IntroductionWelcome| 00:04 | Hi! I am John Derry.
| | 00:06 | Welcome to Transforming a
Photograph into a Painting with Photoshop.
| | 00:10 | In this title, I'm going to
introduce you to the concept of dipping a
| | 00:14 | paintbrush into your photos,
and transforming them into expressive,
| | 00:18 | hand-painted works of art.
| | 00:21 | I describe the vocabularies of
photography and painting to teach you how to
| | 00:26 | expressively interpret one into the other.
| | 00:28 | I will share with you my brushes and
techniques and teach you how to apply them
| | 00:33 | to execute your own unique artistic vision.
| | 00:36 | Using just one of my custom actions,
cloning layers, your photo becomes wet oil
| | 00:42 | paint that you can brush into with a
wide variety of expressive paintbrushes.
| | 00:46 | We will go through the process of
preparing a photo for interpretation.
| | 00:51 | Then we will use a special edition of my artist
brushes, which are supplied with this title.
| | 00:56 | Just a note, these
brushes work in CS5 and later.
| | 01:00 | If you've got a digital camera--from a
phone camera to a DSLR--you can take your
| | 01:05 | picture from digital
image to digital masterpiece.
| | 01:10 | Let's get started with Transforming a
Photograph into a Painting with Photoshop.
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| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | If you are a Premium member of the
lynda.com Online Training Library, you have
| | 00:04 | access to the exercise
files used throughout this title.
| | 00:08 | The exercise files are in the Exercise Files
folder, which I have placed on the desktop.
| | 00:14 | You can store them wherever you like.
| | 00:15 | There are files for most chapters.
| | 00:18 | They reside in subfolders
named according to the chapters.
| | 00:22 | It is not necessary for you to use these files.
| | 00:25 | You can use files of your own in place of them.
| | 00:28 | If you are a Monthly or Annual
subscriber to lynda.com, you don't have access to
| | 00:33 | the exercise files, but you can
follow along with your own work.
| | 00:37 | Let's get started.
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| Installing custom brushes| 00:00 | This course utilizes a
customized set of my artist brushes.
| | 00:03 | These brushes enable you to both clone
from a photograph as well as paint with color.
| | 00:08 | The installation includes a cloning
layer action, custom canvas textures, and
| | 00:13 | an artist oil swatch set.
| | 00:14 | In this video, I'll go through the
installation process to get you up and running.
| | 00:19 | Now everybody is going to have access
to the John's Artist's Brushes folder, and
| | 00:24 | I'm going to show you know what comes with it.
| | 00:27 | So what you'll see first are, there are
three installer files and depending on
| | 00:33 | which version of Photoshop you have, you're
going to want to ensure that you use the right one.
| | 00:39 | Well, how do we know which one of these to use?
| | 00:41 | Let's go ahead and launch Photoshop,
and you'll see that on the splash screen--
| | 00:46 | let me go ahead and pop it up here--
| | 00:48 | it tells me right here, version 12.1,
so I know I'm using version 12.1 of
| | 00:54 | Photoshop. And you'll see that of the
three installers here I have one for
| | 00:58 | version 12.1. Now it just so happens
there are three different versions of
| | 01:02 | Photoshop floating around since CS5
came out, depending on if you've installed
| | 01:07 | a patch or not or when you bought it,
and so you want to make sure that you
| | 01:13 | check on your splash screen which
version you have and then match it up with the
| | 01:18 | installer so that you
install it into the right version.
| | 01:21 | Now, the first thing we want to do is go
ahead and quit Photoshop, so I'm going
| | 01:26 | to dismiss the splash screen, and you
don't normally want to do the installation
| | 01:30 | with Photoshop running.
| | 01:33 | The other thing I'm going to point out
before we actually install is the ReadMe! file.
| | 01:37 | Now it's called that for a reason.
| | 01:39 | I want you to read it. And if you go
and open it up, you'll find that the same
| | 01:44 | thing I'm going to show you in this
video is also presented as a set of written
| | 01:49 | instructions. Some people feel more
comfortable following written instructions;
| | 01:53 | that's what these are for.
| | 01:55 | So if you don't want to follow the video
or if you want to use this alongside of
| | 01:59 | the video, this will give you a
step-by-step explanation of what we're going to
| | 02:03 | go through, and I have
instructions for both Windows and Macintosh.
| | 02:10 | So just be aware that these are here,
and on the second page I have a visual
| | 02:14 | chart, so to speak, of where each of
the pieces of content are located within
| | 02:19 | their proper panel, associated with
that particular piece of content.
| | 02:24 | Let's go ahead then and double-click on
my 12.1 installer, and what this will do
| | 02:31 | is launch the version of Adobe Extension
Manager with your version of Photoshop.
| | 02:37 | You'll get a little
notification here. Just go ahead and Accept.
| | 02:41 | So you want to click OK, and here we see
that it has installed John's Artist's Brushes.
| | 02:46 | You can go ahead and quit the Extension
Manager now, and let's go ahead now and
| | 02:51 | launch Photoshop, and let's go up to
the Window menu. And the first piece of
| | 02:56 | business we want to take care of are
the tool presets, and you'll see right now
| | 03:01 | there is nothing in here.
| | 03:02 | So I'm going to go to the little
dropdown menu, and we'll see that there is
| | 03:07 | now included in here my artist brushes.
| | 03:10 | There is two versions of them: AP stands
for artist pen and GP stand for grip pen.
| | 03:17 | The grip pen is the default pen that
comes with, in this case, the Intuos tablet.
| | 03:24 | The artist pen is an optional pen
that you can buy that also senses barrel
| | 03:30 | rotation, so that when you twist the
pen in your hand it senses that barrel
| | 03:34 | rotation and if that information is
included, the brushes will take that into account.
| | 03:41 | So if you don't have the artist pen,
you want to be sure and install the grip-
| | 03:44 | pen version, and I've modified the
files so that it uses direction instead
| | 03:50 | of barrel rotation.
| | 03:51 | You don't get quite the same behavior,
but it's the best you can do in the
| | 03:56 | absence of actual barrel rotation.
But if you do have the artist pen, go ahead
| | 04:01 | and load this one up.
| | 04:02 | I do have the artist pen so I'm going
to go ahead and click on this, and there
| | 04:06 | are no tools in here, so I'm
going to go ahead and hit Replace.
| | 04:10 | Normally, you do want to replace;
otherwise you're going to start aggregating
| | 04:14 | all kinds of different content in one
of these windows, and it gets a little
| | 04:17 | confusing. So I'm going to say OK,
and here's all of my different tools.
| | 04:23 | And one thing you want to be sure you
uncheck is Current Tool Only, because it
| | 04:29 | comes in handy that you might want to
be in another tool, like for example the
| | 04:34 | Move tool, if this is checked you
won't see it, but believe me there's times
| | 04:38 | where you're going want to still have
access to these, even when you're in this
| | 04:43 | tool, so that you can easily go to this list,
click on one particular brush, and continue working.
| | 04:48 | So it's a workflow option you have to
turn this off, and I highly recommend it.
| | 04:54 | The other thing I'm going to do is I'm
going to click and drag this, and I like
| | 04:57 | to place this in the top of my
Palette Stack here, so that I've got this
| | 05:02 | always visible, and I can also adjust
right here right-clicking on the line
| | 05:07 | between the panels
| | 05:09 | exactly how much of this I want to see,
so you do have a way to kind of play
| | 05:13 | around with your window on your brushes.
But this now gives you the ability to,
| | 05:18 | with just a single click, completely
change the character of your brush.
| | 05:22 | That's why you want to have this up here all the time.
| | 05:25 | Next, let's go ahead and take a
look at swatches. Same behavior here.
| | 05:30 | I'm going to pull the dropdown menu
out, and we're going to look at this list
| | 05:34 | below and we'll see, sure enough, here's
John's Artist's Brushes. So if you click
| | 05:38 | on that, I can go ahead and replace the
current colors with the swatch set that
| | 05:43 | we'll talk about later on in the title.
| | 05:45 | Next I'm going to go to the Brush panel,
and I recommend, this is one you're
| | 05:51 | going to be using so much, I think it's
important to have it in this little mini
| | 05:55 | icon stack all the time.
| | 05:57 | That way you can click on it when,
for example, you do want to change textures.
| | 06:01 | So we'll go to the Texture sub-panel.
Right up here is our Preview and if you
| | 06:05 | click anywhere on that, that brings up
the list of current textures, and you can
| | 06:10 | see that these are the default textures.
We don't care about them, so we'll go in
| | 06:14 | here and once again to locate in our
list the John's Artist's Brushes Textures.
| | 06:19 | I'm going to replace and there they are.
| | 06:21 | So now I've got my textures
activated and available when I want them.
| | 06:26 | Finally, let's go into the Actions
palette, and if we go in here like we've done
| | 06:32 | before, pull down this dropdown menu,
find John's Cloning layers, go ahead and
| | 06:38 | click on that, and in this case it's adding it,
| | 06:41 | so we have one right here at the end of
the list and I will be describing these
| | 06:45 | in great detail later on in the title.
| | 06:48 | So now that we've got all these
little bits of John content located and
| | 06:52 | installed within Photoshop, you'll now
have access to them throughout the title
| | 06:56 | as we utilize them in great detail.
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|
1. Photographic Reality vs. Expressive Interpretation Understanding the visual vocabulary| 00:01 | Throughout this title I'm going to
be referring to visual vocabularies.
| | 00:05 | What do I mean by a visual vocabulary?
| | 00:08 | Each visual medium--sculpture,
painting, photography and so on--has a set of
| | 00:13 | unique features that defines it.
| | 00:15 | For example, the medium of painting
has expressive brushstrokes, canvas, and
| | 00:20 | 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
| | 00:29 | vocabulary of paint.
| | 00:31 | Likewise, photography has a unique
visual vocabulary that defines it:
| | 00:36 | sharp focus, lens distortion,
depth of field, and so on.
| | 00:40 | I'm going to use the notion of these
mediums' visual vocabularies to show you
| | 00:45 | how to translate one medium into another.
| | 00:48 | In effect, using Photoshop, you'll be
interpreting a photograph into a painting
| | 00:54 | using your own expressive voice.
| | 00:57 | Let's use these two examples for
comparison to show you what I mean.
| | 01:01 | Both are of the same subject:
| | 01:02 | a holiday shopping scene on Chicago's
Michigan Avenue, known as the Magnificent Mile.
| | 01:08 | Let's start with the photograph
and take a look at some of its key
| | 01:12 | vocabulary elements.
| | 01:13 | Depth of field encapsulates
both sharp and soft focus.
| | 01:18 | Some parts of an image will be in
sharp focus, revealing many fine details.
| | 01:23 | Other areas may be shot in soft
focus, or even blurred, masking detail.
| | 01:28 | Our eye naturally goes to the areas of detail;
| | 01:32 | that's where the center of interest lies.
| | 01:34 | In this photo, the intersection in
the foreground is in sharp focus.
| | 01:38 | Look at how the lights in
the trees catch our attention.
| | 01:42 | We can even read the signs on the corner.
| | 01:44 | Now, look at what happens as the
traffic recedes into the distance;
| | 01:48 | the focus softens, blurring the detail.
| | 01:51 | Compared to the buildings in the
foreground, the structures a block or two away
| | 01:55 | from us show little detail,
| | 01:57 | yet, still, we read them as skyscrapers.
| | 02:00 | The lights on the trees
dissolve into orange glows.
| | 02:03 | Because these areas don't contain details,
there is little for the eye to focus on,
| | 02:08 | so we don't spend much time there.
| | 02:10 | Together, sharp and soft focus rely on
one another to guide the viewer's eye
| | 02:15 | within a composition.
| | 02:17 | Looking closely at the photograph,
| | 02:19 | we can see that the camera records
detail in a continuous fashion, making no
| | 02:23 | judgment with regard as to
what is important in the scene.
| | 02:27 | Only the lens setting, which the
photographer controls, affects the sharpness of
| | 02:32 | detail in the foreground.
| | 02:34 | The photographer is using depth of field
to control what area of the scene is in
| | 02:39 | sharp focus, and therefore more important.
| | 02:42 | Now, let's compare to how the
painting handles detail and subject focus.
| | 02:47 | Like the photograph, the painting uses
detail to draw the attention of the viewer's eye.
| | 02:53 | However, unlike the photo,
the detail is not continuous;
| | 02:57 | rather, it is indicated through a
simplified rendering of the scene via brushstrokes.
| | 03:03 | The artist has subjectively weighted
specific elements of the scene with greater
| | 03:08 | importance through the use
of more detailed brushstrokes.
| | 03:11 | Compared to the fine detail of the
photograph, the painting is not nearly as complex.
| | 03:17 | The artist has simplified the scene by
indicating with brushstrokes which areas
| | 03:22 | have greater importance.
| | 03:24 | Both of these mediums portray the
same subject matter, yet how each renders
| | 03:28 | detail to draw the attention of
the viewer's eye is very different.
| | 03:33 | The photographer has utilized the
camera lens's capacity to vary focus from
| | 03:37 | soft to sharp in order to lead the
viewer's eye to the foreground where the
| | 03:42 | traffic is waiting at the light.
| | 03:44 | The softly focused distant areas of
the scene provide a backdrop without
| | 03:48 | demanding our attention.
| | 03:50 | The hundreds of small lights in the
trees provide an additional area of focus.
| | 03:55 | The artist's painting has interpreted
the unflinching continuous focus of the
| | 03:59 | camera and rendered it through a
simplification of form and brushwork that
| | 04:04 | indicates a greater level of detail.
| | 04:06 | Unlike the photograph's perfect
recording of detail, the painting supplies
| | 04:11 | enough detail, like dots,
for the viewer's mind to connect.
| | 04:15 | It is this additional creative
playfulness that imbues the painting with the
| | 04:19 | expressive interpretation of the artist.
| | 04:22 | By understanding how each medium
uses its vocabulary elements to create a
| | 04:27 | scene to be viewed, we can translate one
medium's vocabulary element into another medium--
| | 04:33 | in this case, photography and painting.
| | 04:35 | As we go through this title, I'll
describe the various key vocabulary elements
| | 04:40 | of each and show you how we can
translate a photograph into a painting.
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| Using the vocabulary of photography| 00:00 | Photography looks like photography
because of its unique visual vocabulary.
| | 00:06 | We can dissect and isolate these
vocabulary elements to provide a consistent
| | 00:10 | framework for interpreting a photo
into a convincing painted result.
| | 00:15 | Failure to properly eradicate an
image's photographic language will result in a
| | 00:20 | painting that has references to both
vocabularies and weaken the final image.
| | 00:25 | Knowledge of both vocabularies is
essential for a satisfying result.
| | 00:30 | In this video, we'll examine the
visual vocabulary of photography.
| | 00:34 | First of all, I'm going to talk
about the way the lens works on a camera.
| | 00:39 | It's very good at sharply focusing.
| | 00:42 | You can even play with focus through
depth of field so that some areas can be in
| | 00:46 | very sharp focus and
other areas very out of focus.
| | 00:50 | In this example, we can see the
center of this image has very sharp focus,
| | 00:55 | but as it comes towards the camera and
moves away from the camera, the focus falls off.
| | 01:01 | So the photographer can use this as a
way to force the viewer to look at a
| | 01:06 | particular part of the photograph.
| | 01:08 | We're not as interested in the
fuzzed-out parts of this spiderweb.
| | 01:12 | It's the central area that attracts
our attention, because of that detail.
| | 01:17 | So this use of sharp focus and the
ability to play with depth of field is
| | 01:23 | definitely a key element in
the language of photography.
| | 01:29 | Next, we have blur.
| | 01:30 | A camera shutter can stay open for
different lengths of time, and the longer
| | 01:35 | it's open, the larger of a
slice of time it's going to capture.
| | 01:40 | In the case of keeping that open,
and if something is moving, you'll get
| | 01:45 | the effect we see here.
| | 01:46 | Items in this photograph were caught
in motion, and the shutter was open long
| | 01:51 | enough to capture them as they moved
through the scene, rather than isolating them
| | 01:57 | in one instant in which they would
have appeared frozen and stopped.
| | 02:01 | Photographers will use this
technique, just like I've done here, to enhance
| | 02:07 | the sense of motion.
| | 02:08 | In particular, what I happened to do
here was I used static elements, like
| | 02:13 | the people on the platform who
were not moving and static, to contrast
| | 02:18 | against the motion.
| | 02:20 | So this use of blur through motion is
another language element of photography.
| | 02:28 | Another thing that happens in
photography is depending on how the plane of the
| | 02:34 | element that is going to capture the
imagery, and nowadays that's a digital
| | 02:37 | sensor, how that is tilted in relation
to its subject will affect how the image
| | 02:43 | is portrayed on that particular sensor.
| | 02:47 | You can see on the left, that's the true image.
| | 02:50 | That's what I captured. And it
distorted the image with a converging set of
| | 02:56 | lines as if there is some vanishing
point up in the sky that it appears to be
| | 03:00 | converging towards, when in fact,
that building is not tilted at all.
| | 03:04 | So by correcting it, as I did on the
right side, I've taken that out of it.
| | 03:10 | And that looks more normal to our eye
because when we look at a building, even
| | 03:14 | though it really looks very much like
the image on the left, we tend to ignore
| | 03:19 | that, and we don't see it.
| | 03:22 | If you want to think about it,
and look at it, you'll see,
| | 03:24 | oh yeah, the building is getting smaller
as it goes up, but we tend to override
| | 03:28 | that with our common sense, and we
realize a building does not get smaller from
| | 03:33 | top to bottom, unless it's a pyramid.
| | 03:34 | Generally, the building
will stay the same width.
| | 03:37 | So common sense overrides the fact that
optically we're seeing it converge on
| | 03:42 | this imaginary vanishing point.
| | 03:44 | So this distortion that we're seeing is
another language element of photography.
| | 03:49 | Tone is another one.
| | 03:52 | A camera can only expose for highlights
or shadows, and in the image on the left
| | 03:58 | that's the exposure of the camera as it was set.
| | 04:01 | It's pretty good overall, but if
you look at the sky in the upper left,
| | 04:06 | it's almost blown out.
| | 04:08 | If you look at the darks in the image,
some of the darks are starting to plug up.
| | 04:12 | So what you can do is mimic what the
human eye sees, which is what we're looking
| | 04:18 | at here on the left, in which the
highest highlights and the darkest shadows are
| | 04:23 | compressed, so that they don't seem to
be either plugging up or blowing out,
| | 04:29 | and you get what is closer to human
vision where we constantly are looking at a
| | 04:33 | scene and moving around it.
| | 04:35 | Our eye is dynamic.
| | 04:36 | It's constantly changing its
aperture to adjust for light.
| | 04:40 | So you get a difference in the way the
human vision examines and evaluates an
| | 04:45 | image versus the way a camera dumbly
can only record exactly the settings that
| | 04:51 | it's been adjusted to.
| | 04:55 | Color is another one.
| | 04:56 | The camera tends to capture a
certain sensibility of color.
| | 05:02 | It's a number of factors.
Some of it is the sensor itself.
| | 05:06 | It can also be how it's processed.
But all cameras produce a set of colors
| | 05:13 | within a space that I call photographic color.
| | 05:17 | When you look at color photographs, you
don't even think about it and yet there
| | 05:20 | is something in the language of
photography that we understand when we look at a
| | 05:25 | photograph, those colors that it is
displayed in and portrayed in come from the
| | 05:31 | language of photography as photographic colors.
| | 05:34 | Now, we go over to the
right side of the image here.
| | 05:36 | It's still a photograph, but I've
jacked those colors way up, so that now
| | 05:42 | they're more into the range of painted colors.
| | 05:45 | If you look at the swatches on the far right,
those are colors sampled from real paint.
| | 05:50 | So those are the kinds of intense colors
you're going to find in the language of
| | 05:55 | painting where it's based
on very refined pigments.
| | 05:59 | So to even take an image and just
start to up its saturation is one way to
| | 06:05 | evolve an image out of the language of
photography where this photographic color
| | 06:09 | is very common and move it into more
brilliant colors. You're starting to move
| | 06:15 | away from that language of photography.
| | 06:17 | So all these language elements of
photography we've talked about, they're visual
| | 06:22 | vocabulary that makes beautiful imagery.
| | 06:25 | But our goal is to eliminate these
elements by replacing them with appropriate
| | 06:30 | replacements from the
visual vocabulary of painting.
| | 06:33 | If this translation isn't fully
executed, the resulting image will lack
| | 06:37 | crispness and sharp painterly definition.
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| Using 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.
| | 00:08 | Rather than machine-like precision,
painting reveals the hand of its maker via
| | 00:13 | small imperfections and accidents.
| | 00:15 | The viewer then senses a
painting as a unique object, rather than a
| | 00:20 | reproduction. By understanding the
visual elements that make up the vocabulary
| | 00:24 | of painting, a photograph can act as a
source framework upon which to replace its
| | 00:30 | language with that of paint.
| | 00:32 | In this video, we'll take a look
at the vocabulary of painting.
| | 00:36 | Well, first and foremost, probably the
key element that identifies the language
| | 00:42 | of painting is brushstrokes, or
as I call it sometimes, brushwork.
| | 00:46 | Each one of us, just like our own
signature, is unique, and the way each of us
| | 00:52 | apply color, how our wrist, hand,
and arm all conspire to craft expressive marks
| | 01:00 | on the canvas are different for each one of us.
| | 01:04 | Even each of us it will be different in
various times of the day, depending on
| | 01:08 | how much sleep, how much caffeine, how
excited--all of these things will affect
| | 01:14 | how your brushwork appears.
| | 01:16 | A professional lifelong artist can't help
but paint a certain way, and that becomes
| | 01:22 | their style, or the way their
brushwork is expressed through their painting.
| | 01:27 | So brushwork is a key element
of the vocabulary of painting.
| | 01:33 | It's the atomic structure of
the imagery made by painting.
| | 01:38 | Another key element in painting is you
have to build a painting up, so it's very
| | 01:43 | common to start with what is
called an underpainting.
| | 01:46 | An underpainting defines the loose
framework that is the composition, and it also
| | 01:54 | heralds what some of the color
choices are going to be later on in the
| | 01:59 | composition,
but underpainting is a signature of painting.
| | 02:04 | And quite often sometimes some of the
underpainting ends up being visible in the
| | 02:08 | final paining, so it isn't always
something that gets completely covered up;
| | 02:12 | elements of it will often
appear in the final work itself.
| | 02:17 | So this technique of underpainting is
another element of the vocabulary of paint.
| | 02:24 | Next, we get into what I call
indication, or selective indication.
| | 02:29 | A photograph of this would be every
little element in the image completely
| | 02:35 | detailed in fine, sharp focus.
| | 02:38 | A painter, on the other hand, chooses
which elements from a scene, whether it's a
| | 02:43 | photograph or they're looking out at
it in the field, either way the painter
| | 02:49 | is not going to mimic the exact precision
of all of those elements of the photograph.
| | 02:56 | They are going to selectively pick
things out that they consider important,
| | 03:01 | and they will accentuate those via the
choices they make through selective indication.
| | 03:08 | A good example of this is a tree.
| | 03:11 | When we take a photograph of a tree we
see in fine detail every leaf on that
| | 03:16 | tree that's facing the camera.
| | 03:18 | When an artist paints a tree, more often
than not, rather than paint exactly every
| | 03:24 | leaf on a tree, they will start with
something of an underpainting that models
| | 03:28 | some highlights and shadows and green
tonalities, so that they've got the rough
| | 03:33 | model and form of a tree, but then
they will go in afterwards with brighter
| | 03:38 | green and darker greens and paint in
selective areas to portray the illusion of
| | 03:45 | all the leaves on the tree, and this
is what I call the Connect-the-Dots theory.
| | 03:49 | A skillful artist can use these dots,
these visual elements, selectively to get
| | 03:56 | the viewer's mind to complete the image.
| | 04:00 | So a well-done representation of a tree
with simplified indication will be far
| | 04:06 | from every leaf on a tree, and yet
anybody who looks at that image will recognize
| | 04:10 | it, oh that's a tree,
and that's all we have to worry about.
| | 04:14 | Selective indication is a way to
represent reality through a simplified means,
| | 04:20 | and again, this is another key
element of the vocabulary of painting.
| | 04:24 | Now the artist will eventually add
greater detail, but again, it's selective.
| | 04:30 | In fact, the little example I just gave right here,
| | 04:34 | when we look at this, this does look very
much like all of the leaves on the tree.
| | 04:39 | Well, when we go up and look at it,
| | 04:41 | you can see there's
really very little tree in it.
| | 04:45 | It's a bunch of lines that are
scrambled in such a way that we get an illusion
| | 04:52 | of the complexity of trees without
that actual complexity. Same thing here.
| | 04:57 | You can see, I mean I didn't
paint every leaf on that tree.
| | 05:00 | Just a few well-chosen marks in the
right places, right tonalities over the
| | 05:05 | underpainting goes a long way towards fooling
the eye to seeing what it thinks is a tree.
| | 05:11 | So selective detail again is another
form of painting that is unique to this
| | 05:19 | particular medium, and it goes against
the grain of photography. But knowing how
| | 05:24 | to take all of the detail found in a
photograph and reduce it through this
| | 05:29 | simplified indication and simplified detail,
| | 05:32 | we can still portray the same scene,
but in a way that is not nearly as
| | 05:37 | information rich as the photograph.
| | 05:41 | Finally, we have color. I'll just
bounce back and forth between these.
| | 05:45 | This is the original colors I did this in,
which largely came off of the photograph.
| | 05:50 | But then I went in and I just tweaked
them up a bit, so that they would have a
| | 05:54 | little bit more richer color.
| | 05:56 | Remember that colors coming from a tube
of paint are composed of pigments that
| | 06:01 | are much richer and more saturated in
color than is typically possible with a
| | 06:07 | photograph or an inkjet printer.
| | 06:09 | So a true painting has a wider color
gamut, so to speak, than a photograph
| | 06:16 | does, because it's using a completely
different form of to arrive at
| | 06:21 | the finished image.
| | 06:23 | The photograph is limited in a
number of colors used to create it,
| | 06:27 | whereas the artist has an entire array
of colors straight, from the tube and it
| | 06:33 | can be mixed, that can be used to create
a definite range that is far different
| | 06:38 | than photographic color.
| | 06:39 | So what we've learned here is that
each of these languages has their own
| | 06:44 | unique qualities, which I refer to as
languages. In the form of a language you
| | 06:50 | have verbs and nouns.
| | 06:51 | What we are going to do throughout
this course is take the language of
| | 06:55 | photography and replace it
with the language of painting.
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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 this my mental painting filter.
| | 00:10 | This skill goes hand in hand with
taking the time to look at and analyze
| | 00:15 | traditional painted imagery.
| | 00:17 | One of the best ways I can recommend
for improving your eye for painting is
| | 00:21 | to look at paintings,
| | 00:22 | lots of them. Study the compositions, colors,
subject matter, brushstrokes, and the like.
| | 00:29 | A lot can be learned from simply
searching the web for examples of genres,
| | 00:34 | styles, and artists that interest you.
| | 00:37 | Some museums' online web sites have
representations of paintings that can be
| | 00:41 | navigated in high resolution that lets you
get your nose up close and see the detail.
| | 00:48 | It is particularly useful to observe
how the surface of a well-photographed
| | 00:53 | painting appears to the eye.
| | 00:55 | Later in the course, I'll demonstrate
how to incorporate some of these physical
| | 01:00 | surface characteristics into your paintings.
| | 01:03 | This technique works well, particularly
when the finished artwork will be viewed
| | 01:08 | on a display or the web.
| | 01:10 | Even better, visiting galleries and
museums provides a greater appreciation for
| | 01:16 | the physical aspects of a painting.
| | 01:18 | Nothing can replace looking at the real thing.
| | 01:21 | Take note of how lighting
affects a painting's appearance.
| | 01:25 | Look at how physical paint
has the third dimension--depth.
| | 01:29 | Some artists exploit this via the
technique of impasto, which is intentionally
| | 01:34 | applied thick paint.
| | 01:36 | Observe how the artist incorporates
the canvas weave into a painting's
| | 01:40 | physical quality, as well as how thinly
applied paint allows canvas texture to be visible.
| | 01:47 | A traditional painting projects an
aura of physicality that is a part of
| | 01:52 | its perceived value.
| | 01:53 | Projecting some of these physical
qualities into a digital painting can intimate
| | 01:58 | some of this value into the artwork.
| | 02:01 | Another important observation is to
look at paintings, both up close to examine
| | 02:06 | its physical characteristics, as
well as stepping back to see how these
| | 02:10 | characteristics'
interpretation change with distance.
| | 02:13 | For example, a few seemingly abstract
gobs of paint viewed close up can become
| | 02:19 | well-delineated foliage
with highlights and shadows.
| | 02:23 | This is something that
many digital painters ignore.
| | 02:26 | When painting you must be aware of
both close and far interpretations
| | 02:31 | of painted artwork.
| | 02:32 | Another very useful activity is to
simply play with your digital paintbrushes.
| | 02:38 | You don't need a subject or goal in
mind; the idea is to explore the breadth,
| | 02:42 | and variety of marks the brush is capable of.
| | 02:45 | Experiment with how
different colors mix and interact.
| | 02:49 | Depending on the capabilities of your
tablet's stylus, find out how the applied
| | 02:54 | brush changes shape based on
pressure, tilt, bearing, and rotation.
| | 03:00 | This activity is akin to driving a new
car in order to explore how it performs
| | 03:05 | and handles, and can be
quite an enjoyable experience.
| | 03:08 | In essence, know your brushes.
| | 03:11 | They are the voice of your expression.
| | 03:14 | The more you study and absorb the
language of painting, the better your results
| | 03:18 | will be when interpreting a photograph.
| | 03:20 | Armed with this knowledge and experience,
you can effectively look through the
| | 03:24 | lens of a camera with your mental
painting filter in place and reactively adjust
| | 03:29 | how you choose to frame, compose,
and light your subject matter.
