IntroductionWelcome| 00:04 | Hi! My name is Ben Long and in this course, Inkjet
Printing for Photographers, I'm going to show
| | 00:09 | you how to print, because as far as I'm
concerned, an image is not finished until it's on paper.
| | 00:15 | Taking a picture is a physical act: moving
through the world, seeing, positioning yourself,
| | 00:21 | exploring your subject and its environment,
and finally manipulating the camera; it's
| | 00:24 | all very physical.
| | 00:26 | I want the end result to be physical also.
I want to have an actual object that results
| | 00:30 | from my shooting process.
| | 00:32 | You can't be a good photographer without
having a sophisticated relationship to light, to
| | 00:37 | tone and color, and if your only experience of
manipulating and evaluating color and light
| | 00:42 | is on a computer screen, then you're missing out on
working with the true color of the real world.
| | 00:47 | You only get that from paper, and current
inkjet printing technology that lets you explore
| | 00:51 | printed color with a precision, with the
dynamic range, and a permanence that you never had
| | 00:56 | in the chemical darkroom.
| | 00:57 | So printing is not just about
creating a physical result;
| | 01:01 | it's about the further exploration of your image,
your subject, and most importantly, of life itself.
| | 01:06 | I have got a fairly big monitor,
but I've got a bigger printer.
| | 01:09 | On paper I can play with scale in a way that
I just can't do on a computer screen and as
| | 01:14 | I scale images up, they become
landscapes and environments that I can explore.
| | 01:19 | As I scale them down, they become these
little objects that I can live amongst.
| | 01:23 | Image size can dramatically change my relationship to
an image, and I can't get that on a computer screen.
| | 01:28 | Sure, with an electronic image, I can beam it all
over the world, but honestly, I don't care.
| | 01:33 | It's not a real picture at that point.
| | 01:35 | It's just more calories that we
consume from the media bubble.
| | 01:39 | When I put it on paper,
it gains heft and most importantly,
| | 01:43 | if I put it on paper, it just looks better
and that's why I print, because I want to
| | 01:47 | see my images at their very best.
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| Exploring why we print| 00:00 | In the film era there was no choice
about it: you had to print your pictures.
| | 00:04 | Prints were simply the only way that
you can see the photos you'd taken.
| | 00:07 | In the digital era, obviously
things are very different.
| | 00:09 | You can see your image on your
camera as soon as you take it.
| | 00:12 | You can connect your camera to a big
TV and look at your images there.
| | 00:15 | You can dump the images into your computer
and look at them on your monitor, and from
| | 00:19 | there, you can push them to websites
and smart phones and tablets and so on.
| | 00:23 | Images today are very malleable and dynamic.
| | 00:25 | We can shove them around the world, and we can sort
and filter them to combine them with other images.
| | 00:30 | We can deliver them to an audience of millions,
and all without ever having to print a single
| | 00:35 | image. Because of this, some people
never bother printing their images at all.
| | 00:39 | I am not going to bother with explaining
the virtues of easy digital distribution.
| | 00:43 | I think most people are probably already
amazed by how quickly and easily we can all send
| | 00:47 | images electronically.
| | 00:48 | With that said, I am going to be sounding
like an old fogey and say that I just don't
| | 00:53 | get it when people tell me they don't print.
| | 00:55 | Perhaps I'm showing my age,
but to me an image is not finished,
| | 00:59 | it's just not actually an image until it's on
paper. And that's silly, you might be saying.
| | 01:04 | Lots more people can see it if you put it
on the web, and that's true, but there are
| | 01:07 | many other advantages to paper.
| | 01:09 | Obviously, a print can be framed and hung on a wall,
and it doesn't require special gear to look at it.
| | 01:15 | Depending on the size of your printer,
you might be able to get a much bigger print than
| | 01:18 | you can ever see on a computer monitor. And as an image
is printed larger, your relationship to it changes.
| | 01:23 | Bigger prints become landscapes that you
interact with in a very different way than you do when
| | 01:27 | you view a smaller print
or an image on a screen.
| | 01:30 | Prints are tactile.
You can manipulate them with your hands.
| | 01:33 | You can frame them.
You can move them around.
| | 01:35 | They have weight, just like
the other items in your house.
| | 01:38 | To me, the image somehow becomes more real
when it's on paper than what it's simply a
| | 01:42 | string of electrons. And don't get me
wrong; I've nothing against electrons.
| | 01:45 | It just, they don't seem as solid
and sturdy as wood pulp does.
| | 01:50 | If you're only viewing your images onscreen,
you'll quickly run into reproduction issues.
| | 01:54 | No two monitors look the same, so when you
send an image to someone, you never really
| | 01:58 | know what it's going to look like
on the screen they view it on.
| | 02:00 | A print lets you fix the image the way you
want it and ensure that the viewer sees the
| | 02:05 | image as you intended it.
| | 02:06 | Ultimately though, I think the most
important reason the print has to do with the color
| | 02:10 | and tone. We live our day-to-day
lives in a world of reflected color.
| | 02:15 | Light bounces off of things and into our eyes.
| | 02:17 | This is the type of light we see when we go
out shooting, and this is the type of light
| | 02:21 | that we capture with our cameras.
| | 02:23 | When you view an image on a computer screen--
be it an LCD monitor or CRT--you're looking at
| | 02:28 | transmissive color.
| | 02:29 | Colored light is shined
directly into your eyes.
| | 02:32 | This creates color with a very different quality
and feel than what we see in the real world,
| | 02:37 | than what you saw when you were out shooting.
| | 02:39 | The reflected color that we see in the real
world, the color that our visual system evolved
| | 02:44 | to see, has a particular
deepness and richness to it.
| | 02:48 | To me, reflected light feels like it's built
on a dark base of some kind. Brighter colors
| | 02:53 | are built up from darker ones, making for
world where color is rooted in shadow.
| | 02:57 | By comparison, the light that comes from your
monitor is very bright; it lacks that deep
| | 03:02 | rich quality of real world light.
| | 03:04 | It feels to me like color that's brought down
from bright highlight tones rather than built
| | 03:08 | up from dark shadow tones. To me it looks
overwrought somehow, and flat and kind of phony.
| | 03:15 | Because the real world is seen in reflected
light, no picture on a monitor can ever really
| | 03:18 | look like the real world, because a monitor
is always transmissive light. Only when the
| | 03:23 | image gets on paper, where we return to
reflected light and the colors look like the colors
| | 03:28 | in the real world,
| | 03:30 | only then can the blacks look like the
blacks that we see in the real world.
| | 03:34 | It took me quite a few years before I began to
recognize these differences between reflected
| | 03:38 | and transmissive light, so if what I just said
sounds completely silly, just let it simmer
| | 03:43 | for a while. Try to take note of the quality
of the color that you see in real life, versus
| | 03:47 | what it looks like on a monitor.
| | 03:49 | At some point I expect your sense and
preference might shift a little bit.
| | 03:53 | When it does, the good news is that you'll have a
very different relationship to, and appreciation of, color.
| | 03:59 | The bad new is you're going to find
yourself having to buy a lot of printer ink.
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| Understanding what you need for this course| 00:00 | Printing in the digital age is of course
much easier than it was in the film era.
| | 00:05 | You don't need running water and a light-proof
room and not just chemicals and stopwatches
| | 00:08 | or any of that stuff.
| | 00:10 | You do need a printer, obviously, and these
days if you want good-quality photo printing,
| | 00:15 | that means an inkjet printer.
| | 00:17 | Now, not all inkjet printers are ideal for printing
photos, and we'll discuss how to choose one later.
| | 00:22 | You're going to need some good paper as well.
| | 00:24 | Ultimately, paper choice is a critical
part of ensuring good image quality.
| | 00:28 | We're going to look into paper choice in
great detail later, but for now, you need
| | 00:32 | to get some paper to get started with.
| | 00:33 | Of course, you can print on plain old
20-pound office copier paper, but you're not going
| | 00:38 | to get very good results because of the way
that that type of paper interacts with ink.
| | 00:42 | So go get yourself some decent low-cost matte paper;
that's what we will be printing with in this course.
| | 00:48 | I'll be printing on an Epson printer using
Epson's ultra-premium presentation matte paper.
| | 00:53 | It's a great inexpensive
all-around matte paper for photos.
| | 00:56 | You can get 50 sheets for about $15.
| | 00:58 | It can yield very good image quality,
has a nice finish and a nice heft.
| | 01:02 | It's very archival.
| | 01:03 | What's more, if you're printing on Epson printer,
the Epson driver will already have a setting for it.
| | 01:09 | If you're using an HP or Canon photo printer,
then find their equivalent of this paper.
| | 01:13 | Yes, there are third-party papers, and we'll
talk about them, but for now stick with your
| | 01:17 | printer brand, because it's easier
to configure with the printer driver.
| | 01:20 | You're going to need some images to print, but I
expect that if you're interested in a printing
| | 01:24 | course, you've already got some of those.
| | 01:25 | We'll be doing our
printing out of Photoshop CS6.
| | 01:28 | We will be using very basic Photoshop tools,
so you should be able to get by just fine
| | 01:33 | with an earlier version. The only differences
you might find with an earlier Photoshop is
| | 01:37 | that the Print dialog might be
different from what you see here.
| | 01:40 | Even if it is though, you shouldn't have any
trouble translating what you see here back
| | 01:44 | into your version of Photoshop.
| | 01:46 | If you normally use something besides Photoshop,
you'll probably find that most of what we
| | 01:50 | talk about here can be easily
translated to your image editor of choice.
| | 01:54 | If you like to follow along with Photoshop, you can
download a free trial from www.adobe.com/downloads.
| | 02:01 | It's best if you have some basic Photoshop
skill. This is not a Photoshop course, so
| | 02:06 | I'll be expecting that you already have some
level of understanding of adjustment layers,
| | 02:11 | levels adjustments, Hue/Saturation adjustments,
RAW conversion, and other basic editing tools.
| | 02:16 | Printing is one of the
last steps in your workflow.
| | 02:18 | Normally, you'll edit an image up to the way
that you like it onscreen, and then you'll
| | 02:22 | begin to add an additional set of
edits to prepare it for print.
| | 02:26 | I'm assuming that you already know how to get
to that first stage, an image that's edited
| | 02:30 | to the way that you like it onscreen.
| | 02:32 | As the course proceeds, we'll be talking
about paper choice, monitor profiling hardware,
| | 02:37 | motors themselves, and a few
other hardware odds and ends,
| | 02:40 | so along the way you might find that there
are some additional things that you want to
| | 02:43 | invest in. But for now, if you've got Photoshop, a
printer, and some images, you're ready to get started.
| | 02:49 | We are shooting this course at the Oklahoma
Summer Arts Institute at the beautiful Quartz
| | 02:53 | Mountain lounge in Southwestern Oklahoma.
| | 02:56 | OSAI is an amazing multidisciplinary arts
program for teenagers, and I am here for a
| | 03:01 | couple of weeks teaching photography
alongside Susan Kae Grant and Konrad Eek,
| | 03:05 | so from time to time, you're going to join us
in the classroom as we work with students
| | 03:09 | on printing-related issues.
| | 03:11 | My hope is that they'll become your proxies
for certain topics, and that the dialog I have
| | 03:15 | with them will serve to give you
another perspective on certain topics.
| | 03:19 | We've got a lot a ground to cover, so get
your camera and printer ready and let's start printing.
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1. Understanding and Choosing a PrinterWhy inkjet printing?| 00:00 | Not all inkjet printers are created equal;
for photo printing you want a really particular
| | 00:05 | kind of inkjet printer.
| | 00:07 | The good news is, there aren't actually that
many that you need to consider. The realm
| | 00:12 | of photo-quality inkjet printing is pretty
small, so you'll probably just be looking
| | 00:17 | at about half a dozen printers.
| | 00:19 | For the rest of this chapter you're going to
sit in with my class at the Oklahoma Summer
| | 00:23 | Arts Institute as I talk with them about
all of the issues you need to consider when
| | 00:28 | you're trying to pick a good
printer for photo inkjet printing.
| | 00:31 | And we're going to start that right now with
a discussion of why inkjet is better than
| | 00:37 | the other printing technologies
that are currently available.
| | 00:40 | There are a lot of different
printing technologies out there.
| | 00:43 | There is inkjet, which we've been using.
There are also Laser printers which you might have
| | 00:47 | used. And there are some other technologies
what you might not have heard of, like dye
| | 00:51 | sublimation or thermal wax.
| | 00:53 | For the most part, as far as photo printing
goes, it's entirely about inkjet these days.
| | 00:58 | Those other technologies, like thermal wax
where, those were printers that actually had
| | 01:01 | kind of like crayons in them
that were melted onto the page.
| | 01:05 | Most of that has gone away.
| | 01:06 | Dye sublimation, or dye sub, is still around,
and one nice thing about dye sub is it gives
| | 01:10 | you a truly continuous-tone print like you
get in the darkroom; it's not a bunch
| | 01:13 | of dots or anything like that.
| | 01:15 | The downside to dye sub is you have to print
on special dye sub paper, so you don't have
| | 01:19 | a lot of paper options and it's
expensive and the prints can be a little soft.
| | 01:23 | Laser printers are nice because they're cheap.
| | 01:25 | They're cheap to buy,
and they are cheap to use.
| | 01:28 | Cost-per-print wise is cheaper on a laser
printer than anything else, even a color laser
| | 01:31 | printer, but they don't have--
they're not continuous tone.
| | 01:36 | It's more like a newspaper.
| | 01:37 | You look up close.
You can see little dot patterns.
| | 01:40 | They don't have the color gamut, meaning
they don't have as wide a range of colors.
| | 01:44 | Their detail isn't the same, and you can't
print on lots of different media like glossy
| | 01:48 | paper and stuff like that.
| | 01:49 | So it comes down to inkjet.
| | 01:51 | And inkjet it's a technology that's been around
for quite a while, and it's called inkjet because
| | 01:55 | it really is just that.
| | 01:57 | It's a bunch of ink, and there is a little
nozzle that's goes "splzzzz" and spits it all over
| | 02:00 | the page in the shape of a photo.
| | 02:02 | Now you might have an inkjet printer at home
that you use for printing out Microsoft Word
| | 02:08 | documents and things like that, and it might be color,
and it might do an okay job of printing a photo.
| | 02:13 | What we have here is an actual inkjet printer
designed specifically for photos. This specific
| | 02:18 | one is an Epson Stylus Photo R2880,
and they still make this printer.
| | 02:24 | It's also been supplemented
by a new printer, the R3000.
| | 02:28 | The important thing about this printer is
it uses--it doesn't have the sticker on
| | 02:31 | anymore--the Epson K3 ink system,
which is a very particular set of inks
| | 02:35 | that's great for photo printing.
| | 02:38 | So what happens when you send an image to
the printer is as you know, onscreen every
| | 02:44 | pixel is an individual color.
| | 02:45 | So the pixel in the upper left-hand corner might be
red, and that red has a particular numeric value.
| | 02:51 | That value is sent to the printer driver,
which tries to translate that single dot of color
| | 02:58 | into a pattern of printer
dots of the same color.
| | 03:01 | So this printer has eight different inks in
it, I believe, and those are mixed together
| | 03:06 | to create every other color.
| | 03:08 | But they are not mixed together in the way
that you would in a painting studio, where you
| | 03:12 | glob a bunch of different inks together and
swirl them around, and now you've got a final
| | 03:15 | ink that's a particular color.
| | 03:16 | Instead, it's more like
what you see in a magazine.
| | 03:18 | They lay down patterns of dots in particular
ways, and it just so happens that if you lay
| | 03:22 | down out one of ink colors in a certain way
next to some of the other ink colors, you get
| | 03:27 | fuse or whatever.
| | 03:29 | So a single-colored pixel on screen is
represented on your page by maybe a hundred printer dots,
| | 03:36 | teeny, tiny, little printer dots.
| | 03:38 | So the first thing--the first mistake that
people often make is they see the resolution
| | 03:43 | of the printer--and this printer will list its
resolution as 1440 dots/inch or 2880 dots/inch
| | 03:48 | and they think, oh my gosh, I have to have an
image that's 1440 pixels per inch. And that's
| | 03:54 | not true, because a single pixel on your screen is
represented by a whole bunch of printer dots.
| | 04:00 | And we'll talk about resolution later when
we talk about how you size your images.
| | 04:04 | So there are a number of different things to think
about when you're choosing an inkjet printer.
| | 04:09 | There are inks, whether you want to print
black-and-white stuff, how big you want to
| | 04:12 | print, what kind of computer
you have, and so on and so forth.
| | 04:15 | So we're going to talk about those
in the next couple of movies here.
| | 04:19 | For now I'd just say the thing to learn if
you're serious about photo printing is don't
| | 04:24 | worry about any other printing technology; get
an inkjet printer, one specifically designed
| | 04:28 | for printing photos, and we'll talk in a minute
about what the differences are between that
| | 04:32 | and the inkjet printer you
might already have at home.
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| Understanding ink types: Dye vs. pigment| 00:00 | Ben: So the main difference between a
photo printer like this and the office-type
| | 00:04 | printer that you've got at home is going
to be the type of ink that's in it.
| | 00:07 | Ink comes in two broad categories.
| | 00:09 | There are pigment inks and there are dye inks.
| | 00:13 | Most printers that you find at the computer
store or the office supply store are going
| | 00:16 | to be dye-based printers.
| | 00:19 | And they're going to be less expensive than
pigment printers, but they are not going to
| | 00:23 | be necessarily always as good as
a pigment-based photo printer.
| | 00:28 | Dyes have the advantage of a wider color gamut,
meaning they can print a broader range of colors.
| | 00:33 | They are also often better
for printing on glossy paper.
| | 00:36 | Pigment-based printers have one really big
advantage over most dye-based printers, which
| | 00:42 | is archivability. I don't know if you've ever printed a page
on your printer at home and left it sitting
| | 00:47 | in the sun for a couple of days; you
probably notice that it almost immediately fades.
| | 00:50 | They are really not light fast.
| | 00:52 | They will--they will fade in a
matter of years pretty quickly.
| | 00:57 | This printer, with the Epson K3 inks, on the
right paper, these prints we've been making
| | 01:01 | might go 200 years.
| | 01:03 | Now that doesn't mean that like on January
1st 200 years after you print, suddenly the
| | 01:08 | page is blank.
| | 01:09 | What that means is that there will be a
color shift that will start to happen after the
| | 01:15 | extension of its--whatever
archival rating that particular paper has.
| | 01:19 | Most papers don't go that long, but most
prints out of this printer on decent paper will last
| | 01:23 | over a hundred years.
| | 01:24 | Now you may think, well, I'm going to be real tired of
that picture in 100 years. But if you really
| | 01:28 | want to sell fine-art prints, people
are going to bother you about that.
| | 01:30 | They are going to say, is this archival? does
it work--is it a pigment-based printer? and
| | 01:35 | that kind of thing.
| | 01:36 | So for real fine-art photography,
that's what you want to go with.
| | 01:40 | If you are trying to stay on a budget,
there are some dye-based printers that are really
| | 01:45 | good, that have archival ratings of 20-25
years. And again, they will give you a wider
| | 01:50 | color gamut than what you can get out of this.
| | 01:51 | They will also do really, really
well at printing on glossy paper.
| | 01:55 | Next thing to think about ink-wise is
how many colors are in the printer.
| | 01:59 | So we've got eight colors in here.
| | 02:01 | Cyan, magenta, yellow, and black
are what all printers start with.
| | 02:05 | They are the additive primary colors of ink.
They're what are used in finger painting class in elementary school.
| | 02:11 | Mix those together you can get
a whole lot of other colors.
| | 02:14 | This printer adds a few extra things: light black,
light cyan, vivid light magenta, light-light black.
| | 02:20 | So we've actually got three different blacks.
| | 02:22 | We've got three different shades of gray.
| | 02:24 | That's one reason this printer does
so well on black-and-white prints.
| | 02:27 | Those other colors--the light cyan, light
vivid magenta, vivid light magenta--those
| | 02:33 | all serve to shore up different weaknesses
that the engineers found in the printer.
| | 02:38 | So some of those colors are going to get
you better fine detail in light areas.
| | 02:42 | You've clouds that don't
have little dots in them.
| | 02:44 | Some of the other colors are there to--are
actually there for black-and-white printing sometimes.
| | 02:49 | If you're printing black and white, they will
mix in some of those extra color inks to prevent
| | 02:53 | certain problems that can
come up with black and white.
| | 02:56 | Some older printers, when you do black--or even
newer printers, when you print black and white,
| | 03:00 | you'll notice that the overall tone of the
print changes as you move from one type of
| | 03:04 | light to another.
We'll talk about that in a minute.
| | 03:06 | So number of inks, it's not
unnecessarily that oh, my printer goes to 11.
| | 03:11 | It's not necessarily that more inks
inherently means a better printer.
| | 03:15 | It's more that these inks can solve certain
problems that you want to look for when you're
| | 03:18 | evaluating a printer.
| | 03:20 | If you're in the store looking at a printer,
if you have got a chance to look at some prints,
| | 03:23 | you want to look for things like fine detail
in highlight areas. How black are the blacks,
| | 03:28 | how well does it do with black-and-white
printing, and what's the overall kind of color gamut.
| | 03:33 | Don't get sucked into ooh, look at this real
super-glossy print on super glossy paper from this printer.
| | 03:39 | That's what I want.
| | 03:40 | Because that super-glossy printer may
do a lousy job with black and white.
| | 03:44 | It may actually not have great
blacks and that sort of thing.
| | 03:46 | So ink choice is going to be your first big
demarcation when shopping for a printer and
| | 03:51 | for fine-art photo printing,
| | 03:53 | it's, right now, best to stay
with a pigment-based printer.
| | 03:56 | The good news about that is that narrows the
choices down to only about four printers.
| | 04:00 | There aren't a lot of
pigment-based printers out there.
| | 04:02 | So that's probably going to be the way
you're going to want to go in terms of the ink.
| | 04:06 | Any questions?
| | 04:07 | I know I pretty said do this or not. Yeah
| | 04:09 | Male Speaker: So the pigment
is one that lasts longer?
| | 04:11 | Ben: Pigment lasts longer.
| | 04:15 | It's sturdier in terms of light-fastness.
| | 04:18 | It works better with more kinds of media.
| | 04:20 | There is a difference between the way
that it reacts to the paper compared to dye.
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| Discussing considerations for black and white| 00:00 | So all inkjet printers are going to do color,
but if you want the option to do black and
| | 00:05 | white, you've got to be really
careful about what you buy.
| | 00:08 | The tricky thing about black and white, and
what this printer does really well, is that
| | 00:12 | black and white can come out of the
printer not actually looking truly neutral.
| | 00:17 | We've been talking a lot about how you've got to
have real black and you've got to have real white.
| | 00:21 | You also want gray that's actually gray.
| | 00:23 | And I don't know if you saw earlier,
| | 00:25 | because of the lighting that we had in here,
these black-and-white prints actually look
| | 00:28 | kind of green. We've now gotten the
lights fixed so that they do on truly neutral.
| | 00:34 | Not every printer can do this, and what I mean by truly
neutral is this gray right here really does look gray.
| | 00:38 | It doesn't have a slight
green or magenta cast.
| | 00:41 | It doesn't look too warm.
