly twice, it will always come out
| | 01:53 | differently, even if it's the
same subject as I've shown you here.
| | 01:58 | It's not robotic, it's always different,
And that's your emotion and feeling
| | 02:02 | entering into the image.
| | 02:03 | And hopefully, some of that is
communicated in the final artwork.
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| Helpful resources and inspiration| 00:00 | Before I leave you, I would like to go
through a few resources that I depend
| | 00:05 | on fairly regularly and some sites that may
be useful for you in getting some inspiration.
| | 00:12 | To begin with, I have my own courses
here on lynda.com, and the one that I
| | 00:16 | will point out that might be useful
to you after this course, is Painting
| | 00:20 | with the Mixer Brush.
| | 00:22 | This particular title, I went through all
of the ins and outs about the Mixer Brush.
| | 00:28 | So, if you have a desire to understand
more about how to control the Mixer Brush
| | 00:34 | and what it's capable of, you
may want to check out this course.
| | 00:39 | Another Lynda author, Bert Monroy, had
finished a course called Dreamscapes.
| | 00:44 | Essentially, what Bert has here is
the first phase of my course where we
| | 00:49 | developed an image to get it ready to paint.
| | 00:52 | He's done several different images here,
Moon Light Night, Castle in the Sky, one
| | 00:58 | is a High Cliff, Planet.
| | 01:00 | Each one of these he shows how to
assemble this imagery from multiple sources
| | 01:05 | and put it together into a final image.
| | 01:08 | And, every one of these would be
perfect for a jumping off point, to then take
| | 01:14 | the composited image and use it
as a beginning point for painting.
| | 01:18 | So you might want to check out Bert's
newest course, Dreamscapes, for some more
| | 01:23 | inspiration on subject matter, and how
you can assemble various image sources
| | 01:28 | together into a storytelling image.
| | 01:31 | Next, I want to go to the Google Art
Project. And Google Art Project is by Google.
| | 01:38 | And basically, they have gone into
museums all over the world and shot very
| | 01:44 | high resolution
photography of many famous works.
| | 01:48 | Just as a sample, I'm going to type in Van
Gogh here and let's take a look right here.
| | 01:55 | And if we go to his Starry Night image,
it'll initially come up like this, but
| | 02:00 | you have this little control panel over
here where you can crank this up to an
| | 02:04 | amazingly high resolution to see
closer than you could probably get in the
| | 02:09 | museum, the detail within these paintings.
| | 02:13 | And I find it to be just amazing
resource to see how different artists approach
| | 02:20 | their work, the technique they
use, how they applied their paint.
| | 02:24 | And there's another one that I like
to go to, it's called the International
| | 02:29 | Masters of Fine Art.
| | 02:30 | They have several exhibits
over the years they've done.
| | 02:34 | We'll just take a look at a current
one here that just came up recently.
| | 02:37 | And, each one of these contains work
by contemporary artists today, and one
| | 02:44 | that I'll show you was an
example here is Kathryn Stats.
| | 02:46 | And, when you go to look at their work,
it'll initially come up like this, and
| | 02:51 | then, if you want to see a larger view, you
can click this, but it's not really that large.
| | 02:56 | So, what I want to direct you to is
under these artists entries, go to Click
| | 03:01 | here for a high resolution image,
and what you'll see is these very high
| | 03:05 | resolution versions similar to what you
see in the Google Art Project, but these
| | 03:10 | are contemporary artists.
| | 03:11 | So, here is another resource for
taking a look a look at how a variety of
| | 03:15 | painters treat subject matter, how they
use a color palette with their work, the
| | 03:21 | style of delivery of the paint on the canvas.
| | 03:25 | Finally, I will direct you to my PixlBlog,
which is where if you want to keep up
| | 03:30 | on what's happening in the world
of John Derry, this is where to go.
| | 03:35 | You can see, like, the latest entry I had
on here was actually about this title
| | 03:39 | I just finished here.
| | 03:40 | So, whenever I've got something
new going on or just something that's
| | 03:43 | interesting, this is where I will post it.
| | 03:47 | And I hope that these different
websites will provide you with some inspiration
| | 03:51 | and information and keep you
going forward and continue to paint.
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