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|
|
2. Image Preparation: The Source PhotographUnderstanding that resolution is in the brush strokes| 00:00 | If you've ever reproduced a photograph
with an inkjet printer, you have most
| | 00:04 | likely learned the lesson that as
output size increases greater image
| | 00:08 | resolution is required.
| | 00:09 | Most of us learned this lesson by printing
the low-resolution image at a large size.
| | 00:14 | 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.
| | 00:28 | These are wise words when printing a
photograph, but you'll be surprised to
| | 00:31 | learn that you can cheat this supposed
commandment when interpreting a photo into a painting.
| | 00:38 | Now I have got an image on
screen that if this were going to be a
| | 00:40 | photograph that was going to be
printed, it's lacking in resolution, and I
| | 00:46 | will show you what I mean.
| | 00:47 | Let's go up close here. And you can
see this is soft and blurry, and it
| | 00:52 | just lacks quality.
| | 00:53 | In fact, this was shot with an
iPhone camera, so it's not a super
| | 00:58 | high-resolution image.
| | 01:00 | And you would think, well how can I
use this image in order to print out a
| | 01:04 | nice resulting image?
| | 01:06 | Here is the crux of the matter.
| | 01:08 | A digital photograph is composed of
pixels; however, when you are doing a
| | 01:13 | digital painting, it is
composed of brushstrokes.
| | 01:17 | So the high resolution that's
required for print is not the same as the
| | 01:22 | resolution that is going to be required
out of that image when it's interpreted.
| | 01:27 | And I will show you what I mean.
| | 01:29 | Let's zoom up here, and of course
this image is lacking, but you've got to
| | 01:34 | remember, in the way we are going to
be working, this is only a reference.
| | 01:38 | We are going to be using the underlying
image, in this case this image of fruit
| | 01:43 | in a bowl, as a reference, so that the
brush will pick up the colors, but the
| | 01:49 | resolution is going to be
determined by the actual painted strokes.
| | 01:54 | So even though this image looks soft
and blurry, if we switch now to the
| | 01:59 | painted version of it, this is the same
image, the same resolution, and if I go
| | 02:03 | up and look close at this, now you'll see
that there's plenty of resolution in this image,
| | 02:08 | because we've exchanged those
individual pixels that were making up the
| | 02:13 | photographic rendition of this image,
into brushstrokes, that do have crisp
| | 02:19 | sharp edges at this resolution.
| | 02:21 | So, we've really violated, in a way,
this supposed rule of, you have to have a
| | 02:27 | certain amount of resolution in
order for a photograph to print.
| | 02:30 | But we are not printing a photograph;
| | 02:32 | we are printing an
interpretation of a photograph.
| | 02:35 | And as a result, these brushstrokes,
as I kind of move around and show it
| | 02:39 | to you, you can see there's plenty of fine
detail and resolution found in this image.
| | 02:45 | So the conclusion to this really is
that it's entirely possible to use a
| | 02:50 | less-than-high-resolution photograph as a
source image for interpretation into a painting.
| | 02:56 | The usual rules for printing a
photograph at high resolution go out of
| | 03:00 | the window because when you're
painting, the brushstrokes are what define
| | 03:04 | the resolution.
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| Understanding the subject| 00:00 | The heart of a photograph, as
well as a painting, is its subject.
| | 00:03 | A common mistake when photographing
the subject is to make it too small
| | 00:07 | within the overall image.
| | 00:09 | I am going to go over a few things
that show you how you can enhance an image
| | 00:14 | and make it the center of your
painting in a few short steps.
| | 00:19 | And all of these are preparatory
elements that we do still while dealing with
| | 00:24 | the photograph prior to taking
it into the painting process.
| | 00:29 | Now this is a photograph I
shot with my iPhone camera,
| | 00:33 | so it's no great camera.
| | 00:35 | It does record images nicely, I'd have to
admit that, but it's not the same as a DSLR.
| | 00:40 | However, when you're translating a
photograph into a painting you don't need a
| | 00:45 | high-end camera by any means to
do this kind of interpretation.
| | 00:50 | So even a iPhone camera is an
appropriate acquisition device for elements that
| | 00:55 | you're going to use for
the subject of a painting.
| | 00:59 | Now, the first thing I did here when I
photographed--and it's got a few mistakes.
| | 01:03 | Let's look at them.
| | 01:04 | The subject, which is this little
birdhouse, is a bit small in the scene.
| | 01:09 | There is a lot of noise around it,
a lot of detail that is attracting the eye
| | 01:13 | and distracting from the subject.
| | 01:15 | We've also got that house in the
background, which is totally inappropriate for this.
| | 01:20 | It's harder for your eye to decide
whether it should be looking at the house in
| | 01:25 | the background or this little
birdhouse hanging from the tree.
| | 01:29 | So there's a lot of noise
here that has to be removed.
| | 01:33 | Well, the first thing I
did is I cropped the image.
| | 01:36 | So here it is cropped so that now our
subject is much more central in the image.
| | 01:42 | It's taking up at least 50% of the
width and the height of it, and that's good.
| | 01:46 | You want your image to be large.
The larger it is the more it's going to be
| | 01:50 | considered the element to focus on.
| | 01:53 | I then went in and I added much more
foliage around it, because I want to get
| | 01:59 | rid of that house in the background.
| | 02:01 | That was the main thing I did in adding
all of this foliage. I slightly color-
| | 02:05 | corrected it as well.
| | 02:07 | Once I did that, I realized I want to
tell a little bit more of a story here.
| | 02:12 | Even though I couldn't photograph them,
because every time I got close they went
| | 02:15 | back inside, I could fake it.
| | 02:18 | So I ended up finding some elements on
the web of just birds with their mouths
| | 02:23 | open, and I was able to put them into here.
| | 02:25 | I actually enlarged them a little
bit which is another thing you can do.
| | 02:28 | There is no reason you
unnecessarily have to stay in the correct scale.
| | 02:34 | In order for this to read and have the
eye go up to that particular element,
| | 02:39 | enlarging it a bit is a way to
exaggerate, in a subtle way, your subject matter.
| | 02:45 | So while the main subject is this
birdhouse, the secondary subject is the fact
| | 02:49 | that these little birds are in
there with their mouths open.
| | 02:52 | Obviously, it's time to eat. Where is our food?
| | 02:55 | So now I've got a story going on,
but I still have all of this noise to deal with.
| | 03:01 | So here's where we go to next.
| | 03:03 | Next I took that imagery and I simplified it.
| | 03:07 | There is a number of ways to do this.
| | 03:09 | The way I happen to do it here is
with Topaz Lab's Simplify 3 plug-in for
| | 03:13 | Photoshop, and it just has a number of
controls that allow you to take imagery
| | 03:18 | and simplify it down. And if
we zoom into this a little bit,
| | 03:23 | and I'll go back to the
original and zoom in the same amount,
| | 03:26 | I can go back and forth.
| | 03:28 | So you can see the detail and even some
of the detail in the iPhone photo isn't
| | 03:32 | that great, plus I've enlarged it up to
a larger resolution so that I'll be able
| | 03:37 | to work on this with my brushes.
| | 03:40 | You can see the difference between the two.
| | 03:42 | There is a lot of what I call
high-frequency noise in this image that the eye
| | 03:47 | just wants to look around
and see all this detail.
| | 03:50 | But when you simplify it a bit, it's
the beginning of starting to take away
| | 03:55 | from the vocabulary of photography to the
vocabulary of painting. Now, this is just a first step.
| | 04:02 | Then I went to this.
| | 04:04 | So now I've used the photograph and the
special cloning layers that are included
| | 04:10 | with this course to go in and
paint over all of that detail.
| | 04:14 | I've done it in such a way, you still
get the read that this is foliage in the
| | 04:18 | background, some kind of foliage with
some sky peeking through, but you're not
| | 04:23 | having to deal with every
leaf of all this foliage.
| | 04:26 | It's pushed back in such a way that now our
subject is much more central to the image.
| | 04:32 | And while we may see this as a stage,
the actors are basically our little
| | 04:38 | birdhouse and then the birds in
the little hole in the birdhouse.
| | 04:42 | So that's the next step we went through.
| | 04:44 | Then I went to here.
| | 04:46 | Now I am starting to restore some detail.
| | 04:49 | The background without anything
going on is rather plain and is boring.
| | 04:54 | So by starting to reintroduce some of
the detail back into the image, I've been
| | 05:00 | able to provide a little more interest
overall and balance the rest areas,
| | 05:06 | the areas in the background that don't have
much contrast or changes going on,
| | 05:10 | with areas that are higher contrast and more detail.
| | 05:14 | To have that combination of both rest
areas in your image as well as contrasting
| | 05:20 | areas adds an overall
visual interest to the painting.
| | 05:25 | Finally, this is the final layer.
| | 05:27 | I am going to zoom up here, and we'll
do the same thing as we did before.
| | 05:30 | Let's zoom up so we can see the
differences between these two.
| | 05:34 | You'll see that in this image it's
basically done, but if you watch in this
| | 05:39 | dark area when I switch, you see how there
is some sort of surface effect going on here.
| | 05:44 | I'll do it again because it's pretty subtle.
| | 05:46 | I think you see it pretty good right there.
| | 05:48 | Let's turn it off, and now I'll
switch it to that next layer.
| | 05:53 | What that is is a virtual varnish
that I apply to the image to even add a
| | 06:00 | greater sense of this being an actual painting.
| | 06:04 | So that as I move around on this, this
begins to look very, very much like what a
| | 06:10 | photographed painting will look like.
| | 06:12 | We are seeing all the
detail of the canvas weave.
| | 06:16 | We are getting some of
these marks from brushstrokes.
| | 06:19 | We're getting a sense of an
irregular varnished-surface topcoat on this.
| | 06:26 | So all of these elements then come
together to give us the sense of this being a
| | 06:32 | painting, and that's the idea here.
| | 06:35 | We started with a photograph, but going
through the steps I've shown you,
| | 06:40 | we're able to increase focus on the subject,
we are deleting elements that aren't
| | 06:45 | important and are distracting,
and we're adding elements in this case to help
| | 06:50 | reinforce a little storyline that not
only is this a cute little camper that is
| | 06:55 | a birdhouse, but it also has some birds
actually in that area of the window that
| | 07:01 | seem to be asking mom for some food.
| | 07:04 | So the combination of all this is
what leads to a successful painting,
| | 07:10 | and throughout this title we are going
to be looking at all of these various
| | 07:13 | elements in great detail.
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|
|
3. Image Preparation: Lens Distortion RemovalRemoving lens distortions| 00:00 | When the shutter release is pressed, a
camera records exactly what it is pointed at.
| | 00:05 | How the geometry of the captured image
is portrayed is dictated by the optics of
| | 00:10 | the particular lens in use.
| | 00:11 | For example, a wide-angle lens
tends to distort perspective.
| | 00:16 | The result is buildings and phone poles that
lean inward towards the center of the image.
| | 00:21 | An artist, on the other hand, painting
the same scene, will tend to render the
| | 00:26 | same buildings with vertical
elements perpendicular to the ground.
| | 00:30 | This is simply our brain and visual
system at work to see things from a
| | 00:34 | common-sense point of view.
| | 00:36 | Let's go ahead and take a
look at what I'm talking about.
| | 00:39 | Now here's a shot where a wide-angle
lens was used to take this photograph.
| | 00:45 | As we look at this, it looks funny,
because all the verticals are converging on
| | 00:49 | an imaginary vanishing point, which is
somewhere way above the building, and this
| | 00:54 | is how the lens is constructed.
| | 00:56 | This is what it sees.
| | 00:57 | So the lens has no mind about what it sees.
| | 01:01 | It just merely records the way the
light passes through it and bends it in
| | 01:05 | whatever fashion the lens was designed to do.
| | 01:08 | Our eye, however, can look at this and
in the context of the photograph, we
| | 01:12 | may not notice this so much, but the
more I talk about it, hopefully you're
| | 01:16 | looking at this image and thinking,
this looks kind of funny, the building
| | 01:20 | just looks odd to me.
| | 01:22 | And if we think about all these lines
that make up this vertical perspective
| | 01:26 | that is converging, it makes sense
that a lens may be designed to do that.
| | 01:31 | However, through a variety of
techniques in Photoshop, which we will be
| | 01:34 | looking at in the next few videos,
we can take that grid and actually
| | 01:39 | straighten it out.
| | 01:41 | So what we end up with is an image that
looks much more natural to the eye, and
| | 01:46 | this is what I call sometimes the
painter or the illustrator's point of view.
| | 01:50 | When someone is standing in front of
that building and painting or rendering it,
| | 01:56 | drawing it, illustrating it, however,
they are not going to typically draw it
| | 02:01 | with those converging lines like we saw.
| | 02:04 | They are going to draw more like we see here.
| | 02:06 | So one of the things that is the
telltale sign of a photograph are these kinds
| | 02:12 | of distortions that wind up in the
image due to the optics of the lens.
| | 02:17 | The illustrator, on the other hand,
is not going to think that way.
| | 02:20 | So when you're prepping an image for
interpretation, you want to think like a
| | 02:24 | painter, not a camera.
| | 02:26 | Removing lens distortions from the
source photograph goes a long ways towards
| | 02:31 | achieving this goal.
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| Using the Free Transform tool| 00:00 | Have you checked your verticals
lately? Any signs of keystoning?
| | 00:04 | I know, it sounds like a medical condition;
| | 00:06 | it's not, but it is definitely an
image condition that you should watch for.
| | 00:11 | The Free Transform tool is a quick
way to eyeball tilted buildings and
| | 00:15 | horizons into square.
| | 00:16 | In this video, we'll look at how to
get the most out of this useful tool.
| | 00:21 | I'm going to begin by going to the
exercise files, and in Chapter 3 we'll find
| | 00:26 | the original photo_image. And let's take
a look at this, because what we want to
| | 00:32 | find out is where we're having issues
with the way that camera was positioned
| | 00:39 | when it was photographed.
| | 00:40 | If the sensor which captures that
image is not perpendicular to the faces of
| | 00:46 | the buildings, you start to get this kind of
funny distortion that's happening in here.
| | 00:51 | So this building seems to be leaning
over, about to fall on these pedestrians,
| | 00:55 | same here, but that's not
reality, so we need to take that out.
| | 01:00 | It may look correct in terms of the
language of photography, but in the language
| | 01:05 | of painting, a painter at this scene is
not going to record an image that way;
| | 01:10 | he's going to record it as if all of
those verticals are truly vertical, and so
| | 01:15 | we need to get that out of there.
| | 01:17 | And the way we're going to do that is
with Free Transform. And I'm going to make
| | 01:21 | a copy of this, and what I can quickly
do is just click and drag this down to
| | 01:25 | the layer icon and make a copy.
| | 01:29 | And once we've done that, the second
thing we want to do is we want to see a grid
| | 01:35 | that we can use as a reference
for what is vertical and horizontal.
| | 01:38 | So I can go up to the View menu and
go down here to Show and enable the Grid.
| | 01:45 | And you'll notice at the same time
that you can use the keyboard shortcut,
| | 01:49 | which is very useful. I'll do it right now.
| | 01:51 | There's going to be times where I may
want to shut this off as I'm working on
| | 01:54 | it, so I can see clearly what's
going on, and so to be able to have that
| | 01:59 | toggle can be very useful.
| | 02:01 | Now that we've got our grid up, what I
want to do is go into Free Transform mode.
| | 02:06 | And if I go to the Edit menu, down to
Transform, what I want to do here is select Distort.
| | 02:12 | This let's me now grab a corner, and you
can see that I'm moving this around and
| | 02:17 | distorting the image;
| | 02:18 | however, I'm doing it in both the
vertical and horizontal at the same time,
| | 02:23 | which is a little imprecise way to do this.
| | 02:25 | So I'm going to undo, and if I hold
down the Shift+Command or Ctrl+Shift key,
| | 02:31 | now when I grab one of these handles on
the corner, whatever direction I start
| | 02:36 | dragging in, it's only
going to drag in that direction.
| | 02:39 | So in this case I'll move it horizontally.
| | 02:41 | You can see now I'm only moving it
and distorting things according to my
| | 02:46 | horizontal movement.
| | 02:47 | So what I want to do at this point is
watch the grid and try to get my verticals
| | 02:53 | lined up with basically the same
orientation as those gridlines.
| | 02:58 | Let's look over here.
| | 02:59 | There is a little bit of distortion
going on there, so move this in a little bit.
| | 03:04 | And it's just a matter of kind of
eyeballing it and looking. You don't have to
| | 03:08 | necessarily be precise
down to the decimal point.
| | 03:12 | What you want to do here though is
just get it so that it doesn't look like a
| | 03:15 | distorted-by-the-user-holding-the-camera-type
distortion in the image.
| | 03:21 | I'd say that's pretty good.
| | 03:23 | And I'm going to use my
toggle here to shut that off.
| | 03:26 | Now if I turn off the background, you
can see this is what we've adjusted, so
| | 03:31 | we've distorted the rectangular area of
the image, but we've also straightened
| | 03:35 | out the distortion within that rectangle.
| | 03:38 | Now what I want to do is crop this down.
And if I grab my crop tool, what I'm
| | 03:43 | going to do is start by grabbing the
whole thing and then hold down my Shift
| | 03:47 | key and just kind of move this in,
so that I stay within the confines of the
| | 03:53 | actual image itself. And I just want to get the
most imagery I can, and it looks pretty good.
| | 03:59 | Now by hitting the Return
key, we've now got our image.
| | 04:03 | So now I've got an image that is much
closer to the way an artist is going to
| | 04:09 | render this image, as opposed to the
way the camera mechanically records it
| | 04:13 | based on the position of
the sensor within the camera.
| | 04:17 | So this gives us a great way to get our
images into that space that provides us
| | 04:23 | with a painterly approach
to how the image should look.
| | 04:27 | The Free Transform tool is a great tool
for quick and easy adjustment of simple
| | 04:31 | camera distortions created by camera tilt.
| | 04:34 | Of course, all adjustments such as this
are subjective and another place where
| | 04:39 | you can exercise creative control.
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| Using the Lens Correction filter| 00:00 | Every lens distorts the scene whose
light passes through it, some more some less.
| | 00:06 | The fact of the matter is that a
photograph does not record what we see but how
| | 00:11 | the lens optics bend the light
onto the plane of a camera sensor.
| | 00:15 | Beginning with CS5, the Lens
Correction filter, using profiles created for
| | 00:21 | specific popular lenses, accounts for and
removes the distortions introduced by lens optics.
| | 00:27 | Let's go ahead and take a look.
| | 00:29 | The Lens Correction filter is located in
the Filter menu right here, Lens Correction.
| | 00:37 | Let's open this up, and this is going to
kind of put it in its own little world
| | 00:41 | where we can do some things.
| | 00:42 | One of the things that is really useful
about the way this works is that Adobe
| | 00:47 | has established a large database of
optics models for a wide variety of
| | 00:53 | popular camera lenses.
| | 00:55 | In this case, I shot this with a
Canon G10, so if we look over here at the
| | 00:59 | Search criteria, we can see it knows
it's from the Canon, and I have to check
| | 01:05 | here to find which camera it is,
and right down here is the Canon PowerShot G10.
| | 01:10 | Now your camera may not be found in this list.
| | 01:16 | The good news is you can actually search
for this, and it's done right down here.
| | 01:22 | By clicking on Search Online, you have
the option to be able to look for the
| | 01:27 | lens that works with your camera.
| | 01:29 | Not only has Adobe added a lot of
popular lenses to this database, but end users
| | 01:35 | using some software that Adobe provides
can also create their own lens profiles,
| | 01:41 | so there's a really big array of lens
profiles available, and thankfully I was
| | 01:46 | able to find my Canon PowerShot G10.
| | 01:49 | Now that it's in there, let's just
turn the preview on and off and I want to
| | 01:52 | watch what happens to the image.
| | 01:55 | The difference isn't dramatic;
| | 01:57 | we're not seeing some huge change in
the image. But if you look particularly
| | 02:01 | at the outer edges of the image, we're seeing a
change to the way the image is being portrayed.
| | 02:08 | It's almost like it's removing some
curvature that's being produced at the outer edges
| | 02:13 | of our image, and this is the kind of
thing that the Lens Correction filter is
| | 02:19 | capable of doing, with that model of the
lens available to be able to breed this
| | 02:25 | literally out of the image.
| | 02:27 | Now it's not going to automatically
take out distortions like the keystoning we
| | 02:32 | saw in the earlier video.
| | 02:34 | That's actually caused by the user by
tilting the plane of the sensor to a
| | 02:40 | degree where that starts to happen.
| | 02:42 | So that has nothing to do with the lens.
| | 02:44 | That's the user causing that.
| | 02:46 | The only things it's going to correct
are true lens flaws, things like what they
| | 02:50 | call pin cushioning where things kind
of get distorted in the center of the
| | 02:55 | image, or barrel distortion.
| | 02:56 | That's basically what this is fixing here.
| | 02:59 | So we've taken that out.
| | 03:01 | The other thing we can do here is
if we go right here, we can use the
| | 03:05 | Straighten tool. And I'm just going to
do a quick run cross the horizon, even
| | 03:10 | though I don't know that this truly was
the true horizon line, but obviously it
| | 03:13 | looks a little distorted.
| | 03:15 | So now, I can straighten that out,
and I've gotten some basic lens flaws
| | 03:20 | removed from this image.
| | 03:22 | I can see now that things are tilting,
but just like we did earlier, I can use
| | 03:26 | the Free Transform tool
to further tweak this out.
| | 03:29 | So an image like this is going to
probably use a combination of both the Lens
| | 03:34 | Correction filter as well as something
like the Free Transform tool in order to
| | 03:39 | be able to get all these
kinds of distortions out.
| | 03:43 | And as I've said before,
all of this is subjective.
| | 03:46 | These are artistic decisions.
| | 03:48 | You may or may not choose to take them
out, but the idea behind all of this is
| | 03:54 | to get out of these images as much as
possible the language of photography.
| | 03:59 | So these very things we're talking
about are those language elements that make
| | 04:05 | this image look like a photograph.
| | 04:07 | The more we can take this out before we
ever apply a brush to it, the more this
| | 04:11 | is going to look like a painting in the end.
| | 04:13 | I can't tell you the sad stories I've
seen in teaching classes where people will
| | 04:18 | spend an inordinate amount of time
painting an image and when they ask what do
| | 04:22 | you think of it, I'll look at it and I
say, "Well, why is the horizon tilted?"
| | 04:26 | They didn't bother to take those
things out, and those are the little things
| | 04:29 | you have to get rid of in order to get
a successful source image to turn into a painting.
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| Understanding the ACR lens correction profiles| 00:00 | If you shoot your digital photographs
using the raw format then you can take
| | 00:04 | advantage of CS5's Lens Correction
profiles inside of Adobe Camera Raw.
| | 00:09 | This has the advantage of applying
transformations to the camera data before it is processed.
| | 00:15 | The upshot is a higher-quality result instead
of doing this operation post raw conversion.
| | 00:21 | As a bonus ACR, can be used to do
additionally open JPEG and TIFF images,
| | 00:26 | but remember these images have
already had the camera process them.
| | 00:30 | So we're going to work with a raw file
and I'm going to go to the exercise files
| | 00:35 | here in chapter03,
and we're going to use mansion.CR2.
| | 00:41 | CR2 is just an extension that
indicates it's a Canon raw file.
| | 00:46 | Depending on your camera you may have a
different extension, but it's just a way
| | 00:49 | of identifying raw files.
| | 00:51 | So let's double-click this,
and this opens us up into Adobe Canon Raw
| | 00:55 | commonly known as ACR.
| | 00:57 | What we're going to do here is take
advantage of ACR's ability to apply a lens
| | 01:04 | correction profile to the image.
| | 01:06 | However, because as I said we're in
the raw converter, we're doing this before
| | 01:12 | any processing is done.
| | 01:13 | The result is going to
be a higher-quality image.
| | 01:16 | So let's go over to the tab here that
looks like a little set of lenses, Lens
| | 01:21 | Corrections, and we'll click on this,
and we'll enable the Lens Profile, and watch
| | 01:26 | what happens to the image. You saw that it?
| | 01:29 | It just changed it.
| | 01:30 | I'll click it on and off so you can see.
| | 01:32 | It's taking out the lens aberrations
that are part of, in this case, the Canon
| | 01:38 | 17-40 lens, and in doing so, it gives
us a truer representation of the image.
| | 01:46 | I'm going to show you another
secondary effect that happens here.
| | 01:49 | Let's go up to 100%, and I'm going to move
this over where we can see the tree branches.
| | 01:56 | I will probably even enlarge it a bit more.
And let's temporarily turn off our Preview.
| | 02:02 | You see what's happening here in the colors.
| | 02:05 | We're getting this fringing, and this is
commonly known as chromatic aberration.
| | 02:09 | What happens is when the lens,
especially at the outer peripheries of this wide
| | 02:13 | angle lens, when the light comes through
it, the lens has to, just by the nature of
| | 02:19 | glass, slightly bend the different
parts of the light spectrum minutely small
| | 02:25 | angles, but they do make their
appearance in the form of chromatic aberration,
| | 02:30 | and that's what we're seeing here,
this typical green-purple fringing.
| | 02:34 | Now when we turn Preview on, you can see
it's completely eliminated the fringing.
| | 02:39 | So it takes all of these lens optic
peculiarities into effect for this specific
| | 02:45 | lens and breeds out all of these
types of distortions. And the benefit is by
| | 02:52 | doing it at the front end before a
processing happens, you are going to end up
| | 02:56 | with a higher-quality image in the end.
| | 02:58 | It's not a make or break thing
if you don't work with raw files.
| | 03:02 | It's just nice to know that you can go
to the level of dealing with a raw file
| | 03:07 | and be able to process it in a manner
that is the least destructive to the data
| | 03:12 | that you have to work with.
| | 03:14 | Once I'm done with all of this, I can
go ahead and open the image, and that we'll
| | 03:19 | open it for us inside of
Photoshop with those corrections applied.
| | 03:25 | So now I could take this, for example,
and use the free transform that we
| | 03:29 | played with in the last video to get
these distortions out that were caused by
| | 03:34 | the way the camera was held and tilted the
camera sensor at an angle away from the building.
| | 03:41 | So all of these various kinds of
things come together to be able to start off
| | 03:46 | with polishing your image up to get it
to the best quality you can before you
| | 03:50 | make that big conversion
from a photograph to a painting.
| | 03:54 | Now lens distortions are usually subtle,
but can distort image view in a photo.
| | 03:59 | Whether you shot raw or not,
lens profiling is available in the form of ACR's
| | 04:04 | Lens Correction panel on the
Filter menu's Lens Corrections filter.
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|
|
4. Image Preparation: Photographic Color vs. Pigment ColorWorking with Vibrance| 00:00 | The color ranges of photographs
and paintings are very different.
| | 00:03 | The signature look of a digital color
photo is due to factors like the light
| | 00:07 | gathering censor, the common color
relationships found in the world,
| | 00:11 | the limitations of RGB-based
color mixtures, and more.
| | 00:15 | Pigment-based paint is not
constrained by these limitations.
| | 00:18 | Consequently, we have very different
perceptions when viewing each of these mediums.
| | 00:23 | The Vibrance filter is a great tool for
juicing up color photography, to move it
| | 00:28 | more towards pigment color prior
to painting. Let's take a look.
| | 00:32 | So here's our scene that we're going to
be working with throughout the title here.
| | 00:36 | We're going to go to the Image menu
and go to Adjustments, and right here is
| | 00:41 | the Vibrance filter.
| | 00:42 | So let's open this up. And just as a
way of showing you what Vibrance does,
| | 00:47 | I'm first going to turn up saturation.
| | 00:49 | Now this isn't a very highly saturated,
and so it's just not necessarily going to
| | 00:52 | blow it out into psychedelic colors,
but you can see what's happening here is
| | 00:57 | all the colors across the board everywhere
are being equally jacked up in their saturation.
| | 01:03 | Now let's go to the Vibrance filter and
I'll crank it all the way up, and you'll
| | 01:07 | see something different is happening here.
| | 01:10 | One of the things that it does is it
increases less saturated colors of an image
| | 01:15 | while preventing over saturation.
| | 01:17 | So it's intelligently applying
saturation to prevent situations where too much
| | 01:23 | saturation is going to occur.
| | 01:25 | The other thing that's very important, and it
isn't very important in this scene,
| | 01:29 | but it can be in portraiture, is that skin
tones are protected to avoid clipping.
| | 01:34 | So basically, colors in the red area
of the color space tend to be handled a
| | 01:39 | little differently, and that way it
avoids skin tones getting all blown out into
| | 01:44 | the very bright red colors.
| | 01:46 | Now the thing about this is this is a
very subjective adjustment, just like a lot
| | 01:51 | of other things we're looking at here.
| | 01:53 | So I can't tell you you
should turn this up to 34.
| | 01:57 | There is no right number.
| | 01:59 | It's precisely based on
what you think looks right.
| | 02:02 | You're going to hear me say this over
and over throughout the title, and that's
| | 02:06 | why this is artistic decisions.
| | 02:08 | These aren't darkroom decisions where
you're trying to do the exact same set of
| | 02:12 | movements in a formulaic-like way.
| | 02:15 | Each one of these is very much based
on your subjective feel about the image.
| | 02:20 | So some people may want an image that
looks very overly saturated, and that's their
| | 02:25 | prerogative, and there's nothing wrong with it.
| | 02:28 | So you may end up wanting to use
Vibrance, and there is nothing with at least
| | 02:32 | seeing what a little more saturation
does, but the basic idea behind this--if
| | 02:36 | we turn Preview off--is you want to get
away from the standard colors that you
| | 02:42 | find in a digital image and move them
more towards the kinds of colors that
| | 02:48 | you're going to find in a painting.
Because pigment paint is not constrained
| | 02:52 | like photographic colors are,
| | 02:55 | you're going to get a much broader and
wider array of bright color within it.
| | 02:59 | So if you can pre-color an image with
things like Vibrance to add a little bit
| | 03:05 | of oomph to the image and do what I
called juice it up, you're moving it away,
| | 03:09 | again, from the language of
photography into the language of painting.