It doesn't look too cool.
| | 00:44 | That's a really hard thing to pull off.
| | 00:45 | We didn't have inkjet printing technology
that can do that until about 10 years ago,
| | 00:50 | maybe eight or 10 years ago.
| | 00:51 | So I think by this point you guys are really
into black-and-white printing; everybody has
| | 00:55 | been doing a little bit of it.
| | 00:56 | So that's another critical consideration when
you are printer shopping is you want to get
| | 01:01 | a printer that can do a truly
neutral black-and-white print.
| | 01:04 | And again, that's a function
of the ink set that's in here.
| | 01:06 | We've got three different blacks to work with,
so they can get all these fine shades of gray,
| | 01:10 | and they done a very meticulous job of making
sure that when the black-and-white print comes
| | 01:15 | out it doesn't shift tone as you move
from one type of light to another.
| | 01:20 | It also doesn't bronze, which means that
different areas don't take on this kind of bronze look
| | 01:26 | as you shift it around in light.
| | 01:28 | When printing on glossy paper with this printer
we don't get something called gloss differential,
| | 01:31 | which means that black areas have a
different level of glossiness than other areas.
| | 01:35 | So if you're serious about black and white,
before you buy any particular printer you
| | 01:39 | want to look up reviews and things like that
and see if the printer is actually good at
| | 01:44 | black-and-white output. Any questions?
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| Reviewing the features| 00:00 | Okay, there are some other
things that you want to look for.
| | 00:03 | So you gone through, you've
decided, I'm going print photos.
| | 00:05 | I've got to have pigment-based inks, so I want
to be sure I've got a printer that can do
| | 00:08 | a good black and white.
| | 00:09 | Those are really your main concerns, because
image quality should be the main factor that
| | 00:13 | you're using to decide what
printer you want to buy.
| | 00:16 | Still, there is bunch of other stuff that you
might want to think about, and the first one
| | 00:19 | being size: How big a
print do you want to make?
| | 00:21 | We've been making this nice 13 x 19s, and that's
because this print has a slightly extra wide carriage.
| | 00:28 | This printer can actually do bigger than
13 x 19 if you stick roll paper on it. It comes
| | 00:32 | with a roll feeder, so you could buy a 13
inch by 100 foot roll of paper, stick it in
| | 00:37 | here, and do long
panoramas and things like that.
| | 00:40 | So having this, this extra
size, I think is really nice.
| | 00:43 | Obviously, you don't have to go all the way
to 13 x 19, but it's just nice being able
| | 00:46 | to get a little bit beyond letter size.
| | 00:48 | Some other things to consider are
other ways of feeding the paper.
| | 00:51 | In this printer, the paper goes in the top
here and comes out the front, but if you want
| | 00:55 | to print on really thick paper, card stock,
or handmade paper, or stuff you find at the
| | 01:00 | art supply store,
| | 01:01 | it's also got a straight-through path in the
back so that the printer doesn't have to go
| | 01:04 | around the corner.
| | 01:06 | So that's a nice--as long as you've got a
large fine-art printer, it's nice to able to
| | 01:10 | start working with different media.
| | 01:11 | You've been getting the print on paper or on
wood and glass and things like that; obviously,
| | 01:17 | we can't run those through here.
| | 01:18 | But we can run really thick media, different
types of transparencies, and back-print film,
| | 01:23 | and all that kind of stuff can go in
through the different feeding options.
| | 01:26 | The last thing is just to think about how
you want to hook it up to your computer.
| | 01:29 | If you have a couple of computers or you want
to make it available to your network, then
| | 01:33 | you're going to want to think about, does it
have wireless in it, or it does it have an
| | 01:37 | Ethernet connection?
| | 01:38 | The 3000, which is the printer that comes
after this, actually has WiFi in it, so you can
| | 01:41 | just stick it in a closet somewhere and not
have to have it taking up all your desk space
| | 01:45 | and still print to it.
| | 01:47 | So those are just kind of last of the
considerations that you want to weigh in there.
| | 01:50 | They are not as important as the
image-quality considerations.
| | 01:53 | But if you find a couple of printers that
are roughly the same, but one of them has
| | 01:56 | WiFi, that might be a better way to go.
| | 01:59 | Paper path is pretty critical.
| | 02:01 | Some people get hung up on ink cost,
and I wouldn't worry about that.
| | 02:05 | It's really difficult to accurately predict what
the price per print is out of a particular paper.
| | 02:09 | Photo printers are always going to be more
expensive to print on than a normal inkjet
| | 02:14 | Printer because they have got lots of small
cartridges full of ink, and that's just not
| | 02:17 | actually as efficient a way to work.
| | 02:20 | So you don't want to do a lot of
document printing on one of these.
| | 02:23 | It's going to be cheaper in the long run to
buy a cheap laser printer, a $100 laser printer
| | 02:26 | for printing your documents, and
stick with these for just doing photos.
| | 02:30 | So I wouldn't worry too much about per-print
cost when buying a printer, because you are
| | 02:34 | just not going to be able to
get a good answer for that. Any questions?
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|
|
2. Adjusting Images for PrintingPrinting and your workflow| 00:00 | Workflow is a big topic, and there is no ideal workflow
that I can say is unequivocally right for everybody.
| | 00:06 | In general though, it's safe to say that a
postproduction workflow typically proceeds
| | 00:10 | something like this.
| | 00:11 | You import your images into your computer.
Now, you might be importing them into a program
| | 00:15 | like Lightroom or Aperture or iPhoto, or you
might simply be copying the images to your
| | 00:19 | hard drive manually and then using a program
such as Adobe Bridge to browse through them.
| | 00:24 | Next, you review your
images to make your selects.
| | 00:27 | That is, you sift through all of the images
that you shot, you find the ones that are
| | 00:31 | good enough to pass through the rest of
your workflow, and then you edit those images.
| | 00:35 | Image editing has its own workflow that you
follow to work efficiently and to ensure that
| | 00:40 | you're not degrading the
quality of your images.
| | 00:42 | But in this image editing step you'll fix
problems in the image--cropping, exposure
| | 00:47 | problems, sensor dust, retouching--and many
times you'll be image editing because your
| | 00:52 | camera was simply not able to capture the
image the way you saw it either in your mind
| | 00:56 | or with your eye.
| | 00:57 | This is the image
editing to complete an image.
| | 01:00 | You'll make these edits based on
what you are seeing on your screen.
| | 01:03 | Now if you've done any printing at all,
you've probably already discovered that what you
| | 01:08 | see onscreen doesn't always
match what you get on paper.
| | 01:12 | What's more, if you later switch to a different
kind of paper, you may get completely different
| | 01:16 | printed results than what
you were getting before.
| | 01:18 | So after you've got your image looking the
way that you like it onscreen, after you've
| | 01:22 | cleaned it and adjusted it and finished up
your original vision for the scene, then it's
| | 01:26 | time to add some additional edits to get the
image corrected for the specific print that you want to make.
| | 01:32 | Now this is why I think there are two image
editing steps as you're working towards a print.
| | 01:36 | The first set of edits gets you a baseline image
that represents your original vision of the scene.
| | 01:42 | The second set builds on that baseline image
and adjusts it for your particular printer
| | 01:47 | and paper choice.
| | 01:49 | But you might be a thinking, aren't you're
going to show me how to get my images to always
| | 01:52 | match the screen?
| | 01:53 | Maybe. The fact is, depending on the hardware
that you have, it may not be possible for you
| | 01:58 | to get your images to match your screen.
| | 02:01 | But that won't prevent you
from getting good prints.
| | 02:03 | It also doesn't mean that you have go through
dozens of test prints to get a good result.
| | 02:07 | The techniques you're going to learn here will
show you how to accurately adjust your images
| | 02:10 | to get a predictable result, even though it may
not look exactly like what you see onscreen.
| | 02:15 | After your edits are done, you need to size
your image, sharpen it, and then you're ready
| | 02:19 | to print, and that printing step might involve
a soft proofing step, and it will certainly
| | 02:24 | involve configuring the
Print dialog box correctly.
| | 02:27 | You need to let your print dry then and
stabilize and then you're ready to evaluate it and see
| | 02:31 | if you need to make any
additional adjustments.
| | 02:33 | In this chapter, you're going to see me take
an image from that initial set of edits--that
| | 02:38 | is, from edits that look right
onscreen--to a finished print.
| | 02:41 | This is going to involve a lot
of analysis and correction.
| | 02:44 | We're not going to get into resizing and
sharpening in this chapter though, as I like you to focus
| | 02:47 | just on understanding the corrections that
you need to make to get a good image on paper.
| | 02:52 | You're also going to see me working with
students at the Oklahoma Arts Institute.
| | 02:55 | They are going to give me images that they
have edited to a specific vision, and I'm going
| | 03:00 | to take them from there to a finished print.
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| Printing black-and-white photos| 00:00 | We're going to start our printing exploration
by working with some black-and-white images.
| | 00:04 | Now, this might lead you think, I don't care
about black and white, I never shoot black
| | 00:08 | and white; why aren't you show me color?
| | 00:10 | We're starting with black and white because
it's simpler. Color adds a level of complication
| | 00:14 | that it's just better for us to avoid right now.
| | 00:17 | What's more, every single thing that we will
do around black-and-white printing is relevant
| | 00:22 | and necessary for color printing.
| | 00:25 | Correcting a black-and-white image is about
fixing tone, and very often when you fix the
| | 00:29 | tone on the color image,
you end up with correct color.
| | 00:32 | So learning tonal adjustments is
actually critical to color correction.
| | 00:37 | We're starting with black and white, because
I think you'll find it easier to understand
| | 00:40 | the concepts that we're going to cover if we
leave color out of the equation right now.
| | 00:45 | Many of you might have come to this course
with one simple question in mind: How do I
| | 00:48 | get my prints to match my monitor?
| | 00:50 | Don't worry; we're going to
cover that exact question.
| | 00:52 | But the skills that you need to solve that
problem are more easily developed if you work
| | 00:56 | with black-and-white images first.
| | 00:58 | All that said, there's one big caveat about
black-and-white printing that you need
| | 01:02 | to pay attention to.
| | 01:03 | It's possible that you may have a printer
that does a fantastic job of printing color
| | 01:08 | but that isn't quite as
capable with black and white.
| | 01:10 | The tricky thing about black-and-
white printing is neutrality.
| | 01:13 | It's hard for many printers to create a
truly neutral gray; instead, you get a gray that's
| | 01:18 | maybe a little warm or maybe a little cool.
| | 01:21 | That is, your black and white might have the
barest hint of magenta over it, or maybe green.
| | 01:27 | The good news is that you might not notice this
unless you set that print next to a truly neutral copy.
| | 01:32 | So for the purposes of these exercises,
the fact that you're printer might not be an ideal
| | 01:36 | black-and-white tool doesn't really matter.
| | 01:39 | Just know that if you see a color cast in
your print, that doesn't mean that you're
| | 01:42 | doing anything wrong or that
your image needs an adjustment;
| | 01:45 | it just means that your printer is weak
when it comes to black-and-white printing.
| | 01:49 | If you find that you're enjoying black-and-
white printing, but you're printer isn't quite up
| | 01:52 | to snuff, it might simply
be time for an upgrade.
| | 01:54 | You also, though, need to understand
what makes good a black-and-white print.
| | 02:00 | Here's what I'm talking about.
| | 02:01 | If this print came out of your printer, you would
probably being very happy, and you should be.
| | 02:05 | This is a beautiful image.
| | 02:06 | It's wonderfully composed.
| | 02:08 | Then some snobby print guy like me
would walk in and go, oh, yeah, nice.
| | 02:15 | Your whites are a little off.
| | 02:17 | And here's what I'm talking about.
| | 02:19 | This is a very nice print; this is a
nicer print. And let's talk about why.
| | 02:23 | First off, I'd like to issue the
disclaimer that we of course can't be sure what you're
| | 02:28 | seeing on your screen by the time this image has
been compressed and put on your particular monitor.
| | 02:34 | So I'm going by what I'm seeing here
in the real world, off of real prints.
| | 02:37 | There is a big difference between this image
and this image, and at first you go, well,
| | 02:41 | yeah, this one looks different. And then as
you get more into it, you might think, oh,
| | 02:44 | this one is brighter,
and that's a big part of it.
| | 02:47 | These white highlights in here are
very different than these over here.
| | 02:51 | So that's expanding our contrast range.
| | 02:53 | It's making an image that's got more texture
and detail in it, and it's bringing more focus
| | 02:59 | to this central lit area than I can see here.
| | 03:02 | But there's something else going on that's
maybe a little more subtle: overall, this image
| | 03:07 | looks a little more brownish somehow.
Even the brightest little bits of texture in here
| | 03:11 | are so gray that it has this
just overall darker cast.
| | 03:16 | This image, thanks to all of these
bright bits, gets a little more silvery.
| | 03:20 | It looks more like the great tradition of
silver gelatin black-and-white printing.
| | 03:25 | I've got this wonderful range of gray tones
in here that is broader than the more limited
| | 03:31 | tones in here that go from a very dark gray to a
lighter gray, rather than from a black to a full white.
| | 03:37 | One of the critical things about black-and-white
printing is you got be sure you have true black.
| | 03:41 | you got to be sure you've true white, and you want
as broad a range of midtones as you can get.
| | 03:46 | Now, obviously, there will be times when an
image like inherently be low-contrast and
| | 03:50 | it's okay to not have that broad
range and extreme contrast range.
| | 03:55 | But in an image like this, we want that, and
by expanding these midtones in here, that's
| | 03:59 | where we pick up that beautiful silvery look.
| | 04:02 | That's why we get an image here that looks
finished, and an image here that's 90% to 95% there.
| | 04:08 | What I want you to work on is understanding
and learning how to get this extra expansion
| | 04:12 | here that gets you that last 10%.
| | 04:14 | This image is 90% there.
| | 04:16 | This image is there.
| | 04:18 | That's what's going to make the difference
between a great black-and-white and ultimately
| | 04:22 | great color print, and an almost-great print.
| | 04:24 | Let's look at another example. Again, another
nice print right out of the printer, but hopefully
| | 04:29 | by now you've already figured
out what I am going to say.
| | 04:32 | Black and white, how are they?
| | 04:35 | Black here is looking a little weak, the
black back here is a little weak. Now black in a
| | 04:39 | print is a little bit tricky because how
black a black can be is often dependent on
| | 04:43 | your paper, and we're going
to talk about that later.
| | 04:45 | But still, I'd like these blacks to be stronger
if they could be. Whites in the image, there
| | 04:49 | is a specular highlight there and there.
| | 04:51 | They look probably pretty white, but her hair
looks like a lot of light gray, very light gray.
| | 04:57 | And the great thing about white is you've
actually got to reference for it on the same page.
| | 04:59 | I can see that, for the most part, other than
here and here and maybe here, there's not
| | 05:04 | a lot of this tone right
here throughout the image.
| | 05:07 | So my blacks and my
whites are off in this image.
| | 05:10 | When black is not black enough and white
is not white enough, the contrasting your
| | 05:14 | image greatly decreases, and that's what's
creating this overall gray haze over the image.
| | 05:20 | It just looks like I am
looking through a fog of some kind.
| | 05:23 | So let's take a look at a corrected image.
| | 05:25 | Ah, the haze is gone. I can
really see everything really clearly.
| | 05:30 | Now my blacks here are very black.
| | 05:32 | I've got white speckled throughout the image.
Her buttons--actually, the buttons may be a little
| | 05:38 | overexposed. We'll have to fix those.
| | 05:39 | But her hair look great.
Her face is a little bit lighter.
| | 05:42 | Again, the image has more punch.
| | 05:45 | It's got true black.
It's got true white.
| | 05:47 | It's lost that overall haze.
| | 05:49 | And again, going back to that somewhat
ephemeral silvery quality, this image has an overall
| | 05:55 | cast of gray. This one, thanks to its true
whites and true blacks, is revealing many,
| | 06:01 | many more midtone gray patterns throughout
the image, or gray tones throughout the image,
| | 06:05 | and that's giving me that
really good silvery look.
| | 06:09 | That's what we're aiming for
in a black-and-white print.
| | 06:12 | And again, these same tonal considerations
are also going to come into play when you're
| | 06:15 | working in color.
| | 06:17 | Finally, one more thing about black and white:
the broader of your tool set is, the more creative
| | 06:22 | options you have for capturing a scene.
| | 06:24 | So even if you don't normally work in black and white,
it can't hurt to do a little exploration of it.
| | 06:28 | And you learn more about black and white in my
Foundations of Photography: Black and White course.
| | 06:33 | You may find that black-and-white shooting
is an area of photographic expertise that
| | 06:36 | you want to explore further.
| | 06:38 | In case you don't have any black-and-white
images of your own, I've provided one you
| | 06:42 | can download and play with.
| | 06:44 | Just follow the onscreen link to grab an
image that will give you some good editing
| | 06:47 | and printing practice.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding the histogram| 00:00 | So this image here has a bunch of pixels in
it, and each one is colored a shade of gray.
| | 00:06 | If I zoom in here, we can
actually see individual pixels.
| | 00:10 | Now, some of these pixels
might be the same color.
| | 00:13 | There might be a black pixel here and a black
pixel there. But because they are spread all
| | 00:17 | over, it's difficult for us to see
how many of each there might be.
| | 00:21 | Well, why do we care? you might be thinking.
| | 00:23 | It just looks like the image.
| | 00:26 | We care because a good print
has certain characteristics.
| | 00:29 | Among those, it has
blacks that are truly black,
| | 00:32 | it has whites that are truly white, and if
we don't have those things, we're going to
| | 00:36 | get a weaker print.
| | 00:37 | But, you might be thinking, I
can see those on screen.
| | 00:40 | There is some, some black right there.
| | 00:42 | The thing is, black and white are
actually specific quantifiable phenomena.
| | 00:46 | The tone might look black
onscreen; it might not actually be true black.
| | 00:52 | It might simply look black because of the
way your monitor is adjusted, or it might
| | 00:56 | look black to you because your eye is not yet
trained enough to recognize the difference
| | 00:59 | between true black and a really dark gray,
| | 01:03 | and even a tiny difference can
have a big impact on your print.
| | 01:06 | So, since you can't trust your monitor and
maybe you can't trust your eyes, it's critical
| | 01:12 | that you turn some analysis tools on your
image, and the one that's going to be the
| | 01:16 | most useful is the histogram.
| | 01:19 | As I said before, I have a lot of different
tones in the image, but I don't know what
| | 01:23 | they are specifically or how many of each
there are. The histogram shows me that in
| | 01:28 | a very simple way.
| | 01:29 | A histogram is simply a bar chart showing
the distribution of tones in an image.
| | 01:35 | I'm going to jump into Photoshop here and fire
up its histogram display, which is right here.
| | 01:42 | You should already be familiar with this if
you've been using Photoshop a lot; if you're
| | 01:45 | not, you can get it up
here from the Window menu.
| | 01:47 | There is a Histogram option.
| | 01:49 | So this is the histogram.
| | 01:50 | Again, it's just a bar chart showing
the distribution of tones in my image.
| | 01:54 | Black is over here on the left, white is on the
right, and everything in between is a shade of gray.
| | 02:00 | So what I'm seeing from my histogram here
is that I have a lot of black in my image
| | 02:04 | and I've a lot of dark gray, so black
is probably some of this stuff in here.
| | 02:09 | This is also a lot of the
dark gray all through here.
| | 02:12 | I have some lower middle tones in here.
| | 02:18 | That's going to be all this gray in the hand.
| | 02:20 | I have a big spike on this side. That means
that I have actually clipped to the shadows
| | 02:24 | or underexposed the shadows completely; some of
them have gone out to complete black. That's okay.
| | 02:28 | I like having this really
dark stuff in the image.
| | 02:32 | I also have over here a
little spike on the right.
| | 02:34 | This is white right here, and what this indicates
is that there are some pixels that have blown out
| | 02:38 | to complete white, and that's probably
this highlight area right here or this--
| | 02:42 | this was actually a view out of the window
or out of door. Probably some of these.
| | 02:46 | And I have very little white tones in here.
| | 02:50 | Middle gray in the image is
going to be about right here.
| | 02:53 | The histogram is again a statistical analysis
tool showing me the distribution of tones,
| | 02:58 | and what I can see is that the image is
trending in general to being lower than middle gray.
| | 03:04 | So this is a dark image.
| | 03:06 | It's got some overexposed white, but it
has otherwise very few light tones in it.
| | 03:12 | Now, I want to you give you a quick
little thought experiment here.
| | 03:15 | I can flip this image in Photoshop.
| | 03:17 | There is a simple command that will give me
a mirror image of this particular image.
| | 03:23 | Think for a moment.
| | 03:23 | If I do that--and I am going to do it here
in a second--if I do that, what's going to
| | 03:26 | happen to the histogram? Is it going to
stay the same, is it going to change?
| | 03:29 | If it's going to change,
how is it going to change?
| | 03:31 | So I'm going to do that flip right now.
| | 03:33 | I'm going to go up here to Image > Image
Rotation > Flip Canvas Horizontal. And keeping an eye
| | 03:39 | on my histogram here and my hands, notice
that no time are they leaving my arms.
| | 03:43 | And as I flip the image,
my histogram doesn't change at all.
| | 03:47 | If that doesn't make sense to you then
you're not quite getting the histogram.
| | 03:51 | The reason it doesn't change at all is because
there's no actual correspondence between anything
| | 03:55 | in the histogram and any specific
geographic location in the image.
| | 03:58 | The histogram is simply a graph of the
distribution of tones in the image, and flipping the image
| | 04:04 | does not change that distribution.
| | 04:05 | It doesn't add more black.