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| Using the Match Color command| 00:00 | Paintings by the masters
demonstrate a sophisticated use of color.
| | 00:04 | Wouldn't it be great to be able to impart
those complex colors into your own photographs?
| | 00:10 | Well, you can, and I am going to show you how.
| | 00:12 | The way this is done is with a
filter called the Match filter.
| | 00:16 | And what I want to show you is how I
can take an image--and the one I am going
| | 00:20 | to use is this image.
| | 00:22 | This is an image that we can distribute
to you, but I want you to think of any
| | 00:26 | artist that you like.
| | 00:27 | You can go out on the web and find
just about any image by any of the masters
| | 00:33 | that you want, or practically anybody.
| | 00:35 | So you've got this world of color imagery
by painters available to you as a resource.
| | 00:43 | So imagine the painting that you
would like to use in place of this one.
| | 00:47 | So we've got this color set in this image that
we like, and let's go back to the other image.
| | 00:53 | This is a photograph that I took,
and what I want to do is apply the colors of
| | 00:58 | this image to this photograph.
| | 01:01 | So we are going to go up to
Image > Adjustments > Match Color.
| | 01:08 | So with the Match Color filter now,
I can go ahead and say, what is my Source?
| | 01:12 | And we have the other photograph
here, green_lily, so we'll go ahead and
| | 01:17 | apply it, and at first it seems not that
great, but we have some controls we can do here.
| | 01:22 | For one thing, the colors are really
blown out, so I am going to turn Luminance
| | 01:26 | down and keep turning it down, so now
I'm not getting blown out color in here.
| | 01:31 | The other thing I can do is I
can play with the Color Intensity.
| | 01:35 | So you can see how now I am charging
these colors up. And again, part of the
| | 01:38 | lesson we are trying to learn here
is this is yet another way to take our
| | 01:43 | photographic colors out of the image and
move them more towards the language of painting.
| | 01:49 | The other thing that really
helps out is to click on Neutralize.
| | 01:53 | You know if you don't like it, you don't
have to use it, but always check it out,
| | 01:56 | because I find it's generally a better result.
| | 01:58 | What it does is it takes colorcasts
out of the imagery. To my eye, it's a
| | 02:03 | much better rendition.
| | 02:05 | So I can continue to play with
things that Luminance a little bit.
| | 02:08 | That's too dark of course. But with
the sliders, as with all other sliders we
| | 02:12 | have been talking about, these are
truly season-to-taste adjustments.
| | 02:16 | It's what your eye thinks is right.
| | 02:18 | There is no single one right answer.
| | 02:21 | But now we've got this image, and I've
got it in a completely different set of
| | 02:25 | colors than it was originally. And if
we go back, there is the original color,
| | 02:29 | and there's what we've changed it into.
| | 02:31 | So something decidedly different from
the kinds of colors that were captured by
| | 02:36 | a digital sensor, as we are seeing here.
| | 02:37 | It's great as a photograph, and it may
very well look nice hanging on a wall
| | 02:42 | exactly like this, but if you're going
to interpret this into the language of
| | 02:47 | painting, you may want to consider ways
to take that photographic color out and
| | 02:53 | give it a more painterly spin.
| | 02:55 | That's what we've done
here with the Match filter.
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| Understanding the traditional paint color swatch set| 00:00 | Besides filtering a photograph with
color from a painted source, another
| | 00:04 | technique, especially in the final
stages of an interpreted photograph, is to
| | 00:08 | apply additional non-photograph-based
color to the painting.
| | 00:12 | To add authenticity to our strokes,
we'll utilize colors associated with the
| | 00:17 | traditional artist's palette.
| | 00:19 | Now, the way I'm going to do this is a
little bit of juggling between a couple
| | 00:24 | of different mediums.
| | 00:25 | What I've got here is a full range
of colors available from a commercial
| | 00:29 | manufacturer of paint,
and it's very easy to find these,
| | 00:33 | especially if you go to web-based art
stores. You'll find this kind of open
| | 00:39 | stock where they show you all the colors
in a particular color range for say an oil
| | 00:44 | set, or acrylics, or
whatever kind of medium you want.
| | 00:47 | It's just a way for you to
preview how the colors look.
| | 00:50 | Let's just jump over to a web page,
and this just shows you basically what
| | 00:55 | you have here is you've got all of
these listings, and you'll notice this
| | 01:00 | won't always happen.
| | 01:01 | It depends on the way they're organized.
| | 01:02 | They just happen to break this up into two
different-sized tubes of paint, so it appears twice.
| | 01:08 | But assuming you keep track of that, as
you do what I'm going to show you here in
| | 01:12 | a little bit, these duplications,
if they appear at all, are not an issue.
| | 01:17 | Now, let's go back, and we have to start
from the point of view of our color swatches.
| | 01:23 | This is the default color
set that you find in Photoshop.
| | 01:28 | What we want to do is we want to go
in here and delete these individual
| | 01:32 | swatches, so we basically end
up with an empty swatch set.
| | 01:36 | If I hold down the Option key on Mac or
the Alt key on Windows, you'll see how
| | 01:41 | it shows a little pair of scissors.
| | 01:43 | Well, that lets me click,
and that deletes that particular swatch.
| | 01:47 | So what I have to do is sit here and
just click this many times. In fact I've
| | 01:52 | done this enough times, I can tell you that
| | 01:54 | you ma, after you empty this all out,
save this as an empty swatch set,
| | 02:00 | so you've now got a swatch set where
you don't have to go through this several
| | 02:04 | hundred clicks to
eliminate all of your swatches.
| | 02:08 | So we're almost done here,
and there we have now an empty swatch set.
| | 02:14 | So we've eliminated all of the swatches
from here, and as I said, one thing that's
| | 02:18 | nice to do is in order to avoid having
to eliminate hundreds of swatches from a
| | 02:23 | set, you may want to save a swatch set.
| | 02:25 | The trick is, you can't save an empty swatch set,
| | 02:28 | so I'm just going to put one swatch in
here with just anything and in doing so,
| | 02:33 | I can go in here and now
I can save these swatches.
| | 02:37 | And I would just save it as empty swatch set.
| | 02:39 | That way, if you're going to do this
more than once, you'll have a very good
| | 02:43 | beginning point without
having to do a lot of editing.
| | 02:46 | But I do want to get rid of this now,
so I'm going to go ahead and get rid of
| | 02:48 | the last one, and now I've
got all of the swatches.
| | 02:51 | And the way I did this, I just used a
screen-capture utility to go in when I was
| | 02:57 | in my web page and just capture, row by
row of these, and then copy and paste
| | 03:03 | them over into Photoshop.
| | 03:05 | So now we're to the point where we're going
to start adding our colors to the swatch set.
| | 03:11 | I'm going to go ahead and
double-click this, so I'm up to 100%.
| | 03:15 | Let's move this over here.
| | 03:17 | You can see I've got these duplications,
but what I want to do is switch to my eyedropper.
| | 03:22 | I'm going to select this color, and now
when I go over here, I can do New Swatch.
| | 03:30 | Now, you can see, I can put a name in
here, and what I want is this name, but this
| | 03:36 | is just a flat graphic, so there
is no way for me to retrieve that.
| | 03:39 | However, if I jump over to our browser and
go up here to the top, I can copy that text.
| | 03:49 | So I've now copied it.
| | 03:50 | I'm going to go back to Photoshop, and I'm
going to paste that name in there and say OK.
| | 03:57 | So I've now added that color to my
swatch set, and it has the traditional
| | 04:02 | name associated with it.
| | 04:03 | Now, you're probably asking, are you
telling me I have to go through and do this
| | 04:08 | for all of these colors?
| | 04:09 | Well, I did it, and yes,
that's how you have to do this.
| | 04:13 | This is somewhat of a manual process.
| | 04:15 | If you want to create a custom swatch
set that has an organized set of colors
| | 04:21 | that you've acquired from something
like an online location where these colors
| | 04:26 | are organized like this, yes, you
will have to go through with it.
| | 04:29 | However, I have given you this swatch set,
as you may remember earlier from the installation.
| | 04:35 | If I go down here and load
this up--we don't want to save--
| | 04:41 | there are our colors.
| | 04:42 | So I've now got all of these oil-based
paint colors loaded in here. And you can
| | 04:48 | look at them a couple of different ways,
like here is our Alizarin Crimson, but
| | 04:52 | I can also view this, if I want to, as a List.
| | 04:55 | So this also gives me a different way,
if I'm more used to looking in terms of
| | 05:00 | names, I can do it this way as well.
| | 05:03 | But this gives you a couple of different
ways to organize the color once you get it.
| | 05:07 | The real benefit of having this set
of colors is that the color difference
| | 05:12 | relationships between all these are
maintained as they would be in the
| | 05:17 | traditional tube-based colors,
and that then gives you a nice source of
| | 05:22 | colors that very much--
| | 05:23 | if I take Permanent Light Green,
and use Cerulean Blue, the difference between
| | 05:29 | those two is going to be the same
digitally as it was in the traditional colors.
| | 05:34 | Therefore, painting with these two
colors in an image will give me the
| | 05:38 | brighter pigment-based colors that once again
move me away from the language of photography.
| | 05:45 | We're not going to use these extensively.
| | 05:46 | You'll see in a later chapter how I
take advantage of these colors and use them
| | 05:51 | in a very limited basis, just to add a
few bright strokes throughout the painting
| | 05:57 | that once again imbue that image
with a greater sense of a traditional
| | 06:01 | painting, as opposed to a photographic-
based source, and that's the goal of this
| | 06:06 | entire course is to make that translation.
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|
|
5. Image Preparation: Tonal ModificationThe eye has a bettor sensor than a camera| 00:00 | While the human eye and
camera have similarities,
| | 00:02 | how each sees the world is vastly different,
| | 00:05 | particularly when it comes to dynamic
range, the tonal differences between the
| | 00:09 | brightest brights and darkest darks.
| | 00:11 | Because of this, you should adjust
a photograph's tonal range prior to
| | 00:15 | interpreting it into a painting.
| | 00:17 | In this video, I'll show you how both
the camera and eye portrays the world and
| | 00:21 | how you can modify a photo to make it
look more like the eye of the artist sees
| | 00:26 | it, a key attribute toward
successful interpretation.
| | 00:30 | Now, the first fact you have to
understand is that a camera is static.
| | 00:34 | It's basically dumb.
| | 00:35 | It can only expose for one condition.
And I'll show you an example what I am
| | 00:40 | talking about here,
and this is an extreme example.
| | 00:43 | Most photographs are not necessary
going to have this much dynamic range from
| | 00:46 | the darks to the lights, but this is a
good example, the interior of a church.
| | 00:51 | In this particular photo the camera was
adjusted to expose for the shadows, so
| | 00:57 | the darkest areas are exposed properly.
| | 00:59 | But what happens is, in exposing properly
for the shadows, the highlights get blown out;
| | 01:05 | they get overexposed.
| | 01:07 | This is the crux of the camera.
| | 01:08 | It can only see one way of exposing at a time.
| | 01:13 | Now let's say we want to
expose for the highlights. Okay.
| | 01:17 | Now the highlights are not blowing out,
but look what happens to all the shadows;
| | 01:21 | now its way to dark, and this is the
limitation of the camera in that it can
| | 01:26 | only see one exposure at a time.
| | 01:30 | The human eye, on the other hand,
is dynamic. a=As we move around and look at a scene,
| | 01:35 | our iris and our eye is
constantly adapting and adjusting,
| | 01:39 | so we don't perceive the
world as a single exposure.
| | 01:43 | We have a constantly changing
exposure and as a result, the way we see the
| | 01:48 | world is more like this.
| | 01:50 | We adjust for the brightest highlights.
| | 01:52 | We adjust for the shadows. And it's
not that we're going to stand in one spot
| | 01:56 | and look at this as an overall image,
but as we scan the image and look
| | 02:01 | through it, that constantly changing exposure
is what allows the eye to see it seen like this.
| | 02:08 | And that's what happens when
an artist is painting a scene,
| | 02:12 | they are going to be looking at
each part of this scene with the proper
| | 02:16 | exposure for that part of the scene.
And as they aggregate that image into the
| | 02:21 | media of painting, well, you're going
to get a properly exposed image for both
| | 02:26 | shadows and highlights.
| | 02:28 | So this is a big difference between the
language of photography, as we see in the
| | 02:33 | two left images where only one of
exposure is possible with the camera as
| | 02:39 | basically a dumb machine that doesn't
understand the differences in those values
| | 02:45 | and the human eye on the right, where we
are constantly adapting and changing and
| | 02:50 | as a result we see a scene
interpret it much different, and it's this key
| | 02:55 | difference in the way exposure happens
that is a major difference between the
| | 03:01 | language of photography
and the language of painting.
| | 03:04 | In the rest of the videos, I'm going to
be showing you some different techniques
| | 03:07 | you can do to get an image more into the
proper range for painting as opposed to
| | 03:14 | its photographic source.
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| Using the Shadow/Highlight filter| 00:00 | Because the camera's sensor is
imperfect, it can only succeed at capturing
| | 00:03 | either the highlights or
the shadows, but not both.
| | 00:07 | Our goal is to restore, as best
we can, whatever detail we can.
| | 00:12 | In this video, we'll take a look
at the Shadows/Highlights Filter.
| | 00:15 | Now, I'm using the image that we're going to
be going through with the rest of this title.
| | 00:20 | This doesn't have the extreme kind of
highlight-shadow issue that we looked at
| | 00:25 | earlier with the interior of the church,
| | 00:27 | but it still will benefit from moving
that away from the kind of exposure that
| | 00:33 | the camera naturally is going to give it.
| | 00:36 | This is a good overall exposure,
but we still want to move it away a bit,
| | 00:40 | and again the goal here is to transition
from the language of photography to the
| | 00:46 | language of painting.
| | 00:47 | So in the language of painting,
exposure is going to be much more even
| | 00:51 | throughout, because of the way the human
eye looks around at the image and builds
| | 00:55 | it up over all of these varying
parts of the image that it puts together.
| | 01:00 | So let's go to the Highlights/Shadow
filter, and it's in Image > Adjustments,
| | 01:05 | right down here, Shadows and Highlights.
| | 01:07 | What I'm going to do here then is play
around with both the Shadow and Highlight amounts.
| | 01:13 | As I've been saying all through the
title, there is no one correct answer.
| | 01:18 | It's not like I can give you a pair of
numbers here that are going to be the
| | 01:21 | right way to do this.
| | 01:22 | It's going to be up to your eye,
and that once again gets back to the artist's
| | 01:26 | eye, rather than the
camera's cold machine eye.
| | 01:29 | So let's just punch up the Shadow
slider, and you can see what's happening is
| | 01:32 | it's taking the darks out of the shadows.
| | 01:35 | If we look particularly like in this
area here where these trees are, as I
| | 01:39 | turn that up, you'll see that I can start to
see more of the detail of the bark of the tree.
| | 01:45 | So I'm going to turn that
up so that I can see that.
| | 01:47 | Now, let's go to the Highlights,
and this is going to start to take the highlights down.
| | 01:52 | Now, in looking at this image, it may
look a bit odd to our eye, but let's turn
| | 01:57 | the preview on and off.
| | 01:59 | See what's happening?
| | 02:00 | There is a broader dynamic range in the
initial image, but once we utilize the
| | 02:04 | Shadows and Highlights adjustments,
you can see how we can start to compress
| | 02:08 | all that dynamic range.
| | 02:10 | This is taking it away from that
photographic language and bringing it more into
| | 02:14 | the realm of painting,
and that's exactly what we want to do.
| | 02:18 | It's really kind of up to you to
see where you want to adjust these.
| | 02:21 | Some people will go to a very extreme
like image where this does start to have a
| | 02:27 | bit of a funny look to it.
| | 02:28 | But again, if that's the vision you
have for your painting, then that's the
| | 02:32 | right setting for you.
| | 02:33 | I'm not going to sit here and
tell you what is a correct setting.
| | 02:37 | For my eyes, something around in there,
and I always like to kind of A-B it with
| | 02:41 | the original to see what's happening.
| | 02:44 | So something in that realm is what I
like, and so now I've got a nice starting
| | 02:48 | point from which I'm going to begin to
paint the image with the colors already
| | 02:53 | in a form that is amenable to a painting.
| | 02:57 | A shadow/highlight adjustment may
appear odd to our eyes, but remember, that we
| | 03:02 | see this the way as our gaze continuously
changes and adapts while we survey an entire image.
| | 03:08 | The artist typically uses these
localized adjustments in determining the tonal
| | 03:13 | values that make up a total painting.
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| Using the HDR Toning filter| 00:00 | While the Shadow and Highlight
adjustment filter does a good job at reining in
| | 00:04 | a photos tonal range, the HDR Toning filter
does this plus sharpens the image at the same time.
| | 00:11 | We'll eventually remove much of the
fine detail in next chapter, but I am a big
| | 00:16 | proponent of initially getting as
much out of an image is possible.
| | 00:20 | My rule is, the higher the
starting quality the better the result.
| | 00:24 | Now let's examine the HDR Toning filter.
| | 00:27 | First off, HDR stands for high dynamic range.
| | 00:31 | True HDR utilizes multiple exposed
images and then stacks them and does some
| | 00:37 | blending tricks to get the most exposure
out of those various exposures that are
| | 00:43 | applied in the HDR process.
| | 00:46 | The HDR Toning filter, on the other hand,
performs on HDR-type operations, but it
| | 00:51 | does it on a single image.
| | 00:53 | So it just makes it a little simpler to do.
| | 00:55 | You won't get exactly the same quality
you can get from true HDR, but it's a
| | 01:00 | big step towards being able to push an
image to get the most dynamic range out of it.
| | 01:06 | Let go ahead and get our image to work with.
| | 01:09 | So I'm going to go to my exercise
files and go to chapter5, and we're going to
| | 01:14 | work with the corrected photo.
| | 01:15 | This is the photo that we
applied our dynamic range to earlier.
| | 01:20 | We used the Free Transform tool to get
all of the distortion in the buildings
| | 01:26 | out, so we have true vertical and horizontal
the way we wanted to visualize for our painting.
| | 01:31 | Let's go ahead and open the HDR Toning filter,
and we go to Image > Adjustments > HDR Toning.
| | 01:38 | Now, what will happen initially here is
it's going to apply what it thinks is a
| | 01:43 | good starting point, but you
can generally improve on this.
| | 01:47 | The way I normally do this, I start
basically by playing with the Detail
| | 01:52 | slider first. And I'll push it more
than I normally would here, because I want
| | 01:56 | you to see what it does.
| | 01:58 | See how it's actually attenuating the
contrast at local levels within the image.
| | 02:04 | It can almost go too far.
| | 02:06 | So the trick is to find a point of
balance that works for your image.
| | 02:10 | Once you start to turn this up, the next
thing I play with is the Radius slider.,
| | 02:15 | A0nd again I'm going turn it way up here
because I want you to see what happens.
| | 02:19 | You can see how as you turn it up,
it starts to become less apparent what's
| | 02:23 | happening with respect to the Detail slider.
| | 02:27 | Without going into huge detail about
what all of the sliders mean, the best
| | 02:31 | advice I can tell you is it's really
a matter of just kind of playing with
| | 02:34 | them, and somewhat in the order I'm telling
you here, and you can arrive a good results.
| | 02:39 | You don't have to be very precise
to understand exactly what's going on
| | 02:42 | underneath the hood here, as much as you see
visually what's happening within your image.
| | 02:47 | So after I get Detail and Radius set up
the way I want it, I like to go down to
| | 02:53 | Highlight, and I'm going to
crank it down probably too much.
| | 02:57 | What I like to watch for is what is a true
highlight in the image. And the hood of this car,
| | 03:02 | when Highlight is turned to
0, it's kind of blown out.
| | 03:07 | So I'm going to start turning it down at small
levels until I start to see it go into a gray.
| | 03:13 | It's starting to do it there,
| | 03:14 | so I'm going to go back. And it's just
a little tweaking process where you get
| | 03:20 | what you feel is an acceptable
highlight without it appearing to blow out
| | 03:24 | several levels towards the
highlight end of your scale.
| | 03:28 | So I'll find it right in there.
| | 03:30 | You can also use the Shadow slider, and you
can see here I have taken it all way up to 100%.
| | 03:35 | If you look right here where the
mailbox is, if we take that back down to 0,
| | 03:40 | you see how things are getting very dark?
| | 03:43 | So I might want to open the shadows up a
bit, but it doesn't have to be a whole lot.
| | 03:48 | The other thing that happens here is,
by default, the Saturation slider is set to
| | 03:54 | +20%, which you may or may not want.
| | 03:57 | Sometimes I don't think about it and
realize after the fact my image looks
| | 04:01 | kind of oversaturated. Why is that?
| | 04:04 | It's because this automatically is set
to 20%, and just depending on what you're
| | 04:08 | looking for--now I'm cranking it up here--
| | 04:10 | I can play around with it.
| | 04:12 | On the other hand, if I take it down to
down 0 or near 0 I have a Vibrance folder.
| | 04:17 | We've already applied Vibrance,
but it doesn't hurt to kind of punch these
| | 04:21 | colors up as you go along
through these processes.
| | 04:24 | So this Color area of the HDR Toning
actually gives us a chance to hit the color
| | 04:30 | of our image with a second
blast of Vibrance and/or Saturation.
| | 04:35 | So this is just another stop where you
can decide how you want to play with the
| | 04:40 | colors within this image
prior to the painting process.
| | 04:43 | If we go up and toggle Preview on and
off, you can see there is quite a change
| | 04:49 | from what the photo was to where it is now.
| | 04:53 | What we're doing here is we are moving
it away from that photographic space
| | 04:57 | so that before the paintbrush even
touches the image, we've already done a lot to
| | 05:03 | get this image into a painterly head start.
| | 05:07 | So I'm going to go ahead and say OK,
and now I have what will become the
| | 05:12 | basis for my image.
| | 05:13 | In the next chapter, we'll talk about how to
simplify what's going on in this image a bit.
| | 05:19 | Then we'll be ready to start
applying our paintbrush to this image.
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| Understanding how RAW files provide malleability| 00:00 | Raw camera files are the
equivalent of digital negatives.
| | 00:04 | A raw file represents the unmodified
data captured by a camera's sensor.
| | 00:09 | In contrast, a JPEG or TIFF file
downloaded from a digital camera has
| | 00:13 | already been processed.
| | 00:15 | This limits the degree of latitude you
have making further adjustments to the file.
| | 00:20 | Not all cameras offer the
option of raw file output,
| | 00:23 | but if your camera does, then you can take
significant advantage of this digital negative.
| | 00:28 | In this video, we'll take a look at
Adobe Camera Raw, also known as ACR.
| | 00:32 | This is the raw processing
module that comes with Photoshop.
| | 00:36 | So let's go to our exercise files,
and let's go to chapter5, and you'll find in
| | 00:41 | here the mansion.CR2.
| | 00:43 | CR2 just happens to be the extension
for Canon raw files. Depending on the model,
| | 00:48 | your camera you may have a different extension.
| | 00:50 | But it's just a way of identifying raw files.
| | 00:52 | So let's double-click on this.
| | 00:54 | This takes us into Adobe Camera Raw,
or ACR, and basically it gives us a set of
| | 01:00 | controls that we can adjust this image.
| | 01:03 | Now the difference between this and
what happens when you would already have
| | 01:07 | this file just in Photoshop itself is
that a file you're going to work on in
| | 01:11 | Photoshop is generally a 24-bit file.
| | 01:14 | That's 8-bits of color per channel.
| | 01:16 | When you're working with a raw file,
you're working with unmodified data
| | 01:21 | from the camera, and it has
much more headroom in it.
| | 01:24 | Generally, there's about 12
bits of information in it.
| | 01:27 | So it's got a lot more headroom in it to
make adjustments without causing visual
| | 01:32 | artifacts to occur within the image,
and that's one of the primary benefits of
| | 01:38 | working with this unmodified data.
| | 01:40 | Now before we go actually into
modifying the data, I want to point this out that
| | 01:45 | another key part of what you can benefit
from Adobe Camera Raw is right here,
| | 01:51 | and this is the Lens Correction filter.
| | 01:53 | We talked about this in another movie,
but I just want to bring up it again.
| | 01:56 | If at all possible, have this enabled,
because you can see here, if I turn the
| | 02:00 | preview on and off now, that it's made
a nice adjustment for the optics of the
| | 02:05 | particular lens I was using.
| | 02:07 | So this is another benefit of Camera
Raw, and I just want to point out so you
| | 02:10 | can see how wide ranging this module
alone can be to working with a raw file
| | 02:16 | versus a processed file.
| | 02:18 | Now let's go back to the first tab,
which is the basic tab, and I generally work
| | 02:23 | more or less from top to bottom the
way these are organized, and right now I'm
| | 02:27 | not going to touch Exposure yet,
although it may go back to it.
| | 02:31 | Recovery and Fill Light are generally the
two sliders I like to initially work with.
| | 02:36 | The Recovery slider recovers highlights,
| | 02:39 | so it's going to start to tone
down your image a little bit.
| | 02:42 | The Fill Light, on the other hand,
starts to open up your shadows.
| | 02:45 | And as I've been saying, there's
really no correct setting for this.
| | 02:50 | Once I start playing with these,
however, I may see, okay, the Exposure slider
| | 02:55 | may help out a little here.
| | 02:56 | So I'm going to turn this down, and you want
a constantly kind of check your previewing.
| | 03:02 | Now one little shortcut you can use is
rather than going up here and clicking on this,
| | 03:06 | if you just press the P key, it's a nice
way to toggle between preview and non-preview.
| | 03:12 | So it lets me make adjustments and
quickly get a preview of what those
| | 03:18 | adjustments are doing.
| | 03:21 | You can see how that's starting to look
much more, as we've been talking about,
| | 03:25 | I'm getting rid of that wide dynamic
range where only certain parts of the image
| | 03:30 | are properly exposed.
| | 03:31 | Now the overall image is
starting to be properly exposed.
| | 03:35 | So you can go on and get into a lot of
other controls here, but I find for the
| | 03:40 | most part, just the top three, Exposure,
Recovery, and Fill Light, do the job for
| | 03:46 | me, and this is where you really going
to get that change from the language of
| | 03:51 | photography into the language of painting.
| | 03:54 | So ACR in conjunction with raw files
offers the greatest tonal adjustment
| | 03:59 | latitude and the highest quality results.
| | 04:02 | If you have the capability and are
willing to shoot in raw format, you owe it to
| | 04:07 | yourself to master this powerful tool.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
6. Image Preparation: Detail SimplificationWorking with the Reduce Noise filter| 00:00 | A photograph's detail can be thought of
as being made up of a range of frequencies.
| | 00:04 | Low frequencies represent areas of
minimal change, like the sky or flat surfaces.
| | 00:10 | High frequencies represent areas of
high detail, like textures and grain.
| | 00:16 | The goal of simplification is to remove
the high frequencies of a photo while
| | 00:21 | maintaining the high-contrast edges.
| | 00:24 | In this video, we will take a look at
the Reduce Noise filter's capacity for
| | 00:28 | removing these high frequencies.
| | 00:30 | Let's begin by going to the exercise files,
and in chapter06 you'll find the toned_photo.
| | 00:37 | So let's go ahead and open up our
Reduce Noise filter, which you'll find in the
| | 00:44 | Filter > Noise > Reduce Noise right here.
| | 00:48 | And depending on how you have used
this, or if you've never used it before, it
| | 00:53 | may have some different settings on it,
| | 00:54 | so I am just going to artificially
kind of move these up to a setting that's
| | 00:59 | more likely to be there.
| | 01:00 | The thing I want to get across to you
is that you don't need these bottom three
| | 01:05 | settings at all, so you
can turn these all down to 0.
| | 01:08 | And the other thing we are going to
want to do is crank this all the way up to
| | 01:12 | 10 initially, and take a look
at what's happening in the image.
| | 01:16 | And you can see, that it is removing the
noise level quite a bit, and it's smart
| | 01:22 | enough to leave a lot of the
snowfall that's present in the image.
| | 01:27 | I might play around with
reducing this a bit, to see just subtly
| | 01:33 | what's happening here.
| | 01:35 | It's nice that it still maintains the
verbage in the signs. I crank it all
| | 01:40 | the way up, and it's still there.
| | 01:42 | It's really pretty subtle what's happening here.
| | 01:44 | I may go to a level 8 and go ahead and
say OK, and we want to be sure to look
| | 01:49 | at this at 100% so we're
seeing what's happening.
| | 01:53 | And I am going to look right here in
kind of the major subject area,
| | 01:57 | the intersection. And by using Command+Z or
Ctrl+Z to undo, I can get a quick before
| | 02:04 | and after, and it's doing
a very good job actually.
| | 02:08 | The other thing you can do is if use
Command+F or Ctrl+F, you can reapply this,
| | 02:12 | multiple times if you want.
| | 02:14 | But each time you do it, you are going
to add further to the simplification.
| | 02:18 | And if we jump back in history here,
you can see what's happening.
| | 02:23 | So applying multiple times is a way
to extend the use of this technique.
| | 02:28 | You may get it where it's too
simplified and in this case, I would say it is.
| | 02:34 | But the Reduce Noise filter is definitely a
way to simplify an image prior to underpainting.
| | 02:42 | In the next videos, I'll show you
alternate technique for removing
| | 02:46 | high-frequency information from an image.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with the Surface Blur filter| 00:00 | The Reduce Noise filter which we
looked at in the last video performs a basic
| | 00:04 | job of removing high-frequency detail.
| | 00:07 | Let's take it up a notch now and
look at this Surface Blur filter.
| | 00:10 | This filter uses a sophisticated
algorithm that blurs an image while
| | 00:14 | preserving its edges.
| | 00:16 | And remember from the last movie,
that is something we want to do.
| | 00:19 | We want to take areas of very little
noise--and a good sample would be like an
| | 00:24 | area here in the foreground--
and we want to smooth it out.
| | 00:28 | But areas of high detail, on the other
hand, the edges of the cars for example,
| | 00:34 | or the edges of the trees, we want
those to maintain their sharp edges, and
| | 00:39 | Surface Blur is particularly adept at that.
| | 00:41 | So let's go down to Blur > Surface
Blur, and we'll take a look at this.
| | 00:47 | Now I'm going to just start off with the
same settings I had in the last filter.
| | 00:52 | Radius and Threshold tend to be the two
controls for all of these, and it turns
| | 00:57 | out if you've found a setting you like
in one, you can almost always take those
| | 01:01 | same settings in another Radius and
Threshold pairing of controls and they will
| | 01:08 | work equally well, or at least
it gives you a starting point,
| | 01:11 | so if you want to make adjustments after
that, you can, but this looks pretty good.
| | 01:15 | Maybe I'll play with the Radius
a little bit here just to see.
| | 01:19 | So you can see, as I turn this up,
it tends to simplify things more.
| | 01:23 | For example, if we look up here at this
building, there is a lot of still noise
| | 01:28 | in the side of that building
whereas when I turn it up,
| | 01:31 | I start to see that go away, but sharp
edges are maintained. And I like that look,
| | 01:37 | so I'm going to go ahead and say OK,
and there is a very nice rendition of that.
| | 01:42 | Now you can see down here, that noise was
strong enough that the Threshold wasn't
| | 01:48 | high enough to overcome it.