It doesn't add more white.
| | 04:07 | It doesn't lighten anything.
| | 04:09 | So my histogram should stay the same.
| | 04:10 | I'm going to Undo that and again,
my histogram doesn't move.
| | 04:14 | In Photoshop, you'll sometimes in the Histogram
palette see this little exclamation mark here.
| | 04:19 | That simply means that the histogram has not
necessarily been updated to be completely accurate.
| | 04:23 | If I click on it--there we go--
I've seen a few changes.
| | 04:25 | It turns out there is a little more overexposure than
I thought, and then the exclamation mark goes away.
| | 04:31 | There's no correct,
desirable shape to a histogram.
| | 04:34 | There are things in the histogram that may
not be best for your particular image, but
| | 04:37 | you don't shoot to get a bell curve or an image
that looks like a duck or anything like that.
| | 04:43 | The histogram is simply a
reflection of what's in your image.
| | 04:45 | Now I promise you, if you don't follow the
histogram, you are simply not going to get good prints.
| | 04:52 | If you're thinking, oh the histogram, that's
one of those fancy high-end technical things,
| | 04:55 | you know, I'll just do it
by eye, that's easier,
| | 04:58 | you cannot just do it by eye.
| | 05:00 | It's that simple.
| | 05:01 | You're not going to get prints as
good if you don't follow the numbers.
| | 05:05 | Now you can do a print, see if it looks okay,
and then make adjustments and do another,
| | 05:10 | but you're going to go through a lot
of expensive ink and paper that way.
| | 05:13 | If you instead use the histogram, because the
histogram is the key to getting predictable
| | 05:18 | results, then you'll reduce and maybe eliminate
a lot of those test prints that you need to
| | 05:22 | do if you're simply winging it.
| | 05:25 | Understanding the types of edits that you need to make
will also get easier if you understand the histogram.
| | 05:31 | Another thing you're going to need to know throughout
this course is how to make localized adjustments.
| | 05:36 | If you look here, we've got some highlights in
here that are probably showing up somewhere
| | 05:41 | in here. We're very likely going to want to
be able to adjust those independent of the
| | 05:45 | rest of the image,
| | 05:46 | and the mechanism we're going to use for that
is an adjustment layer and its corresponding
| | 05:51 | layer mask, and that's going to all
show up over here in the Layers palette.
| | 05:55 | If you are not comfortable with adjustment layers
and layer masks, then go back to the lynda library.
| | 06:01 | There is lots of Photoshop instruction
that's going to teach you how to do that.
| | 06:05 | One thing you may not quite know yet, even
if you're familiar with adjustment layers
| | 06:10 | and layer masks, is that when you make an
adjustment layer and a corresponding mask, the histogram
| | 06:16 | that you're seeing up here changes.
| | 06:17 | I'm going to quickly create a little mask here, just
of the fingers, and this should be familiar to you.
| | 06:27 | As I said, if you don't know how to do this, then you
need to find some other instruction in the library.
| | 06:34 | And now look at what's happening
to my histogram display here.
| | 06:38 | This histogram looks
different than this histogram.
| | 06:40 | This histogram is a
histogram of the final image.
| | 06:43 | This histogram that's showing up in my Adjustments
palette here--I created a Levels adjustment layer--
| | 06:48 | this histogram is showing me only
the histogram of the unmasked area.
| | 06:53 | So this is a histogram of just
these bits on the fingers here.
| | 06:56 | This becomes very, very useful as you're
making selective adjustments for printing, because
| | 07:00 | I can see precisely that this image that I've
masked right here--or rather, this image that's
| | 07:05 | unmasked right here,
| | 07:06 | these bits of the fingers--don't have
any true black. And my white adjustment
| | 07:10 | there was a little extreme.
| | 07:12 | So understanding that the histogram that you
see here is a histogram of only the unmasked
| | 07:17 | area is going to make it much easier for you
to get the white and black correct for print
| | 07:22 | in each little simple
masked area that you create.
| | 07:25 | This image needs some work, and we're going
to see the actual author of this image, the
| | 07:32 | girl who shot this image, go through
that work here in the next few movies.
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| Understanding what localized adjustments are used for| 00:00 | While your image editor probably has many tools
for making complex corrections and adjustments,
| | 00:05 | it's very rare that an image can be
corrected by a single global adjustment.
| | 00:10 | If you've ever printed in a darkroom, you
know that very often the only way to get a
| | 00:14 | good print is to carefully dodge and burn specific
areas of the print while it's exposing in the enlarger.
| | 00:22 | Dodging and burning is simply the process of
obscuring one part of the image or another
| | 00:26 | to give that specific part a
longer or shorter exposure.
| | 00:30 | Now, the practical upshot is that
those areas get lighter or darker.
| | 00:34 | You have to do this because there isn't always a
single development exposure that's perfect
| | 00:38 | for everything in the image. The exact same
thing is true when we're printing digitally.
| | 00:43 | As you saw in the last chapter, to get a good
range of tones, nice contrast, and a silvery
| | 00:49 | look, we need to be sure that we have some
true black, some true white, and a particular
| | 00:53 | spread of gray tones in between.
| | 00:56 | The problem is that when we apply an
adjustment to achieve this in one part of the image,
| | 01:00 | we might blow out the highlights in another part or lighten
up the shadows or darken the highlights or shadows.
| | 01:05 | So sometimes we have to perform a digital
equivalent of dodging and burning to ensure
| | 01:10 | that we maintain control of how much white
and black there is in our image, and how the
| | 01:15 | grays work in different areas of the image.
| | 01:18 | Photoshop has specific Dodge and Burn tools,
but for the most part, we're not going to touch those.
| | 01:23 | I like them sometimes for performing
retouchings, such as lightening bags under people's eyes.
| | 01:30 | But for the types of edits we're going to do
here, I don't recommend them, for three reasons.
| | 01:35 | First, the edits they create are destructive.
| | 01:38 | That is, they permanently
alter the pixels in your image.
| | 01:41 | Destructive editing is a bad choice for
making printing adjustments because if you do a
| | 01:45 | test print and find out that your adjustment
was too weak or too strong, there's no easy
| | 01:49 | way to go back and change it later.
| | 01:51 | Second, Dodge and Burn tools are somewhat
blunt instruments and they can often leave
| | 01:56 | bad color problems and artifacts in your
image by the time you're done using them.
| | 02:01 | But most importantly, the Dodge and Burn tools don't
give us good feedback about the area we're editing.
| | 02:05 | You've seen the importance of the histogram and
if we perform our edits right, the histogram
| | 02:10 | can continue to be our guide.
| | 02:12 | So, localized editing tools are going to be
critical for all of the work we're going to
| | 02:17 | do in the rest of this course.
| | 02:19 | If you're working in Photoshop, then you'll need a
familiarity with adjustment layers and layer masks.
| | 02:23 | You can find lots of courses in the lynda
library that cover these tools in detail.
| | 02:27 | In the next few chapters, you're going to see
me working with a few different students as
| | 02:32 | we work to use localized editing tools to
solve a number of different printing issues.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Explaining the histogram with a practical example| 00:00 | Ben: All right, Amber!
| | 00:01 | You have gone and you have made
three really exceptional images here.
| | 00:05 | I think, like so much of the work here,
anyone who looks at this is going to say "that's
| | 00:10 | a high school student?"
| | 00:11 | These are just fantastic.
| | 00:14 | I took your images as you gave them
to me and I did these prints.
| | 00:17 | So we have got this lovely shot of
these hands on this wooden door.
| | 00:20 | We have got Haley--is this just?
| | 00:24 | Amber: She is behind the window
and then she is looking out.
| | 00:28 | I am on the other side of the window.
It's a reflection of the scenery behind me.
| | 00:31 | Ben: Okay, so there
is not compositing here.
| | 00:33 | Ben: You actually shot that.
Amber: That's all on camera.
| | 00:35 | Ben: Okay. And then Haley is still stalking you, breaking
into the abandoned house you had of Haley.
| | 00:40 | Amber: Well, I'm the one with the camera, so
I think I am stalking her, but yeah that's--.
| | 00:43 | Ben: Okay, good point, all right!
| | 00:44 | So what do you think of these prints?
| | 00:46 | Amber: I love them.
I mean, that's why I sent them to the print.
| | 00:50 | Ben: Okay, I had given you some thing to
fix before and you did a great job of fixing them.
| | 00:55 | And asking what you think about them is
obviously a loaded question because I brought you over
| | 00:58 | here to do something with them.
| | 01:00 | So I would offer to you, let's
talk about this hands picture.
| | 01:03 | Black-and-white prints of
course are all about brightness.
| | 01:05 | They are all about light and shadow, and we
want them to have all this nice luminance
| | 01:09 | gray, and then you have got a lot of that here.
| | 01:11 | This particular image, it's great, the light
that you have put on here, and you have plainly
| | 01:15 | done a lot of work with some
vignetting and dodging and burning.
| | 01:20 | We have got a lot of nice texture in
here. the hands themselves are great.
| | 01:23 | Whose hands are those?
| | 01:24 | Amber: Those are Lucy's hands.
| | 01:26 | They are originally Ashley's,
but she had sparkly nail polish on.
| | 01:30 | Ben: Okay, that's good.
| | 01:32 | Louis wears a completely
different nail polish I think. All Right!
| | 01:35 | They look great, but you are about 10% short
of where you need to be, in terms of the tonal
| | 01:41 | adjustment that you make, and I
would ask you to look right here.
| | 01:44 | His fingernail right here
is really, really white.
| | 01:48 | There is no ink there.
That's just paper.
| | 01:50 | That's what white should
look like in this image.
| | 01:53 | And it's not what we have in
all of these other white bits.
| | 01:56 | Amber: Yeah.
| | 01:57 | Ben: We don't need this to go to complete
white, but if white is all the way over here,
| | 02:01 | these other secular highlights should be at
least that bright, and if they are that bright,
| | 02:06 | Ben: it's going to brighten up some of these tones.
Amber: Right.
| | 02:08 | Ben: That's going to allow
us to get more texture on here.
| | 02:11 | It's going to just give the
image a little more punch.
| | 02:14 | As good as this looks, it looks
a little muddy and blah to me.
| | 02:19 | And it's an easy thing to miss when the image
first comes out of the printer, because your
| | 02:23 | eye will look at it and make
sense of it and so on and so forth.
| | 02:26 | But once you realize there is actually more
to be had there, there is a very different
| | 02:29 | image you can get.
So let's go in here and look at what you did.
| | 02:35 | Let's analyze this image by the numbers.
Looking at it onscreen obviously doesn't tell
| | 02:39 | us very much, so I am going to go in
here and add a levels adjustment layer.
| | 02:43 | So as we look at the histogram
right over here, what are you seeing?
| | 02:47 | Amber: There is a very sharp spike out there,
which is probably that little spot on his nail.
| | 02:51 | Ben: It's probably this right here.
Amber: Oh, yeah, the window too.
| | 02:54 | Amber: And there is just so flat line.
| | 02:56 | It's not a lot of white until
the middle, around the grays.
| | 02:59 | Ben: Yeah, so thinking of it that way, do
you have an idea of a different white point adjustment?
| | 03:05 | Now, technically, you are okay.
| | 03:06 | You are saying, well, I have got my
white over at the right edge of my data.
| | 03:10 | Well, the right edge of your data is this
thing. The bulk of your data, all of this stuff,
| | 03:15 | really doesn't start till in here.
| | 03:17 | So make another adjustment. See if
you can get something else going.
| | 03:22 | Yeah, coming into there
is making a difference.
| | 03:25 | Are you thinking a midpoint adjustment?
| | 03:27 | Amber: Maybe.
Ben: Okay.
| | 03:28 | Amber: Kind of bring some of it back.
| | 03:31 | Ben: Good because as you move the white
point over, you are running the risk of brightening
| | 03:35 | up the blacks and washing those out.
And I think it's smart to do that. You did that right.
| | 03:39 | You did that with the midpoint adjustment
because if you had done the blacks, then everything
| | 03:42 | is going to plunge back down. All right!
| | 03:45 | So what are we getting now? We are
getting--turn off the eyeball.
| | 03:48 | Let's see a before and after.
| | 03:50 | So there is before.
There is after.
| | 03:53 | And it's very slight and it's very subtle,
but I think it's a huge change that's going
| | 03:56 | to make a big difference.
| | 03:58 | We could now start looking for how do you
introduce any overexposure, has this gone out, have
| | 04:04 | these gone out. Turn it off again.
| | 04:07 | I want to look at this pinky right here.
Yeah, we have lost some detail there.
| | 04:12 | Ben: So, we are not going to be able to
get around this with a single global adjustment.
| | 04:17 | We are going to need to do
some localized adjustments.
| | 04:19 | We will look at those in a little bit.
| | 04:21 | Let's move on to some of these
other images and see where they stand.
| | 04:23 | This picture of Haley reflected in the
window, why don't you pull that out?
| | 04:28 | So same thing. Make a Levels Adjustment layer.
| | 04:33 | Okay, this one is a little trickier.
| | 04:38 | This is where you had it set, and
again, you did the right thing.
| | 04:40 | You found the right edge of your data.
| | 04:42 | But there is this little area along here that's
all roughly the same amount of data, and that's
| | 04:48 | probably all of these tones in her hand,
these bright tones over here, maybe a little bit in here.
| | 04:55 | As far as the rest of the image goes,
the bulk of the image, most of it, the data doesn't
| | 05:00 | start until right in here.
| | 05:03 | So let's see what happens if you
move the white point over to there.
| | 05:07 | Yeah, right into there.
| | 05:10 | Now, obviously, we have lost her hand.
This is gone.
| | 05:14 | But turn that adjustment
layer off: before, after.
| | 05:19 | If you notice in there, there is not a lot
of differentiation between these tones and
| | 05:22 | these tones. Overall it's a lot of middle-gray
tones. With this Levels Adjustment layer on,
| | 05:28 | this has gone brighter.
| | 05:29 | Again, we are going to have to do
some localized things to fix all that.
| | 05:32 | We will come back to that.
| | 05:33 | Let's move on to the next image.
| | 05:36 | And let's just do the same thing here.
Pull up the levels.
| | 05:38 | And again --
Amber: About the sharp spike right there.
| | 05:42 | Ben: Right, and
that's going to be, very good.
| | 05:46 | So where do you think we
ought to go with this one?
| | 05:47 | Amber: Probably about there, because that's all plateaued.
Ben: I think you are right.
| | 05:51 | Ben: Exactly and that's
exactly the word. Thank you!
| | 05:52 | I was looking for that word.
| | 05:53 | Where you see those plateaus, you are
looking at a bunch of little tones that aren't as
| | 05:56 | significant as these big piles of tones.
| | 05:59 | And let's see a before and after again.
| | 06:01 | Okay. Again real, real subtle, but we have
just picked up some extra stuff in there that's
| | 06:07 | going to give it a little more punch.
| | 06:09 | So even if these highlights get brighter,
it just means there is more highlights from here
| | 06:14 | coming into her, and that
may or may not be a problem.
| | 06:17 | So you were real close on all of these edits.
| | 06:19 | Again, you were just like 10% off,
and it's an easy mistake to make.
| | 06:23 | You were--it's kind of heartbreaking to have
to tell you, because you were doing exactly
| | 06:27 | the right thing.
| | 06:28 | You were going over to
the edge of the histogram.
| | 06:29 | It just turns out that the edge of the
histogram is not actually right for the bulk of the image data.
| | 06:35 | We need to define the significant
data and move white and black to there.
| | 06:39 | And as you pointed out, there is a plateau
of insignificant data that you needed to go away from.
| | 06:43 | So now the next thing is to get some masks in
place to ensure that we haven't introduced
| | 06:47 | new problems into the
things that you just fixed.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Making a localized adjustment in a practical example| 00:00 | Ben: All right, Amber. We have got the
Levels adjustment in place that's adding some
| | 00:04 | extra punch and some whiteness to the image.
| | 00:06 | In the process of it brightening these
things up, it's blown out the fingers here. It looks
| | 00:11 | to me like this has maybe lost
something, and the fingertips here gone.
| | 00:17 | Ben: So what we're going to do is use the
layer mask that's built into the adjustment
| | 00:21 | layer to try to constrain the
effects of this brightening.
| | 00:24 | So right now the mask is completely empty.
Wherever there's white, that shows that it's
| | 00:29 | like an open stencil, but the Levels
effect is going through to the image.
| | 00:33 | Ben: So we would like to block off the
mask in the places where we don't want it brightened.
| | 00:38 | We could do it at the other way; we could
fill the mask with black and paint into the
| | 00:42 | mask probably where the areas that we do
want brighter, but that would be more painting and--
| | 00:46 | Amber: Yes.
Ben: Personally, I'm lazy.
| | 00:48 | Amber: A lot more time.
| | 00:49 | Ben: Okay, so grab a paintbrush.
| | 00:51 | Amber: Okay, right.
| | 00:52 | Ben: And we'll make sure we have black
paint because we are wanting to fill the mask up.
| | 00:57 | It's also not a bad idea to checkup here and
make sure that these are set to full strength.
| | 01:01 | Amber: 100%.
Ben: Yeah.
| | 01:03 | So make sure the mask is selected,
which it is; just click on it.
| | 01:07 | And now start painting
over these areas. Aha!
| | 01:11 | It's coming back.
| | 01:13 | Yeah, that's good.
| | 01:16 | So get his other fingers.
| | 01:19 | So as you're doing that, we're filling up the
mask so that the brightening effect doesn't
| | 01:25 | hit those areas.
| | 01:26 | Ben: And I am sure you necessarily have to completely...
Amber: Yeah.
| | 01:30 | Ben: But we'll leave it like this for
now and we'll go back and put some highlight back on.
| | 01:33 | Amber: Okay.
Ben: Go ahead and hit that one.
| | 01:35 | Amber: Completely?
Ben: Mhmm.
| | 01:36 | Ben: Yeah, go ahead and completely cover
those up; because what we can do--we need
| | 01:40 | to get this hand.
| | 01:42 | What we can do here is where there's white
in the mask we're getting full brightening;
| | 01:48 | where there's black in the
mask we're getting none at all.
| | 01:51 | If we paint into the mask with gray or with
a semi-opaque brush, we'll get something in
| | 01:57 | between the full effect of the
Levels adjustment and no effect at all.
| | 02:00 | Ben: So let's try like 50%. Grab one
of these middle-gray shades here, and now
| | 02:07 | maybe--well, that brush size is okay.
| | 02:09 | Let's just hit that highlight right along the
top of his finger there, and that's brightening
| | 02:14 | up a little bit,
| | 02:17 | because we're painting into it not with the
black but with the lighter shade of gray,
| | 02:20 | and so that's letting some of
the Levels adjustment go through.
| | 02:23 | What do you think? Do you want more
highlight on there or do you like that?
| | 02:26 | Amber: I think it needs a little more.
| | 02:28 | Ben: Okay, then go to
a lighter shade of gray.
| | 02:30 | There we go. I think you are right.
| | 02:35 | Now, have we lost detail there,
or do you think that's okay?
| | 02:38 | Amber: I think there's enough detail.
| | 02:40 | Ben: Okay.
Amber: Highlights.
| | 02:42 | Ben: Cool! Any other fingers that?
| | 02:44 | Amber: Yeah. I'd say this one needs it.
| | 02:48 | Ben: Okay. Good.
And maybe one on this hand over here.
| | 02:52 | Amber: Yeah, like right here.
| | 02:53 | Ben: Now as you're painting, Photoshop
is updating the little mask icon over here,
| | 02:57 | so you can see that you have got these
little spots of black and gray going in there.
| | 03:02 | Amber: Yeah.
Ben: I'm wondering about these, have these blown out?
| | 03:05 | Amber: No.
Ben: A little?
| | 03:07 | Amber: Also the windows.
| | 03:09 | Ben: Yeah, comparing this to the print.
| | 03:14 | You could go over those with a little
bit of light gray and see what happens.
| | 03:16 | I like them brighter. I don't want them to
go back to where they were before. Or maybe
| | 03:22 | just leave them alone.
I don't know. Do you have any opinion.
| | 03:24 | Amber: I think they're okay.
Ben: You think they're okay.
| | 03:25 | Amber: There is still a little detail--
| | 03:26 | Ben: Okay, then leave it there, cool.
| | 03:28 | All right, let's go into the other images--
| | 03:30 | Amber: Okay.
Ben:--that also needed some repair.
| | 03:32 | Ben: Here's Haley's
reflection so what's wrong here?
| | 03:34 | Amber: The hand.
Ben: The hand. Anything else?
| | 03:36 | Amber: A little bit of the window around her face.
Ben: Yeah.
| | 03:38 | Ben: And if I look up here, I
see there was detail out here
| | 03:42 | Amber: Yeah, like here.
Ben: And that's gone here, yeah.
| | 03:44 | All right, so you're going
to need to patch those up.
| | 03:47 | Amber: Okay.
Ben: So what you're going to do?
| | 03:50 | Amber: Go to black.
Ben: Very good.
| | 03:53 | It's a good idea to start with black
just to see what it's like having no effect at
| | 03:56 | all and then if you decide that it needs to be
broadened a little bit, go to a lighter shade
| | 04:00 | of gray, and you can start painting
some brightening back in there.
| | 04:06 | Now, one thing is, a lot of times it's easy to
get uptight about, oh, I have to paint perfectly
| | 04:11 | around this thing or that thing. You don't.
| | 04:13 | You can cheat these masks like crazy,
especially if you've got a big soft brush.
| | 04:17 | Here you go. Wow!
There was a lot of detail down from there.
| | 04:23 | I think that looks good.
| | 04:27 | Now that's a tough call.
| | 04:28 | Amber: I kind of like that lighter.
Ben: I agree with you.
| | 04:30 | Amber: I really regret that decision.
Ben: So let's undo.
| | 04:32 | Amber: Okay.
Ben: Yeah, that actually adds a lot.
| | 04:35 | Amber: I like it. It kind of balances a lot.
| | 04:37 | Ben: Yeah. Okay, cool.
Let's go into your last one.
| | 04:39 | Amber: Okay.
Ben: So this one doesn't really need that much.
| | 04:42 | It's just a question of, is that too bright?
| | 04:44 | Amber: I'm trying it out.
Ben: Okay. Drop a mask on it and let's see what happens.
| | 04:49 | Ben: Hmm, it brought back this line
that we didn't even know was there.
| | 04:53 | What do you think?
Amber: I would be fine with it either way..
| | 04:58 | Ben: All right, well let's
look at it again the other way.
| | 05:00 | We can't undo now because you clicked twice,
but you painted black in here before, which
| | 05:04 | has stopped up that part of the mask.
| | 05:06 | If you switch to white, you
can now open the mask back up again.
| | 05:11 | I almost feel like that line's distracting.
| | 05:14 | Amber: Yeah.
Ben: That it's nice without it.
| | 05:16 | Ben: That she's crawling out of the
nuclear blast that's plainly going on out.
| | 05:21 | Amber: It's like the light is pushing her.
| | 05:22 | Ben: Yeah, the light's
pushing her inside. That's cool.
| | 05:24 | All right, I think the next thing is let's
print these out and see how they compare to
| | 05:28 | Ben: our original.
Amber: Okay.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Evaluating a localized adjustment in a practical example| 00:00 | Ben: All right, Amber. It's the moment
of truth. The prints are out of the printer.
| | 00:03 | Amber: Yes!
Ben: Let's see what happened.
| | 00:05 | Ben: So, starting with this one.
What do you see?
| | 00:07 | Amber: It look so much brighter.
It's so much slow clearer.
| | 00:10 | I can see all the way details
in the wood and everything.
| | 00:13 | Ben: Cool! Yeah, it's interesting.
We're getting two things.
| | 00:18 | We're getting improved detail.
| | 00:20 | There's also just--do you feel like there's
a difference in terms of the focus of your eye?
| | 00:25 | Amber: Yes.
| | 00:26 | Ben: There's a--we've got a big brighter
area, and that's interesting because you defined
| | 00:30 | Ben: that area in the original edits with the vignettes that you did.