That's why we still see that there.
| | 01:51 | The higher you set the Threshold the farther
into the size of the noise is going to look,
| | 01:57 | so a higher setting would also smooth
this out, but that's a nice look. And each
| | 02:03 | one of these is seasoned to taste.
| | 02:05 | You do what looks right to your eye.
| | 02:07 | There is no single setting at all.
| | 02:10 | So now that I've done this,
this becomes the basis for a underpainting.
| | 02:14 | You want your underpainting to be a
simplified version of the original image,
| | 02:19 | and you are going to simplify it a great
deal more through the brushing process.
| | 02:24 | But prior to doing that, by taking this
first stab at removing detail, you're
| | 02:30 | already investing in making this image
look less like a photograph and more like
| | 02:35 | a painting, because you are getting rid
of the language of photography in this,
| | 02:40 | which is the high-frequency detail.
| | 02:43 | This is a very good tool.
All of these tools actually are good at this.
| | 02:46 | It just that's the crux of what we are
doing this for is to prep this in advance
| | 02:52 | of painting, which will even be
simplified more. But to go to this step provides
| | 02:58 | a way to mask a lot of that
photographic vocabulary before you even apply the
| | 03:04 | brush to your painting.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using Smart Blur for simplification| 00:00 | In the previous videos, we have
looked at a couple of different filters
| | 00:02 | for removing noise.
| | 00:04 | In this one, we are going to take a
look at the Smart Blur filter. And in
| | 00:07 | these chapters, I'm intentionally going up
the degree of sophistication as we move forward,
| | 00:13 | so now we are getting to a little
bit better filter than we saw before.
| | 00:17 | Each one exerts a little bit more
specific control over the reduction of noise
| | 00:23 | within an image while
maintaining the edges of contrasted areas.
| | 00:28 | So once again let's go and open up
our image in chapter06, and we definitely
| | 00:35 | want to move this into 100%,
so we can see all the detail.
| | 00:40 | This kind of manipulation is
something you would want to see at 100%.
| | 00:44 | If you watch it at reduced magnification,
you won't get a true sense of what's happening.
| | 00:48 | So let's go up to the Filter
menu and go to Blur > Smart Blur.
| | 00:55 | Now the Smart Blur filter does not
have a preview on the actual image.
| | 00:59 | We have to see what's happening
within the window of the filter itself.
| | 01:04 | As I have done before, the settings
that we had earlier in our filters that
| | 01:09 | we've looked at work pretty well.
| | 01:12 | So I am going to go around 5 and 25
right here, and you can already see this
| | 01:20 | does a really interesting job.
| | 01:22 | I particularly like the way
this filter maintains edges.
| | 01:26 | Let's also talk a little about Quality.
| | 01:28 | You have three settings.
| | 01:30 | I don't see that much difference in them,
but High sounds good because you want
| | 01:34 | to get the highest quality,
| | 01:35 | so I always set it on High.
| | 01:37 | I don't know if it's always worth it,
but you might as well take advantage of
| | 01:41 | the fact that a little bit more heavy
computation is being done on the image
| | 01:46 | when you choose High over Low frequency.
| | 01:49 | The biggest difference actually
is in the amount of time it takes.
| | 01:52 | So here's our image, and I will just
move it a little bit so we can see how it's
| | 01:56 | applied this filter.
| | 01:57 | It's done a very nice job of
maintaining crisp edges on all of the contrasting
| | 02:04 | areas, and yet it's really
simplified the non-sharp areas.
| | 02:09 | So it's very good at removing
high-frequency detail and yet maintaining all
| | 02:14 | of the edges within.
| | 02:17 | I can't tell you which one of these
filters is the best one, because every image
| | 02:21 | has its own set of frequencies that
you're going to be removing, and you just
| | 02:26 | don't know which one is going to work.
| | 02:28 | So the best thing you can do is
experiment with these different filters to
| | 02:32 | see which one works best with a particular
image that you are in the process of translating.
| | 02:39 | Now, we are going to go up yet another
notch in the next video and take a look at
| | 02:42 | a third-party filter, which is
probably the pinnacle of being able to do
| | 02:47 | simplification on photographic images.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with the Topaz Simplify plug-in| 00:00 | As we've seen, Photoshop has
several filters capable of removing
| | 00:03 | high-frequency detail from a
photograph, and as usual, there are third-party
| | 00:08 | filters out there that fill perceived
holes in Photoshop's capabilities with
| | 00:13 | add-on plug-in filters.
| | 00:15 | One such filter in this case
is Topaz Labs Simplify 3 filter.
| | 00:20 | This filter has several bells and
whistles that enable a wider range of results.
| | 00:25 | In this video, we'll take a look at
Simplify. And per our other videos, let's go
| | 00:31 | to chapter6 and open up our toned_photo.
| | 00:36 | I'll go to Full Screen mode.
| | 00:38 | We want to look at this at 100%.
| | 00:39 | I've put it in our primary subject
area here. And now we'll go to our Filter
| | 00:46 | menu and go down to Topaz Labs Simplify 3.
| | 00:52 | I would like to point out that if
you're interested in this filter, you can
| | 00:55 | download a 30-day free trial.
| | 00:58 | It doesn't leave any watermarks or
anything, so you have 30 days to really
| | 01:02 | exercise this file and see if you like it.
| | 01:04 | And it's only I believe somewhere
under $40 if you do choose to buy it.
| | 01:09 | So if you think this is a filter you
like, I can recommend it as a very good
| | 01:14 | companion to Photoshop.
| | 01:16 | Now once again, as we've done before,
we're going to go to 100% so we can see
| | 01:21 | exactly how this filter is working.
And I'm just going to start off by showing
| | 01:26 | you a few presets that they have.
| | 01:28 | This is where this really shines.
| | 01:30 | There are a pretty wide set of controls
in here that we're not going to get into
| | 01:35 | nearly the sophistication of what this
can totally do. But just by showing you a
| | 01:40 | few of these presets, you can start to
see that you can get many, many different
| | 01:45 | kinds of results out of this particular filter.
| | 01:50 | Some people actually use the
filter as an end result unto itself.
| | 01:55 | I like to think that I can take it
further than what the filter alone can do, so
| | 02:00 | for me it's just a very nice filter effect.
| | 02:03 | Now what I like to do is just reset
everything, so we're now down to basic controls.
| | 02:09 | Really all you need to deal with is
the Simplify Size slider, and I'll just
| | 02:15 | turn that up a bit.
| | 02:17 | It's pretty sensitive, so you
don't want to crank it up too much;
| | 02:20 | if you do, you're going to
get very simplified imagery.
| | 02:23 | But you can see how this really goes
a long way towards simplifying and yet
| | 02:27 | maintaining all of that edge
detail that's in the image.
| | 02:31 | The other slider that is very
useful is the Details Strength.
| | 02:35 | You can see where we've lost the lights
in the trees, and I can bring those back
| | 02:40 | and yet it still maintain the general
character of the Simplify Size setting.
| | 02:46 | So this filter really does quite a bit.
| | 02:50 | I find it to be a very interesting
filter to experiment with, as well as use as
| | 02:54 | the primary way I like to get
my images prepped prior to painting.
| | 02:59 | Let's go ahead and say OK, and because
this is a sophisticated filter, there is
| | 03:03 | a lot of processing going on underneath
the hood, so you'll find that depending
| | 03:07 | on the size of your filter, these are
going to take a little longer to process,
| | 03:10 | but it's well worth it for
the results that you get.
| | 03:14 | So here's our finished image. And once
again, the character is different than
| | 03:18 | we've seen in the other filters, but it
gives you a really good idea of what you
| | 03:23 | can get in terms of the "ultimate,"
so to speak, in image simplification.
| | 03:29 | Now I'm going to go ahead and close
this, and if we go back to chapter6, I've
| | 03:35 | put in here a file called Simplify
Compare. Let's open this up. And I'm going
| | 03:39 | to go to Full Screen mode at 100% and let's
get rid of the interface, so we can see this.
| | 03:45 | And basically this gives you a nice
comparison, so you can just see side by side
| | 03:52 | what each of the filters that we've
looked at do. So here's our original, and we
| | 03:56 | can't look at this all on screen at once,
| | 03:58 | So I'm just going to scroll.
Reduce Noise, as we said earlier, is a
| | 04:02 | nice beginner filter.
| | 04:03 | The one thing that I will criticize
it for is it tends to soften everything up,
| | 04:08 | so the crisp edges get lost to a degree,
and there's an overall kind of softness
| | 04:13 | to the image, but not bad for a built-in filter.
| | 04:17 | Next we go to a Surface Blur, and it's
very good at maintaining crisp edges on
| | 04:22 | high-contrast areas, but it also tends
to almost give what I call kind of an
| | 04:27 | underwater effect to the
reduction of noise in the image.
| | 04:32 | Next, we looked at Smart Blur,
and Smart Blur starts to have a good combination
| | 04:37 | of both reducing high-frequency
detail, as well as maintaining edges.
| | 04:41 | So moving up in the quality ladder,
you can see this definitely does a better
| | 04:45 | job, at least in this image.
| | 04:47 | Once again, I will emphasize, every
image is different, and you may find one of
| | 04:51 | these techniques works better on a
different image than it does on this image,
| | 04:55 | so you can't give it an overarching
quantitative pronouncement that this is the best filter.
| | 05:01 | And then finally, we have Topaz
Simplify 3. And in looking at this, I probably
| | 05:06 | under-simplified just a hair, but it does
show how a live detail can stay in the
| | 05:11 | image and yet can be very effective at
removing the highest frequency detail in
| | 05:17 | this particular case.
| | 05:18 | And as we saw, it has the most
wide-ranging control over all of the filters that
| | 05:24 | we've seen, but you pay for it,
because it is a third-party filter.
| | 05:27 | So Topaz Simplify is really adept at a
wide range of simplified looks, so much
| | 05:34 | so that it is capable of
producing finished artwork on its own.
| | 05:38 | For our purposes don't be seduced
by these looks and go overboard.
| | 05:42 | All of the simplification methods
we've looked at, when well applied, will
| | 05:47 | produce an attractive painterly effect.
| | 05:49 | You don't want to simplify detail so
much, however, that there is little to
| | 05:53 | focus on.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
7. Non-Destructive Layer PaintingNDLP: A creative safety net| 00:00 | If you were a high-wire tightrope artist,
you'd prefer a safety net, wouldn't you?
| | 00:04 | I know I would.
| | 00:05 | Likewise, when interpreting a
photograph into a painting, a safety net can
| | 00:09 | provide the ability to back out of
undesirable results, as well as embolden you
| | 00:14 | to experiment and try out
ideas you'd otherwise avoid.
| | 00:17 | In this video, we will take a look at
my solution for a creative safety net
| | 00:21 | while interpreting photos into painting.
| | 00:24 | I call it non-destructive layer painting.
| | 00:26 | The holiday scene that we are using
for this project could have been painted
| | 00:30 | directly on the digital canvas
using only the trusty undue, or
| | 00:34 | alternatively, regular file saving to
provide any means of backing out of an
| | 00:39 | undesirable result.
| | 00:40 | Instead, I employed non-destructive
layer painting which enables me to build up
| | 00:46 | a painting in layers.
| | 00:47 | This technique not only acts as a
safety net, it lets you build up a painting
| | 00:52 | in organized layers.
| | 00:53 | If you need to make a correction
later on, for example, you can go to the
| | 00:57 | layer that isolates the desired
change, and edit only the specific area
| | 01:01 | requiring modification.
| | 01:03 | Here is a look at how I isolated
the various stages of this painting.
| | 01:06 | Now I am going to go through these and
just show you the buildup and remember
| | 01:11 | that each one of these I am going to
show you is an individual layer where the
| | 01:15 | activity took place on.
| | 01:17 | So I have the original source
photograph. That's always available to me, and
| | 01:22 | we'll see in more detail in the
next video exactly how this works.
| | 01:26 | The first layer I work with
is the underpainting layer.
| | 01:30 | So now I'm creating the simplified
underpainting upon which more detail is
| | 01:37 | going to be added at a later stage, and you'll
notice that I actually took out some elements.
| | 01:44 | The trees, for example, would have been
very difficult to try to keep in the scene.
| | 01:48 | So I literally edited them out in the
underpainting scene and then used an
| | 01:53 | additional layer to bring back that
detail, and by keeping those on those
| | 01:58 | separate layers, it lets me
experiment, for example, with the look of the
| | 02:02 | trees because I'm not painting right on the
same base that the underpainting exists on.
| | 02:09 | Next, I did the tree lighting.
| | 02:11 | I wanted to experiment with it.
| | 02:13 | So once again, an additional layer gave
me the wherewithal to try that out two
| | 02:18 | or three different ways until I
recognized the one that that's how I want it to look,
| | 02:23 | and then that became the
layer that stayed part of the painting.
| | 02:26 | Next and this is a big part of the
interpretation process, and that is adding
| | 02:32 | all the indication,
indicating detail within the painting.
| | 02:36 | So a lot of time was spent here and
this is where you are starting to bring up
| | 02:40 | the individual character of the image,
starting to isolate the subject matter
| | 02:45 | and add to it in a way that the observer's
eye wants to go in and look at that detail.
| | 02:51 | Next I started adding elements
that weren't even in the photo.
| | 02:54 | I added passersby, pedestrians
crossing the street, that weren't even in the
| | 02:58 | original photograph. So in this case,
I'm adding a storytelling element that
| | 03:03 | wasn't present in the original image.
| | 03:05 | Then I get into the final refinements.
| | 03:07 | This is where it's just a final
layer that adds a little bit of extra
| | 03:11 | character to the image.
| | 03:12 | Now if I turn it on and off,
you can see for the most part
| | 03:16 | it's the look of snow in the sky coming
down, as well as I added some highlights
| | 03:23 | on the windshields of the cars, played
a little bit with the signage on the
| | 03:28 | lamp posts, but these are just the small
things that you start to notice towards
| | 03:33 | the end that are going
to help enhance the image.
| | 03:35 | So we really are kind of narrowing
down into the end of the image process to
| | 03:40 | where it's almost finished.
| | 03:41 | Then finally, I add a physical texture layer.
| | 03:45 | It's the appearance of what it
would look like if this was a photograph
| | 03:50 | painting, and we are not seen it too
much here, and once again we are going to
| | 03:53 | go out in more detail about this in a
later video, but that is yet another step
| | 03:59 | that ends up giving me the entire painting.
| | 04:01 | So if we looked on the left, you can
see there is a stack of several individual
| | 04:05 | layers that make up this entire painting.
| | 04:08 | And as long as those layers are
isolated the way they are, I can always go
| | 04:13 | back and change things.
| | 04:15 | Just a simple example
would be the tree lighting.
| | 04:18 | I might want to go back to that layer
and play around with its intensity or the
| | 04:23 | hue of the color, to mix those up.
| | 04:25 | There's kind of a warm glow to
those white lights in the trees.
| | 04:29 | I may decide I want to change that, or
I can even go back and mask that layer
| | 04:34 | and go in and paint individual colored lights.
| | 04:37 | So having all these elements in these
layers is a great way to build up a very
| | 04:43 | complex scene and yet have a very
diverse editing environment where you can go
| | 04:49 | back and play with these isolated
layers to adjust them the way you want.
| | 04:54 | In the next couple of movies, we will
take a look at the individual components
| | 04:57 | in my suite of cloning layer actions.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using custom actions| 00:00 | In the last movie I introduced you to my
non-destructive layer painting concept.
| | 00:04 | In this video I am going to drill down
a little bit and show you exactly the
| | 00:08 | mechanics of how all this works so
that you can apply them to your own
| | 00:12 | images in the future as well as to the
project file that we are going to be working with.
| | 00:16 | So I've got my image open here and
this is found in the exercise files
| | 00:21 | folder for Chapter 7.
| | 00:23 | If I go to the Actions button here and
open this up, this will open the current
| | 00:28 | actions I have installed.
| | 00:30 | Now, we installed this earlier and if
you haven't at this point, you can go
| | 00:34 | back to the Introduction chapter and
check out how to install my actions as
| | 00:39 | well as the brushes and the other content that
we are using within Photoshop for this course.
| | 00:44 | Default Actions is a set of
actions that's always there.
| | 00:48 | I typically don't use them.
| | 00:49 | In fact, sometimes I remove them
just to clear up the clutter, but I'll
| | 00:53 | leave them in there for now, because some
people do like to have different action sets.
| | 00:57 | What I want to show you though is I did
create this so that you could use what's
| | 01:00 | called a button mode, and because those
other actions are in there we get this
| | 01:04 | pretty big list, but since I am at the
bottom here I can just kind of edit this
| | 01:08 | down a bit, so that I only see my actions.
| | 01:12 | And if you remove any other actions,
this is basically what you'll see here, but
| | 01:15 | it just makes it a little cleaner
for selecting the various actions.
| | 01:19 | The first one we are going to look
at is John's Cloning Layer Action.
| | 01:23 | This is really the heart of how this
whole process works that I've come up with.
| | 01:28 | And the first thing you're going to
want to do when you're going to go through
| | 01:31 | the process of translating a
photograph into a painting is you're going to
| | 01:35 | want to run this action.
| | 01:37 | So let's go ahead and do
that and see what happens.
| | 01:39 | Let's click on it, and it gives us
a little bit of information here.
| | 01:43 | It's going to tell you that the action
is going to flatten any existing layers.
| | 01:46 | So if you're coming into the process
with a layered image, you'd probably want
| | 01:52 | to save it first and either pre-flatten
it or understand that when this action
| | 01:57 | runs it will flatten it.
| | 01:59 | So that's the first thing you need to know.
| | 02:01 | Secondly, you're going to want to use
the cloner brushes to paint on clone
| | 02:06 | layers, and you'll see the clone layers
here in a moment, and if you look over
| | 02:09 | in the Tool Presets
right there is a Flat Cloner.
| | 02:12 | So the name Cloner is the key to tell
you that you want to use this kind of
| | 02:18 | brush on one of the clone layers.
| | 02:21 | The other thing that you're going to
want do, and we can't see this yet, but
| | 02:23 | I'll show it to you in a moment is,
when we run this action and you select
| | 02:28 | any of these brushes.
| | 02:29 | You're effectively going to be using
Mixer Brushes, part of what was introduced
| | 02:33 | in CS5 and there is an option up here
in the option bar for Sample All Layers.
| | 02:40 | We want to disable that, and I'll
explain that in greater detail in a moment,
| | 02:44 | but I'm just providing you with some
information that you're going to want to
| | 02:48 | know and it never hurts to be reminded of
these things every time you run this action.
| | 02:52 | So let's go ahead and hit Continue, and
what it has now done is created a set of
| | 02:59 | pre-built cloning layers for you.
| | 03:01 | The way I set these up, if I close
these up, you'll see these are actually
| | 03:06 | groups and I'm starting off with three
groups, which is just a good beginning
| | 03:11 | set of these to have.
| | 03:13 | So if we look at the Underpainting
set, you can see there is actually
| | 03:16 | two components to it.
| | 03:17 | You have the actual layer called Underpainting.
| | 03:20 | This layer is the layer
you're going to actually paint on.
| | 03:23 | And then associated with that in that
group is a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer.
| | 03:29 | That's what I have found to be the most
useful, and I'll get into the whys and
| | 03:34 | wherefores of that a little later, but
I do want to tell you that as you get
| | 03:38 | comfortable with these layers, if you
want to add other adjustment layers to it
| | 03:44 | that are useful to you, you
can add as many as you want.
| | 03:47 | Remember, adjustment layers are non-destructive.
| | 03:50 | So they're laying on top of that layer.
| | 03:53 | And then basically these are just
duplicates of this same arrangement.
| | 03:56 | It's just each one of these is named
to give you an indication that this is
| | 04:01 | where you're going to do very
broad underpainting Strokes.
| | 04:05 | This is set up to where you're most
likely going to want to apply intermediate
| | 04:09 | strokes, and then finally, the Detail layer.
| | 04:12 | So this is where you would
apply the detail strokes.
| | 04:14 | As we get into this project though,
you'll see I don't stick to just using
| | 04:18 | these three layers.
| | 04:19 | We will be probably using more cloning
layers than these three and I will show
| | 04:23 | you in a moment another
action that allows that to happen.
| | 04:26 | But that's how these three layers work.
| | 04:29 | And just to give you an idea, I'm
going to go ahead and click on the
| | 04:32 | Underpainting layer and let's just go
up, and since this is right here, let's
| | 04:35 | grab the Flat Cloner.
| | 04:37 | I am also going to go up to 100% so I
can just see what's happening and I am
| | 04:42 | just going to start painting on this area.
| | 04:46 | Now, you're seeing the underlying image,
because we have a Reference layer on.
| | 04:50 | I can turn it on and off at any time.
| | 04:53 | But most of the times you're going to
want it on, because you want to know where
| | 04:58 | detail and where the proper
information is within the image.
| | 05:03 | So I am not going to do much here,
but I just want you to see how this
| | 05:06 | cloning layer works.
| | 05:08 | And when you see it this way it looks a
little funny, because we're seeing the
| | 05:13 | photograph transparently
interposed with the strokes we're making.
| | 05:17 | As soon as you turn it off however,
you'll see these are just paint strokes.
| | 05:22 | You could try to paint like this
without knowing where things are, but you're
| | 05:26 | not going to get a coherent composition,
because you don't know where one car
| | 05:30 | ends and one car begins.
| | 05:32 | The Reference layer is what gives me
that ability to know exactly where I
| | 05:37 | want to paint in order to
accommodate the composition that's actually
| | 05:42 | underneath of this image.
| | 05:44 | So that's the basis for how these layers work.
| | 05:48 | So each of these layers allow you to
use a cloning brush and there are several
| | 05:53 | in here, and the character of them is
just different in terms of the shape of
| | 05:56 | the brush throughout the set.
| | 05:58 | And then finally, you have the Reference
layer, which you can enable and disable
| | 06:03 | to be able to see it.
| | 06:04 | In fact, I've even put a
couple of shortcuts in here.
| | 06:09 | Now, it works for me for it to be F14
and F15 because I'm left-handed, therefore
| | 06:14 | I can use my right hand to toggle
F14 and F15 to turn this on and off.
| | 06:20 | You're free through the Actions
palette to assign whatever keyboard shortcut
| | 06:24 | you'd like to work with this.
| | 06:25 | For me F14 and F15 work.
| | 06:28 | But it just avoids having to stop
over here and turn this on and off this way,
| | 06:32 | and I find that very useful just in
terms of workflow, that I can be working, stop.
| | 06:38 | I want to see that off, okay, I understand.
| | 06:40 | Now I turn it back on, and I keep going.
| | 06:43 | So those give you a really nice way to do that.
| | 06:47 | The other one I want to
talk about is Clear Layer.
| | 06:50 | Now, Clear Layer doesn't mean
it's a layer that is invisible.
| | 06:54 | It means it will clear any
information on that layer.
| | 06:57 | However, and this is why I did this in red,
| | 06:59 | there is a caveat to this.
| | 07:01 | You do not want to apply
Clear Layer to a cloning layer.
| | 07:06 | The reason is, if you eliminate
what's on a cloning layer through an action
| | 07:11 | like doing Select All, Delete, which is
exactly what the Clear Layer action itself does.
| | 07:17 | It will destroy the information that
enables you to paint on that layer and you
| | 07:21 | don't want to do that.
| | 07:23 | If that would happen, in the worst
possible case, what you could do is either
| | 07:29 | undo, so you can get back to the
previous iteration of the layer before you had
| | 07:34 | deleted all the information out of it, or
you could use the Create Cloning Layer command.
| | 07:40 | As I said, the Cloning Layer action is
designed to just establish a set of three
| | 07:45 | cloning layers, but in reality, you're
probably going to use more than that.
| | 07:49 | And in the case of where you just for
some reason lost the detail, you can use
| | 07:53 | the Create Cloning Layer Group, and
basically you just position it wherever.
| | 07:58 | If you want to go above this one, then
I say Create Cloning Layer Group and it
| | 08:03 | just added a new cloning layer group
that I could now put, for example, right
| | 08:08 | above my Detail Strokes, and now I can
go to this one and I could start to draw
| | 08:13 | on it, but let's go down here
and turn this earlier one off.
| | 08:17 | So you can see now I'm
painting on another layer, where it's
| | 08:22 | different information.
| | 08:23 | So I've added an additional cloning
layer, and you can have as many of these
| | 08:27 | stacked up as you want.
| | 08:29 | At some point your system performance
may suffer, but the idea is you start
| | 08:33 | initially with the three cloning layers,
which is a nice little starting number,
| | 08:37 | but as you go on, if you need to add
more, that's what the Cloning Layer Group
| | 08:42 | Create command is for.
| | 08:44 | Finally, I have a Create Varnish
Layer, and we'll get into exactly what
| | 08:49 | this does a little later, but this is kind
of what I think of as the icing on the cake.
| | 08:53 | If in the final steps of the painting
you want to add physical effects like what
| | 08:57 | does it look like when there's a Clear
Varnish layer and yet the lighting is
| | 09:01 | creating little highlights and shadows
on that raised surface, as well as the
| | 09:06 | effects of canvas texture, those
things can all be created with the varnish
| | 09:11 | layer in conjunction with the Varnish
Brush, and once we get to a more final
| | 09:17 | state of working with an image, I
will demonstrate exactly how that works.
| | 09:22 | So these are the full set of cloning
layer actions, and with these set of
| | 09:27 | actions you should be able to have a
complete workflow that will enable you to
| | 09:33 | create a non-destructive painting
environment to translate your photograph into
| | 09:39 | a finished painting.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the reference layer| 00:00 | Cloning layers enable you to dip your
paintbrush into a photograph and paint
| | 00:03 | with it like wet paint.
| | 00:05 | But how do you know where to place your
brush on the canvas in order to paint the image?
| | 00:09 | With the reference layer, of course.
| | 00:11 | In this video we'll take a look at this
special layer and how to get the most out of it.
| | 00:16 | So I've got my project image opened,
which is available from the Exercise
| | 00:20 | folder for Chapter 7, and I'm going
to quickly go through the process of
| | 00:24 | creating a set of cloning layers.
| | 00:26 | So I'll click on my John's Cloning
Layer Action, and we get this typical
| | 00:31 | warnings here, but we know that
we're not going to do anything wrong and
| | 00:35 | we've now got our layers and the
Reference layer is at top of everything, and
| | 00:40 | if we click on it you'll see it's actually a
layer-- and I'm going to unlock it temporally--
| | 00:44 | set to 50% opacity and that's why
we're seeing it transparently.
| | 00:48 | Now I want to talk a little bit about this lock.
| | 00:51 | You normally want this lock on at all times.
| | 00:55 | You may want to turn it off, so that you
can go in and adjust the opacity, which
| | 00:59 | is typically why you would unlock it.
| | 01:01 | So if you want to make it
more or less opaque, you can.
| | 01:04 | I set it at 50% by default, because
that way it's neither too dark or too light,
| | 01:08 | but when you're done, be sure to lock it,
because if you don't, you can easily do this.
| | 01:13 | I can go and get my cloning brush.
| | 01:16 | I've adjusted something and now I
forget that I'm not on one of my cloning
| | 01:20 | layers, and I go on and I start to
paint and this is the one instance of
| | 01:24 | where this is destructive.
| | 01:25 | I'm actually painting on the reference,
and I'm destroying what is there to help
| | 01:32 | me know where things are, so you don't
want to paint on the Reference layer and
| | 01:36 | that's why it's wise to always keep it locked.
| | 01:39 | Only unlock it when you want to make an
opacity adjustment, and I'll show you in
| | 01:43 | a moment one other reason you want to do it.
| | 01:46 | Let's go ahead and relock it and that
basically is what the Reference layer is
| | 01:50 | doing then. It's giving me the
compositional information to know where to paint.
| | 01:55 | Now the other thing you can do is use
the layer Visibility icon and click on it
| | 02:01 | to turn it on and off.
| | 02:03 | There are times when you're painting,
| | 02:05 | you know, let's say we've taken our
brush here on an Underpainting layer and
| | 02:10 | I'm now painting just the cab.
| | 02:15 | I might want to get this car next
to it or maybe I want to get the
| | 02:18 | fire hydrant, and when I turn this off,
I get a much clearer idea of what's
| | 02:23 | happening with my brush.
| | 02:24 | If I just paint like this, you'll see
it is very painterly strokes, but I don't
| | 02:29 | really know where I'm doing anything.
| | 02:31 | So you need this on in order to be
able to intelligently place your strokes
| | 02:36 | while creating your
Underpainting layer, in this case.
| | 02:41 | Now there is one little trick I'll show
you and that is I do have the hide and
| | 02:46 | show Reference layer toggles, so
rather than interrupting my workflow from
| | 02:50 | painting, stop, go up here and
turn this on, turn it back off.
| | 02:55 | I can be painting on the image and using my
two keys here, F14 in this case, to turn this off.
| | 03:02 | This lets me see if I need to
keep painting I can, then use F15.
| | 03:05 | I'll turn it back on.
| | 03:07 | So using this pair of keys is a great
way to adjust the visibility on the fly,
| | 03:13 | and I find it very useful.
| | 03:15 | If you don't like the F14/F15 keyboard
assignments, what I'd need to do here is
| | 03:21 | I'll just go out of button
mode, so it looks this way.
| | 03:24 | That way I can select or highlight one
of these and the I could just go in and
| | 03:29 | go to Action Options, and you can see
right now the function key is assigned to F14.
| | 03:35 | I could select any of the function
keys and I could additionally use
| | 03:39 | additional modifiers if for some reason
a keyboard shortcut is already assigned
| | 03:44 | that I don't want to lose.
| | 03:45 | So you do have the control over
exactly what key and what modifiers you can
| | 03:50 | assign to the hide/show reference toggles.
| | 03:55 | Finally, while this is unlocked, I'm
going to show you another thing I just
| | 04:01 | figured out recently.
| | 04:03 | I have it in a normal mode, and I see all
these colors, which is good most of the time.
| | 04:07 | See, now there I'm glad I did this.