Amber: Yes.
| | 00:33 | Ben: But there's not enough contrast
in here for it to really pop out the way it is here.
| | 00:38 | As you look at it, do you see anything else
that you might think you want to experiment with?
| | 00:42 | It's okay if you don't.
| | 00:43 | Amber: Not immediately, but maybe I'd bring
a little more back into the fingernail or...
| | 00:49 | Ben: More highlight
on, or more detail there.
| | 00:51 | Amber: More detail there, maybe more
highlight on the fingers though, yeah.
| | 00:54 | Ben: One thing that I wonder about:
now that I can see white, now that I can see how
| | 00:58 | Ben: much texture there is to be had, I wonder, could the cloth go.
Amber: Yes.
| | 01:02 | Ben: A little more contrasty. Now we
don't want to go too much; we don't want it
| | 01:05 | to be unreal-looking, but that
might be something to play with.
| | 01:09 | I think it looks great.
| | 01:12 | All right and finally, Haley, looking
through the window. What do you think?
| | 01:18 | Amber: I like that. Yes.
Ben: It seems a little more subtle.
| | 01:20 | Ben: But we have--this again is serving
your vignetting a little better than before.
| | 01:26 | We've still got a nice pool of light in
here that was getting a little lost in there.
| | 01:31 | And again, overall, this image was predominately
gray, and now it's got a little more contrast.
| | 01:38 | As I said before, you were so close to this;
you were off just by a few percentage points,
| | 01:41 | and that's going to become easier
as you do, as you print a lot more.
| | 01:46 | You're going to learn to look at a print
and go, I think that's off by 1% or 2%.
| | 01:51 | You're going to be able to tell the difference
between really a dark black and just a dark gray.
| | 01:55 | I think another thing that you may start
finding as you edit more is you are going to learn
| | 01:59 | more about how your screen
corresponds to a print.
| | 02:03 | But one of the most important things is just to
start thinking of the histogram as a statistical tool.
| | 02:09 | The tones in this image were largely clumped up
around the center; in other words, the image
| | 02:13 | Ben: was trending, statistically, to being very gray.
Amber: That's right.
| | 02:16 | Ben: And when it comes on a paper,
that's sure enough what it is; it is very gray.
| | 02:19 | So, again, we've got to have
the white and the black.
| | 02:23 | But I think you got it here.
| | 02:24 | Well done, and congratulations.
I'm looking forward to seeing more prints.
| | 02:27 | Amber: Thank You.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Refining a localized adjustment for effect| 00:00 | Ben: All right, Lucky!
| | 00:01 | You have got this really nice
portrait that you have got in here,
| | 00:03 | and I know and you have
already done a lot of stuff to it.
| | 00:06 | What have you done, roughly?
| | 00:08 | Lucky: Well, basically I made another layer on
top of a layer, and I blurred out the background,
| | 00:19 | made a huge lens blur so it can kind of flush
everything, all the harsh colors and all the
| | 00:24 | harsh blacks and the whites.
| | 00:26 | And I cloned out a car.
| | 00:28 | Ben: That's right.
There was an entire car, that's there.
| | 00:31 | Lucky: Yeah, that was a car there.
| | 00:33 | And I kind of lightened up those tones in
her face over here, just to kind of even out
| | 00:38 | the color differences.
| | 00:40 | I brightened the highlights in her eyes, and
I defined some of the shadows in her facial features.
| | 00:48 | Ben: Fantastic!
| | 00:50 | So as you took the image, it had pretty deep
depth of field, and so you were feeling like
| | 00:54 | Ben: the background was competing with her.
Lucky: Mhmm, yeah.
| | 00:56 | Ben: Okay, I think you decision to blur
it was exactly right, and you have done a great
| | 00:59 | job, and your car removal is amazing.
| | 01:01 | It actually looks like there
is just a parking space there. That's incredible.
| | 01:05 | So this is great. This is very often how--
actually, this is always how it works.
| | 01:10 | You sit down and you do just the edits you
think you need to get the image working right.
| | 01:13 | And very often, whether you are doing the
printing or someone else is doing the printing, there
| | 01:16 | is another set of edits that need to
come over it to make it ready for print.
| | 01:20 | So you gave me this image, and I looked at it
and made a couple of decisions about some
| | 01:25 | things that I think needed to
happen to get it to look good on paper.
| | 01:28 | And I have done this print here, which,
because of our paper choice, I now think I want to
| | 01:33 | go back and do it different way.
| | 01:36 | Our background here is not as black as it
could be, because we had to switch paper, I've
| | 01:39 | Ben: have got a nice dark black over here.
Lucky: Okay.
| | 01:41 | Ben: I am going to try and push that up
a little more, but also I am going to see
| | 01:45 | if I can get us back to this other paper that's
holding a better black. So that aside, there
| | 01:49 | are some other things that I did.
| | 01:52 | What do you see different
between the print and here?
| | 01:55 | Lucky: I see more highlight tones in her hair,
kind of how it stuck out, and more, in her shirt, I
| | 02:05 | can see more texture than down here where
it's just kind of like lines and stuff.
| | 02:09 | Ben: Okay.
Lucky: So there is a big color difference in texture there.
| | 02:13 | Ben: And the reason I did that
is that I was looking at her shirt.
| | 02:16 | There is very little contrast between the
light threads and the dark threads, and I was
| | 02:19 | afraid that was just going to have the
overall appearance of just a big ball of gray.
| | 02:25 | And so in addition to having more texture,
popping these tiny little highlights out
| | 02:30 | is how we start to get an image that starts
to look more silvery. The great silvery prints
| | 02:36 | that you see sometimes see hanging in galleries
and things, what gives them that silvery rich
| | 02:40 | texture is they have got really nice white
highlights and they have got a huge range
| | 02:45 | of grays spread throughout the tonal range.
| | 02:48 | And here we have got mostly darker grays.
| | 02:50 | So by brightening up the whites, we are also in
that process pulling out some lighter grays
| | 02:54 | and just giving ourselves more variation.
| | 02:56 | And that's also what I
tried to do in her hair here.
| | 03:00 | So I would like you to make those
edits now. I will walk you through them.
| | 03:02 | Lucky: Okay.
Ben: Here you can see what I did.
| | 03:05 | Ben: And you already know everything you
need to know to be able to pull this off.
| | 03:08 | You have already been working with adjustment
layers, Levels Adjustment layers, and you are
| | 03:12 | already plainly comfortable with the way
you can mask them to constrain your edits.
| | 03:16 | So we are going to do the same thing.
| | 03:18 | Also, incidentally, the other thing that I
did was I brightened her face a little bit.
| | 03:21 | Lucky: Yeah, I can see that.
| | 03:22 | Ben: And you had the right, you were
making the right choice to brighten her face.
| | 03:25 | You just didn't go quite far enough, and we
will see why and we'll see what the difference is.
| | 03:29 | Ben: So, start by making a
new Levels Adjustment layer.
| | 03:32 | Let's start with her shirt.
| | 03:33 | Lucky: Okay, so Levels.
Ben: Levels, yeah.
| | 03:38 | Now, what do you think you need
to do here to get those working?
| | 03:42 | Lucky: Can I take one of these?
| | 03:43 | Ben: You could use the droppers, yeah.
| | 03:45 | Lucky: The dropper and then would I just?
| | 03:47 | Ben: It's going to be a little bit
difficult--they are so small. Trying
| | 03:51 | to nail the black part is going to be hard.
| | 03:53 | I think it's going to be easier
to just work with the sliders.
| | 03:56 | So start with the white end.
| | 03:57 | Lucky: Okay, so pay
attention to her shirt, right?
| | 03:59 | Ben: Exactly, just
try and ignore all of this.
| | 04:01 | Lucky: So, I am making it more white.
| | 04:03 | Ben: You are making it more white.
| | 04:04 | Now as you do that, the midpoint is shifting so
that it maintains the same relative relationship
| | 04:10 | to white and black that it had before.
| | 04:12 | So you are also lightening up those midtones,
but we want to take some of those midtones
| | 04:17 | and darken them, so that we are getting a
broader range of black and white and more gray.
| | 04:21 | So with your white in there, you are good.
| | 04:23 | Now take your Midtone slider and start moving
it on. Try it moving to the right first. Aha!
| | 04:27 | Ben: Now we are starting to get some contrast. Yeah.
Lucky: Yeah, there we go.
| | 04:30 | Ben: Now in doing that, you have
darkened her shirt again, which is fine.
| | 04:33 | So maybe try cranking the white a little more
in, and basically, you can just start massaging
| | 04:39 | those two sliders until you think
you see the texture that you like.
| | 04:42 | Lucky: All right! It's good.
| | 04:46 | Ben: Now, why don't you also bring up
the black a little bit because we don't have a strong black?
| | 04:51 | Ah! There we go.
| | 04:54 | Okay, now my only concern is this is now
pushed so far that we got a--we have introduced
| | 04:58 | a few new problems.
| | 05:01 | Ben: This shadow has gone really, really dark.
Lucky: Oh, yeah.
| | 05:03 | Ben: These shadows are
looking a little unnaturally dark.
| | 05:05 | So now I think actually we got to back off
this a little bit. Pull the white back out
| | 05:09 | a little bit to reduce the contrast.
| | 05:11 | Okay, and now you are going to need to pull
the Midpoint slider back in a little bit.
| | 05:15 | That black move really turned things around.
| | 05:18 | That's looking a little bit better.
| | 05:20 | In fact, now I think you're maybe--maybe
that's more of the path. Pull the white back in.
| | 05:24 | Lucky: This way?
| | 05:25 | Ben: Yeah, okay good, get it right.
And now back off the midpoint a little bit, a little bit to
| | 05:30 | the left. Yeah, maybe actually a
little bit to the right.
| | 05:34 | Yeah and just try and hold those blacks.
| | 05:36 | Ben: That looks pretty good.
Lucky: Okay.
| | 05:37 | Ben: And we are eyeballing this a lot.
| | 05:39 | We are going to do a test print.
| | 05:40 | Obviously, in doing this, we have now introduced
radiations burns to her, which we really don't like.
| | 05:46 | So we would like to fix all this, and I
think you already know how to do that masking.
| | 05:50 | You want to paint this in.
| | 05:52 | Lucky: Uh yeah, that would be awesome. So--
| | 05:54 | Ben: My recommendation would be start
by filling this with black because then all
| | 05:59 | you have to is paint her shirt.
| | 06:01 | As it is now, you would have to paint
everything that you don't want and that would be a lot
| | 06:04 | Ben: more painting.
Lucky: Okay.
| | 06:05 | Ben: So the easiest way to do that--
one of the easy ways to do that is go to Edit >
| | 06:09 | Fill, and just make
sure this is set to black.
| | 06:16 | Okay, so now we have no adjustment at
all because the mask is all filled up.
| | 06:20 | So now if you grab a
brush and some white paint--
| | 06:22 | Lucky: And then start coloring her shirt?
| | 06:26 | Ben: Yeah, we are going to fix that.
Lucky: We can turn that down, can we?
| | 06:29 | Ben: Right now, leave it
and we will patch it later.
| | 06:32 | Lucky: Okay.
| | 06:33 | Ben: So as you do that, you are punching
a hole in the mask and letting that Levels
| | 06:38 | adjustment go through, and we are
basically getting this really nice texture.
| | 06:43 | And we are getting something that's
looking a little less overly gray.
| | 06:48 | Okay, that looks pretty good.
| | 06:52 | Now, notice this bug in Photoshop before.
You have painted your mask and your histogram
| | 06:55 | is gone here.
| | 06:57 | If you just click on one of
those little sliders--there we go--
| | 07:00 | now it's back.
| | 07:01 | Okay, now this is interesting. The histogram
is now showing us only a histogram of the
| | 07:06 | data for the area that is visible.
| | 07:09 | So this bit you have masked right here--and I
know it's this shape because I can see the
| | 07:12 | little silhouette of what the mask looks like--
| | 07:15 | you have actually nailed it pretty well.
| | 07:17 | We have clipped all this stuff--that's what
that is--but for the most part you have got
| | 07:22 | white set right.
| | 07:23 | We have crunched the blacks a little bit.
All of these blacks to the left here are going
| | 07:27 | out to complete black, and I think that's okay.
| | 07:29 | So you nailed your white point really well.
| | 07:32 | What we need to do now is fix that.
| | 07:34 | You started to go for the Opacity
slider, which is one way of doing that.
| | 07:37 | I tend to use gray swatches more because I
don't--I can paint over other colors of paint.
| | 07:43 | Why don't you start by knocking this back
by half, which would be like this dark gray right here?
| | 07:49 | Lucky: This one?
Ben: No, no, darker one on the second row, yeah.
| | 07:52 | Lucky: Okay.
| | 07:53 | Ben: And now try painting over that.
| | 07:55 | Lucky: Okay.
| | 07:56 | Ben: So what's going on is if painting
white lets the full effect go through and
| | 08:02 | painting black prohibits any effect,
painting gray is somewhere in between.
| | 08:05 | It's a lot like painting with opacity.
| | 08:07 | The difference is, when you paint with opacity,
you can't go back over an area that you have
| | 08:12 | Ben: already covered.
Lucky: Oh, yeah.
| | 08:13 | Ben: You have basically
overridden that white with gray.
| | 08:15 | If you wanted to choose another gray, you
could paint over it, so that's an easy way
| | 08:17 | to experiment.
| | 08:19 | So what do you think?
| | 08:20 | Lucky: Yeah I like--I definitely can see
the lines in her shirt, which make it stand out
| | 08:25 | more, so I think it looks good.
| | 08:26 | Ben: Okay, we might
need a test print to be sure.
| | 08:29 | You want to try and fix her hair now.
It's the exactly same process. Okay.
| | 08:32 | Lucky: Yeah, so I am
going to make a new level.
| | 08:35 | Ben: Exactly, start
with a new Levels adjustment.
| | 08:39 | And I would start with the white point.
| | 08:41 | Now this one is rough because she has got a
lot of parts of hair, a lot highlights that
| | 08:47 | are already on the verge of overexposure.
| | 08:51 | Very good, that's exactly right. That's pretty good.
Lucky: Okay, yeah. Looks good.
| | 08:56 | Ben: All right!
| | 08:57 | So now get your mask in place.
| | 08:59 | Another shortcut for doing that: if black
is already your background color, you can
| | 09:04 | just hit Command+Delete.
| | 09:06 | That fills the mask with the
currently selected background color.
| | 09:09 | Ben: So now you are ready to
just select white and start painting.
| | 09:15 | So good. Same thing. Don't worry about
whether painting is blowing out highlights.
| | 09:19 | You will patch those with
gray paint in the mask later.
| | 09:24 | So again, for each of these areas, we are just
following the histogram that's relevant to
| | 09:30 | those particular areas.
| | 09:32 | We want to be sure we have got, in this
case, the brightest tones to be white.
| | 09:36 | We are not going for the darkest tones to be
black, but we are manipulating those darker tones.
| | 09:39 | And we are doing that by the numbers because,
as you saw, you can't really trust the screen.
| | 09:45 | It looked fine onscreen.
| | 09:47 | And don't worry about matching my print.
Definitely follow what you think you like.
| | 09:53 | You know it's--you can
tweak this all day long.
| | 09:56 | Ben: All right! I think that looks pretty good.
Lucky: Yeah, okay.
| | 09:58 | Ben: Let's now patch
some of those overblown areas.
| | 09:59 | Lucky: Okay, so would I hit more, maybe this?
| | 10:02 | Ben: Yeah you could start in the middle.
Lucky: Okay.
| | 10:05 | Ben: Here we go. That's 55% gray.
| | 10:07 | Painting black is going to
take the effect out altogether.
| | 10:11 | So a dark gray is going to
put a little bit of it in.
| | 10:13 | That looks good. And get down here and maybe a
little bit right there. Any of those white
| | 10:18 | spots are just going to be eye magnets.
| | 10:20 | Why don't we see a before and after?
| | 10:22 | Click the eyeball on that layer.
| | 10:25 | Ben: So there is no adjustment.
Lucky: Oh yeah.
| | 10:26 | Ben: And there is some.
| | 10:27 | You'll want to go back
later and patch this up.
| | 10:29 | You spilled out over here so that's
getting a lot... We'll worry about that later.
| | 10:33 | The last thing is her face, and
this is a pretty simple one.
| | 10:36 | Give me another Levels Adjustment layer.
And this time you don't want to necessarily use
| | 10:41 | the white point because we just want her
skin tone to be a little lighter, which I think
| | 10:45 | is going to be midpoint
adjustment. Drag it to the left.
| | 10:48 | Now she is running the risk of
going low contrast on her face,
| | 10:54 | but that's better than increasing contrast
and getting a lot of skin texture sometimes.
| | 10:59 | Maybe pull the light
point in just a little bit.
| | 11:03 | See, the thing is, as we pull white point in,
overall contrast increases and now her nose
| | 11:06 | Ben: is getting shinier.
Lucky: Yeah.
| | 11:07 | Ben: That's why I was
thinking maybe just midpoint.
| | 11:10 | Ben: So why don't you
back off of that a little bit?
| | 11:13 | I think this is one where we can't tell that
the adjustment is right until we get the mask in place.
| | 11:18 | So fill it with black and paint in her face.
| | 11:24 | So in these edits we are also,
we're leaving the background completely black.
| | 11:29 | I made that choice just because I knew you
had gone to a lot of work to try to get the
| | 11:33 | background less significant in the image, and I
thought leaving in black is a way of playing it down.
| | 11:38 | If you wanted to brighten it, you could.
I don't think that's necessarily a bad choice.
| | 11:43 | Ben: You also have to decide, do you want to brighten her neck up at all?
Lucky: Maybe, yeah.
| | 11:47 | Ben: And that's tough because it is in
shadow which kind of makes it look a little
| | 11:50 | more three-dimensional, which is nice.
| | 11:52 | Lucky: Let's just try it.
Ben: Okay.
| | 11:53 | Lucky: Oh, I don't really like that.
Ben: All right! Why don't we undo there?
| | 11:59 | Lucky: Okay.
Ben: Pull the midpoint to the left a little bit.
| | 12:02 | Ben: Let's get her just a little
bit brighter. Ah, there we go.
| | 12:04 | Now I would just recommend one last thing,
which is, her face is in sunlight and we are
| | 12:11 | now saying through our edits that skin and
sunlight should be this color. Then her arms
| | 12:16 | Ben: are really tan.
Lucky: Yeah.
| | 12:17 | Ben: So, maybe try and paint a
highlight just along the outside of her arm.
| | 12:22 | You don't need to--I'd go
with a bigger brush actually.
| | 12:26 | So we don't want to hit the
inside of her arm necessarily.
| | 12:28 | You can just put a little bit of shadow right
where--a little bit of highlight right where
| | 12:31 | the sun would be hitting. All right!
| | 12:35 | If you think that's too much brightening,
then go for a middle gray, so that we are
| | 12:40 | only painting in some of the highlight.
| | 12:44 | That's looking better.
| | 12:45 | Ben: Okay, she looks a little sun burned maybe.
Lucky: Yeah, maybe.
| | 12:47 | Ben: But we can touch that up.
| | 12:49 | In fact, that's what I did here. I just got a
very softer edge here. Bigger brush, softer edge
| | 12:53 | will do the same thing.
| | 12:54 | So this is the kind of process that you need
to be going through for the final step in
| | 13:00 | all of your images.
| | 13:01 | Do what you did here: stack up all
your layers, do all of your editing.
| | 13:03 | But when it comes down to print, you want to
go through and look at each of these different
| | 13:07 | texture areas and see, is it really just gray
or do I really have the contrast in there,
| | 13:13 | and pay attention to--get a Levels adjustment
assigned, get a mask on it, and then pay attention
| | 13:18 | to where black and white are in that mask.
| | 13:21 | Also, this is not just something that you
need to do for black-and-white shootings.
| | 13:25 | It's all the same process
when you are shooting color.
| | 13:28 | You still have tone and color
that you need to worry about.
| | 13:30 | I think we need to get this on paper and
we will see if you need to do anymore.
| | 13:33 | Lucky: Okay.
Ben: Thanks.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Making a gradient adjustment| 00:00 | Ben: Okay, so Jessie, you've made your initial
edits and they're looking good, but in thinking
| | 00:06 | about this as a printed image, right away my
first concern is that the foreground is too dark.
| | 00:11 | What we've got here is a bright sky and a
silhouetted mid-ground and a dark foreground.
| | 00:16 | Your camera exposed for the sky,
which left the foreground too dark.
| | 00:19 | Now this morning you were telling me that
you went out early this morning and the water
| | 00:24 | Ben: was really metallic-looking.
Jess: Yeah.
| | 00:26 | Ben: Is it--compared to what you saw
then, how does this look now. Is that about--
| | 00:30 | Jess: It looks a little bit more dull.
| | 00:34 | Ben: Okay, so we need to bring that out.
| | 00:36 | This is tricky because your camera is good
enough that we could really brighten this
| | 00:39 | whole thing up, but it's not going to really. Your eye
wasn't seeing a tremendous amount of brightness.
| | 00:45 | So I think the goal is to get back to
that metallic look that you were having.
| | 00:49 | So here in Camera Raw we can see that
we've got an overexposure over here.
| | 00:52 | That's going to be this bit, and we can always
turn on Highlight Clipping so everything red
| | 00:58 | is overexposed.
| | 01:00 | Overall, I think the sky looks
pretty good. What do you think?
| | 01:02 | Jess: Yeah, it does.
Ben: Okay, so let's go on into Photoshop.
| | 01:06 | Ben: So we'll go ahead and open the image,
and I am going to have you drive here.
| | 01:10 | What we're going to do is we're going to make
a Levels adjustment that's going to tackle
| | 01:13 | this foreground area, and then we're going to
need to mask it to make sure that it doesn't
| | 01:17 | mess up the sky.
| | 01:19 | So right away, now that we look at the histogram
here on our level, we can see that our white
| | 01:24 | point is still off. So, actually, why don't
you drag that to the left, and that's going
| | 01:31 | to affect the sky some.
| | 01:33 | We're going to lose a little bit more
detail in here, but I don't think really matters.
| | 01:37 | That's the sunshine, and we're
used to it being too bright.
| | 01:40 | Let's look at the Layers palette and we can
see that we've got one Levels Adjustment layer
| | 01:44 | that's going to be targeting the sky.
| | 01:46 | Let's make was another one.
| | 01:47 | Jess: Another Levels?
Ben: Another Levels.
| | 01:51 | Ben: And this time what we need to do is just create
a quick rough Levels adjustment that we think
| | 01:56 | might be right for the foreground.
| | 01:58 | We don't have a mask in place so
it's going to mess up the sky.
| | 02:01 | So we've got this big blob here, which is a
bunch of shadow detail. Where do you think that is in the image?
| | 02:07 | Jess: I have to say the mountains.
They look really dark right now.
| | 02:11 | Ben: Yeah the mountains here, it's going
to be all of this stuff, all of this stuff,
| | 02:15 | which means that our water and all of the
other darker midtones are going to be somewhere in here.
| | 02:21 | Ben: So let's try getting--and then
this stuff is going to be all of the lighter midtones.
| | 02:27 | I think you might be able to take the white
point and get it all the way over to here.
| | 02:32 | Okay, now obviously we're
overexposing the water here. That's not good.
| | 02:37 | We want to detail on the mountains. Do you
want to leave the mountains in silhouette?
| | 02:40 | Jess: Yeah, a little bit, yeah.
| | 02:41 | Ben: I think that's
the right choice, yeah.
| | 02:45 | So back off on that white point adjustment;
just take it back to the right, okay.
| | 02:50 | So split the difference there.
| | 02:52 | Ben: Let's come into about there.
Jess: Yeah.
| | 02:53 | Ben: So let's just watch--
okay, back off a little bit.
| | 02:56 | We are not getting much detail in here. Is
the water is starting to get more metallicky
| | 03:01 | looking to you?
| | 03:03 | Okay, problem is we lost our sky.
| | 03:05 | Jess: Right.
Ben: So we need to create a mask.
| | 03:09 | Ben: So you know that we can mask this by
painting black into here, but you're going to have
| | 03:13 | a hard time painting around all of this.
| | 03:15 | We can cheat that by putting in a gradient
that is going to define fully unmasked here
| | 03:20 | and wrap off into fully masked up here, and
the way we do that is with the Gradient tool,
| | 03:25 | which is this little rectangle
that's filled with a gradient.
| | 03:28 | So just pick the Gradient tool there.
| | 03:30 | You can also just hit G. And we want to have
white as our foreground color and black as
| | 03:35 | our background color, so you can either hit D
on the keyboard or you can click that little
| | 03:38 | swatch thing right there. All right.
| | 03:42 | So now we want the mountains in full
silhouette or partial silhouette, whatever.
| | 03:48 | Start clicking right about there, where the
water meets the mountains, and drag up to about
| | 03:52 | where the mountain ends.
| | 03:53 | In fact, if you hold down the Shift key, that
will constraint it to 90 degrees. So let's see what
| | 03:58 | that looks like.
| | 03:59 | Ben: Let go and there is our sky back.
Jess: Okay.
| | 04:02 | Ben: And if you look over here at the mask,
you can see that we've got white underneath,
| | 04:06 | Ben: so this is unmasked.
Jess: All right.
| | 04:07 | Ben: And then there is a very slight
gradient from here to here that's smoothly
| | 04:10 | blending the Levels adjustment from
full strength to no strength at all.
| | 04:16 | Now with the mask in place
something happens to out histogram.
| | 04:19 | It changes to show only a Histogram of the
data that's visible in the unmasked area.
| | 04:26 | So in other words, this histogram is showing
just what's in this white area down here.
| | 04:30 | Ben: Now looking at it, I still feel like this is a little dark.
Jess: All right.
| | 04:34 | Ben: So why don't you crank the
white point to the left some more.
| | 04:39 | This is the tricky bit right here.
| | 04:41 | That's getting overexposed,
but I like the rest of this.
| | 04:44 | Why don't you get it, put that white point
where you like it for this bit, and we'll fix that.
| | 04:50 | I really like this stuff that's coming out
over here; it's looking really silky. That's nice.
| | 04:55 | So now what we need to do is just mask that
off so that it's not getting such a strong
| | 04:59 | adjustment, and for that
we'll just use a paintbrush.
| | 05:02 | So grab the Brush tool. And we want to protect
this area from the adjustment, so that's going
| | 05:08 | to be black paint. So you can hit that
double-arrow thing there, yeah and it swaps them
| | 05:13 | so now black is your foreground color.
| | 05:15 | Jess: And then just go under and over the
bridge and like in there, or go over it as a whole?
| | 05:19 | Ben: Good question, do you want to--
yeah, you don't necessarily want to mess up the
| | 05:23 | bridge, so I'd stay with a small brush
and try and just mask out the water there.
| | 05:28 | Ben: And that's too strong, so I am going
to undo that there, and lower the opacity of your brush.
| | 05:34 | We could also switch to a different shade
of gray if you wanted, but lowering the opacity
| | 05:38 | is very easy.
| | 05:40 | Yeah, you are starting to get
some detail back in there.
| | 05:42 | And if the highlights are blown a little bit
on the surface of the water, that's okay.
| | 05:45 | We're kind of used to seeing those specular
highlights on water blow out to complete white.
| | 05:50 | If you wanted, it would be possible to bring
out a little more contrast in these textures,
| | 05:54 | but I just don't think that it would look
that realistic because you don't have strong
| | 05:59 | light coming in to cast shadows and make contrast,
so I think, yeah, that's looking pretty good.
| | 06:04 | I think that this is
probably the right adjustment.
| | 06:07 | One thing: these iMacs all have glossy
screens, which really change your view of black.
| | 06:15 | They make it impossible to see some of the
darker, more subtle shades of black that might
| | 06:19 | be sitting in shadows, and they also just make
the image a little more complicated because
| | 06:23 | we see all these reflections.
| | 06:24 | So there's a degree to which we're just not
going to know about this until we see a test print.
| | 06:30 | All right, I think it looks good.
| | 06:34 | So, well done. The next step is to do a test print.
| | 06:37 | We'll see where we need to go from there.
| | 06:38 | That's a great before and
after; it's definitely improved.
| | 06:40 | Ben: Anything else that you think the image needs?
Jess: No.
| | 06:43 | Ben: Yeah, I think it's ready to go.
Let's take a look.
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| Paying attention to viewing conditions| 00:00 | If you are familiar with white balance on your
camera then you should already be comfortable
| | 00:04 | with the idea that different types of lights
have different color qualities, and those color
| | 00:09 | qualities can affect the color
that you capture in your camera.
| | 00:12 | The same thing is true with prints.
| | 00:14 | The quality of the light where you look at a print
can dramatically impact how the print appears.
| | 00:19 | If you're examining a print under tungsten
lights, which have a yellowish cast, you may
| | 00:22 | think "uh-oh, my print is too yellow." Or if
you're viewing your print in low light, you
| | 00:26 | might think "oh no, there is
no detail in the shadows"
| | 00:28 | when in fact it's just too dark in the room
for you to see the detail in your shadows.
| | 00:33 | If you're thinking "yeah, but I am not that picky,
I don't really care about the level of finesse,"
| | 00:37 | well, the problem is you actually will care.
| | 00:39 | If you don't see detail in the shadows when
you review your print, then you'll go back
| | 00:43 | to your computer and you'll brighten the
shadows up. Or if the print looks too yellow, you'll
| | 00:47 | go dial back the yellow.
| | 00:48 | But then when you get those prints into more
normal light, you'll think "oh, this is too
| | 00:51 | bright" or "wow, this is too blue."
| | 00:53 | So, viewing conditions can be
critical to your review process.
| | 00:57 | Now, ideally, you would view your prints in
sunlight, and in fact this is often a really
| | 01:02 | good way to get a good view:
just take the print outside.
| | 01:05 | Even there though, you need to
be careful about the lighting.
| | 01:07 | If you're standing next to a bright-red
building or there are a lot of trees around then you
| | 01:11 | might be in a light with a red or green cast.
| | 01:14 | Indoors, things get a little more complicated.
| | 01:17 | First, you need to think about
what kind of lights you have.
| | 01:20 | D50--that's D-5-0--is a lighting standard that
specifies a light source that has the same
| | 01:26 | color temperature as sunlight.
| | 01:27 | It's the accepted standard for everything
from monitor calibration to print viewing
| | 01:32 | and display, so gallery
lighting is usually D50.
| | 01:35 | Now you can get D50 light bulbs to fit in just about
any kind fixture, and that's what we've done here.
| | 01:41 | We've got these tungsten track lights that are
up, and that's just kind of the normal lighting
| | 01:45 | we deal with and is not
very good for viewing prints.
| | 01:48 | So we got some D50 fluorescent bulbs and just
a cheap fixture. I just went to the hardware
| | 01:52 | store and got all this stuff. It didn't cost
very much, and it's just sitting up here on
| | 01:55 | the track, and it's creating this nice
pool of correct print-viewing light.
| | 02:00 | You'll see these labeled not necessarily D50,
they might be labeled daylight for sunlight
| | 02:05 | or something like that.
| | 02:06 | The problem is, the ones we got weren't quite
exactly right, and when we put black-and-white prints
| | 02:11 | under them, they looked a little bit green.
| | 02:13 | So we put a gel over it, that's a gelatin.
| | 02:16 | That's basically a clear piece of plastic
you can get at any lighting supply store or
| | 02:20 | maybe a photo store.
| | 02:20 | You can certainly order it online.
| | 02:22 | In this case, it's color temperature blue, or
CTB, and those come in various thicknesses.
| | 02:27 | So we were able to correct this and get it
properly balanced so that it truly is sunlight
| | 02:32 | and now when we get black-and-white
prints up here, they look neutral.
| | 02:35 | So this is a really inexpensive, pretty
easy way to get good viewing conditions.
| | 02:40 | You also need to think about the
other ambient light in the room though.
| | 02:43 | So, just as mixed lighting can confuse the
white balance in your camera, it can also make
| | 02:47 | print evaluation more complicated.
| | 02:50 | So in here, we've got windows downstairs that
are letting in sunlight, and that sunlight
| | 02:55 | is bouncing all around the room and
creating a faint kind of bluish light everywhere.
| | 02:58 | There used to be a window right over there,
but we've closed that off completely so that
| | 03:02 | we have very little ambient light in here,
little enough that the lighting from
| | 03:08 | this can simply overpower the ambient light in the
room, so I have a good correct pool of light.
| | 03:14 | I don't really have to worry
about a mixed-lighting situation.
| | 03:16 | Here, under these lights, I've pretty much got
only D50 lighting, and I've got enough of the
| | 03:20 | lights setup to create a very even pool to
work in, so I don't have my prints sitting
| | 03:25 | in the area where there is a lot of falloff.
| | 03:27 | Finally, the wall itself
has magnetic paint on it.
| | 03:30 | You can get this at most
painting supply stores.
| | 03:32 | This is actually just a primer, so I
could paint color over it if I wanted.
| | 03:36 | And with this magnetic paint, I can simply
stick prints to the wall with magnets.
| | 03:40 | It took a few coats to get the wall magnetic
enough to support the heavier paper that I'm
| | 03:44 | printing, but it makes for a really
easy, spacious area for viewing prints.
| | 03:49 | Now, if you don't have a place where you can
control the ambient light, then things get trickier.
| | 03:53 | For example, my apartment at home has windows
all around so there's bright ambient light
| | 03:58 | that's constantly changing throughout the day.
| | 04:00 | It becomes very confusing for me to figure
out when the best time to evaluate prints
| | 04:04 | is, and the light is bright enough that I just
can't overpower it with artificial lighting.
| | 04:09 | So kind of my only option is to wait until dark
and set up artificial lights and view prints.
| | 04:13 | And in the summer that's hard because
there's so--because it gets light so late.
| | 04:18 | So if that's the situation that you're in,
you may want to consider buying or even building
| | 04:22 | a print viewing station.
That's basically a booth with D50 lighting in it.
| | 04:27 | Just Google print viewing station, and you'll
find several vendors that will sell enclosed
| | 04:32 | print viewing booths of different kinds.
| | 04:34 | The important thing to remember is that you've
just got to pay attention to where you're
| | 04:38 | evaluating prints.
| | 04:39 | You need to control the ambient light, and
you need to try to get some predictable D50
| | 04:43 | lighting on to your prints so that you
can accurately gauge both tone and color.
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| Summing up| 00:00 | The tonal adjustments we've covered in this
chapter are critical to getting good prints.
| | 00:05 | Now, hopefully the before and after examples
we've shown and the surrounding conversation
| | 00:09 | have helped you understand what
good tone in a print looks like.
| | 00:13 | A big part of good printing is simply learning
the aesthetics of what makes one print work
| | 00:17 | better than another.
| | 00:19 | 90% of what I do to fix an image before
printing is exactly what you've seen in this chapter.
| | 00:24 | I analyze different areas of the scene to
determine if the tone in those areas is correct,
| | 00:29 | and then I use localized
adjustments to fix those areas.
| | 00:32 | Usually, I simply follow
the light in the scene.
| | 00:34 | If one area is lit differently than another,
then I edit each of those differently lit
| | 00:38 | bits, applying whatever
corrections are necessary.
| | 00:41 | I use Levels Adjustment layers and layer masks
for my edits, both because they give me histograms
| | 00:47 | specific to my masked area and
because they're nondestructive.
| | 00:50 | If I adjust an image, make a test print, and
then find that the adjustment isn't quite
| | 00:54 | right, I can easily alter it and reprint.
| | 00:57 | Your eye works to constantly correct tones
so that white always looks white, and that
| | 01:01 | means it is often difficult to recognize
onscreen that a print has an overall gray cast to it,
| | 01:06 | or an overall color cast if
you're working in color.
| | 01:09 | But as you print more, your eye will become
more tuned to true black, true white, and a
| | 01:14 | broad range of mid-gray tones.
| | 01:16 | You'll get much quicker at recognizing when a
particular area could be brightened, darkened,
| | 01:20 | or made more contrasty or distinct.
| | 01:23 | But even then, the histogram will
remain your guide to good editing.
| | 01:28 | At this point, we're through the
first part of our printing workflow.
| | 01:30 | We've made our initial edits on screen and
then we've added an additional set of edits
| | 01:34 | specifically for print.
| | 01:35 | Now I've been cheating a little bit by cranking
out some test prints without showing you the
| | 01:39 | other steps in the workflow.
| | 01:41 | So we're going to move on to those now.
| | 01:43 | After making your edits, the next step is
to properly size your image, and we'll cover
| | 01:47 | that in detail in the next chapter.
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|
|
3. Resizing Images and the Aesthetics of Print SizeUnderstanding pixels, printer dots, and resolution| 00:00 | A digital image is made up of a bunch
of colored picture elements, or pixels.
| | 00:06 | Line these colored pixels up in a grid,
stand far enough away from them, and you've got
| | 00:10 | what appears to be a continuous-tone image.
| | 00:12 | It's really just like making a picture by
using colored pencils to fill in squares on
| | 00:16 | a piece of graph paper.
| | 00:17 | The difference is that your typical digital
image has millions of squares and each square
| | 00:21 | can be any one of millions
and millions of colors.
| | 00:24 | Each of those millions and millions of
colors has a number associated with it.
| | 00:28 | So to store an image, all your camera has to
do is decide what color each pixel should
| | 00:32 | be and then sock away the appropriate numbers.
| | 00:35 | Change the number for a particular
pixel and you change its color.
| | 00:38 | Now as we talked about earlier, an inkjet
printer works by spraying colored dots at a page.
| | 00:44 | However, your printer might only have,
say, eight different ink colors available.
| | 00:48 | So a single dot of ink can only
be one of eight different colors.
| | 00:52 | A pixel in your image though, can be on
of millions and millions of colors.
| | 00:55 | To get those other colors, your printer lays
down different-colored dots next to each other
| | 01:00 | in particular patterns.
| | 01:02 | Because the dots are small enough and
because you view them from far enough away, those
| | 01:06 | patterns of dots appear to be one of
thousands and thousands of colors.
| | 01:10 | Now you may think, wait a second, what
happened to the millions that I had onscreen?
| | 01:13 | Don't worry about that.
| | 01:14 | Your eye is not actually sensitive enough
to perceive the difference between all of
| | 01:19 | those millions of colors
that you can get onscreen.
| | 01:21 | No one knows for sure what it is, but the
actual number of colors that your eye can
| | 01:24 | discern is much smaller than the total
number of that your monitor can display.
| | 01:28 | So your printer gets by just fine with its
mere thousands and thousands of colors.
| | 01:33 | The important thing to understand here is
that there is not a one-to-one correspondence
| | 01:37 | between pixels and printer dots.
| | 01:40 | It might take a pattern of dozens of different
printer dots to replicate the color of a single
| | 01:45 | pixel in your image.
| | 01:46 | This is why printers support
resolution settings that are so high.
| | 01:49 | Your printer might say a resolution of 1440
dots per inch, but remember, that's in dots
| | 01:55 | per inch, printer dots, not pixels per inch.
| | 01:58 | The actual number of equivalent pixels per inch
that your printer can print will be much smaller.
| | 02:04 | So your printer might list a couple of
resolutions. For example, Epson photo printers typically
| | 02:09 | offer 1440 dots per inch
and 2880 dots per inch.
| | 02:14 | In the printer driver, you will have
a choice of which you want to use.
| | 02:17 | Now, I have never been able to tell an
image-quality difference when printing with the
| | 02:21 | higher resolution.
| | 02:22 | As near as I can tell, that's just a
way for you to use up ink faster.
| | 02:26 | You might want to do some test on your own
though, just to see if you can tell a difference,
| | 02:30 | but I would not include printer dot counts on any
list of features to look for when printer shopping.
| | 02:34 | It's just simply not a number
that you need to think about.
| | 02:36 | We'll have much more to say about pixels,
printer dots, their relationship, and color
| | 02:41 | as we continue.
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| Understanding resolution| 00:00 | We all have our little pet peeves and one
of mine is when certain words aren't used
| | 00:04 | correctly, and resolution is a
term that is almost always misused.
| | 00:08 | In digital photography terms, resolution is
simply a measure of how many pixels there
| | 00:13 | are in an image over a given area.
| | 00:15 | So if an image has resolution of 72 pixels
per inch, then no matter how many pixels there
| | 00:21 | are in the image, they are spaced so that it
takes 72 of them to cover a one linear inch.
| | 00:28 | Now many people, including camera makers and vendors,
will speak of a camera having a particular resolution.
| | 00:33 | This camera has a resolution of 14 megapixels.
| | 00:36 | 14 megapixels is not a measure of resolution.
| | 00:39 | It's a pixel count.
| | 00:40 | A camera doesn't actually have a resolution.
| | 00:42 | Sure, the pixels on the sensor are spaced a
particular way, but that's pretty meaningless
| | 00:47 | in the real world, because
the sensors are so small.
| | 00:49 | The fact is, an image can have any resolution
that you want it to have, because you can choose
| | 00:55 | to space the pixels closer
together or farther apart.
| | 00:59 | Sometimes when I am delivering an image to
someone and I ask what size they need, they
| | 01:02 | will say I just need an image
that's 300 pixels per inch.
| | 01:05 | That doesn't really tell me anything useful,
because a 300-pixel-per-inch image could
| | 01:09 | be 3 inches wide or the
size of a billboard.
| | 01:12 | Again, resolution is just a
measure of how your pixels are spaced.
| | 01:17 | Now, resolution and image size are inherently
related, but their relationship is very intuitive.
| | 01:23 | As I push pixels closer
together, image size decreases.
| | 01:27 | In other words, as resolution
goes up, print size goes down.
| | 01:30 | If I spread pixels farther
apart, print size increases.
| | 01:34 | So as resolution goes down, print size goes up.
| | 01:38 | Earlier, we discussed the difference
between printer dots and pixels.
| | 01:42 | We will talk about
resolution for both of these.
| | 01:45 | When speaking of pixels, we measure
resolution in pixels per inch, or PPI.
| | 01:51 | When speaking of printer dots,
we resolution in dots per inch, or DPI.
| | 01:55 | Note that most people still use
DPI interchangeably with PPI.
| | 01:59 | So if you ask a print service, say, for their
printing specs, they probably give you a resolution
| | 02:06 | specification in DPI;
they actually mean PPI.
| | 02:09 | I am going to use those two different terms
in this course for the sake of clarity and
| | 02:13 | because they are the terms of Photoshop uses.
| | 02:16 | And suddenly I am realizing I am going to be
really self-conscious about my word choice
| | 02:19 | for the rest of this course, because now that
I've gotten all uppity about it, if any of you
| | 02:23 | catch me misusing words, there is just going
to be really embarrassing flood of email.
| | 02:27 | If these terms are confusing, don't worry;
we are going to look at a tool in Photoshop
| | 02:30 | that's going to make it all much clearer.
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| Defining resampling and interpolation| 00:00 | Let's say you want to reduce
the print size of an image.
| | 00:03 | By now you should be getting comfortable with the
idea that as you do that, resolution will increase.
| | 00:09 | So for example, if I have an image with a
print size of 8 x 10 at 300 pixels per inch
| | 00:15 | and I resize it down to 4 x 5
inches, my resolution will go up.
| | 00:19 | It will go from 300 pixels per
inch to 600 pixels per inch.
| | 00:23 | Don't worry about understanding that math.
| | 00:25 | Just trust me, that's how the
resolution will increase.
| | 00:26 | The important thing to understand is that
as print size goes down, resolution goes up.
| | 00:31 | But let's say I'm giving this image to someone
who says they need the image to be 300 pixels
| | 00:36 | per inch, but they need it to be 4 x 5 inches.
| | 00:39 | Now I have a problem, because
my image has too many pixels.
| | 00:42 | At 600 pixels per inch, a 4 x 5 inch image
has 2400 x 3000 pixels; at 300 pixels per
| | 00:50 | inch, a 4 x 5 inch image
has 1200 x 1500 pixels.
| | 00:55 | So I need to throw some pixels away.
| | 00:57 | Resampling is the process of taking my collection
of pixels and selecting a new sample of pixels
| | 01:03 | from that set to come up with a new image.
| | 01:06 | So to get my 4 x 5 at 600 pixels per inch
down to a 4 x 5 at 300 pixels per inch, I
| | 01:13 | need to resample the image.
| | 01:14 | That is, I need to go through and take, say, every
other pixel from the image and just throw them out.
| | 01:20 | What I'll be left with is a smaller set of pixels that
can then be spaced at the resolution that I want.
| | 01:26 | Now let's say I have to go the other way.
| | 01:28 | Let's say I have an 8 x 10 inch image at 300 pixels
per inch and I want to go up to 11 x 14 inches.
| | 01:34 | Expanding to that size will drop my resolution
to 218 pixels per inch, because to get from
| | 01:40 | 8 x 10 to 11 x 14, the printer has to print
each pixel a little bit larger, and with that
| | 01:45 | larger pixel size, only 218
of them will fit in an inch.
| | 01:50 | So let's say again that you're giving this
image to person who insists on having a 300
| | 01:55 | pixel per inch image.
| | 01:56 | At that point, I need to employ interpolation.
| | 02:00 | In the case of digital images, interpolation
is simply the process of making up new pixels
| | 02:05 | based on the pixels that are already there.
| | 02:07 | For example, let's say that I
said you 2, 4, 6, 8, blank, 12.
| | 02:14 | You would interpolate 10
to fill in that blank.
| | 02:17 | That may seem simple, but you have
actually just performed an analysis.
| | 02:19 | You've recognized a pattern, you've understood
that pattern, and you've figured out how to
| | 02:23 | interpolate that missing value.
| | 02:26 | Photoshop, and most every other image editor, have
sophisticated algorithms for interpolating new pixels.
| | 02:32 | So if you want to go from, say, 8 x 10 to 11 x
14, but still at 300 pixels per inch, then
| | 02:39 | your image editor will need to interpolate
some new pixel data to get you to a pixel
| | 02:43 | count that will allow you to have the
resolution that you want at the given print size.
| | 02:48 | Now, this kind of interpolation isn't an easy, and some of
these algorithms are closely guarded trade secrets.
| | 02:53 | In fact, there is an entire
industry built around resizing images.
| | 02:56 | You'll find several Photoshop plug-ins that
claim to do a better job than everyone
| | 03:00 | else at upscaling images.
| | 03:02 | The problem is simply that it's
just hard making up a new image data.
| | 03:05 | When you interpolate an image upward, you run
the risk of softening the image, of introducing
| | 03:10 | stair-step patterns on diagonal lines, of
creating noticeable repetitious patterns, and other
| | 03:16 | visible artifacts.
| | 03:17 | Therefore, you need to be very
careful about how much you interpolate.
| | 03:19 | I'll have more to say about that
throughout the rest of this chapter.
| | 03:23 | Photoshop uses the term resampling to
refer to both scaling up and down.
| | 03:28 | When we are resampling down,
we are throwing pixels away;
| | 03:31 | when we are resampling up, we
are interpolating new pixels.
| | 03:34 | So I'll sometimes be using the term
resampling to refer to either scaling up or down.