| | 04:09 | There's a case of where I just
painted on the Reference layer when it was
| | 04:12 | unlocked, and you don't want to do that.
| | 04:15 | What I wanted to do and where I'll
go back to is the Underpainting layer,
| | 04:18 | and I'm going to paint here, and
sometimes the fact of the colors are under it
| | 04:25 | makes it a little bit hard to know for
sure is my brush painting the correct colors?
| | 04:29 | And the trick I found is to go to the
Reference layer while it's unlocked and
| | 04:34 | switch to Luminosity mode, and I found
I like it down more closer like 20% or so.
| | 04:41 | Be sure to lock that back
up and I'm going to go back here.
| | 04:44 | Now I can paint on this and I can
see the color in my brush a little more
| | 04:49 | clearly, because I'm not competing
with the color information already in the
| | 04:54 | Reference layer, and so I find
sometimes that this setting is just a little bit
| | 04:58 | easier to keep track of what your
brush is painting, while still having an
| | 05:03 | access to reference information.
| | 05:06 | To finish up, I just want to say that
the Reference layer offers you visual
| | 05:10 | feedback that provides a working knowledge
of exactly where image elements are located.
| | 05:15 | Knowing this, you can precisely apply your
cloning brushes to reveal these elements.
| | 05:20 | Just remember, keep the Reference layer
locked or you may inadvertently paint
| | 05:25 | on the reference itself, something
you definitely do not want to do.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Cloning layers| 00:00 | In this video, we'll take a look at what
you can, and can't do with cloning layers.
| | 00:05 | So I've run my action here, and I've
got my Underpainting selected, which is one
| | 00:09 | of the clone layers.
| | 00:11 | The others would be the Intermediate
Strokes cloning layer, and the Detail
| | 00:15 | Strokes cloning layer.
| | 00:17 | So when you take a brush, and we'll grab
Flat Cloner here, and I'm going to jump
| | 00:23 | up to 100% too just so we
see a little more clearly.
| | 00:27 | When I start painting with this brush,
where is that color actually coming from?
| | 00:33 | We certainly see the reference image, but
I can turn it off and I can still paint.
| | 00:40 | So it's not coming from the reference image;
| | 00:43 | it's actually embedded in
each of the cloning layers.
| | 00:47 | So the Underpainting layer, the
Intermediate Strokes layer, and the Detail
| | 00:50 | Strokes layer each have a copy of
the reference image embedded in it.
| | 00:56 | It's the nature of the way the
cloning brushes work that they pick up that
| | 01:01 | color and paint with it.
| | 01:03 | Now, each of these layers are almost
100% transparent, but there is 1% of the
| | 01:09 | image that is visible and when you
stack three of them up like we've done here,
[00:01:4.02]
in some spots you may just barely be
able to see a little bit of a ghost of the image.
| | 01:22 | But it's not enough to really paint with,
and that's why we use the reference image.
| | 01:27 | This just gives us a way to have a very
clear indication of what's there and yet
| | 01:31 | it's not part of the image at all.
| | 01:33 | So we can turn it on or turn it off
and in either case we're going to be
| | 01:37 | painting with the embedded version of
the same image in the cloning layer.
| | 01:43 | So that's first and foremost
what's going on with cloning layers.
| | 01:47 | Secondly, I want to talk about a limitation.
| | 01:49 | The way this works, it just so happens
that if you would take something, I'm
| | 01:54 | just putting some color on
here, so we can see this.
| | 01:56 | There is not a lot of color going on
in the background of this part of the
| | 02:00 | image, so it's rather monotonic.
| | 02:03 | But let's go get the Eraser. Let's say oh!
| | 02:05 | I want to fix this right here.
| | 02:07 | Well, when you do that, unfortunately
the nature of cloning layers is that you
| | 02:13 | are erasing the image from it.
| | 02:16 | So using an Eraser, or doing a Select
All, Delete, or even using my Clear Layer
| | 02:23 | command, none of those are something
you want to do on a cloning layer itself.
| | 02:29 | Now let's go back and get the Cloning
Brush, and okay, I can paint here, but in
| | 02:35 | this area I erased when I try
to paint, nothing happens.
| | 02:39 | You can see what happens. Wherever I've
erased, as soon as it hits the edge of
| | 02:42 | the erased area, then it starts
painting again, because there is imagery there.
| | 02:45 | If I paint into that area yet, well, yes,
I can paint with color into that area,
| | 02:50 | but I can no longer get back
to the imagery that was there.
| | 02:54 | So how do you get around this problem,
because there may be times where you do
| | 02:57 | want to erase an area and do something with it?
| | 03:00 | Well, you wouldn't necessarily need to
erase it, but what you can do in these
| | 03:04 | circumstances is go into the Actions
and create a new cloning layer group.
| | 03:11 | There is multiple ways to use this.
| | 03:13 | In this case we're kind of
using this as a band aid.
| | 03:16 | I'm going to put it right above the
Underpainting layer and now I'm going to
| | 03:19 | go in here, and because this layer now has the
full information in it, well I can paint in here.
| | 03:25 | So if you find you need to locally
edit something that you did on a layer and
| | 03:29 | for some reason you've erased it and
there is no more imagery actually embedded
| | 03:34 | in the layer, then making a new cloning
layer group is a way to give you imagery
| | 03:40 | in that area to be able to paint with.
And as I've said before, you can create as
| | 03:44 | many of these layer groups as you want.
| | 03:46 | So you can stack up many different
cloning layers and do different kinds of
| | 03:51 | things on each of those layers.
| | 03:53 | In a little while, we'll get into how
the Intermediate and Detail Strokes layers
| | 03:57 | work and we're going to be using
smaller and smaller brushes on each of these
| | 04:01 | layers which reveals more and more detail.
| | 04:04 | So even though the layers are the same,
what the brush does on the layer is
| | 04:08 | really the key to how these work.
| | 04:11 | In fact, I will go down here to a very
different brush like a Fan - Flat Cloner.
| | 04:16 | Now we can see this brush
has a very different character.
| | 04:19 | I'm rotating the barrel of
the pen in my hand to do this.
| | 04:22 | But this brush has a very different
look than this brush did over here.
| | 04:28 | It's also because we're in a different
area of the image, but you can see the
| | 04:32 | character of how I've designed the
hairs on this brush and the spacing, all of
| | 04:38 | these things come together to give
this brush a different character.
| | 04:41 | Let's go to a different one.
| | 04:42 | Let's go to a Fan - Round Cloner right here.
| | 04:45 | Another very different character.
| | 04:48 | So it's the shape of the brush and the
way the bristles are designed on them
| | 04:52 | that are going to alter the character of
what happens when it interacts with the
| | 04:58 | imagery embedded in the layer.
| | 05:00 | So you have quite a range of
expression possible with all of the different
| | 05:05 | cloning brushes that are in this list.
| | 05:08 | I'll get into some more specifics about
the brushes a little later, but one of
| | 05:12 | the things you'll see is for each type
of brush, there is a Round Cloner, but
| | 05:17 | then I also do a opaque version of it,
what we can call a smeary version of it,
| | 05:21 | and each of these brushes has a
different character. Some are going to apply
| | 05:25 | color, some are going to smear color,
some as cloners do in this case use the
| | 05:30 | color within the imagery.
| | 05:32 | But the whole brush set is designed
to give you a very wide latitude of
| | 05:36 | expression based on your hand input.
| | 05:39 | So what have we learned in this chapter?
| | 05:41 | Well, using cloning layers you can break up
a painting into as many layers as you want.
| | 05:46 | Each layer then access its own safety
net, enabling you to fearlessly advance
| | 05:51 | your painting without ever
losing the original source.
| | 05:54 | By segregating your painting into
discrete layers, you further widen your safety
| | 05:59 | net as well as provide greater
latitude for editing the painting later on.
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| Working with the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer| 00:00 | The key idea behind nondestructive
layer painting is to provide a safety net
| | 00:04 | that enables you to experiment
without fear of losing creative activity.
| | 00:09 | This concept is expanded further through
the use of adjustment layers in concert
| | 00:13 | with the cloning layers.
| | 00:15 | By adding an adjustment layer, you're
provided with greater editability and
| | 00:19 | that's a good thing.
| | 00:21 | So I've opened up a file that is in
your exercise folder and I've just
| | 00:25 | enlarged it to 100% here, so we're looking at
the line of cars that is at the intersection.
| | 00:31 | And I've painted on all three layers.
In fact, let's turn them on and off
| | 00:35 | individually, so you can
see that is my Detail Strokes.
| | 00:39 | Here are my Intermediate Strokes,
and here is the Underpainting.
| | 00:44 | And as you can see, without anyone of
these on, you definitely lose information
| | 00:50 | about what is there, so it requires
all three of these to make up this
| | 00:54 | kind of gestural scene of these cars
aligned in front of the intersection.
| | 00:59 | What I want to show you is that we can
now edit how the colors on each layer
| | 01:04 | appear, and one of the things I often do
is as things become more important in a
| | 01:10 | scene, I tend to play with the color a bit.
| | 01:13 | So the Detail Strokes, for example,
once again I'll turn those on and off,
| | 01:16 | so you can see them.
| | 01:17 | I guess I had the background off. I'll
turn that back on and I can turn off the
| | 01:21 | Reference layer for now.
| | 01:23 | So we're basically just seeing to this
scene as it would look painted, but I
| | 01:27 | want to play around a
little bit with the colors.
| | 01:29 | So the Detail Strokes, once again,
it's these strokes right here that we're
| | 01:34 | seeing that kind of supply
the most detail about the cars.
| | 01:38 | I am going to go and double-click
on my Hue/Saturation layer, which is
| | 01:42 | associated with the Detail Strokes.
| | 01:44 | And now I can play with this.
| | 01:46 | So, for example, if I start to turn
this up, see how I'm increasing the
| | 01:51 | saturation, but it's only on that layer.
| | 01:54 | I can also play with Lightness. Maybe I
want to do a combination, if I want that
| | 01:57 | to be lighter and more of saturated.
| | 02:01 | So let's just leave it at that
and here is the great thing:
| | 02:04 | this is nondestructive.
| | 02:05 | If I don't like this I'm
not stuck with these colors.
| | 02:08 | So I'm free to visualize a
whole range of possibilities.
| | 02:12 | Let's go to the Underpainting layer
and go to its Hue/Saturation layer,
| | 02:17 | double-click, and maybe I'm going to turn
the Lightness down a little bit on that.
| | 02:22 | Maybe I'll decrease the Saturation a little bit.
| | 02:24 | Okay, that looks pretty good.
| | 02:27 | Now let's go to the Intermediate layer
and just see what we can do there with
| | 02:30 | its Hue/Saturation adjustment layer.
| | 02:32 | What if I actually change the colors?
| | 02:34 | I could adjust the Hues into probably
nonsensical hues that I wouldn't care
| | 02:39 | about, but this just gives me a way
to possibly even by a couple points
| | 02:43 | change the color character of the image
without fear of having damaged the entire image.
| | 02:51 | Maybe I want more or less Saturation,
maybe a little less value on it, but I'm
| | 02:56 | encouraged to see and play with
different combinations of things.
| | 03:01 | So now I've got three layers that I've
adjusted from their original character
| | 03:06 | and it's nondestructive.
| | 03:07 | I can always go back and change it.
| | 03:09 | The other thing we can do, and let's do
this with the Detail layer, I have the
| | 03:13 | option of applying any other
adjustment layers I may want to.
| | 03:18 | So let's take something like Levels.
| | 03:20 | So I'll just take Levels on that layer
and here is where I can start to play around.
| | 03:26 | If I want to tighten that
contrast up on an even more, I can do that.
| | 03:31 | And again, it's nondestructive.
| | 03:33 | Maybe I want to adjust the Hue/
Saturation now of that layer, so maybe it
| | 03:36 | doesn't need to be so saturated, because I
have kind of accomplished that with my Levels.
| | 03:42 | But the idea here is that you can
use these adjustment layers in concert
| | 03:46 | with your cloning layers as a means of
further adding your expression to it or editing it.
| | 03:53 | One of the things I'll get into a
little more detail later is as objects become
| | 03:58 | more important, the subject areas of a
scene come to the fore, you want to do
| | 04:02 | things like increase that saturation,
maybe lighten it or darken it, and
| | 04:07 | things that are not as important you may
want to take some of the saturation out of it.
| | 04:11 | So by having these adjustment layers
associated with each of your cloning
| | 04:16 | layers, you have the option then to
kind of play with the visual weighting of the
| | 04:20 | layers in terms of their color and contrast.
| | 04:23 | And that's a great way to take an
already good painting and just tweak it in
| | 04:28 | small ways that can add to the
readability of the image that would otherwise
| | 04:32 | be difficult to do.
| | 04:33 | If this was a traditional painting, imagine
how hard it would be to change those colors.
| | 04:37 | Here it's just a slider that we're
adjusting and we're making that happen.
| | 04:41 | With the addition of adjustment layers
to cloning layers, you've got a complete
| | 04:45 | nondestructive layer painting environment.
| | 04:47 | This broad safety net enables you
to paint without fear of making an unrecoverable mistake.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
8. BrushesBrush categorization| 00:00 | When you start amassing a large
variety of brushes, organizing them can get
| | 00:04 | pretty messy if you don't have some
sort of system for categorizing them.
| | 00:08 | Well, I've done the heavy lifting
here and I have come up with a naming
| | 00:12 | convention system that makes it easy to quickly
locate the brush you want. Let's take a look.
| | 00:18 | First and foremost, the brushes I'm
basically using throughout this are all
| | 00:22 | designed around the Mixer Brush, and
for those of you new to CS5, it's a new
| | 00:28 | brush that has a very nice natural
media capability associated with it.
| | 00:34 | So it's much different than the traditional
Brush tool that we're used to in Photoshop.
| | 00:38 | This one lets you mix paints together.
The brushes can be dirty in that they
| | 00:44 | pick up color from the canvas and it
contaminates the color on the brush.
| | 00:48 | There's just a number of things the
Mixer Brush can do that you can't do
| | 00:52 | with the older brush.
| | 00:54 | So that is one of the key
things about these brushes.
| | 00:58 | And associated with the Mixer
Brush is the Options bar up here.
| | 01:03 | It just has several specific
controls that are Mixer Brush unique.
| | 01:08 | They are not going to be found anywhere
else and it's for that reason that all
| | 01:13 | of my brushes are actually tool presets.
| | 01:16 | Once again, if you're old school
Photoshop, you're probably used to brush
| | 01:20 | presets and they've served and
continue to serve a good purpose, but a brush
| | 01:25 | preset is not capable of saving this added
information associated with the Mixer Brush.
| | 01:31 | The only way to save this so that all
that data about the brush is contained
| | 01:37 | within a single definition is to save it
as a tool preset, and that's why you'll
| | 01:42 | find these all in the Tool Presets panel.
| | 01:45 | A unique feature of the Tool Presets
panel is this Current Tool Only toggle that
| | 01:51 | you have, and I am going to turn it on
for a second and show you why you don't
| | 01:55 | want to have it in this state.
| | 01:56 | A lot of times you may be temporarily
using a different tool when you're working
| | 02:02 | with layers that you're painting,
and you can see that if the Current Tool is
| | 02:06 | selected, what happens when I go to
something like the Move tool, which doesn't
| | 02:12 | have any tool presets for it,
nothing shows up in that panel.
| | 02:16 | If it's unchecked, however, I can be
in the Move tool and all of my tools
| | 02:21 | associated with the Mixer Brush still show up.
| | 02:24 | The other thing that this offers is,
even if I'm in a different tool and I
| | 02:27 | select a tool over here, not only does
it highlight the tool over in the Tool
| | 02:32 | Presets panel, but it's also changed
from the Move tool to the Mixer Brush tool.
| | 02:37 | What this offers then is a one click
access to a wide variety of brushes found
| | 02:43 | within my Tool Presets panel.
| | 02:45 | So the idea here is to give you a very
efficient workflow that makes it very
| | 02:50 | easy, whether you're in the Mixer tool
or you've temporally switched to a
| | 02:54 | different tool, you can go over here,
click on one of these, and boom, you are
| | 02:58 | in that tool and it's ready to use.
| | 03:01 | So you want to take advantage of that.
| | 03:03 | The other thing that I've done is I've
taken advantage of another component of
| | 03:08 | Photoshop CS5, which is the Bristle Tips.
| | 03:13 | All of these brushes, and you can even
seen it in the previews that are provided
| | 03:16 | when I put one of these brushes on the
screen, I have all different kinds of
| | 03:21 | Tips I can work with.
| | 03:22 | There is actually five different basic kinds.
| | 03:25 | There is a Point, a Blunt, Curve, Angle,
and Fan, and then they're repeated both
| | 03:30 | in the Flat and the Round types.
| | 03:33 | So you've got these ten brushes that
are very intrinsic to how the brushes are
| | 03:39 | designed and it's for that reason that
I use this naming convention as a way to
| | 03:44 | organize all of my brushes.
| | 03:46 | If we look at this kind of chart I
have created, you can see that I start off
| | 03:51 | with Shape, so I start off
with one of those five shapes.
| | 03:55 | A brush is always going to be named
initially either Angle, Blunt, Curve, Fan, or Point.
| | 04:00 | Then you can go from there and
you can say, well, which one of the
| | 04:03 | two variations is it?
| | 04:04 | It's either going to be Flat or Round.
| | 04:07 | Then we get to the Function, and this
is where I've added names that describe
| | 04:12 | what you can expect these
brushes to do when you use them.
| | 04:15 | For example, the Cloner Brushes, they
work in concert with my cloning layer.
| | 04:19 | So that when you paint with a
Cloner Brush on a cloning layer, you will
| | 04:24 | literally be painting with the color
that is associated with your source image.
| | 04:30 | When you paint with Opaque, just as it
says, it's going to paint with an opaque
| | 04:34 | brush that covers with the color
you've chosen from your color palette.
| | 04:39 | And then Smeary is like
Opaque except it blends colors.
| | 04:44 | So that let's say I've got blue on my
canvas and I've got yellow on my brush.
| | 04:51 | When I start painting on the blue, it
will initially do yellow, but it will
| | 04:55 | start to mix in with the blue, and in
fact, in this case you'll kind of get a
| | 04:58 | green intermediate in there.
| | 05:00 | So mixing is something you can do
very well with the Smeary brushes.
| | 05:05 | Finally, we get down to the finest
Character of them and these are just the
| | 05:10 | modifying words that really kind of
tell you exactly what you're ultimately
| | 05:14 | going to get with them.
| | 05:15 | A Dirty brush happens to be a technique
in painting where when you have a brush
| | 05:20 | say with blue on it and then you paint
on a canvas that's got wet paint on it,
| | 05:25 | not only are you going to apply some
blue to the canvas, but you're going to
| | 05:28 | pick up some of the existing wet paint.
| | 05:31 | So if it's got greens and yellows or
whatever, your brush will no longer be
| | 05:35 | a solid blue brush.
| | 05:36 | It's now going to have been
contaminated by those yellows and greens and the
| | 05:41 | next stroke you make will be different,
because those colors are now on your
| | 05:45 | brush, and the same thing repeats itself.
| | 05:47 | So each time that brush dips into wet paint
and paints, it's picking up more of that color.
| | 05:53 | So they call that a Dirty brush, and
there's a technique I can do to make
| | 05:58 | brushes be dirty with my brushes.
| | 06:00 | So some of them you'll find will
have that dirty categorization.
| | 06:04 | A Dry brush is a brush that doesn't
have much paint on the brush tip and what
| | 06:09 | happens is as you start to paint with
and it runs out of paint very quickly.
| | 06:13 | So it's just a brush that's
going to do a short stroke.
| | 06:16 | A Fine brush is nothing more
than a brush with a very fine tip.
| | 06:19 | So you can assume that Fine brushes
you can use for detail work, for example.
| | 06:23 | Then a Floppy brush is actually a brush
that's got pretty long bristles on it,
| | 06:28 | but the tension on those bristles is very low.
| | 06:31 | So when you move it around on the canvas, and
we'll see an example of this in a little bit,
| | 06:36 | iIt flops the brush hairs around and
you get a rather exaggerated, somewhat
| | 06:41 | uncontrolled stroke out of it, which
can be very good for expressive purposes.
| | 06:45 | So this whole set of nomenclature is
really designed to give you a quick way to
| | 06:51 | be able to understand what a brush
is going to do when you select it.
| | 06:55 | I've taken the list, which is the same
list as you see over here in the Tool
| | 06:59 | Presets panel, but I can't break
them out like this and unfortunately I
| | 07:03 | can't add color to them.
| | 07:05 | But I just color coded them so that
we can see how they sort of break out.
| | 07:09 | For example, you'll see Fan Brushes by
far have more versions of themselves in
| | 07:15 | this list than the other ones. Why is that?
| | 07:17 | I just found that the Fan Brush,
because of its character, has a lot more
| | 07:22 | variability that I can control.
| | 07:24 | But each category is represented, so
we have Angle Brushes first and you
| | 07:29 | can see how they break up into Flat and
Round categories, and so on through the list.
| | 07:34 | And it's just a way to quickly
identify what brush you're going to use.
| | 07:40 | So without that being visible
we don't have this nice charting.
| | 07:43 | Well, let's just go to a blank screen.
| | 07:45 | I'll just demonstrate a couple
of these brushes to show you.
| | 07:48 | For example, if I take an Angle, Round
Opaque, well, I am going to get an Angle
| | 07:53 | Brush, and as I rotate my brush
around you can see it has an angled tip.
| | 07:57 | And what I'll get then is a character
that is indicative of a brush with that
| | 08:02 | angled tip, and it's opaque, just like
we said, so if I get a different color,
| | 08:07 | it's opaquely covering
over the last color I had.
| | 08:11 | Whereas a Smeary Brush,
let's get a very different color.
| | 08:15 | Okay, at first it looks it's doing the
same thing, but look what happens here.
| | 08:19 | See how it's blending in
with the color underneath of it.
| | 08:23 | If I do it enough in one area, I'll
pretty much build up to the full Opacity,
| | 08:28 | but otherwise it wants to blend colors.
| | 08:31 | Let's look at a Dirty Brush and
we'll start off with a color here.
| | 08:35 | So it's starting off with this orange,
but if I end right there, where that
| | 08:40 | other color was, watch what happens.
| | 08:42 | See, now the brush has been dirtied
with the color I picked up before.
| | 08:46 | So each time this brush ends up in a
color, some of that color is now on the tip
| | 08:52 | of the brush, and every time you paint
with it, you're going to get a different
| | 08:56 | stroke because it's constantly being
contaminated by the last color it was in
| | 09:00 | contact with when you stopped painting with it.
| | 09:04 | Let's look at a Floppy Brush, because
that's another one that's got some pretty
| | 09:06 | interesting characteristic here.
| | 09:09 | We'll go with this Round, Smeary Floppy here,
and once again, I'll just pick a different color.
| | 09:13 | And what you can see is this brush
exaggerates and even when I kind of press down,
| | 09:20 | it's almost like I can press and make
the individual hairs splay out from the brush.
| | 09:27 | But as I draw with it, you get these
exaggerated, kind of very interesting
| | 09:31 | irregular strokes and once again,
you can use this for very expressive
| | 09:36 | characteristics in the type
of painting you may want to do.
| | 09:40 | Well, we've been able to take a
look at a sampling of these brushes.
| | 09:43 | Obviously we didn't have
time to go through all of them.
| | 09:46 | But throughout the rest of this project
I will be using a pretty broad selection
| | 09:50 | of them so that you'll see them in action there.
| | 09:52 | I also advise you to take the time
to just play with these brushes and
| | 09:56 | experience for yourself the kind of
expressibility you can get out of them.
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| Working with canvas texture| 00:00 | My artist brushes provide the
authentic appearance of a traditional brush.
| | 00:04 | But brushstrokes are often influenced
by the texture of the applied surface,
| | 00:08 | which is typically canvas.
| | 00:11 | The artist's 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.
| | 00:20 | Well, the first thing I want to start
off saying is unfortunately in Photoshop,
| | 00:24 | the words pattern and texture
gets somewhat interchangeably used.
| | 00:30 | So sometimes you'll hear the same
element referred to as a pattern and
| | 00:33 | sometimes a texture.
| | 00:34 | I definitely think of them as textures,
and it does say Texture panel here.
| | 00:39 | This is the sub-panel of Texture
that you'll find in the Brush palette.
| | 00:43 | So once you're here, this is where you
can control all of these textures and if
| | 00:48 | we click here we'll see these are the
six patterns that are included with my
| | 00:52 | artist brushes and I've just created a
variety of different canvas weaves, all
| | 00:58 | the way from very coarse to very
fine, so you've got a lot of character
| | 01:02 | differences in the way these are
going to look in concert with a brush.
| | 01:07 | The other thing that's important to
know is you can adjust the Scale and
| | 01:11 | we've got a little sample here of the
current brush, and you'll see that as I
| | 01:17 | change the Scale I can get, even with
the same texture, I can get what looks
| | 01:22 | like a very fine textured canvas,
or I can go up and get a very large
| | 01:28 | coarse-grained canvas.
| | 01:30 | So Scale is one of the things
you're going to want to work with.
| | 01:34 | Also, Depth is very important.
| | 01:36 | Let's just do a little sample stroke
here so you're seeing what this does.
| | 01:41 | If I didn't have Texture enabled, this
is what my brush looks like, and you may
| | 01:45 | want to use brushes like this some of
the time, but without texture, they lose a
| | 01:50 | lot of their character, and enabling
texture is just a matter of clicking on the
| | 01:56 | little check box next to Texture in
the Brush panel and now I've got a nice
| | 02:02 | texture working with my brush.
| | 02:04 | I can further play with this
texture through the Depth slider.
| | 02:08 | The lower it is, the less I'm
going to affect all of the grain.
| | 02:12 | In fact, see I'm pressing down as hard
as I can and I never penetrate all the
| | 02:17 | way down into the grain, whereas if I
go increase the Depth slider, now with
| | 02:24 | very light strokes, I'm using pressure here.
| | 02:28 | I can still get a very light amount of
texture, but if I press hard, now I'm
| | 02:34 | completely filling and
flooding the texture of the canvas.
| | 02:39 | One of the things that artist will often
do is use a light amount of pressure to
| | 02:46 | just kind of skip along the top of that
grain so that I am getting somewhat of
| | 02:51 | an optical affect of orange right
here, because the eye wants to start
| | 02:56 | intermixing the yellow and the
red together to produce orange.
| | 03:01 | So Texture can be used for one
thing just to make a stroke have that
| | 03:06 | characteristic that you associate
so much with oil paint on canvas.
| | 03:11 | But you can also use it like artists
do to overlay a light dusting of texture
| | 03:18 | so to speak on top of a second color to
produce interesting optical blends in the eye.
| | 03:25 | So to wrap up, the appearance of canvas
weave is integral to the vocabulary of paint.
| | 03:31 | You may choose to keep it subtle or
pump it up to a major visual component of
| | 03:35 | your expressive style.
| | 03:36 | Either way, the artist brushes
canvas textures are there to enrich your paintings.
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| Using Sample All Layers| 00:00 | The combination of layers on the
Mixer Brush eats up a lot of processor
| | 00:04 | power, so much so that sampling the
color found on underlying layers can slow
| | 00:09 | brush performance down.
| | 00:11 | In this video, we'll take a look at the
Mixer Brush's Sample All Layers option
| | 00:16 | and I'll show you how to avoid
potential interruptions in your creative flow.
| | 00:21 | So the thing is that we've got this Sample
All Layers option when we're in the Mixer Brush.
| | 00:27 | You typically want to keep it off.
| | 00:31 | The reason is, as I mentioned at the
beginning, when I start to paint on another
| | 00:35 | layer, and let's just take
something like the Smeary Brush.
| | 00:38 | Now it's normally smeary, but you
can see when it's not interacting with
| | 00:43 | the layer below it. It doesn't smear,
whereas another color on this layer
| | 00:47 | will smear with it.
| | 00:49 | If I want a color to smear with the
color on a layer underneath of it, I have to
| | 00:54 | enable Sample All Layers.
| | 00:56 | Now, it's going to do the extra push
to look at that color underneath of it.
| | 01:02 | Now, in this particular instance,
just dealing with a color layer to sample
| | 01:07 | color found underneath of it is not
necessarily a huge performance hit.
| | 01:12 | Where you're really going to find the
issue however is when you're on cloning layers.
| | 01:17 | If you're on a cloning layer, and using
the cloner, Sample All Layers, if it's
| | 01:22 | enabled is going to just
slow your brush way down.
| | 01:25 | So if you happen to be on a cloning
layer with a cloning brush, and you start to
| | 01:31 | paint and it's very slow, the first
thing you should think of is Sample All Layers,
| | 01:35 | and look up here and I'll
guarantee you that you've got it checked.
| | 01:38 | So you normally want this unchecked,
specifically when you're working on cloning layers.
| | 01:45 | Now, I'm going to give you a little tip
that is kind of hidden, and that is, you
| | 01:50 | would think, okay, cloners only work
with cloning layers. But guess what?
| | 01:55 | They actually can perform two functions.
| | 01:58 | So I'm going to get a round cloner here.
| | 02:00 | Now, we're not on a cloning layer.
| | 02:02 | What do you expect to happen
when I use it? Well, watch this.
| | 02:07 | It actually becomes a blending brush.
| | 02:09 | It's a brush that blends,
but doesn't apply color.
| | 02:12 | It could be very useful.
| | 02:15 | In this case, I do want Sample All
Layers on and now here I am blending colors
| | 02:22 | very nicely, but it's on a
separate layer completely.
| | 02:26 | So this lets me do all kinds of
blending and not be destructive about it.
| | 02:32 | For example, normally I tell you keep
Sample All Layers not enabled when you're
| | 02:39 | using the cloning brush.
| | 02:40 | Well, when you're on a cloning layer,
yes, but you may later on want to create
| | 02:45 | a blank layer and then use the cloning
brush in its alter ego, which is as a
| | 02:51 | blender on a normal layer as I'm doing
here, and then you could go over your
| | 02:56 | cloning layer and use that same cloning
brush on a normal layer to become a blender.
| | 03:02 | So it's a nice technique for being able
to use the cloning brush as a blender.
| | 03:11 | To kind of wrap this up, the Sample
All Layers option can be very useful for
| | 03:17 | blending color on overlapping,
multiple-layer, underlying color, but in doing so,
| | 03:23 | it can dramatically
affect brush performance.
| | 03:26 | Being processor and memory dependent,
it's very difficult to predict whether or
| | 03:31 | not it will affect your specific setup.
| | 03:33 | For the most part, you can work with
Sample All Layers disabled and never notice it.
| | 03:38 | But don't forget my little trick.
| | 03:39 | You can use the cloning
brushes on regular layers and blend.
| | 03:44 | Very big trick.