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| Understanding where resizing fits into your workflow| 00:00 | After the last few movies, you should be
beginning to get comfortable with the idea of resolution
| | 00:05 | and pixel counts.
| | 00:06 | We're about to get to the actual Photoshop
process of resizing an image, but before we
| | 00:10 | do, we need to talk about where
resizing fits into your workflow.
| | 00:13 | Earlier, I explained where I think printing should
fit into your overall postproduction workflow.
| | 00:18 | You start by performing the edits that you
need to get your image looking right onscreen,
| | 00:22 | then you move on to printing, which includes
applying the adjustments that are needed to
| | 00:25 | get the image looking good on paper.
| | 00:28 | You perform these resizings at the
beginning of the printing process.
| | 00:32 | As you've seen over the last few movies,
resizing might involve the removal of pixels from your
| | 00:36 | image and once those pixels
are gone, they're gone.
| | 00:39 | Now over the long hall, you may choose to
print your image at lots of different sizes.
| | 00:43 | Perhaps you give someone 8 x 10, and they like
it so much they come back saying they want
| | 00:47 | something poster size.
| | 00:48 | If you preserve the original edited image
at full pixel count--that is, the image that
| | 00:53 | has the edits that get it looking good
onscreen--then you'll always have a master version
| | 00:56 | that you can resize to any size that you want
without having to perform those first edits again.
| | 01:01 | Remember, shrinking an image can require the
elimination of pixels, and resizing upward
| | 01:07 | can require making up new pixels,
which might not always be so accurate.
| | 01:10 | So we want to keep that original master image
so that we always have one copy with the best
| | 01:15 | possible quality.
| | 01:16 | We perform resizing at the beginning of our
printing workflow because sometimes resizing
| | 01:21 | will result in a change in
contrast in your image.
| | 01:24 | As you reduce an image, contrast can sometimes
just slightly increase, because intermediate
| | 01:29 | shades along edges are going to be eliminated.
| | 01:32 | Similarly, as you enlarge, you might see a slight
reduction in contrast. Your image will become
| | 01:36 | a little more diffuse.
| | 01:38 | We don't want to perform contrast adjustments,
get them just right, and then resize and see
| | 01:43 | contrast go up or down,
| | 01:44 | so we resize before we
start our printing edits.
| | 01:48 | Also, the sharpening settings that you're going
to apply are configured for a specific print
| | 01:53 | size, so we need to be sure that we've
resized before we apply any sharpening.
| | 01:58 | Therefore, we can now expand our printing
workflow to, say, initial edits onscreen, then
| | 02:04 | resize, then apply edits for print.
| | 02:07 | There is also going to be a sharpening step
that we'll add in there afterwards, and we'll
| | 02:10 | talk about that later.
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| Defining native printer resolution| 00:00 | All inkjet printers have a native resolution.
| | 00:03 | Now, this is different from 1440 or 2880 printer
dot resolution numbers that you might have seen.
| | 00:10 | Remember, there is not a one-to-one correspondence
between printer dots and the pixels in your image.
| | 00:16 | Instead, you have to group a certain number of
printer dots together to get a single screen pixel.
| | 00:21 | By the time you've grouped printer dots of a
certain size into screen-pixel equivalents,
| | 00:26 | you'll have a certain number of those
screen-pixel-equivalent groups across a given distance.
| | 00:31 | This is the printer's native image
resolution or just native resolution.
| | 00:35 | Anytime you send a print to the printer and
that print is not set to the printer's native
| | 00:40 | resolution, then the printer driver will
resample it to the printer's native resolution.
| | 00:44 | For example, if you have your image set to 200
pixels per inch at 8 x 10 and the printer's
| | 00:49 | native resolution is 300, then
the printer driver will resample.
| | 00:53 | It will interpolate and upscale that
image to 8 x 10 at 300 pixels per inch.
| | 00:59 | Now most of the time, your printer will
probably do a very good job of this.
| | 01:01 | However, you might want to consider doing
that resampling yourself in Photoshop before
| | 01:06 | you print, for a couple of reasons.
| | 01:08 | First, Photoshop has very good resampling
algorithms, possibly better than what your
| | 01:13 | printer driver has.
| | 01:14 | Second, you can get a preview
of that resampling onscreen.
| | 01:19 | If you let the printer driver do it, you just have to
wait till the print comes out to see the results.
| | 01:23 | But most importantly, if you let the printer
driver resample, you might introduce some sharpening-
| | 01:27 | related troubles into your image.
| | 01:29 | Now we are going to spend an entire chapter
on sharpening, so you will learn about--more
| | 01:33 | about this issue later.
| | 01:34 | In the meantime, I recommend setting your
image's resolution settings to your printer's
| | 01:38 | native resolution.
| | 01:40 | Sometimes this might require
resampling and sometimes it won't.
| | 01:42 | It all depends on the final
print size that you're aiming for.
| | 01:45 | Now, plainly, native printer resolution is
a critical specification for printing.
| | 01:50 | Therefore, you might expect to find the
specification somewhere in your printer's manual.
| | 01:54 | But for reasons passing understanding, printer
manufacturers don't feel compelled to publish
| | 01:59 | this essential data.
| | 02:00 | I can only assume it's because their stance is,
don't worry, our driver will take care of everything.
| | 02:05 | You don't need to concern
yourself with these matters.
| | 02:07 | Whatever the reason, you're not going to find
native printer resolution listed anywhere
| | 02:10 | in your printer's documentation,
| | 02:12 | so you're going to want to
make note of this next bit.
| | 02:15 | If you're using an Epson inkjet printer then
you most likely have a native resolution of
| | 02:20 | 360 pixels per inch.
| | 02:22 | Canon and HP printers typically both have
native resolutions of 300 pixels per inch.
| | 02:27 | So, in this course, because I am going to be
working with an Epson printer, you're going
| | 02:31 | to see me choosing 360 as my
target resolution when I am resizing.
| | 02:35 | If you're using Cannon or HP, go with 300.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding the relationship between viewing distance and print size| 00:00 | By now you should be comfortable with the
idea that resolution affects print size.
| | 00:04 | For example, as resolution goes up, print size goes
down, because you're packing pixels closer together.
| | 00:10 | You should also understand that as you
interpolate an image upward, you run the risk of softening
| | 00:14 | image or introducing other little artifacts
that result from the upsampling process.
| | 00:19 | The good news is that there's another factor
that affects your perception of the quality
| | 00:22 | of a print, and that's viewing distance.
| | 00:25 | As you stand farther away from a print, you don't
notice a certain level of detail loss or artifacting.
| | 00:31 | In general, you can assume that as print size
goes up, viewing distance also increases.
| | 00:37 | So if I make a 24 x 36 inch print,
I'm probably not going to view it at arm's length.
| | 00:41 | I am going to stand far away
from it, at least several feet.
| | 00:45 | From that distance, my eye will
be very forgiving of detail loss.
| | 00:48 | In fact, the only people who are going to walk
up to a large print, stand a few inches away
| | 00:52 | from it, and assess detail and resolution from
there are printing nerds and geeky photographers,
| | 00:57 | so you just shouldn't let
those people into your house.
| | 01:00 | A small image, an 8 x 10, one that you have
to get close to to be able to see, needs
| | 01:05 | a higher resolution than a large image that
you view from far away. A billboard is probably
| | 01:10 | the best example.
| | 01:11 | A billboard has a resolution of just two or
three pixels per inch because it's designed
| | 01:15 | to be viewed from a
distance of a few hundred yards.
| | 01:17 | Now, as I mentioned in the last movie, you'll
ultimately be resizing your images to your
| | 01:22 | printer's native resolution.
| | 01:23 | So, in the end, all of your prints
will have the same resolution.
| | 01:27 | I am simply discussing viewing distance here,
so that you'll understand that even if your
| | 01:31 | camera has only, say, 12 mega pixels, that doesn't
mean that you can't produce a large quality print.
| | 01:37 | Yes, you'll have upsample to get a larger
print and yes, that upsampling might result
| | 01:42 | in a softer image, but because the print will
be viewed from farther away, the resulting
| | 01:46 | print will probably be fine.
| | 01:49 | Sizing, then, involves pixel count,
resolution, image size, and viewing distance.
| | 01:54 | Those are a lot of parameters to juggle,
but don't worry; you're about to see an easy way
| | 01:58 | to understand how they all interrelate.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Reducing image size in Photoshop| 00:00 | If all of this talk of resampling and resolution
and pixels and print size has you all confused,
| | 00:06 | don't worry; it's all going to
come together in this movie.
| | 00:09 | You've seen this image before.
| | 00:11 | This is a student image
shot by Amber Griffith.
| | 00:14 | It has been edited.
| | 00:15 | We are now at the point of the workflow
where we need to resize it before we pass it on
| | 00:19 | to our sharpening process and
then finally, out to print.
| | 00:23 | Our goal here is to produce an 8 by 10 inch
image. There are a number of different ways
| | 00:28 | of resizing in Photoshop.
| | 00:30 | I can actually resize with the Crop
tool, as you'll see later in this chapter.
| | 00:34 | I can resize with the Print dialog box, which
you should pretty much never do. Or I can resize
| | 00:40 | by going to the Image menu and choosing Image Size,
which brings up Photoshop's Image Size dialog box.
| | 00:47 | This is a great tool for resizing, but also
for understanding the interrelationship of
| | 00:53 | resolution, print size, and pixels, and for
seeing where resampling fits into all of this.
| | 00:58 | So let's take a look at what we have got here.
| | 01:01 | This is showing me that this image has pixel
dimensions of 4288 pixels wide by 2848 pixels high.
| | 01:10 | It's also showing me that currently the image
will print at 17.8 inches wide by 11.8 inches
| | 01:17 | high, because it has a
resolution of 240 pixels per inch.
| | 01:23 | In other words, if I take 4288 pixels and
line them up so that there are 240 of them
| | 01:31 | per inch, the resulting line
will be 17.8 inches long.
| | 01:37 | Remember, resolution is not
something that's inherent to an image.
| | 01:41 | It is simply a decision that you can make
and that you can change your mind on at any
| | 01:46 | time for how closely
pixels are spaced together.
| | 01:52 | A really important thing to pay attention to
here in the Image Size dialog box is this
| | 01:55 | little icon over here that's showing me that
all three of these parameters are linked.
| | 01:59 | I cannot change Width without changing
Height and Resolution and vice versa.
| | 02:04 | So, I had said that I wanted to
ultimately create an 8 by 10,
| | 02:09 | so I am going to type 10 here into my
Width and right away, a few things happen.
| | 02:13 | My Height goes to 6.6; it changed
because Width and Height are linked.
| | 02:18 | They are linked so as to
preserve the original aspect ratio.
| | 02:22 | So this is great. My image is not
going to distort during my resizing.
| | 02:26 | Resolution went up to 428 because I
have reduced the width of my image.
| | 02:32 | The only way I can go down from the 17 inches
I was at before to the 10 inches that I want
| | 02:36 | is to pack the pixels closer together and
so that gives me an increase in resolution.
| | 02:41 | I cannot change any of these without changing
the other, so let's remember that I had said
| | 02:46 | I want to print at my
printer's native resolution.
| | 02:49 | I am printing on an Epson printer, so my native
resolution is 360, so if I were to enter 360
| | 02:54 | here, my print size will change
again because these are all linked.
| | 02:59 | Note that when I put in a Width of 10, my
Height goes to 6.6. I said I wanted an 8 by 10.
| | 03:07 | It turns out that this image with its 3 to 2 aspect
ratio doesn't actually scale exactly at 8 by 10.
| | 03:12 | I am not going to worry about this
because I am having a custom mat cut.
| | 03:18 | I just know that I need it to fit in an 8 by
10 inch window, and so this will still work
| | 03:25 | for me just fine.
| | 03:26 | If I want to get it to a precise 8 by 10,
then the image is going to have to be cropped,
| | 03:31 | and we'll look at how to do
that later in this chapter.
| | 03:34 | For now, I want to solve this
problem of my resolution.
| | 03:37 | I have got the size that I want,
but I can't get the resolution.
| | 03:40 | That's because right now the number of pixels in
the image, which I can see here, is not editable.
| | 03:46 | I can't change these numbers.
| | 03:48 | That means I can't discard any extra pixels
that I have to get my size and resolution
| | 03:53 | down to where I want it.
| | 03:55 | To do that I need to check
the Resample Image box.
| | 03:58 | Now, we talked about this earlier.
| | 04:00 | When I check it, a number of things happen.
| | 04:02 | First of all, these fields become editable
and second, Resolution is no longer linked
| | 04:09 | to Size so I can change it
independently of my size.
| | 04:13 | Notice that these two, Width and Height, are
still linked. If I want, I can uncheck Constrain
| | 04:17 | Proportions and that link will go away.
| | 04:20 | I can now edit Width independent of Height
and inevitably end up distorting my image.
| | 04:25 | So I am going to be sure
and keep that checked.
| | 04:28 | Resampling is the process of going back to
my original set of pixels and just taking
| | 04:33 | a new little sample of them that might
be smaller than what I started with.
| | 04:37 | That's what we are going to do here.
| | 04:39 | When I checked Resample Image it went back to my
original configuration here of 17 by 11 at 240.
| | 04:43 | So I am going to shrink that down to 10.
Notice Resolution is not changing because it's not
| | 04:49 | linked in here anymore, and I am
going to bump this up to 360.
| | 04:54 | Now I've got my parameters
exactly how I want them for printing.
| | 04:56 | I've got the size that I want.
| | 04:57 | I've got the resolution that I want.
| | 04:59 | And if I go up here and look at my
pixel counts, I can see they are lower.
| | 05:03 | These numbers become very important.
| | 05:04 | I can see that after dialing in all this stuff
I have ended up with an image that is smaller
| | 05:10 | than where I started, so that's a downsizing.
| | 05:13 | Downsizing is a very safe resizing to perform
because it's not going to mean that Photoshop
| | 05:18 | has to create anything.
| | 05:20 | Let's say I was going out to a fancy
typesetting machine that wanted 1200 pixels per inch.
| | 05:26 | If I type that in here, now when I look, I
see that my 10 by 6 at 1200 has resulted in
| | 05:33 | a substantial increase in pixel count, so
now I need to start worrying about upsizing.
| | 05:38 | We are going to talk
about that in a later movie.
| | 05:41 | Just be aware that anytime that I'm typing
some values in here, it's a good idea to, before
| | 05:46 | I'm finished, go up and make sure that I am
getting the downsizing that I'm expecting
| | 05:51 | and not actually going up.
| | 05:53 | Again, there is nothing wrong with going up.
| | 05:55 | You just need to know how to do it,
and that's a topic for another movie.
| | 05:59 | So 10 by 6 at 360. The last thing to
consider is my method of interpolation.
| | 06:04 | When it comes time to throw out pixels there
are lots of different ways that Photoshop
| | 06:07 | can choose to do that, and some are
better in some cases than others.
| | 06:11 | If I pop this open, I see all
of these different things.
| | 06:14 | By default, Photoshop CS6 will
be set on Bicubic Automatic.
| | 06:18 | That means it is automatically going to
choose between Bicubic Sharper, which Adobe thinks
| | 06:23 | is best for reduction, or Bicubic Smoother,
which Adobe thinks is best for enlargements.
| | 06:29 | So it will recognize that I'm going
down and set itself to Bicubic Sharper.
| | 06:33 | If you're using a version of Photoshop earlier
than CS6, you may not have Bicubic Automatic.
| | 06:39 | If you are using a version that's way, way
earlier than CS6, then you may not have Bicubic
| | 06:44 | Sharper and Bicubic Smoother, in which case you want
to just go for a straight Bicubic interpolation.
| | 06:51 | Adobe claims this is best for smooth gradients,
so even if you're using CS6 on Bicubic
| | 06:56 | Automatic, there might be times when you want to
experiment with a Bicubic reduction, particularly
| | 07:01 | if you've got really smooth gradients in
your skies and you are shooting lots of chrome
| | 07:05 | or something like that.
| | 07:06 | Bilinear and Nearest Neighbor you can just
ignore; those are not well suited for resizing
| | 07:11 | photos and remember that Photoshop is
used for more than just editing photos.
| | 07:15 | If you're dealing with illustrations or business
graphics or something, then these come into play.
| | 07:20 | So, most of the time you are just going
to leave it set on Bicubic Automatic.
| | 07:23 | If you are using a version that doesn't have that,
you're going to manually choose Sharper or Smoother.
| | 07:28 | If you are using a version that doesn't
have those, you are going to use Bicubic.
| | 07:32 | Some interesting things happen when you start
using Bicubic for scaling upwards, and we'll
| | 07:36 | talk about those when we get to
those movies later in this chapter.
| | 07:40 | So I am going to set for Bicubic
Automatic, and I am ready to go.
| | 07:43 | I hit OK. Photoshop is
going to think for a bit.
| | 07:46 | It's going to toss out some
pixels and my size will go down.
| | 07:49 | Now if I go back to the Image Size dialog
box, you can see that I am 10 by 6 at 360,
| | 07:55 | my Pixel Dimensions are 49.3 million pixels, so I've
lost a whole bunch of pixel data in this image.
| | 08:04 | Because of that, I'm now going to do a Save As.
| | 08:07 | I don't want to save over my original version
because I don't want to give up those original
| | 08:13 | pixels that I had, because there may come a
time later when I decide that I want to, say,
| | 08:18 | maybe enlarge my image or not go
all the way down to 8 by 10 at 360.
| | 08:23 | It would be stupid to enlarge from this
reduced-pixel-count image when I have another copy
| | 08:29 | in image that has more data in it.
| | 08:31 | So anytime I do a resizing, I Save As to
write out a version of that specific size.
| | 08:37 | That way I've always got my original image
with my edits in it at full pixel count, and
| | 08:42 | I can do other interpolations from
there, which is a safer way to work.
| | 08:47 | So that's resizing an image size.
| | 08:48 | You are going to do that a lot.
| | 08:50 | Every image that you print will need to be
sized, so you'll be spending a lot of time
| | 08:55 | here in the Image Size dialog box.
| | 08:57 | Remember, the real critical things are to pay
attention to whether you're set for resampling.
| | 09:02 | And if you get confused, just follow the
little linking icons over here and that will help
| | 09:07 | you understand the
interrelationship between the different fields.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Cropping to a specific size and resolution using Canvas Size| 00:00 | In the last movie, you saw me trying to size
this image to 8 x 10 and running into the
| | 00:06 | problem of the image's aspect ratio.
| | 00:09 | This image does not actually scale to a
perfect 8 x 10 because it's too wide.
| | 00:14 | This is a 3:2 aspect ratio, so it
doesn't fit into a perfect 8 x 10 inch size.
| | 00:20 | If I go here and set my Width
to 10, my Height drops to 6.6.
| | 00:25 | If you are building a custom mat, that's fine,
but if you're trying to fit an image to a
| | 00:30 | prebuilt frame or a prebuilt matte size,
then you may want to go to a very, very specific
| | 00:36 | size, and that might mean that
you have to crop your image.
| | 00:40 | That's the only way we are going to get
this image to fit in the size that we want
| | 00:44 | is to drop some off the edges.
| | 00:47 | There are a lot of
different ways of doing this.
| | 00:48 | The Crop tool is probably the one that
immediately comes to your mind, but in this movie I want
| | 00:52 | to show you a different way.
| | 00:54 | Before we get to cropping though,
I want to set my size properly.
| | 00:58 | If I have my image set to 10 x 6, that's going
to complicate things a little bit in my cropping
| | 01:03 | operation, because my
height is already too small.
| | 01:05 | So I am going to go ahead and just put the
smallest dimension at the size that I want.
| | 01:10 | So we are going to make sure that Height is
set to 8, so I can see that where I am probably
| | 01:14 | going to want to crop is off of my Width.
| | 01:17 | Now I could do a more complicated crop.
| | 01:19 | I could actually come in here and crop whatever
I wanted out of the middle, but my goal here
| | 01:24 | is to take just as little as
possible out of the image.
| | 01:27 | I want to preserve as
much of the image as I can.
| | 01:29 | So I am going to keep the full
height and take some off of the edges.
| | 01:33 | This is also a case where I can afford to
lose some things off the edges because there's
| | 01:37 | not as much interesting
or relevant image data.
| | 01:40 | There might be other times when you need to
crop differently, crop the tops and bottoms
| | 01:44 | or crop maybe in an L-shaped, take some off
the top and some off of one side and leave
| | 01:49 | the other edges alone.
| | 01:50 | I am going to say OK
and go up here to Image > Canvas Size.
| | 01:55 | Canvas Size gives you a way of cropping, and what I like
about it is its kind of an automatic way of cropping.
| | 02:00 | If you're needing to very quickly go through
a bunch of images and chop them down to a
| | 02:04 | particular size, Canvas Size is probably a
faster way of doing that than the Crop tool.
| | 02:09 | What I can see here is the size of
the total canvas that I've got here.
| | 02:13 | In this case, it matches the image size.
| | 02:15 | So I am just going to knock
width down to 10 inches.
| | 02:18 | The question is, where is it going to
chop those extra 2 inches off of?
| | 02:22 | That's controlled by this
Anchor mechanism here.
| | 02:25 | Right now, it's saying that it's going to
anchor the image at the center and take off
| | 02:30 | space around the edges to get my
canvas down to the size that I want.
| | 02:35 | So let's just watch what happens if I hit OK.
| | 02:39 | It's warning me that the canvas size is
smaller than where I'm starting, so clipping, or in
| | 02:44 | this case, cropping, will occur.
| | 02:45 | I am going to tell it not to
show that to me again.
| | 02:48 | And there, you can see what happened.