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|
|
9. Expressive Interpretation: UnderpaintingBeing willing to destroy detail| 00:00 | I've talked 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
| | 00:10 | from the source photograph.
| | 00:11 | Remember a key element in the language of
photography is sharp focus and fine detail.
| | 00:16 | It is very hard for
photographers to let go of this element.
| | 00:20 | As a result, too much detail is
often retained in the translation and the
| | 00:25 | so-called painting
continues to look photographic.
| | 00:28 | In this video we'll look at how
always having the original source imagery
| | 00:32 | available provides a safety net for
vigorously destroying detail during the
| | 00:37 | underpainting step.
| | 00:38 | I'm using the project image from
Chapter 9 in the exercise files and one of the
| | 00:44 | things that is kind of difficult to
start with here is how you know how to break
| | 00:49 | up this detail. Because this is an
admittedly fairly complex scene and I am going
| | 00:54 | to show you a little trick that I've
figured out that helps me determine what
| | 00:59 | are the critical areas.
| | 01:01 | So I am going to create a new layer above
this and I also am going to fill it with white.
| | 01:08 | I am going to set the Opacity to around
50% and finally I'm going to just get a
| | 01:14 | small airbrush, very small size, in
black and basically what this gives me is a
| | 01:21 | tool I can kind of sketch with and
what I am going to do is just very roughly
| | 01:26 | without taking a whole lot of time, I
don't want to be very specific about it,
| | 01:32 | I'm just going in and delineating
what are the major kind of compositional
| | 01:37 | elements in here, without regard to what
they actually are as objects, but just
| | 01:42 | their shapes on a page is all they are.
| | 01:45 | So I'm seeing these basic lines and you
do not have to be super accurate about
| | 01:52 | this at all, but I'll show you here in
a moment that just going through and doing
| | 01:57 | this ends up giving you a nice template
for understanding where your composition is.
| | 02:02 | And you don't have to
lever over this for long at all.
| | 02:07 | We just want it very simple.
| | 02:09 | Now I am going to turn off the
Reference layer and right there what I've
| | 02:13 | delineated in just a few seconds is
the major building blocks of this image.
| | 02:19 | They are almost like puzzled
pieces and all fitted together.
| | 02:22 | They come together to create the
composition that is this street scene.
| | 02:28 | So just this little exercise alone
helps you visualize exactly what are the
| | 02:34 | key areas you are going to work on
destroying all the detail and there are
| | 02:37 | places where you are going to want to
kind of preserve some of these shapes
| | 02:41 | that you see in here.
| | 02:42 | So that's our goal, to take these
large compositional shapes and destroy all
| | 02:47 | the detail in them.
| | 02:50 | So having done that, I'm going to go
ahead and I can throw this away now.
| | 02:52 | It was just an exercise for me to
just quickly see that and give me a
| | 02:56 | visualization of really what I'm after in
terms of breaking down the shapes in this image.
| | 03:01 | Let's go ahead and we're going to apply
our Cloning Layer action and since we're
| | 03:09 | starting off here, we're going to be
working in the Underpainting layer.
| | 03:13 | You are going to work from the largest
brushes down to the finest bushes as you
| | 03:18 | progress in this painting.
| | 03:20 | So by the time you are finished, you
are going to be working with very small
| | 03:23 | brushes at 100% in doing a lot of detail.
| | 03:26 | Right now, we're just doing this kind
of overall thing and a good brush I've
| | 03:31 | found is as the Fan, so I am going to use the
Fan - Flat Cloner, which should be right up here.
| | 03:39 | There we go.
| | 03:40 | And I can adjust with my Left and Right
Bracket keys the size of this brush, so
| | 03:47 | that's how I'm doing the left bracket
key and you can see how it gets smaller.
| | 03:51 | Doing the right bracket key and it gets larger.
| | 03:53 | So that's how I'm making these adjustments.
| | 03:56 | So we saw how these are major areas.
| | 04:00 | I also know from experience and I am
going to impart it to you, that you don't
| | 04:05 | want to try to block out this building
and somehow think to yourself "Oh, but I
| | 04:10 | don't want to get rid of this
tree, because it's in the scene."
| | 04:12 | We can obliterate it now and get it
back, because the key rule about this whole
| | 04:18 | process is that you always have
access to the original photograph.
| | 04:23 | So if I completely blend out the
trees right now, I'm not losing them.
| | 04:27 | They're just temporally gone on this
layer, but every other cloning layer I
| | 04:30 | create those trees are in there.
| | 04:32 | So I can always bring them back and I
can tell you it's going to be much easier
| | 04:37 | to just get rid of them now in this
total destruction of detail layer and bring
| | 04:43 | them back in a later cloning layer.
| | 04:45 | So don't worry about it.
| | 04:46 | And now I can see on this
system, this is a little slow.
| | 04:51 | So one thing I might do to help myself
out is just take the size down a bit,
| | 04:55 | because I want to get to where
I have a fairly quick motion.
| | 05:00 | The other thing you can do is you
sometimes can kind of speed things up
| | 05:02 | if you are not looking at the entire
image. It doesn't tend to try to do so much.
| | 05:08 | So here we are.
| | 05:09 | I am just going in here and
I am going to clone this out.
| | 05:12 | Now we are not going to have
time to completely do this.
| | 05:17 | So you are not going to see me do
everything, but I am going to go through the
| | 05:20 | major steps of what would be
done, and then we continue on,
| | 05:24 | I will have finished this up. But you
can see what I am doing right here?
| | 05:27 | I am just dragging color down over the
tree areas and if we disable temporarily
| | 05:34 | our layer, you can see it
goes away. It's not there.
| | 05:37 | So I can pretty much dismiss this just
by painting right over it with the existing
| | 05:44 | color that's already on there.
| | 05:46 | You are just smearing color around
basically and I may use some of these guides
| | 05:51 | that are part of the
building, strokes I'm making.
| | 05:55 | They can be against the grain.
| | 05:57 | They can be with it.
| | 05:58 | The goal is just to simply lose all that detail.
| | 06:02 | So in all these areas you are pretty
much going to just smear things out.
| | 06:07 | I don't care about these frontal details.
| | 06:09 | They can go away. And this can be a
very liberating activity, particularly if
| | 06:15 | you're a photographer, whenever
I show photographers, so this is what
| | 06:18 | you are going to do,
| | 06:19 | they really get into it,
because it's so against their grain.
| | 06:22 | They are so used to dealing with lots of
detail that it liberates them when they
| | 06:28 | realize, I can just go in here
and just get rid of all of this.
| | 06:31 | And the other thing that's very
important about doing this is you want to be
| | 06:37 | loose when you do this. Hopefully
you're seeing the way I'm doing it.
| | 06:40 | It's a very loose painting style.
| | 06:43 | Don't worry about perfect lines,
straight lines, lines that are outside the lines.
| | 06:49 | All of these things are going to
get tightened up in the later layers as
| | 06:55 | we move towards the finishing of this image.
| | 06:59 | So right now of all times in this
painting where you can just play like your Van Gogh
| | 07:04 | and you just slop paint
around, this is the time to do it.
| | 07:07 | So I am going to go ahead and keep doing
this and in the next video we'll take
| | 07:11 | a look at the next step where we
start to add more detail back in here.
| | 07:16 | In the meantime, I will keep
painting and I'll see you in the next video.
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| Establishing the painting style| 00:00 | The style of painting done on the
underpainting basically defines the style of
| | 00:04 | brushstroke use for the rest of the painting.
| | 00:07 | Everyone has a different style, so I'm
not going to sit here and try to tell
| | 00:10 | you how to define yours, but I do recommend
considering a loose versus a tight style of painting.
| | 00:17 | Why?
| | 00:18 | Because a tight style tends to meticulously
follow the shapes and detail the source photo.
| | 00:23 | What is the result?
| | 00:24 | A painting that looks photographic,
which is what we're working hard to avoid.
| | 00:29 | A loose style painting places a premium
on spontaneity, a key vocabulary element
| | 00:34 | of expressive painting.
| | 00:36 | Let's take a look at
painting with a loose style.
| | 00:39 | Now one of the things you've got
remember when you're working is that the
| | 00:43 | underpinning is not the detail layer.
| | 00:46 | We are going to do that later, so you
don't want to get caught up in trying
| | 00:51 | to detail too much.
| | 00:52 | Here's what I did in the
underpainting of our general project image.
| | 00:56 | Now I'm going to critique myself a
little bit here and show you a few things
| | 01:00 | that I would probably do
to work it a little more.
| | 01:04 | Now first and foremost even with the
very loose brush stroking that I did,
| | 01:08 | I think we can all agree we can tell
that this is still is a city scene.
| | 01:12 | It's not so decimated that it's
unrecognizable, and that's good, because this
| | 01:18 | is the basic model of which we are
going to place all of the detail as we
| | 01:22 | finish through this.
| | 01:24 | Now one of the things I noticed as I
finished it up, this area where the tree
| | 01:28 | and there is a light
standard here and some signage.
| | 01:31 | This area got really kind of dark. In
fact, we can turn on the underpainting
| | 01:37 | layer and look at that, and you see what
happened here is there is all this dark mass.
| | 01:42 | Well, when we shut this off even trying
not to paint those lines very much,
| | 01:48 | we ended up still getting rather dark area.
| | 01:50 | So one of the tricks I could do is
I'm already been working with the
| | 01:53 | Flat Cloner Fan Brush.
| | 01:55 | I'm just going to switch to the Flat
Opaque here and I'm just going to sample a
| | 02:01 | color that is more of the background,
and then go back to my brush and this
| | 02:06 | lets me, now I can go in here and I'm
just going to paint some strokes in here,
| | 02:11 | just to get rid of that overly dark area.
| | 02:14 | I might actually switch to a Flat Smeary here,
because this will let me kind of blend strokes.
| | 02:21 | It won't be quite so harsh,. And we
really don't know what's behind here, but
| | 02:26 | I'm assuming it's a continuation of the
street off into this rather misty snowy background.
| | 02:32 | So without really knowing too much about
what's there, I'm just going to make an
| | 02:37 | educated guess that the buildings are
somewhat in a line right here, and then it
| | 02:42 | just kind of goes into a city scene.
| | 02:44 | And remember, this is all going to get
covered by the trees and the light post
| | 02:50 | when we repaint them back in.
| | 02:52 | So what's back here isn't important.
| | 02:54 | We just don't want it be dark and
cluttered and you can see here I'm kind of
| | 02:59 | playing with my brush strokes.
| | 03:01 | I'm not keeping them super tight.
| | 03:03 | The one thing you don't want to be
is what I call a white knuckle painter.
| | 03:07 | It's like people that fly and they just sit
there with their hands gripping the armrests.
| | 03:12 | You don't want to do that.
| | 03:13 | You want to maintain a pretty loose
approach to how you're doing this.
| | 03:18 | Now the other thing I'm going to do is
I'm going to go back to my Flat Cloner,
| | 03:22 | and I'm going to zoom up here a bit.
| | 03:25 | You can see what I have got some of
these areas of white. Those don't bother me
| | 03:29 | too much. What bothers me more is that
in stroking these, I just kind of stroked
| | 03:33 | in the direction of some of the
architectural elements on the building and I
| | 03:38 | really don't want them there, because
it's detail and here I really want to
| | 03:41 | minimize detail here.
| | 03:43 | So I'm just going back in and kind of
scrubbing over this, using my cloning brush,
| | 03:47 | and I'm just going to
get rid of some of this detail.
| | 03:51 | And again, just like we did before, I
may not sit here and have you watch me do
| | 03:57 | all of this, but I want to kind of give
you a few tips as to what you can do to
| | 04:02 | get your underpainting really in the state
that I'm expecting it for my own work to be in.
| | 04:08 | One nice thing you can see here too is
when you do pick some of these colors and
| | 04:12 | move the light over dark or dark over light,
| | 04:15 | the texture of the canvas shows up and
that's another nice vocabulary element of
| | 04:20 | painting that we're allowing to be in here.
| | 04:23 | See how I'm also I'm kind of breaking up
straight lines? Nothing in this should be detail.
| | 04:30 | It's strictly a rough shape of
the composition of the background.
| | 04:36 | Now I'm going leave some of these white
areas in here, because one thing you do
| | 04:40 | want to allow to happen is
what I call happy accidents.
| | 04:44 | When you're working, sometimes you may,
"Oh, I did that stroke and I didn't mean do it."
| | 04:48 | Well, in real painting that happens.
In real life we do things we don't expect
| | 04:52 | to do, and part of the expression of
this is allowing both the intended things
| | 04:58 | to happen, as well as some of these
accidents, because it's that kind of
| | 05:01 | allowing all of those variations to
occur in a painting here is what adds a real
| | 05:06 | sense of life to it.
| | 05:08 | So I'm going to keep on working on
this, and then I will see you in the
| | 05:13 | beginning to the next chapter, where
we'll talk about starting a reintroduce
| | 05:17 | very selectively detail back into this.
| | 05:21 | So here's where we are at and you'll
see a little bit more work done to this,
| | 05:25 | starting in the next chapter.
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|
|
10. Expressive Interpretation: Intermediate LayerSimplified indication| 00:00 | Simplified indication is my term for
representing visual elements with a minimum of detail.
| | 00:06 | This relates to my "connect the dots"
theory of engaging the user. Our brain
| | 00:11 | delights and filling in
detail and creates interest.
| | 00:14 | A painter, for example, does not
typically paint every leaf on a
| | 00:18 | representation of a tree. Rather he
creates an underpainting of light and dark
| | 00:23 | areas, then applies a few well-placed
brushstrokes to fool the eye into seeing greater detail.
| | 00:29 | Simplified indication is yet another
element of the vocabulary of painting.
| | 00:34 | Now, before we start, I want you to
notice that with the exercise file from
| | 00:40 | Chapter 10, instead of gridlines we have
a set of guides and the reason they're
| | 00:46 | there is I cannot do this whole painting.
| | 00:49 | It would be prohibitively long to do that.
| | 00:52 | So we're going to
concentrate on the area right here.
| | 00:57 | It has elements that are throughout the
entire painting and that way I can work
| | 01:02 | on this part of the painting without
going to the extent of doing all of it.
| | 01:07 | But it also provides you with a whole set of
unfinished areas that you can do on your own.
| | 01:14 | So I'm going to work here and you
will be able to work in the rest of the
| | 01:19 | image to complete it following the various
techniques that I am going to be showing you.
| | 01:24 | So having said that, let's go ahead
and take a look at simplified indication.
| | 01:28 | I am going to zoom up and I don't
typically work at 100% at this point, because
| | 01:34 | you do want to get an overview.
| | 01:35 | If I were to go to 100%, we'd
be looking at this much detail.
| | 01:40 | And while there are times when we are going
to work that close, right now is not the time.
| | 01:46 | So I'm guessing about 50% is
about the size I want to work at.
| | 01:51 | It gives me a good overview of what
I'm doing, but I'm not working so close
| | 01:55 | that I am missing out on how the
addition I'm putting into the image is
| | 01:59 | affecting other areas.
| | 02:01 | Let's start off and go to the Layers
palette and I'm now going to go to the
| | 02:06 | Intermediate Strokes.
| | 02:08 | All of the underpainting we did
earlier is on our Underpainting layer.
| | 02:12 | We are going to move up to Intermediate Strokes.
| | 02:15 | One of the techniques that I use is as
I start to refine detail in a painting,
| | 02:23 | I use the brush size almost
like the aperture on a camera.
| | 02:26 | The smaller the aperture, the greater the
detail I am going to be bringing into the image.
| | 02:32 | So smaller brush sizes provide more detail.
| | 02:36 | That's the way this works.
| | 02:38 | Let's go up and look at our
tools and I can go in here.
| | 02:41 | I am going to probably at this point,
| | 02:43 | I am big fan of the Round Fan, so I
am going to take the Round Fan Cloner.
| | 02:48 | You can see there's its default size,
but I'm going to use my left and right
| | 02:52 | bracket keys to be
controlling how small or large this is.
| | 02:57 | And remember, we've now got
another copy of the original image in
| | 03:02 | our Intermediate layer.
| | 03:03 | So as soon as I start painting with
the clone brush, I'm going to be bringing
| | 03:07 | out color based on the original image.
| | 03:10 | But now we are working with a smaller brush.
| | 03:13 | So at this point I am going to go up
and turn on my Reference layer, so I can
| | 03:17 | see the true detail that's in the image,
and now I start to go to work to color
| | 03:21 | in some of these detail areas.
| | 03:23 | So I am going to bring in the area of
the car and you can see I'm painting it
| | 03:30 | pretty precisely so that the shapes of
the car are going to become much more
| | 03:37 | rendered and visible in the painting.
| | 03:39 | I am not going to necessarily paint
every element of the car, but I am going to
| | 03:44 | start to delineate much more
precisely elements of the car.
| | 03:48 | So in the case of this taxicab, you can
see how I am following the shape of the
| | 03:55 | windshield a bit more and this
little advertising sign on the top.
| | 03:59 | This is where this indication now
starts to really come into play.
| | 04:03 | Now, you don't have to sit here
and render every tread on that tire.
| | 04:08 | You just want to have a stroke or
two that gives the intent of a tire.
| | 04:12 | You are indicating and by not taking
time to slavishly render every single bit,
| | 04:21 | we're going to end up with some nice
lines that describe a car without being a
| | 04:25 | precise rendering of a car.
| | 04:28 | And we can turn this on and off at will,
so we can see, see how now there is
| | 04:34 | much more detail there.
| | 04:35 | Let me shut off the Intermediate layer,
and you can see how just the addition of
| | 04:41 | those strokes now is
bringing much more detail in.
| | 04:44 | I may have even done too much.
| | 04:46 | But for this area of focus, that's
where the greatest amount of detail is.
| | 04:50 | As I move back here, we'll see in a moment,
I'm going to use less detail, but still
| | 04:57 | just kind of capturing the actual
strokes that represent the shape of the car,
| | 05:04 | and everybody's going to do
this a little differently.
| | 05:06 | Every time I redo this painting, which
I've done during this project, it comes
| | 05:10 | out different every time.
| | 05:11 | This is going to look different than the final
painting I did in preparation for the course.
| | 05:17 | It's just the way it works.
| | 05:19 | Hit some of the street elements in here.
| | 05:21 | This is an area where there is
definitely reflection is happening on the
| | 05:25 | pavement, and drawing my lines somewhat
in the same direction of those is going
| | 05:32 | to help portray the cement as if it is wet.
| | 05:36 | There is also the notion of these
crossing stripes here, so I want to make sure
| | 05:42 | that I at least provide some of that detail.
| | 05:46 | And then once again enlarge my brush a
little bit, because this is just less of
| | 05:51 | a detailed area to worry about.
| | 05:53 | But see how I am just painting
downward here with very quick strokes.
| | 05:57 | Now, here's where my brush size goes down a bit.
| | 06:00 | I'm not going to touch the tree yet,
because I am going to do that on a separate layer.
| | 06:07 | Just because there's three layers
presented here at the outset doesn't mean that
| | 06:10 | you have to restrict
yourself working with three layers.
| | 06:14 | You use as many as you need.
| | 06:16 | And in fact, the layer for the
tree is not even going to be cloned.
| | 06:20 | I am going to actually paint it,
because I want it on its own layer and you'll
| | 06:25 | see in a little bit why I want to do that.
| | 06:28 | So we've got a good
indication of the light standard.
| | 06:35 | Now, to get to the tree I am going
to go ahead and create a new layer.
| | 06:40 | And I'm not going to be cloning, so
what I need to do here is get one of
| | 06:44 | brushes and I think a Smeary
Brush is going to work in this case.
| | 06:48 | I don't want it to be Solid Opaque.
| | 06:51 | And I am going to reduce the size a bit
and I am going to go and I'm just going
| | 06:55 | to select that color and then what I
may do over in my color palette is just
| | 07:03 | darken it up a little bit.
| | 07:04 | So if something is somewhat dark, you
might want to make it a little bit darker.
| | 07:08 | If something is somewhat light and
you're going to paint in your own color, you
| | 07:12 | might want to lighten it up a little bit.
| | 07:15 | Because when you do that, you are in
effect increasing the contrast in the image
| | 07:20 | and you could see this tree is
somewhat faded in the processes that we went
| | 07:24 | through to get this into an
underpainting state, and I probably want a little
| | 07:29 | bit more darkness there, so that's the
reason for selecting the darker color.
| | 07:34 | Now I can go in here and I'm just
going to paint and I'm going to be doing
| | 07:38 | this actually just on its own layer. And I'll
show you in a moment why we want to do that.
| | 07:45 | Now, I've already kind of used up the
size of my brush here, so I am going to
| | 07:49 | reduce the scale a bit.
| | 07:50 | And you don't have to go through and
exactly precisely render every branch on this,
| | 07:59 | because once again, it's pretty
much an impression and it's not going to
| | 08:06 | be painterly if you try too
precisely to follow what the photograph is.
| | 08:11 | What are you going to
end up with? A photograph.
| | 08:14 | So we don't want to do that.
| | 08:17 | And then we've got some trees back here,
so I am just going to vaguely use the
| | 08:23 | shape of the lights as well as some of
the branches I can see in those trees to
| | 08:29 | just provide a skeletal outline.
| | 08:33 | Look how I'm just indicating them.
| | 08:34 | I am not even now
following real tree limb structure.
| | 08:38 | I'm just providing a few loose lines
in those areas that will be close enough
| | 08:42 | for the eye to read as the tree branches.
| | 08:46 | But they're going to be so far in the
background we really don't need to worry about them.
| | 08:51 | So I've shown you the basic
techniques I am using here.
| | 08:54 | I am going to go ahead and keep
working and finishing this up and then when
| | 08:57 | we start the next movie, you'll see
the result of what I did and then we'll continue on.
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| Understanding color| 00:00 | Besides indicating details 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 effects of
the atmosphere on distance.
| | 00:25 | We can additionally use this optical
queue to place greater importance on
| | 00:29 | subject matter in a painting.
| | 00:31 | In this video, we'll take a
look at how to use this technique.
| | 00:34 | So here's where we are.
| | 00:35 | This is the work I did since we last
talked and I wanted to show you that within
| | 00:42 | each of our cloning groups, there is a
Hue or Saturation adjustment layer and
| | 00:48 | I'm going to take advantage of that now,
because I want to start to play around
| | 00:52 | with this saturation of these images to
provide more focus on the subject matter,
| | 00:58 | which is really the cars in the foreground here.
| | 01:01 | That's the most important element.
| | 01:04 | We will be adding some people into
the scene later, but we want to start
| | 01:08 | working already on getting the stage
set for our actors that we're going to
| | 01:11 | supply a little later.
| | 01:13 | So I'm going to go to the
Underpainting first and turn it on.
| | 01:18 | What I want to do is reduce the Saturation.
| | 01:21 | I'm going to overplay it here because I
want to see exactly what's going to happen.
| | 01:25 | Okay, so can see we've almost turned
into black and white, which is too far.
| | 01:30 | So I'm going to start to bring it up a
bit. And like so many settings in here, I
| | 01:35 | can't tell you which one is wrong or right.
| | 01:37 | I'm just going to turn this
on and off and watch the image.
| | 01:42 | And I can see here some color
brilliance is definitely been removed, but
| | 01:46 | it's not noticeable and that's the other
thing you want to do in these kinds of effects.
| | 01:51 | When they're done right, the eye
isn't attracted to them and so even on a
| | 01:56 | small scale like this, where I'm just
slightly adjusting the Saturation, less
| | 02:01 | is generally more. You don't want to turn that
into a black and white painting in the background.
| | 02:06 | It would look unnatural.
| | 02:08 | So we've done that one.
| | 02:09 | Let's now go up to our Intermediate
layer, Hue/Saturation, and in this case I'm
| | 02:15 | going to increase it and
once again I may just overshoot.
| | 02:18 | Let's see what it's actually affecting
and yes, it is affecting quite a bit there.
| | 02:24 | So I'm going to start turn this
down and I can turn the Hue/Saturation
| | 02:30 | adjustment layer on and off in the
Layer panel to see the difference.
| | 02:34 | It's definitely changing it and I
might punch it up just a little bit more.
| | 02:40 | Remember these are nondestructive
adjustments, so if later on I realized gee,
| | 02:45 | I kind of over did it and
that taxicab is way too yellow,
| | 02:49 | I can always come back and fix this,
but I want to at least have the start of
| | 02:54 | the visualization of how I'm going to
control the hierarchy of importance through
| | 02:59 | color saturation in this image.
| | 03:03 | The other thing I could do, we'll just
try it to see if it does anything, is if
| | 03:08 | I go here I can play with the Lightness.
| | 03:11 | Let's, for example, turn
it down to see what happens.
| | 03:13 | It kind of hiked that a little bit.
| | 03:16 | This is the kind of thing where if this
was a traditional painting, you could never
| | 03:19 | see these to try them out and because
we have this as a safety net, I can try
| | 03:25 | things out I never even would try.
| | 03:27 | Who would have thought that darkening
that a little bit would make a difference?
| | 03:30 | And yet now that I'm
looking at it, I really like it.
| | 03:33 | Let's go to the Intermediate Hue/
Saturation and toggle it on and off.
| | 03:38 | And sure enough you can see how that's
just adding a little bit more life to
| | 03:43 | what is right now our primary subject.
| | 03:46 | So what I've done here is used warm
and cool color and brightness as a useful
| | 03:53 | tool for focusing viewer attention to
desired areas within our composition.
| | 03:58 | The trick is to be subtle about it and not let
it call undue attention for the wrong reasons.
| | 04:03 | And in the next movie, I'm going to
talk about adding texture, which is another
| | 04:07 | visual element that attracts the eye.
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| Introducing texture| 00:00 | As we advance further into the
intermediate layer of our translation it's time
| | 00:04 | to start introducing some texture into the mix.
| | 00:07 | Within the vocabulary of painting,
the appearance of canvas texture is a way of
| | 00:12 | reestablishing the high-frequency
detailed destroyed in the underpainting step.
| | 00:18 | 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.
| | 00:25 | So this is where texture is now
going to start to play a greater role.
| | 00:30 | I can see a little bit in some of the
cross-strokes that idea down here in the
| | 00:35 | street area, but they're pretty
subtle and we want to start to reintroduce
| | 00:40 | that texture, to provide some visual
activity that the eye is going to be attracted to.
| | 00:46 | Remember in a photograph everything
that's in clear sharp focus has the elements
| | 00:52 | of high-frequency noise in
it that attracts your eye.
| | 00:57 | In a painting we can indicate it by
using the canvas in a way that it provides
| | 01:04 | some high frequency and we are
totally in control of it through the
| | 01:08 | application of our brush.
| | 01:10 | I will show you what I mean.
| | 01:11 | Now this is another one where I definitely
am going to want to do this on its own layer.
| | 01:18 | So I'm going to probably put this one
outside of this group, because I don't
| | 01:24 | want the adjustment layer of
Hue/Saturation to affect it.
| | 01:29 | So I am going to go ahead, I am going
to create a new layer, and what I want to
| | 01:32 | do is just take this layer and put
it up so it's above the grouping that
| | 01:37 | includes the Hue/Saturation slider.
| | 01:39 | That way it won't be
affected by changes made there.
| | 01:44 | Now we are going to use our brushes on
this and we are going to not use cloning,
| | 01:48 | but we are going to use opaque brushes
and we are going to have to look at a
| | 01:51 | couple of things here to get this straight.
| | 01:54 | Again, I'll probably just
use my Round Opaque Fan Brush.
| | 01:57 | Now if you look down here in the
preview we are getting a really good
| | 02:01 | representation of how the current Depth
setting through light to full pressure
| | 02:07 | will apply to our layer and I don't want
a fully engaged paint occurring on this
| | 02:16 | texture layer that I am making.
| | 02:17 | So I'm going to play with the Depth
slider here and notice as I turn it down,
| | 02:22 | see what's happening down in the preview.
| | 02:24 | I'm able to reduce the influence of
texture so that even with my hardest
| | 02:29 | brushstrokes I am not going
to get a canvas-clogging color.
| | 02:33 | It's only going to skip along the
highest parts of a grain, and that's what we
| | 02:38 | want to do, because we can start to use
this as a way to do optical mixing and I
| | 02:44 | will show you what I mean in a moment.
By being able to apply color but not as a
| | 02:49 | fully coverage type color,
| | 02:52 | but by only using the tops of the
canvas weave we can establish a very
| | 02:57 | interesting additional layer
of information on our painting.
| | 03:02 | I am going to leave it open for a moment and
just try a very wild color here on my layer.
| | 03:07 | The other thing I am going to do is I
am going to call this texture so that I
| | 03:12 | know where that is in case I
start building up so many layers.
| | 03:15 | I am just going to try it here.
| | 03:17 | That's still pretty tight in terms of
how much texture is showing through this.
| | 03:21 | So I am going to turn it
down even more. That's better.
| | 03:27 | I think it's even still at
this point a bit too much.
| | 03:30 | I am going to turn it down a bit more.
| | 03:32 | Maybe even down about 3%. Now let's see.
| | 03:36 | That's in there where I want.
| | 03:37 | So almost like you want the most
coverage to be maybe 50% coverage and then
| | 03:43 | through pressure be able to go from
that 50% down to a much lighter amount and
| | 03:50 | that's exactly what I'm looking for.
| | 03:52 | So I'm going to delete all that and
we can go ahead and close this up.
| | 03:58 | Oddly enough, even while this has to do
with the main subject, you can use it in
| | 04:03 | some very interesting ways.
| | 04:05 | Remember, we talked in the last
movie about warm colors advancing and
| | 04:09 | cool colors retreating.
| | 04:11 | I can do a little bit of interest on
these buildings in the background without
| | 04:16 | calling too much attention, but just
providing some optical mixing and what I
| | 04:22 | want to do here is actually go and get a blue.
| | 04:27 | Now I could do this by the numbers here,
but the other thing we don't want to
| | 04:32 | forget, I did create all the swatches
which represent traditional colors.
| | 04:37 | So I've actually got a whole set of
colors here that provide me with the
| | 04:43 | equivalent of what a commercial
set of artists' colors would have.
| | 04:47 | So if we stick more to these colors
rather than just dialing in any color I want,
| | 04:52 | it's going to be yet another
element of painting that the colors applied
| | 04:57 | this image are coming from a
traditional model of what color should be like.
| | 05:03 | So let's go ahead and do that.
| | 05:05 | I'm just going to see a little bit here.
| | 05:09 | In fact, let's go to 100% for this.
| | 05:12 | Now we are getting to the point where being
able to see makes a great amount of difference.
| | 05:17 | See how I am just putting a
little bit of that in there.
| | 05:21 | We will back out in a moment and look at that.
| | 05:25 | Now this building is getting a little closer.
| | 05:27 | I am going to provide a little warmth for it.
| | 05:29 | So let's take this color.
And again very, very light.
| | 05:35 | You don't want to overdo this.
| | 05:37 | I might do purple, and remember this is
on a layer, so later on I could say, you
| | 05:44 | know, that's a bit much.
| | 05:45 | I can play with, for example, the
Opacity to adjust the strength of this.
| | 05:50 | So while it looks good to my eye now,
I often find after you have done something
| | 05:55 | like this and you get away from it,
you realize later oh, I overdid it.
| | 06:00 | That's once again where I
call my 50% rule into play.
| | 06:03 | It may work out that it looks good,
but it's calling attention to itself.
| | 06:07 | Now let's get down here on the cars and
I am going to work a little bit in these
| | 06:13 | vehicles right in the front.
| | 06:15 | Another trick I'll show you, and this
deviates a little bit from using the exact
| | 06:20 | colors, but you don't always have to
stay rigidly tied into these colors.
| | 06:25 | I am going to go over here and I am
going to sample a color off of there.
| | 06:30 | I want to point something out,
because I'm doing a little trick here that I
| | 06:33 | haven't told you about.
| | 06:34 | Normally, when you hold down the Option
key when you're using the Mixer brush,
| | 06:39 | you're going to see that cursor.
| | 06:42 | What is that cursor?
| | 06:43 | This cursor actually enables me
to pick up a broad range of color.
| | 06:48 | I will just show you a sample here.
| | 06:49 | I am going to pick right there
and then let's just do a stroke.
| | 06:52 | So normally when you're in the Mixer
Brush, you will find if you hold down
| | 06:56 | the Option key, which normally is what
you do to get the eyedropper, instead
| | 07:01 | you get this little cursor.
| | 07:03 | What this cursor does in terms of the Mixer
brush is it actually picks up a range of colors.
| | 07:09 | So if I were to position it here
and sample it, my brush would start
| | 07:13 | painting with yellow on one side and
kind of this brown on the other, which
| | 07:17 | is a great technique.
| | 07:18 | It's called a loaded brush technique.
| | 07:20 | I use it all the time.
| | 07:21 | But for what I am doing right now, I
don't want to actually get a range of colors.
| | 07:27 | So I just want a single color.
| | 07:29 | So what I have done and what you will
be seeing we do while I am in the Mixer
| | 07:33 | Brush is I have got a key assigned to
my Wacom tablet so that when I press it,
| | 07:40 | it just initiates the eye
shortcut for the dropper.
| | 07:43 | So I can sample and let it up and it goes away.
| | 07:47 | So that's one little trick you can do
so that you have the ability to grab both
| | 07:51 | add mixtures of color for a loaded brush
technique or in the cases like this where
| | 07:56 | you just want to grab a single color
you can do it with a simple push of a
| | 08:00 | button on a device like your Wacom tablet.
| | 08:03 | Otherwise, you've got to go all way over here,
click on this, sample it, go back and select.
| | 08:09 | There is a lot of movement in
the interface that is distracting.
| | 08:13 | So that's my little trick.
| | 08:15 | So we've sampled that color.
| | 08:17 | Let's go ahead and jump back here and
this is where I can play with its saturation.
| | 08:22 | I might resample it again.
| | 08:23 | It doesn't quite look great. There we go!
| | 08:26 | So here is where I probably turn up
Brightness a little bit and increase
| | 08:29 | Saturation and now let's go
in here and paint on this.
| | 08:34 | See there it is and I am going to reduce my
brush size and just put a little bit on there.
| | 08:41 | It looks like it could maybe
be a little lighter, there.
| | 08:47 | So now I am just going to put a little
bit of that on there and I don't think
| | 08:53 | there is really other
areas. I need to do it there.
| | 08:56 | Another thing that's happening is these
windshields are reflecting the sky and
| | 09:02 | while it's really gray and a windshield
tends to have kind of this bluish green
| | 09:08 | kind of color in it,
| | 09:09 | it wouldn't hurt to highlight the fact
that there's some reflection going on there.
| | 09:14 | So once again I am going to sample a
single color and let's punch it up and
| | 09:20 | lighten it up a little bit and then
with a very light touch, I am just going to
| | 09:24 | go in here and add little bits of that
reflection from the sky to show up on here
| | 09:33 | and anywhere where there's a
windshield I will do some there, anywhere where
| | 09:41 | that kind of curving towards the sky.
| | 09:42 | It's just a little technique to
indicate, there is that word, indicating kind of
| | 09:48 | a reflection on glass.
| | 09:50 | I don't know that it really be here so
much, but that's good. Same thing here.
| | 09:59 | I am going to once again sample this
color and if anything I am going to
| | 10:02 | brighten it up a bit.
| | 10:03 | So I will take it to brighter, and keep in
mind I am always doing this with light touch.
| | 10:09 | If I go all the way I am going to
get that, which there may be occasions I
| | 10:13 | want it, but for the most part I want
it to be that or less, generally less.
| | 10:19 | Maybe also little bit right along the top here.
| | 10:25 | Let's once again turn on our
preview and we do have this bus here.
| | 10:33 | So that's another area I think I am
going to go ahead and sample there and
| | 10:38 | lighten it up just a bit.
| | 10:40 | Maybe just little bit along here.
| | 10:45 | They are small moves, but each of
these small moves are slowly but surely
| | 10:55 | bringing this back into sharper focus
and it's all through this indication.
| | 11:00 | I am going to shut that off.
| | 11:04 | Let's back out a little bit here so we see.
| | 11:08 | And what I like to do is just A/B
it by turning the layer on and off.
| | 11:11 | So you can see what we are doing is
subtle, but we are going to be doing a lot
| | 11:17 | of subtle things on our way to
completion that are going to put this in a much
| | 11:22 | more finished state.
| | 11:23 | And I will be using more texture.
| | 11:25 | This isn't the extent of
texture I'm going to be using.
| | 11:28 | This is just one usage of it, but
there will be more texture used in the
| | 11:33 | image as I move forward.
| | 11:36 | So I am going to keep working on
this and I will see you over in the next
| | 11:39 | chapter which is the detail chapter.
| | 11:41 | This is where we are really going to
start to lock in our subject matter.
| | 11:45 | So I will see you on the other side.
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|
11. Expressive Interpretation: Detail LayerProviding rest areas for the eye| 00:00 | While I have been stressing the
importance of using detail to direct the
| | 00:05 | viewer's interest, it is
equally important to utilize areas of
| | 00:08 | contrasting non-interest.
| | 00:11 | An image with no rest areas becomes
fatiguing to look at, and confuses the
| | 00:16 | viewer's eye as to what is
important within the scene.
| | 00:19 | Let's take a look at how to use the
contrast of detail and rest areas to
| | 00:24 | emphasize the subject.
| | 00:25 | Before we get started, I'll just show
you the difference between the texture
| | 00:30 | that I applied in the last chapter.
| | 00:33 | We'll take a look here at both the
texture on and off, so you can see how
| | 00:37 | it affects the image.
| | 00:39 | It's subtle, but it is adding detail to the
image and that's what we're all about here,
| | 00:45 | adding more detail.
| | 00:48 | Now, let's talk a bit about rest areas.
| | 00:51 | I've got a couple of big
rest areas in this image.
| | 00:53 | One is in the foreground here, in the street.
| | 00:57 | There is far less going on here than
there is in the main subject area where the
| | 01:02 | line of cars is sitting.
| | 01:04 | We've also got a primary
rest area here in the back.
| | 01:08 | You can see a good contrast of a
rest area with detail in front of it.
| | 01:13 | So these both support each other.
| | 01:16 | The act of this detail being here
reinforces the rest area and vice-versa.
| | 01:22 | This rest area makes this detail seem
all the more important, because there's
| | 01:26 | not a lot going around it
otherwise. Same thing is going on here.
| | 01:31 | In fact, we've got a
little bit of a problem here.
| | 01:33 | I told you earlier that I wanted to put
this on its own layer and the reason I
| | 01:39 | did that is because I can do a little
trick here and I've already turned it on.
| | 01:44 | I've enabled the
Transparency Lock for this layer.
| | 01:48 | Once this is enabled, what this lets
me do is paint into only areas that have
| | 01:55 | already existing painting on it.
| | 01:58 | I feel like the trees are too
prominent even as they move back.
| | 02:03 | The problem was as I was using pretty
much the same color for all the trees and
| | 02:08 | these are retreating in distance and
yet they still bear the same importance in
| | 02:13 | the distance as the trees closer in the
foreground, and that's just not correct.
| | 02:18 | These trees need to have less saturation
and less dark color associated with them.
| | 02:25 | So by using this Transparency Lock, I can
paint into here and literally adjust the colors.
| | 02:32 | So what I've done is I've
switched over from the Mixer Brush to the
| | 02:37 | regular Airbrush tool.
| | 02:38 | I also made sure I
selected a nice soft airbrush.
| | 02:43 | Just it helps in being able to add a
change of color in here, because we're
| | 02:47 | literally going to be airbrushing.
| | 02:48 | I've made it rather large.
| | 02:52 | The other thing I'm going to do is I'm
going to sample the colors in this area.
| | 02:57 | So something like right here.
| | 02:59 | So there is our color and it's pretty dark.
| | 03:01 | So I'm going to go ahead, and lighten
it up a bit and let's just do a test
| | 03:05 | and see how it works.
| | 03:06 | I'm just going to go ahead and slam it in there.
| | 03:08 | Okay, it's so light,
| | 03:10 | it makes it invisible, which is not what I want.
| | 03:12 | So I need to darken it up a
little bit and let's try it again.
| | 03:17 | That's much better.
| | 03:18 | See how it's light, but you still see it.
| | 03:20 | So I'll start with full pressure here, but
then I'll lighten my pressure as I come forward.
| | 03:25 | You can see what I've done here is now
I've added some atmospherics to this so
| | 03:30 | that as it retreats in the distance,
they become lighter and that's just a way
| | 03:34 | to accentuate the
appearance of depth in this image.
| | 03:39 | So something that I didn't do correctly
initially, by leaving it on a separate layer,
| | 03:44 | and I kind of knew in advance I
might want to adjust this, I'm able to
| | 03:48 | take advantage of this layer's
Transparency Lock to then paint into it as if it
| | 03:53 | were masked, which essentially it is,
and I can alter the color within it.
| | 03:58 | So it's just a little trick to visually
portray depth in this particular area.
| | 04:04 | One of the concepts I use to think
about what is important in a scene is what I
| | 04:09 | call the "actors on a stage" concept.
| | 04:13 | If you've ever been to a Broadway play
or even a high school play, you'll see
| | 04:17 | that at the beginning of a
play, the stage is all lit up.
| | 04:21 | You see the scenery, the props, the
actors, everybody is on there, because
| | 04:25 | they're introducing the
environment that this play is going to be in.
| | 04:29 | But once the play starts, the focus
becomes centered on the actors and through
| | 04:34 | the use of spotlights, they'll often
have lighting that is only lighting up
| | 04:40 | the actors and the rest of the stage is
darkened down to where you don't even see it.
| | 04:44 | They're doing exactly what
we've been talking about.
| | 04:47 | They are restricting your focus so that
you're only going to pay attention to the actors.
| | 04:52 | You already have a sense of
them being in that environment.
| | 04:55 | If it mysteriously disappears, you're
not even going to notice it, because
| | 04:59 | you're so focused on those actors that
the fact that the scenery has somewhat
| | 05:03 | disappeared doesn't bother you,
because the focus is on the actors.
| | 05:08 | If the stage stayed lit up through the
whole play, you'd find yourself wandering
| | 05:12 | around looking at different elements of
the scenery and the props and you'd be
| | 05:15 | distracted from the actors at times.
| | 05:17 | So the way lighting is used in the
theater is a very good analogue of what
| | 05:23 | we want to do here.
| | 05:24 | We want to focus on the actors and so
using that concept, I will look at a
| | 05:29 | scene like this and I ask myself,
who are the actors? What's the stage?
| | 05:33 | And in this case, right now, until we
had people, the actors on this stage are
| | 05:39 | definitely the cars and the
traffic and to a degree the trees.
| | 05:44 | The stage itself is this foreground, the
street, and the buildings in the background.
| | 05:50 | They provide a sense of place, but
they are not the actors on the stage.
| | 05:56 | So, by asking yourself that question,
who are the actors, you can ensure that
| | 06:02 | you are paying attention to the
proper elements within an image.
| | 06:06 | If you find yourself fussing too much
over how this looks like a watery street,
| | 06:11 | you have to ask yourself, is
this the actor or the stage?
| | 06:14 | If it's the stage, you're
spending too much time on it.
| | 06:17 | So that's one way you can evaluate
a scene and decide where should I
| | 06:21 | be spending my focus?
| | 06:23 | Where am I going to be
spending my time with my brush?
| | 06:25 | You want to spend it on the actors.
| | 06:27 | So what have we learned here?
| | 06:30 | A well composed photograph will
naturally have some rest areas, but you can
| | 06:34 | always make artistic decisions during
the translation process to increase the
| | 06:38 | visual contrast between
the actors and the stage.
| | 06:42 | I make it a practice to regularly
check myself when fussing over an area of a
| | 06:47 | painting by asking the question,
is this an actor or the stage?
| | 06:51 | If it is the stage, stop spending time on it.
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| Focusing on the subject through detail| 00:00 | We talked about simplified indication
earlier in Chapter 10, and to a degree this
| | 00:05 | video is a continuation, but on a smaller scale.
| | 00:09 | Now that we are working on the Detail
layer, it is time to focus on the subject
| | 00:14 | and utilize small brush size in order
to provide the greatest amount of detail.
| | 00:19 | As we know, the eye seeks out detail,
so by imbuing our subject with the
| | 00:24 | greatest degree of detail, we control
where the viewer will focus his attention.
| | 00:29 | Now, I am going to start by dealing
with these trees and I don't have a
| | 00:35 | specific brush in the collection that
actually is going to create a splattery effect.
| | 00:42 | So we have to manufacture it.
| | 00:44 | And what I am going to do is
switch over to the regular Brush tool.
| | 00:49 | I also want to go up here and I am
just going to grab one of the hard edged
| | 00:54 | brushes for now and we'll create a new layer.
| | 00:58 | In fact, I've added it here.
| | 01:00 | It's called Detail Strokes, and I want
to just try this out and see what happens.
| | 01:06 | Well, that's no good.
| | 01:08 | So how do we adjust this
to do what we want it to?
| | 01:10 | I am going to open up the Brush menu
and the first thing we are going to do is
| | 01:14 | we are going to go to Scattering and
you will notice down there, see what
| | 01:17 | happens when I adjust Scattering?
I am going to just really crank it up.
| | 01:23 | That's the first thing we are going to do.
| | 01:25 | Next, we are going to go to Shape
Dynamics and here is where I can play with
| | 01:30 | what's called the Jitter Size.
| | 01:32 | See how it's randomly changing sizes as
I turn that up, and that's what I want.
| | 01:39 | That is going to create a
range of sizes as I spray this out.
| | 01:44 | The third thing I want to do is go to
Brush Tip Shape and let's try it out.
| | 01:50 | Okay, that's getting good,
but it's a bit too much.
| | 01:53 | So how do we slow down
the delivery of all these?
| | 01:56 | We can do it with the Spacing slider.
| | 01:58 | So as I turn this up, see how we're
getting less dense version of those.
| | 02:03 | I'm going to keep turning it up
here and trying it out till I get about
| | 02:09 | the delivery I want.
| | 02:11 | There, I think that's pretty good.
| | 02:14 | It's a little large for the sights of the
light, so I am going to turn this down a bit.
| | 02:19 | That's better.
| | 02:20 | I might even turn it down one
degree more, maybe another, there.
| | 02:25 | So I've now got the light.
| | 02:28 | The other thing I may do here is play
with the Hardness, because these lights
| | 02:32 | are like twinkling a little bit and
a little bit of soft edge won't hurt.
| | 02:38 | I think that looks pretty good.
| | 02:39 | So I am on my Detail layer.
| | 02:41 | I am going to go ahead and let's
just give it a try. There we go.
| | 02:48 | I am putting in these lights and you
have to kind of imagine that there are
| | 02:53 | little branch elements that we're not
even seeing that those lights are going on to.
| | 02:57 | So don't have a hard and fast rule
that your sparkly little lights in right
| | 03:04 | with the ends of the branches.
| | 03:08 | Implied branch is a little farther out
and kind of going beyond the range we
| | 03:13 | are going to imply that, which
again is a sense of indication.
| | 03:18 | Let's try it here, and I am going to go
ahead-- and I am not pressing this hard.
| | 03:22 | So I am getting smaller lights,
which is, they're in the distance.
| | 03:27 | Just add them in there and as we go
back, now I can't worry about the color
| | 03:31 | but we'll go back and mask this off
with our Transparency Lock and I will
| | 03:36 | lighten those up a bit.
| | 03:38 | Okay. I think there is some back in here,
but they are almost nonexistent.
| | 03:45 | So we've added our lights. Maybe a
little bit more here, in the foreground.
| | 03:49 | And I am also going to lightly go
in here and just do some smaller ones
| | 03:54 | overall, just to add to the density and
to give it a feeling of kind of lights
| | 03:59 | twinkling and glowing.
| | 04:00 | Remember, this is an
impression here we are doing.
| | 04:02 | It's not photography.
| | 04:04 | That's what we are trying to get away from.
| | 04:06 | And I can clean this up in
a little bit with an eraser.
| | 04:10 | So that looks pretty good.
| | 04:13 | Now, let's go ahead and lock this off,
and this is where I can take this color
| | 04:19 | and just turn it down as well as its
saturation, and now I'll go pick out just
| | 04:24 | a normal brush that doesn't have all of
those attributes about it and enlarge it here.
| | 04:29 | Let's just try it. Yup, it's working.
| | 04:32 | I can see I can take it down a little
more though, so I'll go down there and
| | 04:37 | now I am just kind of feathering
from the lights being less bright in the
| | 04:42 | background to brighter in the
foreground. Same back here. And there it is.
| | 04:47 | That's how simple those lights were.
| | 04:49 | Now, looking at them it's like they
look great, but gee, maybe they are a
| | 04:52 | little too overemphasized.
| | 04:54 | So the other thing I can do here is I am
going to use Command+U or Ctrl+U, which
| | 04:59 | brings up the Hue/Saturation slider,
and I am just going to, while I can see this,
| | 05:04 | turn down the Lightness of it a bit.
| | 05:08 | I didn't take it too much where these
don't look right at all, but this gives
| | 05:12 | me a way to play with this look without
necessarily losing exactly all the work I've done already.
| | 05:20 | So I like the placement and everything.
| | 05:21 | It's just the look of the
light seemed a little off.
| | 05:23 | So by having this, again, on a separate
layer, I can play with this and get it
| | 05:28 | right where I want it, and that's about it.
| | 05:30 | Because once again, you don't want these
elements to necessarily over attract attention.
| | 05:36 | Yes, they are subject areas and the
detail helps your eye go to it, but I don't
| | 05:40 | want it to be overemphatic.
| | 05:42 | In fact, this is the main actor on the stage.
| | 05:45 | This is kind of supporting cast
essentially, so there's no reason to have it as
| | 05:50 | brilliant and as "look at me"
as the actors on the stage are.
| | 05:55 | So by turning that down a little bit,
I have created some interest in an
| | 06:00 | otherwise rest area of the image,
but I've also created some interest.
| | 06:05 | So I'm balancing who are the primary actors
and who are the supporting actors basically.
| | 06:13 | Okay. The other thing we're going to do now
is start to use a very small brush stroke.
| | 06:19 | So if we go down here to my point and I go
down to Round Opaque Fine, let's grab that.
| | 06:25 | And I want to be sure I disable my
Transparency Lock and let's just try
| | 06:30 | a little sample here.
| | 06:31 | I want to just see the range
of small to large I am getting.
| | 06:36 | At the largest end it's a bit too big.
| | 06:39 | So I am going to use my left bracket key here
to turn it down a little bit. And what was it?
| | 06:43 | It was a 7. I've taken it
down to 5. Let's try that.
| | 06:46 | Still a bit much.
| | 06:48 | Let's take it down to 3.
| | 06:51 | That's probably the range of largeness
to smallness that I want in my strokes.
| | 06:58 | So we'll undo these and now I'm ready
to start applying some fine detail to this
| | 07:06 | and for this I do want to be up at 100%.
| | 07:09 | This is where we can really start
defining these elements, and you'll notice
| | 07:13 | too we are spending less and less
time using the referenced image. It's now
| | 07:19 | becoming more and more of our painted image,
and that's where we want to go with this.
| | 07:24 | So one of the things I am going to do
is kind of delineate the cars a bit more.
| | 07:28 | I am going to go down with a
fairly dark brush to do this.
| | 07:31 | I am just going to go into some of these
spots and just detail, feather in small
| | 07:39 | amounts of detail on some of this.
| | 07:43 | You want to be careful because too
much is going to be pretty noisy, but we
| | 07:47 | just want to start adding some small areas.
| | 07:50 | One thing I kind of like is the way
it's almost like the rim here got lit up by
| | 07:55 | the side lighting from looks like this vehicle.
| | 07:57 | So I am going to grab that color
and just throw a little right there.
| | 08:02 | See, that's very small but it helps
define the roundness of the tire and the
| | 08:07 | rim and that's where small
amounts make a big difference.
| | 08:12 | The other thing we can do is I am
going to take it all the way up to white,
| | 08:16 | and you want to reserve whites for highlights
only. You can't start using white everywhere.
| | 08:22 | None of this is white right now.
| | 08:24 | These are all less than white.
| | 08:25 | In fact, I'll draw an exit so you can
see, the white is brighter than that, and
| | 08:31 | that's why I reserve white
only for my highest highlights.
| | 08:35 | And I am going to start putting it
like on the very tops of the cars.
| | 08:40 | And notice I am not necessarily
being a slave to exactly keeping these
| | 08:46 | perfectly straight lines that match the
exact geometry of the car, so to speak.
| | 08:52 | Just bits and pieces here are
enough to help the eye connect the dots.
| | 08:58 | Remember, that's the trick here.
| | 09:00 | We're connecting the dots.
| | 09:01 | There's going to be highlights back
here, these other car elements, one back
| | 09:09 | there, we've got there.
| | 09:10 | See, how I am also by being lighter and
allowing a bit of the texture to work,
| | 09:15 | I can simulate less brightness by allowing
this thing to become reticulated and broken up.
| | 09:23 | That's another way to kind of add to that.
| | 09:26 | Also, on things like the tops of
these signs, we are just going to assume
| | 09:30 | there is a bit of a light coming from
above, and so little areas like this are
| | 09:36 | where just adding little
highlights help define the illusion of
| | 09:42 | three-dimensionality to the scene.
| | 09:45 | And it's amazing how just a few little
strokes like that are enough to start to
| | 09:50 | give the illusion of greater detail.
| | 09:54 | I think these are little areas that are
the tops of awnings that are in the scene.
| | 10:00 | Now, let's back this out, and where
this will really make a difference is when
| | 10:05 | you turn this layer on and off now.
It should really be like, wow, without that
| | 10:09 | there's a lack of what I
want to be a finished image.
| | 10:13 | I mean, look at the difference.
| | 10:14 | It looks okay there, but you turn that
on and just those few lines that we have
| | 10:19 | added to the cars, the detail in the
trees, it's an amazing difference that's
| | 10:25 | starting to happen to this image
and it's through such small amounts of
| | 10:30 | additional paint on the image and yet
it really starts to make a difference.
| | 10:35 | So I am going to go ahead and finish
detailing this and then I will catch
| | 10:39 | you in the next video.
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|
12. Expressive Interpretation: Non-Photographic AdditionBeing willing to depart from the original| 00:01 | I shoot a lot of architectural stuff,
and when I do, my practice used to be to
| | 00:05 | shoot a facade or a scene
without pedestrians in the scene.
| | 00:09 | I mean after all, the subject
is the architecture, right?
| | 00:12 | Well, on one occasion I was shooting
near the Plaza in Kansas City, where
| | 00:17 | there's a lot of great architecture
and I had driven past this area a couple
| | 00:21 | times and I just noted that an early
morning light would get some interesting
| | 00:26 | side-lighting on the face of the architecture.
| | 00:29 | So I was shooting this scene and during
the shooting of it this little old lady
| | 00:36 | comes walking by and it's kind of like
my normal thinking is, okay, I wait till
| | 00:40 | they are out of the scene and I'll
take my shot, and then I just hit and it's
| | 00:43 | like well, she is walking through
there. I'll just shoot it just for variety.
| | 00:48 | I'm almost certainly not going to use
it, but I'll try it, and here's what
| | 00:52 | that shot looked like.
| | 00:53 | Well, the second I reviewed the shots
and I saw this it just struck me what a
| | 01:00 | difference a person in the scene makes.
| | 01:03 | I mean if you look at it without it
there is a certain I guess loneliness or
| | 01:08 | desolate kind of environment, but you
add a person into this scene and all of a
| | 01:14 | sudden there's a new level
of interest about the image.
| | 01:17 | Who is this woman, where is she coming from,
where is she going, what's in her shopping bag?
| | 01:22 | All of these things start to add a
focal point for the scene and as I've
| | 01:28 | talked about before actors in a stage,
well it turns out that a lot of these
| | 01:33 | architectural shots I've been doing I was
merely shooting the stage without actors on it.
| | 01:38 | I was assuming that the stage was the
actor and once I had this breakthrough
| | 01:44 | and saw this image and realized you
need an actor on was really a stage,
| | 01:49 | it really changed for me how to
shoot these kinds of images.
| | 01:52 | Another thing it does is it
just gives scale to the image.
| | 01:56 | You start to get a sense of how large
the buildings are and overall the addition
| | 02:00 | of people really makes these images.
| | 02:03 | And I've since used this little
old lady in a number of images.
| | 02:07 | Here's the finished image. I did do
these long panoramas of a whole block, and
| | 02:12 | there she is in the center.
| | 02:13 | The other thing that worked out, and I
have to thank her for it, she happened to
| | 02:16 | be in the perfect spot where that's a rest area.
| | 02:20 | We talked about this earlier. And you
put her in it, and all of a sudden her detail
| | 02:25 | pops out against that area of non-activity.
| | 02:29 | So when you look at this scene you
almost focus right away on her. She is
| | 02:35 | centrally located, she's got that
bright red scarf, she's against a black
| | 02:39 | background with the white or the very
bright bag she's carrying, all come together
| | 02:45 | for your eye. You want to go that. Even
though there is a lot of other detail in
| | 02:49 | this image, it's just a
spot that you tend to go to.
| | 02:52 | So it becomes a focal point for the whole image.
| | 02:54 | Here is she is in another image.
| | 02:56 | Now I got to place her where I
wanted to this time and I tried several
| | 03:00 | different locations, but just like
the earlier one with the window I had a
| | 03:04 | perfect opportunity with this doorway
that was shut and had no detail in it
| | 03:09 | to add her to that location, and
without her in this scene it's a nice
| | 03:14 | architectural scene, it's another one
of these early-morning shots, but it was
| | 03:18 | dead without an actor on the stage.
| | 03:21 | So the addition of that one person
made a big difference in how I've
| | 03:26 | photographed these kinds of scenes now.
| | 03:28 | The moral of the story is you
don't want to be a slave to the original photograph.
| | 03:34 | You always have to be thinking of how
can I improve this, how can I add to this,
| | 03:38 | how can I add a storytelling element,
for example? And that's where the addition
| | 03:43 | of these actors on the
stage make a huge difference.
| | 03:47 | Now another thing I want to mention
while we're covering this subject is
| | 03:50 | looking at illustration work is a
great place to get a lot of ideas for this.
| | 03:55 | And in the mid 50's maybe a little
earlier and up to the 60's was an era called
| | 04:02 | the golden age ofillustration. It's
before photography took over, and in that
| | 04:07 | earlier era illustrators or painters
did all kinds of illustration work for
| | 04:13 | magazines and books and novels.
| | 04:16 | Their ability to tell a story in a
dramatic way is unparalleled, and so I
| | 04:23 | recommend that you spend some time
looking at that era of illustration and some
| | 04:28 | of the names I can give you that are
really big to look at is Norman Rockwell
| | 04:32 | for sure, N.C. Wyeth is another one,
Howard Pyle, Maxfield Parrish, J.C.
| | 04:39 | Leyendecker, Bernie Fuchs, all these
guys were masters at adding extra elements
| | 04:46 | to an image to create a sense of drama.
| | 04:49 | Now let me just show you one other
example of not being a slave to the original.
| | 04:55 | This is the image we played with
earlier where I corrected the perspective and
| | 04:59 | this just happens to be my daughter's
sorority house that she lived in when she
| | 05:03 | was going to college. And we wanted to do
something with this image and the idea
| | 05:09 | was why not take this scene, which I
had to shoot at towards the end of summer,
| | 05:14 | and we used it for an auction item, a
print, and we wanted to do a autumn scene.
| | 05:20 | So you can see here, I've done
a lot of changes to this image.
| | 05:24 | It's still based on the photograph, but
I changed it quite a bit in order to add
| | 05:29 | a sense of charm and illustration to it
| | 05:31 | that wasn't in the original image.
| | 05:34 | Now here's one case where I didn't add
a person in the image and I could have,
| | 05:38 | but we did really want to
focus on the house itself.
| | 05:41 | Then the next year we wanted,
they said, can you do another one?
| | 05:44 | And so I thought wouldn't it be
interesting to do the same scene, different season?