Let me undo that. Before, after.
| | 02:52 | So it's taken it just right off the edges.
| | 02:55 | Again, this is a really quick way
of just getting a center crop.
| | 02:57 | You can even store this is an action and
batch process it on images if you needed to.
| | 03:02 | But let's consider something here.
| | 03:04 | This is just black over here.
| | 03:07 | This is actually some wood texture over here.
| | 03:10 | I am losing equal amounts of both.
| | 03:12 | But I wonder if maybe the wood texture is a
little bit more interesting. Maybe I should
| | 03:16 | try and preserve and just lose some of
this empty black that I have got over here.
| | 03:20 | So I am going to up here
to Image > Canvas Size.
| | 03:22 | I am going to set my Canvas Size back to 10,
but this time I am going to anchor over here.
| | 03:29 | So this is telling me that all of the
information that's going to be lost is going to be coming
| | 03:33 | from the left side, so when I hit OK, aha!
| | 03:35 | Now I get this. Before, after.
| | 03:39 | If you watch this space in here--take note of all
this detail here--you can see I haven't lost any.
| | 03:45 | Over here, you can see there is this
curtain and a little bit of window.
| | 03:48 | That's all going away.
It's taking a full 2 inches off of there.
| | 03:51 | So that has done what I
was hoping would happen.
| | 03:53 | It preserved this at the expense
of the stuff that was over here.
| | 03:57 | But I think I actually like the center crop
better because it left the hands in the middle
| | 04:01 | of the image, and this image was composed
around the hands being a strong central element.
| | 04:06 | So I think if I was going to crop this way,
I would keep my center anchor point, dial
| | 04:11 | in my final print size, and hit OK.
| | 04:14 | Again, not a tremendous amount of
cropping control here, but it's fast.
| | 04:18 | If you know that all you need is to crop, say, a
square out of the center of a bunch of images,
| | 04:23 | Canvas Size is a great way to do it.
| | 04:25 | Canvas Size is also a way that you can enlarge
the canvas beyond the original size of your
| | 04:30 | image, and we'll see some uses
for that later in this chapter.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Cropping to a specific size and resolution using the Crop tool| 00:00 | I can of course crop my image with the Crop
tool, and the advantage of the Crop tool is
| | 00:05 | that I get a lot of free-form flexibility;
I don't have to just try and lop things off
| | 00:09 | the sides like we saw with Canvas Size.
| | 00:12 | The tricky thing about the Crop tool of
course is in this particular case, I want to crop
| | 00:15 | to a very specific size.
| | 00:18 | Fortunately, the Crop tool
provides some easy ways of doing that.
| | 00:21 | This is the Crop tool right here.
It looks like a Crop tool.
| | 00:25 | You may not know that if you've never worked
with an actual real-world analogue practical
| | 00:29 | crop tool, but it does
actually look like this.
| | 00:32 | In CS6, I have a new cropping interface.
I have these handles on the edge of the image
| | 00:38 | that I can drag, and as I drag,
my image stays centered in my screen.
| | 00:44 | What's not necessarily obvious to people who
are just starting out with the CS6 Crop tool
| | 00:49 | is that I can still actually crop the way
that I used to, which is to simply click and
| | 00:55 | drag to define the crop that I want and then
refine it from there, still using this center-
| | 01:01 | weighted cropping mechanism
that they have introduced.
| | 01:04 | I'm going to cancel out
of this and start over.
| | 01:07 | Whether you're using CS6 or an earlier version,
what you want to do with your Crop tool for
| | 01:12 | this case is to actually give it
specific dimensions that you want to crop to.
| | 01:18 | So you can see, up top I've got a
number of different predefined options.
| | 01:22 | What I want to do is set
a size and resolution.
| | 01:25 | Now in previous versions of Photoshop,
you may simply see Length, Width, and Resolution
| | 01:31 | all up here in the Control bar.
| | 01:34 | So I'm going to put in a Width of 10, a
Height of 8, and a Resolution of 360.
| | 01:40 | Now, I know ahead of time because I've looked
at my pixel dimensions that I have more pixels
| | 01:44 | than I need to get an 8 x 10 at 360.
| | 01:47 | So I know some downsampling is going to occur.
| | 01:50 | I'm fine with that downsampling.
| | 01:51 | It won't degrade my image.
| | 01:54 | But before you head in with the Crop tool,
you may want to see by, looking in the Image
| | 01:58 | Size dialog box, if you actually have enough pixels
to get the crop and resolution that you want.
| | 02:02 | I'm going to say OK. And now it has gone ahead and set
up an 8 x 10 inch crop at the appropriate resolution.
| | 02:10 | It's taking it right out of the center.
| | 02:11 | So this is actually doing exactly
what canvas size did in the last movie.
| | 02:17 | The advantage here is I can think about
some of what's going on in the edge.
| | 02:21 | I've got this black bit
over here, which I like.
| | 02:24 | It makes a nice frame around this window,
but I've also got this little bit of lace
| | 02:30 | over here, and I might want to keep some of it.
| | 02:32 | So I can pick up my crop and drag it around.
| | 02:35 | Now, I can drag it around by simply clicking
with the mouse and moving it, but I need to
| | 02:40 | be very careful because if I drag up or down,
I will actually introduce this white space
| | 02:46 | down here, so I'm going to undo that.
| | 02:48 | And instead, I'm going to use the arrow keys.
With the arrow keys I can make nice little
| | 02:52 | nudges to my image.
| | 02:54 | So I'm going to nudge the image
around a little bit and see.
| | 02:58 | I'm looking at this area over here
and keeping an eye on this over here.
| | 03:02 | I think I like that a little bit better.
| | 03:04 | The hands are still mostly in the center.
| | 03:06 | I've still got a little bit
of black border there.
| | 03:08 | I'm getting the edge of that
lace, which I like better.
| | 03:11 | I think also I like having the
hands a little bit to the right.
| | 03:16 | This is kind of a leading edge in the
image, because of this window out here,
| | 03:19 | so compositionally, I think it works a little
bit better having the hands to the right.
| | 03:23 | So I'm doing that just with the arrow keys.
| | 03:25 | And then when I'm done I can simply hit the
Return key or double-click within the crop
| | 03:30 | to accept the crop. Photoshop thinks about
it a little bit and then crops the image.
| | 03:35 | I want to talk about one more
thing here in the Crop tool.
| | 03:37 | I'm going to undo that crop and set it back
to where I had it before, so I'm going to
| | 03:43 | put it right about in there.
| | 03:46 | And take note of this checkbox up here.
| | 03:48 | This is new in CS6: Delete Cropped Pixels.
| | 03:52 | If I uncheck that and do my crop, Photoshop
shows me the crop, just as you would expect.
| | 04:00 | I can now go off take other tools, do other
edits, save the image, print it, do whatever.
| | 04:05 | If I come back to my Crop tool though and
decide that I'm not worried about 8 x 10 anymore
| | 04:10 | and I choose to expand this,
my original image is still there.
| | 04:16 | So if I uncheck Delete Cropped Pixels, it doesn't
actually throw away the pixels that are cropped out.
| | 04:21 | In other words, Photoshop CS6 now
supports nondestructive cropping.
| | 04:28 | It only keeps those cropped
pixels if I save in Photoshop format.
| | 04:31 | So I don't want to go save this as a TIFF or
a JPEG if I intend to go back to that image
| | 04:37 | and uncrop it later or change its crop later,
or if I'm going to save it as a TIFF or a
| | 04:42 | JPEG, I need to be sure that I also save a PSD.
| | 04:45 | So this is a very, very powerful new thing.
| | 04:48 | Obviously, if I don't plan to re-crop later
or if I want to deliver a smaller Photoshop
| | 04:53 | document then I should choose Delete Cropped
Pixels because that will actually remove the
| | 04:58 | cropped areas from my image,
so they won't take up more space.
| | 05:01 | So that's cropping to a very specific size
and resolution, and that's another way that
| | 05:08 | I can get my image sized exactly how I wanted
to fit, say, within a particular sized frame or mat.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Enlarging an image in Photoshop| 00:00 | Reducing an image is a pretty simple process.
Photoshop simply needs to throw out any extra
| | 00:07 | pixels that it can find to get the
image size down to where it needs to be.
| | 00:11 | Enlarging is trickier because Photoshop may
need to make up pixels, and that's where you
| | 00:16 | can begin to degrade your
image if you're not careful.
| | 00:20 | So we've reduced this image.
| | 00:22 | Let's take it the other direction.
| | 00:23 | I've gone back to my original file,
which has the original full pixel count.
| | 00:29 | You can see, I'm currently at 4288 x 2848,
for a 17 x 11 inch image, at 240 Pixels/Inch.
| | 00:38 | If all of this is going by way too fast and
you skipped the "Reducing an image" movie, go
| | 00:44 | back and watch that now because it goes into
detail about how this Image Size dialog box works.
| | 00:49 | So I'm going to do is go up.
| | 00:51 | Let's say that I wanted to
print this image 24 inches wide.
| | 00:55 | Very often, before I do a resizing, I'll play
around with the Image Size dialog box, just
| | 00:59 | as a calculator to get a sense of exactly
how much I can size an image, what kind of
| | 01:06 | interpolation I'll need to
do, and so on and so forth.
| | 01:08 | I begin that play by
unchecking the Resample Image box.
| | 01:12 | I want to see what can happen with
just the native pixel count in my image.
| | 01:17 | So for example, I know that I'm
going to print at 360 pixels per inch.
| | 01:22 | That means without any interpolation,
my image is going to print at almost 12 x 8.
| | 01:28 | But I'm wanting to go to 24 inches wide, so
if I dial in 24, that means my Resolution is
| | 01:33 | going to drop to 178.
| | 01:36 | Now, as I mentioned earlier, I need to send
the print to the printer at the printer's
| | 01:41 | native resolution, which in the
case of my Epson printer is 360.
| | 01:46 | So I'm going to need to do a lot of
interpolation to get from 178 to 360.
| | 01:52 | With experience, you're going to learn how
large amounts of interpolation affect your
| | 01:56 | image and whether you like that effect or not.
| | 01:59 | I'm okay at this point
with going from 178 to 360.
| | 02:02 | I know that from experience.
| | 02:04 | If I wasn't, I might see that 178 number right
now and go ooh, actually I can't take this
| | 02:10 | image that big, maybe I'm going to
back off down to, say, 19 inches.
| | 02:14 | That gets me to 225. That's going
to be less interpolation upwards.
| | 02:18 | And so sometimes I'll make some image-size decisions
based on that resolution number that I'm seeing.
| | 02:23 | But again, that kind of just comes from
experience, and it also comes from your personal taste:
| | 02:27 | how much softening in an image are you willing to put
up with, because that's what's going to happen here.
| | 02:33 | We're going to soften image as we enlarge it, and we
were possibly going to introduce some artifacts.
| | 02:37 | But I'm going to stay
committed to this 24-inch-wide idea.
| | 02:40 | That's going to me a 24 x 15 inch image and without
resampling, I am going to be down to 178 pixels per inch.
| | 02:49 | Just to recap, if I were to send the image
to the printer like this, the printer would
| | 02:53 | resample the image up to 360.
| | 02:56 | I don't know that it's going to do as good
a job at resampling as Photoshop does, but
| | 03:00 | more importantly, that resampling that it does
at that stage could mess up the sharpening
| | 03:05 | that I'm going to apply after I resize.
| | 03:07 | So I want this image at native resolution.
| | 03:11 | That means I need to resample.
| | 03:13 | With the Resample Image checkbox checked,
my pixel count is now editable, and so I can
| | 03:19 | go in here and dial in 360.
| | 03:22 | And I can see up here that I'm
doing a whole lot of upscaling.
| | 03:26 | I'm going from a 69.9
million pixel image to 283.7.
| | 03:32 | That's a lot of going up.
| | 03:36 | So my interpolation method
is set to Bicubic Automatic.
| | 03:39 | That is going to tell Photoshop to use Bicubic
Smoother, which Adobe thinks is best for enlargement.
| | 03:44 | If you're using a version of Photoshop that
does not include Bicubic Smoother and Bicubic
| | 03:50 | sharper, that is an older version of Photoshop--
and even some versions of the Creative Suite
| | 03:54 | do not have these options--then
you're going to need to go for Bicubic.
| | 03:58 | When you resample with Bicubic it's best
not to do this big a jump all at once.
| | 04:05 | Let me cancel out of this and show you how you're
going to do this in steps with a Bicubic resampling.
| | 04:13 | It's best to only go with Bicubic, to
only go up in about 10% increments.
| | 04:20 | So what I am going to do is I am going to
start my setting my Resolution to 360, which
| | 04:24 | gets my size down to 11 x 7.
| | 04:27 | Now I'm going to check Resample. That locks
my resolution into place and now I can start
| | 04:30 | playing with size.
| | 04:31 | I'm going to switch over to
Percent, and I'm going to go up 110%.
| | 04:37 | I'm going to set to Bicubic, say OK,
and let it do that interpolation.
| | 04:45 | Now I'm going to go back to Image Size
and see what my size is. I'm at 13.
| | 04:50 | Well I need to get up to 24,
so I'm going to Percent.
| | 04:55 | I'm going to dial in 110%, and I'm going to
keep doing those 10% steps until I get up
| | 04:59 | to the size that I want.
| | 05:02 | That's one of the great advantages of newer
versions of Photoshop is they have these newer
| | 05:05 | interpolation methods that work much better
and don't require those intermediate steps
| | 05:11 | that the old Bicubic resampling did.
| | 05:14 | So, let's just put this back where we had it.
24 inches wide, at 360, on Bicubic Automatic.
| | 05:19 | It's going to give me a
whole bunch of new data.
| | 05:22 | I am going to let it sit
there and think about that.
| | 05:24 | Depending on the speed of your computer,
this will take more or less time, and then when
| | 05:28 | it's done I have this.
| | 05:30 | Now I'm currently looking at 30%.
| | 05:32 | I am going to zoom in some.
| | 05:35 | Now, I'm not going to do too much
fretting over what I see here at 100%.
| | 05:42 | The image is definitely softer, but what
I'm looking for are these kinds of things.
| | 05:47 | These stair-stepping patterns that came in
here, that's the result of the interpolation.
| | 05:51 | You may look at them here and go, oh my
gosh that looks terrible, but remember, we
| | 05:55 | are looking at individual pixels right now.
| | 05:57 | Remember, too, that when this is printed 24
inches wide you're going to stand back from it.
| | 06:02 | I'm even standing back from my monitor right
now and those artifacts don't look so bad.
| | 06:07 | But that's the kind of thing you can end
up with from really severe upsampling.
| | 06:14 | The other thing that's happening is that this
bit of dark edge that's come around the finger
| | 06:20 | here is being exaggerated a little bit.
| | 06:22 | But overall, I'd say this
resizing went very, very well.
| | 06:25 | The only way to find out for sure if my
sharpness and my artifacting is acceptable is to do
| | 06:32 | a print and check it out.
| | 06:35 | This image will still need some sharpening,
and we'll cover that in the next chapter.
| | 06:38 | Just remember that when you're scaling up you
need to pay attention to resolution just as
| | 06:45 | you always would when you're scaling down.
| | 06:47 | Try to assess how much scaling you are doing
and for your first large prints, pay attention
| | 06:52 | to that degree of scaling so you can learn
to develop a sense for how much scaling you
| | 06:56 | can get away with.
| | 06:57 | And remember, it's Bicubic Automatic or
Bicubic Smoother if you have those choices; if not,
| | 07:03 | then it's Bicubic in 10% increments.
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| Creating a triptych| 00:00 | If you have three images that you would like
to present together, then you might consider
| | 00:04 | making a triptych.
| | 00:06 | A triptych is simply a single print with
three images on it. A diptych is the same thing
| | 00:11 | but with two images.
| | 00:12 | You basically just take the three images and
position them on the paper, usually in a straight line.
| | 00:18 | There are several ways of
creating a triptych in Photoshop.
| | 00:21 | I am going to show you a really
easy one that starts here in Bridge.
| | 00:24 | I have taken my three images.
| | 00:25 | These are three student images
again, and I have already sized them.
| | 00:29 | I have opened up each image independently in
Photoshop and using Image Size, sized them
| | 00:35 | to be 2 x 3 inches.
| | 00:36 | So they are all the same size.
| | 00:37 | I have selected all of them here in Bridge.
| | 00:39 | Now I am just going to go to Tools >
Photoshop > Load Files into Photoshop Layers.
| | 00:46 | That's going to take each of the three images
and load them together into a single Photoshop
| | 00:51 | document, one image per layer.
| | 00:53 | Along the way, it's going to flatten the images
so they don't come in with any adjustment layers
| | 00:58 | or anything. And here's my finished document.
| | 01:01 | You can see my Layer Stack
over here in the Layers palette.
| | 01:04 | If I hide the visibility of the
top layer, I see the middle layer.
| | 01:08 | If I hide its visibility,
I see the bottom layer.
| | 01:11 | So I have got this nice stack of images here.
| | 01:12 | So you can argue I've got three images in
a document, it doesn't do me much good since
| | 01:17 | they're all on top of each other.
| | 01:18 | So what I need to do is move them apart.
| | 01:21 | The problem is I can't move them apart right
now and still be able to see them because
| | 01:26 | my canvas is too small.
| | 01:29 | So you should already have an idea about this:
Image > Canvas Size, and now I can expand the
| | 01:35 | size of my canvas.
| | 01:36 | Earlier, we used Canvas Size to crop an
image, but I can also do the opposite.
| | 01:40 | I am going to just enter in the final
canvas size that I want, in this case 8 x 10.
| | 01:46 | And here I am going to make sure
that my anchor point is in the center.
| | 01:50 | That means all of the new space that will be
added to the canvas will be padded around
| | 01:55 | the edges of where my three images are.
| | 01:57 | So if I hit OK, I get this new document.
| | 02:01 | Let me zoom out there.
| | 02:03 | That checkerboard indicates transparency.
| | 02:05 | Right now none of my layers have any
solid pixels in these areas right here.
| | 02:10 | They are completely transparent,
so I see this checkerboard pattern.
| | 02:13 | That can be a little distracting.
| | 02:14 | Let me just quickly create a new layer, move
it to the bottom of my Layer Stack, and I am
| | 02:21 | going to fill it white. It makes
this a little bit easier to see.
| | 02:24 | So, now I can simply take the Move tool, click
on a layer, and then click and drag to reposition
| | 02:33 | the image that's currently selected.
| | 02:35 | Another trick you may not know about: if you
hold down the Ctrl key and click, you get
| | 02:40 | a pop-up menu that shows you the name of every
layer that's beneath the current cursor position.
| | 02:47 | So I can very quickly say oh, I want to grab
that windowlight layer and drag that, so there
| | 02:52 | I am making my layer selection without
having to go to the Layers palette.
| | 02:56 | So I am just going to spread those out there.
| | 02:58 | That looks pretty good.
| | 02:59 | I think I might like a little more air in
there, so I am going to nudge that to the
| | 03:03 | right with the arrow keys a little
bit. Ctrl+Click to grab that layer.
| | 03:08 | I'll nudge to the left a little bit.
| | 03:10 | I like that a little bit better.
| | 03:11 | Now, if I was going to get really picky about
this, I would turn on my rulers and drag guides
| | 03:16 | out and measure the distance between the images to be
sure that they are positioned perfectly symmetrically.
| | 03:23 | Before you define your triptych, you might
want to talk to whoever is going to do your
| | 03:27 | matting and framing and ask them if they want
to cut a single window to go all the way around,
| | 03:34 | or if they would recommend individual
windows around each image in the triptych.
| | 03:40 | If they do want to do individual windows,
then you may need a certain amount of gutter
| | 03:42 | space between each image.
| | 03:45 | But nevertheless, that's an
easy way to do a triptych.
| | 03:49 | It's a nice way to present multiple images,
particularly if you have a larger-sized piece
| | 03:53 | of paper to print on.
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| Creating a triptych using Automator on a Mac| 00:00 | If you're using a Macintosh, you have another
option for creating a triptych and that is
| | 00:05 | use Apple's Automator.
| | 00:08 | Automator is built into the Mac OS. It's a
program that lets you create workflows that
| | 00:13 | can control other applications.
| | 00:16 | By default, Automator does not let you control
Photoshop, but if you go to my website, robotphotoshop.com,
| | 00:25 | you can get a collection of Automator actions
that let you drive Photoshop from Automator.
| | 00:31 | I offer two packages. One is free and the other
is $20 and includes a lot of extra functionality.
| | 00:37 | Now, you may think, why would I bother with
using Automator to control Photoshop, when
| | 00:41 | Photoshop has its own built-in actions?
| | 00:44 | Well, Automator gets you some
things that you can't do in Photoshop.
| | 00:48 | First of all, I can control multiple
applications from within a single workflow.
| | 00:52 | So, for example, I could build a workflow
that processes images in Photoshop and then
| | 00:57 | takes the results and copies them to another
server or drops them into InDesign or uploads
| | 01:02 | them to an FTP site, so you can build very
complex automations that span multiple applications.
| | 01:09 | Also, with my Photoshop action collection,
you get these special filters that let you
| | 01:14 | build workflows that have some logic in them.
| | 01:16 | So you can say, take this batch of images and
process images that have a certain aspect
| | 01:22 | ration one way and a different aspect ratio
another way. Or process images differently
| | 01:27 | based on what size or orientation and so on
and so forth. So those are some things that
| | 01:31 | you can't do with
Photoshop's built-in actions.
| | 01:35 | And finally, I include actions for
creating diptychs, triptychs, and contact sheets.
| | 01:40 | So I'm just going to quickly give you an
idea of what it's like to work with Automator.
| | 01:44 | I'm going to take these three images, and I'm
going to drop those into this Automator workflow
| | 01:50 | here. And then I'm going to tell it that what
I want done with those images is I want them
| | 01:55 | opened in Photoshop and I want them made into a
triptych, and then I want that whole process rendered.
| | 02:03 | Now I could do lots of other
things before creating the triptych.
| | 02:05 | I could have the images.
| | 02:07 | I could Level adjustments on them.
I can invert them.
| | 02:10 | I can do Hue/Saturation adjustments,
Blurs, Flips, all sorts of other things,
| | 02:14 | the typical set of actions
that you would find in Photoshop.
| | 02:18 | Anything that's scriptable with Photoshop's
built-in actions can also be done here in
| | 02:23 | Automator. And in fact, I can even trigger
Photoshop's built-in actions from an Automator workflow.
| | 02:30 | So, with all of that done, I would simply
run the workflow and it will go to work.
| | 02:36 | So what it's going to do is
it's going to open them.
| | 02:38 | It's going to automatically size the images for me,
so I don't need to do any manual resizing stuff.
| | 02:45 | It's going to build a new document
and place everything on the page.
| | 02:48 | Now, it's not saving my resized images here,
so I haven't actually done anything to these
| | 02:54 | images. And if I go over here to my triptych,
here's my finished triptych file, all laid
| | 03:00 | out very nicely with separate layers.
| | 03:02 | I have some other options. I can tell it to
flatten the final image if I want. I can also
| | 03:08 | have it close the original files as it goes,
so those are left open. So that's a really
| | 03:13 | easy way of making a triptych.
| | 03:14 | Now what I can do to make this even cooler
is I'm going to take out this action here
| | 03:19 | which grabs specific Finder items and then
I'm going to the File menu and choose Save
| | 03:25 | As, and I'm going to tell it that I want to
save this as an application on my desktop.
| | 03:31 | And so I might call this Make Triptych.