| | 05:49 | And so here yet again is another
rendition of that same original scene, but now
| | 05:55 | I've completely changed its character
through adding snow and wintry sky and
| | 06:01 | taking leaves off the trees, so all of
this combines to take an original image
| | 06:07 | and in many cases steer it very far
off of what its original content was.
| | 06:15 | So the idea is, behind my whole little
epistle here, is that you don't want to get
| | 06:21 | stuck on the original image, and if
you're a photographer that's especially hard.
| | 06:26 | Besides destroying photographic detail,
| | 06:29 | altering a photograph is very
hard for photographers to do.
| | 06:32 | Both of these are in direct
opposition to the vocabulary of photography.
| | 06:38 | They are however key elements
in the language of painting.
| | 06:41 | So don't be afraid to utilize these powerful
elements in the service of expressive painting.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating detail to enhance the artwork| 00:01 | Here's where I'm at now in the process
of adding detail to my image and you can
| | 00:06 | get this file from the
Exercise folder for Chapter 12.
| | 00:11 | What I want to talk about now is
starting to add elements that aren't in the
| | 00:16 | original scene, which is yet another
way to differentiate yourself from the
| | 00:20 | language of photography and the
language of painting. We're going away from
| | 00:24 | what the camera sees and we're putting into
this what our vision of what we want to see is.
| | 00:30 | And at this point on one add
the pedestrians into this scene.
| | 00:35 | And so here's how the
process worked for doing that.
| | 00:39 | There weren't any people in this
scene and I needed some reference.
| | 00:44 | So what I ended up doing was going out
on the web and just using a Google search
| | 00:49 | to find you know pedestrians or street
scenes and in doing so I found several
| | 00:55 | examples of people walking.
| | 00:57 | So I had some anatomy reference how
people walk and I actually put them on my
| | 01:01 | second monitor in my studio
and then here's what I did.
| | 01:06 | I did little sketchy versions based on
these references that I had and I wanted
| | 01:14 | to keep them intentionally very loose
to go along with the rest of the style of
| | 01:20 | the painting and it also once again is
yet another move away from photography
| | 01:25 | because these definitely are not
photographic silhouettes of people.
| | 01:28 | They are hand rendered in a loose style.
| | 01:31 | That's what I wanted.
| | 01:32 | And once I made them, I took them and I
would take these and I would bring them
| | 01:38 | down into the scene.
| | 01:40 | I didn't worry about when I
rendered them what scale they were at.
| | 01:43 | Because I knew I was going
to need to rescale them anyway.
| | 01:47 | And in this case I will just kind of
play with this so I got a scale that seem
| | 01:51 | appropriate and I am looking at kind of
the height of the fire hydrant here, the
| | 01:55 | size of the car which is probably a
little bit further back, so this would be a
| | 01:58 | little bit oversized.
| | 02:00 | It's probably a little taller, maybe like this.
| | 02:03 | And so I would put those into the scene.
| | 02:06 | Now here is another one that's finished
and the nice thing about this too is you
| | 02:11 | know I can play with where I want to
put this, her silhouette. It kind of stands
| | 02:14 | out against the plain detail of the cab.
| | 02:18 | So I am going to put her there.
| | 02:19 | I am using my arrow key here just to
adjust it a little bit and I am going to
| | 02:24 | put the gentleman here.
| | 02:26 | And now here's how I went about coloring these.
| | 02:29 | Because these are just silhouettes,
I can take this layer and lock its
| | 02:33 | transparency and now I can paint into
this without fear of going past the edges
| | 02:39 | of the already sketched out silhouette.
| | 02:42 | So let's add some color to him.
| | 02:44 | I am going to give some blue for his
suit and I am going to take my brush and
| | 02:48 | make it very small here.
| | 02:50 | So I've selected my Fan - Round Opaque
Brush and sized it down a little bit.
| | 02:56 | And now I am painting and as you can
see, the paint doesn't go beyond the
| | 03:01 | confines of the silhouette, which
is perfect for what I'm doing here.
| | 03:05 | So I am just going to paint him in and I
am going to add a little bit of detail.
| | 03:09 | But you don't want to sit here
and try to you know add stripes and
| | 03:13 | everything else on this.
| | 03:14 | We are indicating. We are not trying to
unnecessarily get every single detail on here.
| | 03:19 | I am just going to take what looks like
a darker blue here and just put a little
| | 03:22 | bit of shadowing on this to
give it a little bit of dimension.
| | 03:26 | But you can see, I mean, very
little real effort is going into this.
| | 03:30 | Let's see I guess the appropriately attired men.
| | 03:33 | We have brown shoes, so we'll
just put a little brown down there.
| | 03:36 | Well, I want to get some flesh tone,
so right here is a good flesh tone.
| | 03:40 | I make my brush a little smaller.
| | 03:44 | That's maybe a bit much, but we
can darken it up a little bit.
| | 03:47 | Again, just, I am not going to
try to put eyes and everything.
| | 03:51 | You don't need that, just
enough to represent a human form.
| | 03:56 | Now I am going to darken along the
edge here little bit, just maybe to get
| | 03:59 | little bit more profile, and now we
might add a little bit of brown to the hair.
| | 04:04 | I am going to turn off the Transparency
Lock and the one thing I might do here
| | 04:11 | is just additionally put a
briefcase in the hand, business situation.
| | 04:16 | See, and here you're kind of thinking
a little bit about the story of this.
| | 04:20 | You know, who are these
people, where are they going?
| | 04:22 | Limited what you're adding, but it's just
enough to give a little bit more of a story to it.
| | 04:27 | Now the other thing I may do here is I
am going to add another layer above and
| | 04:33 | we'll just call this Highlights and
this just gives me another layer now.
| | 04:38 | I am going to add little highlights
to them to help pop them out a little
| | 04:43 | bit from the scene.
| | 04:44 | And so I am just going to grab some
white and let's get a nice fine brush here,
| | 04:49 | so I will get a Round Fine Opaque.
And I always test one so I am just going to
| | 04:53 | draw with it, and okay that's pretty good.
| | 04:56 | I do notice that right now the brush is
very slow, so you can see my brush all
| | 05:01 | of a sudden seems to be painting in
molasses and as I've told you before, if you
| | 05:06 | encounter a slow brush what is the
first thing you do? You look up and see if
| | 05:12 | Sample All Layesr is turned on and yes it is.
| | 05:15 | So I am going to disable it.
| | 05:16 | So look, now my brush is real time again.
| | 05:18 | So I'll delete that from there.
| | 05:21 | Now I can use this Highlight layer,
just to go and I am just going to add a
| | 05:24 | little bit of highlight on them.
| | 05:26 | And this just helps to
differentiate them from the background a bit.
| | 05:30 | Merely you don't have to be necessarily
accurate to any lighting source or anything.
| | 05:35 | We are just adding little
bits of highlight and you can see,
| | 05:39 | because you reserve white only for
the highlights, these are the brightest
| | 05:44 | colors on the whole scene.
| | 05:46 | So the addition of these highlights,
just like I've done in the cars in the
| | 05:50 | background and whatnot, give these
particular elements more weight visually.
| | 05:55 | Without them, it sort of melt into the scene.
| | 05:57 | With them they pop better.
| | 06:00 | So, little highlight elements.
| | 06:02 | While they are very small details, they
sure do change the character of how you
| | 06:08 | read these particular elements within the scene.
| | 06:11 | Now that we've got two pedestrians in
the scene, the one thing that's a little
| | 06:15 | odd about them is just still seem to be
floating the scene because they're not
| | 06:20 | reflecting in this foreground.
| | 06:22 | And in order for them to see
actually in the scene, they need to be
| | 06:26 | appropriately reflected as are the
cars and the lights and everything else.
| | 06:31 | So, I'm going to grab my Move tool
here and I am just going to select the man
| | 06:39 | and the woman and I am going to hold
down my Option key, click and drag, and
| | 06:44 | make a copy of them.
| | 06:45 | I don't need the highlights in this case.
| | 06:48 | And then I am going to take those two
layers and go to Transform and go down and
| | 06:55 | say Flip Vertical and now I may want to work on
each one of them individually to line them up.
| | 07:02 | But now I've got these reflections of them.
| | 07:05 | However, at this point
they're way too prominent.
| | 07:08 | So I need to dial them down somehow
and the way to do that is to first of all
| | 07:14 | lower their Opacity at least to about 50%.
| | 07:18 | And reflections typically are the most
intense nearest the object that they
| | 07:22 | are reflecting from, that's causing the
reflection, and then they diffuse out as they move away.
| | 07:30 | So a simple way to do that is to grab my
eraser and then just take one of these,
| | 07:36 | the woman in this case, and I am just
going to feather that reflection out a bit.
| | 07:41 | And then we'll go to the man, same thing.
| | 07:44 | If he is completely disappeared by
the top of his head, that's fine.
| | 07:48 | You just want to get that hint of
reflection. And these are so easy to overdo.
| | 07:53 | You don't want to call attention to themselves.
| | 07:55 | Yet it's the kind of element,
if it's not there it's noticed.
| | 07:59 | There, that's nice and subtle.
| | 08:01 | It's enough there to place them in
that scene and dimensionally kind of give
| | 08:06 | them proper weighting visually.
| | 08:09 | So that reflection looks good and
basically what we've done here is we've taken
| | 08:14 | something that wasn't in the
original and put it in there just to add an
| | 08:18 | additional element of life and storyline.
| | 08:22 | In the next movie we're going to talk
about the addition of the appearance of a
| | 08:27 | physical surface to the painting, which
gives it a sense of physicality, almost
| | 08:32 | like it's a photograph of
an actual physical painting.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating physical surface texture effects| 00:00 | Once you've transformed a photograph
into a painting, you have the option of
| | 00:05 | adding the appearance of
physical surface texture. What is this?
| | 00:09 | It is a simulation of light on the
three-dimensional surface of paint,
| | 00:14 | canvas, and varnish.
| | 00:15 | When a physical painting is
photographed or viewed under gallery lighting,
| | 00:19 | the lights will cause the painted
brushstrokes, particularly impasto style
| | 00:23 | painting, and canvas texture to be
emphasized by highlight and shadow.
| | 00:28 | Applied varnish or a glossy
protective coating will appear as subtle
| | 00:32 | brushstrokes delineated
by specular highlighting.
| | 00:35 | These visible artifacts make a part of our
perception of the painted physical object.
| | 00:41 | Depending on the wishes of the artist,
gallery, or museum, these physical
| | 00:45 | effects can be attenuated or
suppressed depending on the lighting setup.
| | 00:49 | I display a lot of my painting on the web.
| | 00:51 | So I like to add this virtual
surface to the finished work.
| | 00:55 | This provides the viewed representation
with an extra painting vocabulary element
| | 01:00 | that adds an additional
degree of realism to the work.
| | 01:04 | My technique is nondestructive.
| | 01:06 | So you have the option of displaying
or printing the painting with or without
| | 01:11 | this virtual surface.
| | 01:13 | I used to think that this surface
effect would not mix well with prints on
| | 01:16 | canvas, but I've been pleasantly
surprised that it can and does work.
| | 01:21 | This is definitely a personal preference.
| | 01:23 | Depending on your style of print
reproduction and presentation, you may or may
| | 01:27 | not wish to utilize virtual surface effects.
| | 01:31 | Before I do anything else, one thing
I want to going to bring up is as we
| | 01:34 | have been going through this,
we have been adding a lot of layers and
| | 01:37 | deepening on person's system,
| | 01:39 | you may not notice this at all, or
it could start making your system huff
| | 01:43 | and puff quite a bit.
| | 01:44 | What I am going to do here is I am
going to flatten this image down, but I
| | 01:50 | always make sure I have
saved the layered version first.
| | 01:54 | If I'm happy with all of the layering
and the cloning that I've done and I don't
| | 01:59 | feel like it's going to be something
I'd be going back to, then I'm freed at
| | 02:04 | this point flatten this image down and
that relieves a whole lot of memory so
| | 02:07 | that the performance can jump back up
if it's been bogged down at all. And you
| | 02:11 | can do this anywhere in the process you want.
| | 02:14 | I've let a whole bunch of layers build up here
and I think it's time for me to flatten it out.
| | 02:20 | That way I'll still have a preserved
layered version of the image by saving it
| | 02:24 | before flattening and then post-
flattening I can continue to work on it and in
| | 02:29 | fact when I add the Varnish layer onto it,
| | 02:31 | if I want to, I can always take that
Varnish layer and duplicate it over to
| | 02:36 | the layered version, so that I still
have a fully layered version all the way
| | 02:41 | up through and including the varnish, even
though I didn't do it with all of the layers intact.
| | 02:46 | So it's just a way to help
performance on your system.
| | 02:50 | So let's go ahead and I'll go over to
the Layer menu and right here at the
| | 02:55 | bottom is Flatten Image and we want to
discard the Reference layer too. That's fine.
| | 03:00 | So now we've got a flattened version
of this image, but we have saved the
| | 03:05 | layered version previously and I
can go ahead with adding my varnish.
| | 03:11 | So what I want to do is go the
Actions palette and we are going to go to
| | 03:15 | Create Varnish Layer.
| | 03:16 | Let's click on that and we
get a little dialog here.
| | 03:19 | It's just telling you that it
is going to add the Varnish layer.
| | 03:22 | You are going to see in a moment when
we hit Continue that the Layer Style
| | 03:26 | dialog will come up.
| | 03:27 | You can just dismiss that and then a
little bit later I'll get into what you
| | 03:30 | can do there. And then finally, you are
going to want to make sure you use the
| | 03:34 | Varnish Brush over into the tool presets
in connection with this particular layer.
| | 03:40 | So let's hit Continue and as I
said you can dismiss this for now.
| | 03:45 | I am going to go ahead and close this
and now we've got a latent varnish layer,
| | 03:49 | sitting there ready to be worked on.
| | 03:51 | I want to make sure I take my Varnish
Brush and one thing I want to point out,
| | 03:55 | I am going to temporary going to go down
to the Brush panel and in the Texture
| | 03:58 | panel, you want to keep this locked.
| | 04:00 | As long as this is locked, you won't
inadvertently be loading up other textures
| | 04:05 | or changing the scale of it, because as
we work through our painting, we want the
| | 04:11 | scale and the texture to be honored
all the way through and if this is
| | 04:16 | unchecked, you can get changes. All of a
sudden you are working with one of the
| | 04:20 | canvas texture. So be sure that
you check that this is enabled.
| | 04:25 | We've got our varnish coat and I am just
going to try a little sample outside my
| | 04:29 | area here, just to see what I am getting.
| | 04:32 | And as you can see it's applying
brushstrokes that are kind of raising the grain
| | 04:38 | a bit as well as imparting
some of those brushstrokes.
| | 04:41 | That's what I want on my layer.
| | 04:44 | I am making my brush size a little
larger here. And there are a couple of ways
| | 04:48 | you can go about this.
| | 04:49 | I just like kind of a general overall approach.
| | 04:51 | It's almost like I'm applying a
protective coat, but some people might want to
| | 04:57 | use the brush to follow the shapes in
the image so that it appears that that
| | 05:02 | paint actually is raised, and
you're certainly free to do that.
| | 05:06 | I just tend to be a little more freeform here.
| | 05:08 | I want it to be a recognizable textured
surface, but I'm not too concerned about
| | 05:13 | following the exact
painting elements within the image.
| | 05:18 | Okay, let's take a look at how we
can control this via the Bevel and
| | 05:23 | Emboss layer style.
| | 05:24 | So I am going to double-click
on that, bring up its dialog.
| | 05:29 | The primary way to control is right
here in the Bevel and Emboss Depth slider.
| | 05:33 | I'll turn it up so we can see what happens.
| | 05:36 | These things take a little while to
catch up, but you can see now it's really
| | 05:40 | super thick varnish, more than we
really want, but I just want to show you you
| | 05:45 | can totally control this.
| | 05:47 | So if you want to raise the attenuation
of it a bit, you certainly can do that.
| | 05:51 | There are two ways to do this.
| | 05:52 | You can either use the control in here
to set it visually the way you want it,
| | 05:57 | or I'll show you another way to do it.
| | 05:59 | Another key control right here is in
the Opacity slider for Highlight mode.
| | 06:04 | If I turn this up, it's going to
attenuate the supposed highlights coming from
| | 06:09 | above and if I do the Shadow
Opacity, it will attenuate from below.
| | 06:17 | So now you can see we've got really over-
attenuated varnish, way more than we want it to be.
| | 06:23 | As I said, you can control it from here,
or you can go ahead and leave it over-
| | 06:28 | attenuated and then use the
Opacity slider of your Varnish layer.
| | 06:33 | Let's just turn it down and now you
can see how I can bring this down and
| | 06:38 | sometimes I've found that kind of
over-attenuating it and then turning it down
| | 06:42 | using Opacity to control how much it's
there is actually better than trying to
| | 06:48 | control it strictly from the Bevel panel itself.
| | 06:52 | So now let's turn it on and off.
| | 06:54 | It looks pretty good.
| | 06:56 | Although I can tell you right now it
looks great, but I wouldn't be surprised
| | 07:00 | if I get away from this and come back
a little later and look at and realize
| | 07:04 | oh, it's way too strong.
| | 07:06 | I generally use what I call my 50% rule.
| | 07:09 | Whenever something looks really good,
give it some time and then come back and
| | 07:13 | turn it down by at least 50% and you'd
often be surprised at oh, yeah, it was way
| | 07:18 | overdone, even at this point.
Like I say this is too much.
| | 07:21 | So I am going to turn it down some more
and now I can turn it on and off and it
| | 07:26 | adds a nice subtle dimension of texture
without being obvious. It also looks like
| | 07:33 | we didn't quite paint in
here, so paint in this area.
| | 07:40 | The last thing I'll show you is if we go
back to the Bevel and Emboss panel,
| | 07:45 | you can also control the lighting from
here and I am going to just turn this so
| | 07:51 | it's directly overhead.
| | 07:52 | That's a little more neutral as
opposed to some angle. In a gallery in
| | 07:56 | particular it would be directly overhead
and you could see it's slightly changed
| | 08:01 | the attenuation of how the
strokes and texturing looks.
| | 08:06 | So you can also play with this and this
is all nondestructive, what we are doing here,
| | 08:10 | so you can play quite a bit
with the look of this varnish once you've
| | 08:14 | applied it and it's
nondestructive which is great.
| | 08:18 | So that's applying varnish.
| | 08:20 | As I said, this is a highly
personalized element of the painting.
| | 08:24 | You may or may not choose to use it.
| | 08:27 | You may choose to use it for display
on the web and then shut it off when you
| | 08:31 | print, or you may want to print with
it on. As I said I've been pleasantly
| | 08:35 | surprised that this actually does
work when it's printed on canvas.
| | 08:39 | You'd think it somehow would interfere,
but in most cases it actually enhances
| | 08:44 | the sense of three-
dimensionality. This is varnish.
| | 08:47 | Use it if you want, and as I said, it's
one more way to add a vocabulary element
| | 08:52 | of painting to our finished image.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
13. Expressive Interpretation: Final RefinementsWaiting a day| 00:00 | After you've supposedly finished
the painingt, 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 | re-examining it again.
| | 00:10 | Then take another look.
| | 00:11 | You're probably going to find a
few small things to change that you
| | 00:14 | haven't noticed before.
| | 00:16 | I believe this fresh look is brought
about by time away from the painting, and
| | 00:21 | let's take a look what we have here so far.
| | 00:23 | And the first thing I'm going to do is
I'm going to turn off the Varnish layer
| | 00:28 | and I just want to look around at this
spot anything that doesn't make any sense
| | 00:34 | and here's the way I do this.
| | 00:35 | I apply what I call my "what is that?" rule.
| | 00:38 | And if I see something and I have to
ask "what is that," take it away because
| | 00:43 | you don't want things in your image that are
going to do precisely that to your viewers.
| | 00:49 | You want everything to be clear enough
to be read so that there's no confusion
| | 00:54 | about what things are and
I can see a few right away.
| | 00:57 | For example, if we go over here, there
are some strokes I painted at one point
| | 01:03 | for some reason, but now there are just
kind of the squiggles and you know, what is that?
| | 01:07 | Well, I have to ask that question.
| | 01:08 | So this is due for removal and I'm
going to go and create a new layer above my
| | 01:15 | background underneath the Varnish coat
and let's get a little bit of Opaque Fan brush,
| | 01:23 | because this is going to reduce
it now and this is just going to be a
| | 01:25 | painting brush that I'm going to
use to pick up color and paint with.
| | 01:29 | So let's grab this gray.
| | 01:32 | I'm just going to go in here and paint this out.
| | 01:34 | Now because the entire image is painted,
all the strokes are going to fit in very
| | 01:38 | nicely and I'll just kind
of feather this in here.
| | 01:43 | So we don't want to have oddball things in
here that are something that has to be asked.
| | 01:50 | Here is another one, this little drip.
| | 01:52 | I'm not sure what that is I'm sure it
was a reflection or something, and I'm
| | 01:56 | just going to give rid of it.
| | 01:58 | Another one is right here and you look
at the total image and all of a sudden
| | 02:05 | this thing kind of stands out.
| | 02:06 | It's like "what is that?"
| | 02:08 | Well, since I have to ask
that question, it's going away.
| | 02:10 | Well, here we'll just paint in the
side of the car and I think the windshield
| | 02:16 | kind of got a little occluded by some paint,
so I'm going to just add-in a little
| | 02:22 | hint of windshield color, just gives
the side of the car a little more shape
| | 02:27 | that relates to the shape of a car. What else?
| | 02:30 | Here's another one.
| | 02:31 | This is a light standard
with a traffic light on it.
| | 02:34 | I'm not sure why this happened, but
once again I'm asking what is that, so I'm
| | 02:40 | going to get rid of it. Even this little
reflection or lighting back here is bothersome.
| | 02:45 | So we're going to reduce that.
| | 02:49 | Here's another thing I noticed.
| | 02:51 | When I photographed this image these
cars were at a stop sign and there were no
| | 02:55 | people in the intersection.
| | 02:57 | However, the light had just turned green
and it was up here, and some how I kind
| | 03:02 | of painted over it, so
there is no color in there.
| | 03:05 | But if these people are crossing the
intersection, it has to be red and so I've
| | 03:10 | got to change this
traffic light, so that it's red.
| | 03:14 | So it's usually green, orange, and red.
| | 03:17 | So red belongs right down here.
| | 03:20 | And I'm going to grab a color not too
bright and just paint it in there so that
| | 03:25 | now we have the correct red
light for this intersection.
| | 03:29 | Also this should be
darker since it's not lit up.
| | 03:33 | Let's sample that color, our
dark color, and just fill it in.
| | 03:38 | Okay, so now we've got the correct red
light that should be showing when these
| | 03:42 | people are crossing the intersection.
| | 03:44 | So my advice to you is always, always,
always give yourself a day or so to get
| | 03:51 | away from a painting before
declaring it finished, if at all possible.
| | 03:55 | Sometimes in a rush job you can't do that.
| | 03:57 | But whatever possible, try
to give yourself that time.
| | 04:00 | It's all too easy to get completely
absorbed by the minutia and lose sight
| | 04:05 | of the big picture.
| | 04:07 | By getting away from the work you will
clear your mind in return with a fresh
| | 04:11 | perspective that which to evaluate the painting.
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| Examining your importance hierarchy| 00:00 | Earlier in Chapter 11, I used the
analogy of actors on a stage to represent the
| | 00:05 | distinction between a
painting's subject and background.
| | 00:08 | Now is a good time to
again utilize this analogy.
| | 00:12 | Assuming you are creating some sort of
storytelling element to a painting,
| | 00:17 | you should examine your importance hierarchy.
| | 00:19 | The actors, your subject in the scene,
should be the beneficiaries of detail,
| | 00:24 | saturation, contrast, composition, all of
the techniques we've discussed in order
| | 00:29 | to focus the viewer's attention on them.
| | 00:31 | Everything else is secondary.
| | 00:33 | Now, we're going to take a look
at where we are in our partially
| | 00:37 | completed painting here.
| | 00:40 | I have said this before,
but I will remind you again.
| | 00:43 | If you have flattened your image and
started to add new layers as I've done
| | 00:47 | here, this is my varnish layer, this is
the, what is that stuff removed from image.
| | 00:54 | These layers can be highlighted, and
assuming I had another image open, I can go
| | 01:00 | here and say I want to duplicate these
layers, and then I could duplicate them
| | 01:05 | to the existing layered file.
| | 01:08 | So I just want to go through that quickly,
so you understand you can continue to
| | 01:12 | build up one master file with
everything in it if you want.
| | 01:16 | It may be too big to operate on,
because all your memory is getting by all the
| | 01:20 | layers, but at least you can have a
master file where you can go through and
| | 01:25 | click off and turn on every
element within the image if you want to.
| | 01:29 | I'm not going to do that here, but
assuming I was going to deal with this
| | 01:34 | importance hierarchy, I may in fact
want all the layered information here.
| | 01:39 | The main thing I'm going to show you,
and I'm going to zoom back a little bit, I'm
| | 01:42 | going to go ahead for the purpose of
this exercise, trim this image down now,
| | 01:47 | because we've got all this unfinished
painting around the image. In reality,
| | 01:53 | what we just did in this section
would have been applied everywhere.
| | 01:56 | But I've left all this other area for
you to try out your own painting on, or
| | 02:01 | you can take the whole thing
and do it all from scratch.
| | 02:04 | But what I want to do here is
just reduce this down to this amount.
| | 02:08 | We'll call this our complete
painting because what I'm going to show you
| | 02:11 | requires that to be applied to a complete image.
| | 02:15 | I can zoom back up again, and what I
often do for the actors on the stage is a
| | 02:22 | little bit of stage lighting.
| | 02:25 | Typically, on a stage, the actors are
going to be the brightest elements on that
| | 02:31 | stage, and we've got a lot of bright
color and stuff surrounding the actors.
| | 02:37 | So what I want to do is suddenly
diminish non-actor areas of the image and
| | 02:44 | the way I'm going to do that is I
will create a new layer, but I'm going to
| | 02:47 | hold down the Option or Alt key on Windows,
and that just calls up the New Layer dialog.
| | 02:54 | What I want to say here is I
want to take this to Soft Light.
| | 02:58 | You can use the Overlay if you
want, but it's a little aggressive.
| | 03:00 | I like Soft Light for this.
| | 03:02 | I'm going to fill with
neutral gray and we'll say OK.
| | 03:07 | It appears invisible because it turns
out that these blending modes, from Overlay
| | 03:12 | down to Hard Mix, all
treat 50% gray as transparent.
| | 03:16 | Anything lighter than that lightens the
image, anything darker darkens the image.
| | 03:21 | So it effectively gives me a
nondestructive Dodge and Burn tool.
| | 03:27 | I can be very simple about this and
just get the standard Air Brush tool.
| | 03:32 | I'll check it out for how it works.
| | 03:35 | I don't think I want to have the size of
this particular one change with pressure.
| | 03:40 | So if we go to Shape Dynamics here, I
can turn that off and I will just turn
| | 03:46 | this up all the way.
| | 03:47 | But what I may want to do is in
Transfer, I want to turn Pen Pressure on.
| | 03:53 | Now I can control the
amount of opacity with this.
| | 03:57 | I'm going to generously enlarge this
brush and I'm also going to turn Opacity
| | 04:01 | down to somewhere between 10 and 20%.
| | 04:05 | I'm going to start to apply
a bit of a vignetting here.
| | 04:08 | It's just subtle enough,
particularly on the top and bottom.
| | 04:12 | I'm going to darken this up.
| | 04:15 | Of course I would be doing this very
differently if we had the whole image, but
| | 04:21 | I would do a similar technique as well.
| | 04:23 | So I am just darkening this up and
I'll turn it on and off, but you can see it
| | 04:28 | definitely has an effect of darkening
non-subject areas and what that does is
| | 04:35 | conversely it makes the actors
much more prominent in the scene.
| | 04:40 | Although it is subtle, it does have an
effect of helping the eye want to go to
| | 04:45 | the brightest elements of the image.
| | 04:48 | So simply using a vignetting
technique like I'm using here is one way to
| | 04:53 | diminish the importance of
non-actor areas on your image.
| | 04:59 | It's a simple little fix, but it's a
great way to focus viewer attention on the
| | 05:05 | subject within your image.
| | 05:07 | So what have we learned here?
| | 05:08 | Well, by evaluating a painting's
importance hierarchy, we can make decisions
| | 05:14 | about what adjustments may need to be
made to the image in order to further
| | 05:18 | control the viewer's eye in reading the image.
| | 05:21 | So the trick is with these
adjustments we've made is to not make them call
| | 05:26 | attention to themselves.
| | 05:27 | They should be there.
| | 05:28 | They should do their job, in this case,
helping to highlight the actors on the
| | 05:32 | stage, but not calling attention to
the fact that we've darkened other areas.
| | 05:37 | If we over-darkened it, it would look
dramatically dark and that would call
| | 05:40 | attention to the fact that
the lighting is changed so much.
| | 05:45 | You don't want it to be that
way. Just this subtle change.
| | 05:49 | So all the techniques I've shown
you throughout these videos really put
| | 05:53 | together the notion of how we take
this photographic source and translate it
| | 05:59 | into a painted result.
| | 06:02 | We've only been able to
work on this one section.
| | 06:04 | But I've left all the other areas of
the image for you to go ahead and try your
| | 06:10 | skills at it, or you can just start
from scratch and not even use my central
| | 06:14 | area as a reference and just go ahead
and completely do it in your own style.
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ConclusionGoodbye| 00:00 | Well, here we are at end of the course.
| | 00:03 | If you followed along from the
beginning, then you have installed new artist brushes,
| | 00:07 | explored custom actions in
Photoshop, and in the process, started to
| | 00:12 | create an expressive work of
art that communicates your vision.
| | 00:16 | This course is only the
beginning of the process.
| | 00:19 | You hopefully are now ready to take
these tools and techniques and start
| | 00:23 | scouring your digital photo collections
for images that you can take from plain
| | 00:28 | pixels to artistic brushstrokes.
| | 00:31 | You will be amazed at some
of the things you can create.
| | 00:34 | If you want to explore, more on the
topic of brushes, I recommend that you check
| | 00:39 | out my course, Photoshop CS5: Painting
with the Mixer Brush, or if you want to
| | 00:44 | see how other artists use the Brush
tools and create digital painting, check out
| | 00:49 | Bert Monroy's The Making of Times Square.
| | 00:53 | Thanks for joining me and happy painting!
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