And what that will do is that'll give me a little
| | 03:36 | application on my desktop and at any time I
can just pick up three images, drop them
| | 03:41 | on that application, and I will
get a triptych made in Photoshop.
| | 03:45 | I don't have to actually run
Automator or work with it that way.
| | 03:49 | This is a very easy way of creating complex
Photoshop automations and it allows you to
| | 03:55 | make diptychs, triptychs, and contact sheets
without doing any work other than just passing
| | 03:59 | the images to the Automator workflow.
Again, you can get these at robotphotoshop.com.
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| Exploring the aesthetics of print size| 00:00 | Ben: I think for some of you this is
the first time you've ever really printed
| | 00:04 | in a serious way, or had your images printed.
| | 00:07 | And obviously one of the things we have to do
here is we got a couple of different sizes
| | 00:10 | that we had, that we were able to choose from,
and we chose to make some images larger and
| | 00:14 | some images smaller.
| | 00:15 | When you first start on the process of printing
a print, one of the things you want to think
| | 00:19 | about is what output size are you going for?
| | 00:22 | Do you want to do this image really
large, do you want to do it small?
| | 00:25 | Very often your relationship to the image
changes when it's on paper. Just seeing it
| | 00:28 | on paper is a really different thing than
seeing it onscreen, but also, it can change
| | 00:32 | depending on the size that you have it at.
| | 00:34 | So you have seen a lot of these
images come out at different sizes.
| | 00:39 | Do you have a sense of why we choose
one size over another for some images?
| | 00:44 | Amber you seem very positive about that idea.
| | 00:46 | Amber: Well, I think one factor is just quality
of the image, like if one is really grainy, then
| | 00:52 | you are not going to want to print it.
| | 00:54 | Ben: So if the image has noise or grain
or other problems, you don't want to blow
| | 00:57 | Ben: those up real big? Yeah.
Amber: Right.
| | 00:59 | Male Speaker: To show more detail.
Ben: Show more detail. Absolutely, yeah.
| | 01:04 | There are also times when,
like a landscape image,
| | 01:08 | you might want really large, because it's
actually a landscape that you want to kind
| | 01:11 | of be able to navigate.
| | 01:12 | Portraits can be nice large
because they become more intense.
| | 01:15 | At the same time, blowing up a portrait can make
it too intense. Sometimes it's nice smaller.
| | 01:21 | I think she has an interesting question.
| | 01:23 | Blow that image up even larger, make it really
big and it could be this really powerful intense image.
| | 01:28 | At the same time it might just be better this
size because she's got such this stare on
| | 01:32 | her face. I don't know that I would want to
encounter a really large version of her walking into a room.
| | 01:37 | Konrad Eek: But one thing that's nice about
that, if you look at--and then I think that
| | 01:41 | up high it works really well--she's
a little bit larger than life.
| | 01:45 | It's a slightly bigger than life size, and
that's a real interesting line to cross is
| | 01:50 | when you go larger than life size, all of a
sudden the impact becomes really strong.
| | 01:56 | And the first thing that comes to mind is
something Richard Avedon's shows where he generally
| | 02:00 | prints one and a half to two times life size
on these huge four- and five-foot-tall prints
| | 02:06 | where you're in the room with them and they
just kind of take you aback because it's
| | 02:09 | they are so realistic and they are so large.
| | 02:12 | So size can give you this
real in-the-face impact.
| | 02:15 | Ben: So I think the lesson we
want you to take away here is, we are all used
| | 02:19 | to working at these little 8 x 10 sizes. And I
said a little, but 8 x 10 sizes, and on your
| | 02:24 | typical regular-size photo printer that's the
biggest you can go, but as you move forward,
| | 02:29 | experiment with larger sizes, and see if you
can start to develop a sense of when you want
| | 02:34 | to use it and when you don't, what images,
what types of images work better at larger
| | 02:37 | sizes and you know you can
even go larger than this.
| | 02:40 | Female Speaker: I want to say one other thing.
We have been sort of talking about the large prints.
| | 02:43 | We might talk just also a minute about the
smaller prints, and like this one here is calling
| | 02:49 | my attention for a moment, is that sometimes
when there is little, really small, little spaces
| | 02:54 | that have intimate details in them,
I like to look at those small.
| | 02:59 | This kind of pulls me and then I look really
carefully and examine every square inch of it.
| | 03:03 | Ben: And that's the thing.
| | 03:05 | That's another thing about print size is it's
going to change how the viewer physically
| | 03:09 | responds to your image. The smaller images,
they are actually going to come up closer
| | 03:12 | too and they are going to study fine detail.
| | 03:14 | A really large print is designed to be, or
intended to be looked at from far away.
| | 03:18 | They are not going to get right on top of it.
| | 03:20 | So, on the one hand, you print images larger
because they can hold lots of detail; on the
| | 03:24 | other hand it might be the smaller image
where they really examine every little hair and fine line.
| | 03:29 | Konrad Eek: Another thing too that I notice,
and we separated them out, but these lovely
| | 03:34 | little horizontal kind of panoramic images, the
camera was set to where it was only exposing
| | 03:40 | panoramics, but by creating a format that's
kind of unique, rather than kind of this three
| | 03:47 | to two ratio that most of these are,
| | 03:50 | if you change that a little bit, you can create
a different rhythm and kind of create a space
| | 03:55 | that is a little different than the
viewer normally expects from photography.
| | 03:59 | You know, when I think about paintings, I
don't think in standard sizes, but photography, I
| | 04:03 | think a lot of people think of that way.
And if you can kind of break that boundary and
| | 04:07 | think about maybe a more unique way to frame
the world, you can get interesting stuff.
| | 04:13 | And one of the other things that I'd
encourage you to do is, if you find an idea, like say
| | 04:19 | that shape that you kind of like, explore it.
Work with it for a while and try to build
| | 04:24 | up enough images in that format, you can--
I always look at--you know if you have got
| | 04:28 | an idea, do at least a dozen and kind of
decide if it's worth pursuing real seriously.
| | 04:33 | Ben: All right! Cool.
Female Speaker: Thank you.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Sharpening, Noise, and the Print DialogUnderstanding how sharpening works| 00:00 | Every image shot with a digital camera
needs to be sharpened. This is because there is
| | 00:04 | a filter that sits directly in front of the
camera's image sensor, and that filter cuts
| | 00:09 | out some infrared light to
help improve color reproduction.
| | 00:11 | It also blurs your image a tiny little bit
to reduce stair stepping, those little patterns
| | 00:17 | that can appear on diagonal lines in your image.
| | 00:19 | It's a necessary part of capturing a good
digital image, and it means that sharpening
| | 00:23 | is a necessary step in postproduction.
| | 00:25 | Now if you are shooting JPEG, then your
camera will perform some sharpening internally.
| | 00:30 | And you can most likely adjust the
level of sharpening from the camera's menus.
| | 00:34 | After you watch the next few videos, you may
find you have a different aesthetic for sharpening,
| | 00:38 | and so you might want to fiddle
with your JPEG sharpening settings.
| | 00:42 | If you're shooting RAW, then there is
no sharpening applied by the camera.
| | 00:45 | This means that it is up to you to get your
image properly sharpened before you print.
| | 00:50 | Fortunately, Photoshop has very
good Sharpening tools built in.
| | 00:54 | Now here's the bad news: sharpening
an image is not actually possible.
| | 00:58 | So this might lead you to think if it's not
actually possible, couldn't this chapter be
| | 01:01 | a little bit shorter?
| | 01:02 | What I mean when I say it's impossible is
that you cannot take an image that's out of
| | 01:06 | focus--or soft--and make it in focus and sharp.
| | 01:10 | There's simply no substitute for
good focus and correct shutter speed.
| | 01:13 | So don't slack off on those skills just because you
have commands in your Image Editor labeled Sharpen.
| | 01:20 | Sharpening software doesn't actually
increase the sharpness of an image.
| | 01:23 | Rather, it simply makes an
image appear to be sharper.
| | 01:27 | Now that might seem like treacherous philosophical
ground to head into. Is an image really sharp
| | 01:32 | if it merely looks sharp? And if
it look sharp, what's the problem?
| | 01:35 | It's important for you to understand that
sharpening tools don't actually sharpen, they
| | 01:38 | just create kind of an optical illusion.
| | 01:40 | If you don't understand this, you can misuse
your sharpening tools and dramatically degrade
| | 01:44 | your image. Here is what
sharpening software does.
| | 01:47 | Every edge in an image has a
dark side and a light side.
| | 01:51 | Really, all an edge is is an
area of well-defined contrast.
| | 01:56 | The softer edge has less contrast.
| | 01:58 | You don't see a sudden
change from light to dark.
| | 02:01 | Sharpening software works by going through your
image and finding areas of sudden contrast change.
| | 02:06 | It's pretty safe to assume that at a
sudden contrast change you've got an edge.
| | 02:11 | When it finds one of those areas it darkens
the dark side of the edge, and it lightens
| | 02:15 | the light side of the edge.
That makes the edge more acute.
| | 02:18 | In fact, sharpening software isn't so much
a software that sharpens an image but
| | 02:22 | that increases the acutance
of the edges in the image.
| | 02:26 | When it is applied well, this increase in
edge contrast, this boost of acutance
| | 02:31 | can make for a dramatic improvement in the
sense of overall sharpness in the image.
| | 02:35 | When it's applied poorly, though, the
increase in localized contrast around every edge in
| | 02:39 | the image can yield a result
that looks garish and busy.
| | 02:43 | Over-sharpening is a common problem
amongst beginning printers, and it's one that you
| | 02:47 | want to be very careful to avoid.
| | 02:49 | Note that in this image we're seeing here
every edge has a visible halo around it.
| | 02:54 | Over time your eye will become very sensitive
to sharpening halos, and you'll learn to walk
| | 02:58 | that fine line between an edge that's more acute
and one that's got an unnatural halo around it.
| | 03:03 | In general, I find it is always better to err on
the side of slightly soft than to go anywhere
| | 03:07 | near the realm of over-sharpened halo.
| | 03:10 | In the rest of this chapter we're going to
look at exactly how you apply sharpening.
| | 03:14 | The first question, though, is
when you apply it in your workflow?
| | 03:19 |
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| Sharpening in JPEG mode| 00:01 | When you shoot in JPEG mode, the computer
inside your camera takes care of pulling the
| | 00:05 | Raw image data off of the camera sensor and
processing it into a full-color final image.
| | 00:10 | Part of that process involves
applying sharpening to your image.
| | 00:13 | Now depending on your camera you may, or may not,
find that you like the results of the sharpening.
| | 00:18 | Your camera probably offers controls for how much
sharpening to apply, and it's worth experimenting
| | 00:23 | with these to see the different results.
| | 00:25 | However, if you're going to shoot JPEG,
then I recommend turning the sharpening as low
| | 00:29 | as it will possibly go.
| | 00:30 | If you can disable
altogether that's even better.
| | 00:32 | There are a few problems
within camera sharpening.
| | 00:35 | Obviously, the first is whether you like the
level of sharpening or not, but also within
| | 00:38 | camera sharpening, you're
giving up some other control.
| | 00:42 | Sharpening adds contrast to an image, so
if the camera is sharpening, you've inherently lost
| | 00:46 | some contrast control.
| | 00:47 | The camera will have already upped the
contrast a bit in its sharpening pass.
| | 00:50 | Good Sharpening is performed after the image
is properly sized for output, the camera by
| | 00:55 | comparison is simply using
generic sharpening settings.
| | 00:59 | If you want to apply additional
sharpening later, this could create problems.
| | 01:03 | For example, if you're going to blow the image
up larger, you'll need to apply more sharpening,
| | 01:07 | and this can be difficult to the image
that has already been sharpened by the camera.
| | 01:10 | You may not be able to get the sharpening
you want, because your new sharpening pass
| | 01:14 | will exaggerate the sharpening
that the camera has already applied.
| | 01:17 | So if you're shooting JPEG, lower your
sharpening settings or better yet switch to shooting
| | 01:22 | in Raw, so that you can have full
control of the sharpening process.
| | 01:27 |
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| Exploring sharpening workflows| 00:01 | Sharpness is a very subjective thing, and
the amount of acceptable sharpness can really
| | 00:06 | vary from image to image. So I can't give
you a simple recipe for sharpening, instead
| | 00:11 | you need to develop an eye and an aesthetic
for what makes good sharpening and learn to
| | 00:16 | adjust your sharpening settings accordingly
for each image, and that's what we are going
| | 00:19 | to spend the rest of this chapter exploring.
| | 00:21 | Right now, I want to
talk about when you sharpen.
| | 00:24 | As mentioned before, if you're shooting JPEG,
your camera might already have sharpened your
| | 00:28 | image enough so you may not
need another sharpening step.
| | 00:31 | If you're shooting RAW, then your images
will be soft straight out of the camera.
| | 00:35 | Photoshop Camera Raw provides a sharpening
control that allows you to apply a very small
| | 00:39 | amount of sharpening to make up for what gets
lost to the filter that sits in front of your
| | 00:44 | camera's image sensor.
| | 00:45 | However, this sharpening control isn't really
enough to get your image sharpened all the way to print.
| | 00:51 | You'll use it when processing your image in
Camera Raw and then you'll perform the rest
| | 00:54 | of your edits and then you'll perform
a final sharpening after you resize.
| | 01:00 | We size the image before we
sharpen for a very simple reason.
| | 01:05 | As you saw earlier a sharpening filter works by
increasing the contrast along the edges of your image.
| | 01:11 | This contrast increase is achieved by creating
dark and light halos around each edge in your
| | 01:15 | image and these halos have a specific width.
| | 01:18 | If they're too wide, then your
image appears over-sharpened.
| | 01:21 | If they're not wide enough, then you won't
see a great increase in sharpness in your image.
| | 01:25 | The problem with sharpening before you
resize is that the resizing operation will change
| | 01:30 | the width of these halos.
| | 01:32 | For example, if you enlarge an image the
halos might get wider as the image scales up and
| | 01:36 | the resulting width may
not make for good sharpness.
| | 01:39 | Similarly, if you scale down, the halos may
get shrunk or even eliminated leaving an image
| | 01:44 | that isn't properly sharpened, or
maybe, not even sharpened at all.
| | 01:48 | That's why earlier I recommended that when
resizing you always set your image to your
| | 01:52 | printer's native resolution.
| | 01:54 | This will keep the printer from scaling
your image and thus prevent the possibility of
| | 01:58 | your sharpening halos being altered into widths
that no longer provide a good sharpening effect.
| | 02:03 | Also, if you're scaling an image down, that
downsampling process may result in a slight
| | 02:09 | sharpening of your image, so you want to do
that downsampling before you sharpen, because
| | 02:13 | you may find that your sharpening needs go
down as you decrease the size of your image.
| | 02:18 | So for raw shooters we have two different
sharpening passes, the first one is a slight
| | 02:23 | sharpening in Camera Raw and the second is a
more aggressive sharpening that occurs after
| | 02:28 | you resize your image.
| | 02:30 | But there's a third sharpening
step that you might want to apply.
| | 02:32 | So far both of the sharpening steps I've
been describing are global sharpenings, that is
| | 02:37 | they are applied to the entire image.
| | 02:39 | Depending on your picture you might want to
apply an additional selective sharpening pass
| | 02:44 | wherein you will sharpen some
parts of the image independently.
| | 02:47 | For example, let's say you're working on a
portrait, and it's a little soft, but your
| | 02:51 | subject has very wrinkly skin.
| | 02:53 | If you sharpen the entire image equally,
you're going to exaggerate the wrinkles, which you
| | 02:57 | may not want to do.
| | 02:59 | So in this case, you'd use a selective
sharpening pass to sharpen just the eyes and maybe their
| | 03:03 | hair, which would leave their skin alone.
| | 03:05 | Or, maybe you have a lowlight image that
has a lot of noise in the shadows, sharpening
| | 03:10 | can really exaggerate noise.
| | 03:12 | So you might want to choose to add a
selective sharpening pass, which would let you sharpen
| | 03:16 | the brightly lit areas, but
leave those noisy shadows alone.
| | 03:19 | So if you're a raw shooter, you will apply
light sharpening in your raw converter, then
| | 03:25 | probably a global sharpening pass later to
sharpen up the image and maybe then a selective
| | 03:30 | sharpening pass to improve
specific areas in the image.
| | 03:34 | If you're a JPEG shooter, you might not
need any sharpening at all, or as we discussed
| | 03:38 | previously, you might be able to turn your
sharpening settings down and regain many of
| | 03:43 | the same sharpening
options that raw shooters have.
| | 03:48 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Sharpening in Camera Raw| 00:00 | Normally, sharpening is something that
happens at the end of your workflow, but if you're
| | 00:06 | shooting Raw, there is a sharpening step that you
may want to take at the beginning of your workflow.
| | 00:11 | As I mentioned earlier, an inherent part of
digital capture is a softening of your image,
| | 00:16 | there is actually a filter that sits in front of your
camera's image sensor that slightly blurs your image.
| | 00:21 | Now, if you're shooting JPEG, your camera
will actually add a little sharpening to your
| | 00:26 | image to make up for this.
| | 00:28 | If you're shooting Raw though, you need to,
possibly, add this yourself in Camera Raw.
| | 00:33 | So I've got a Raw image here that I've
already done some tonal adjustments to, I want to
| | 00:37 | zoom in here to 100%--when sharpening, we
always look at our image at 100% it's one
| | 00:43 | of the few situations where we do need to
assess things on a pixel by pixel basis--and
| | 00:49 | I'm going to go over here to the Detail tab,
which gives me two sets of controls, one for
| | 00:54 | Sharpening and one for Noise Reduction.
| | 00:56 | By default, Camera Raw opens up with these
sharpening settings, I'm going to just turn
| | 01:01 | them off for a moment, and as I do, I want
to issue a big disclaimer here for all of
| | 01:07 | the sharpening movies in this chapter, I'm
not really sure how much sharpening you're
| | 01:12 | going to be able to see in these movies.
| | 01:14 | I'm going to be trying to show you some
before and after stuff and while it's very obvious
| | 01:18 | on my screen, you're going to be looking at
a smaller image than what I am seeing here.
| | 01:25 | And when the images are shrunk during the
post production of these movies, they're going
| | 01:30 | to pick up some sharpness, anytime you
shrink an image, you actually get an increase in
| | 01:33 | apparent sharpness, because you're
inherently reducing the width of the edges, and that
| | 01:38 | usually makes them sharper.
| | 01:40 | So some of these before and afters you may
not actually be able to see, but I think if
| | 01:44 | you try these things on your own images, you'll
see pretty much the same results I am getting here.
| | 01:48 | I have dragged this to 0, and this is pretty
typical of the type of softness you're going
| | 01:55 | to get out of a Raw image, I'm just going
to put this back to the default value and
| | 01:58 | right away on my screen I see a
tiny bit of sharpening increase.
| | 02:03 | Now, these sharpening controls here really
are just like the unsharp mask and smart sharpen
| | 02:09 | filters that you'll find in Photoshop, they use the
same process that I discussed earlier in this chapter.
| | 02:14 | They're finding edges and darkening the
dark side of the edge, lightning the light side
| | 02:19 | of the edge to create an
edge that is more acute.
| | 02:23 | So it's doing that same process, but it's
doing a really, really gentle version of it.
| | 02:29 | Watch what happens if I drag the
Amount slider all the way over to the right.
| | 02:34 | Now on my screen I can see an increase in
sharpness, than actually it's a little over
| | 02:38 | sharpened I'm seeing noisy patterns
being exaggerated in here in her skin tones.
| | 02:44 | This though is much less of over-sharpening
effect, than what I would get with an unsharp
| | 02:50 | mask or smart sharpen filter.
| | 02:52 | So these sharpening
controls are very, very gentle.
| | 02:55 | The control themselves work
just the way unsharp mask does.
| | 02:58 | Amount simply controls how much darkening and
lightning is applied to an edge in the image.
| | 03:05 | Radius controls how wide that edge is.
| | 03:09 | Detail is something you won't typically
find in an unsharp mask filter, it's letting me
| | 03:15 | control what level of detail in
the image is getting sharpened.
| | 03:18 | So this is a nice slider to just play with,
you'll get a sense that maybe fine details
| | 03:22 | are getting more sharpening if I
crank it up, less if I leave it alone.
| | 03:26 | Masking is going to attempt to do
automatically something we're going to do manually later,
| | 03:31 | which is, it's going to attempt to
not sharpen some areas of the image.
| | 03:35 | For example, it's going to apply more
sharpening here around her eyelashes, than it is on this
| | 03:41 | less texture skin tone here that will help
keep the skin tone from getting over-sharpened.
| | 03:46 | But again, all of these
controls are very, very gentle.
| | 03:49 | I typically leave the Camera Raw Sharpening
settings set to their default values, because
| | 03:55 | I think they had a nice level of additional
sharpness without going too far and the bulk
| | 03:59 | of my sharpening will still be
performed later in my workflow.
| | 04:03 | If an image is very, very soft, I might need
to increase the sharpening, and what I will
| | 04:06 | typically do there is increase the Amount a
little bit and then widen the Radius, because
| | 04:11 | softer images need a wider Radius.
| | 04:14 | But as I'm going to say over and over
throughout this chapter, it's always better to err on
| | 04:18 | the side of not enough sharpening,
rather than risk over-sharpening an image.
| | 04:23 | So, slightly soft image is to my eye, much
preferable to an image that has been over-sharpened.
| | 04:30 | Now there is another setting here in
Camera Raw that we want to take a look at.
| | 04:34 | I'm going to go over here to
the Preferences for Camera Raw.
| | 04:37 | Again, these are Camera Raw
Preferences, not Photoshop Preferences.
| | 04:40 | I got them by clicking this button right here.
And if you look here in the General section,
| | 04:45 | Apply sharpening to All
images or Preview images only.
| | 04:49 | If you're going to be really cautious about
sharpening, you could choose these to Preview
| | 04:54 | images only, and what that means is that it's
going to show me the sharpening settings here
| | 04:59 | in my Preview window, but
not actually apply them.
| | 05:02 | The idea there is I can see a preview of
sharpening without actually damaging my image.
| | 05:09 | As you sharpen, you increase contrast in the
image, so sometimes it can be a little confusing
| | 05:13 | to know exactly how much contrast to put into
an image, because you know that you're going
| | 05:17 | to sharpen it later, and that
might increase the contrast further.
| | 05:20 | So this is a way of getting a preview of
sharpening so that you can truly assess contrast and
| | 05:24 | then you can, later in your workflow,
apply your actual sharpening pass.
| | 05:30 | To be honest, I never use that feature.
| | 05:31 | I leave Apply sharpening set to All images, I
work carefully with my sharpening settings
| | 05:36 | here, leaving them set a little bit low and
then I do a stronger sharpening pass later
| | 05:41 | which we're going to see.
| | 05:42 | Notice I've zoomed in here to her eye, in a
portrait it's the eyes that are really critical.
| | 05:47 | I can also see some hair here, we're going
to want those details to be right, that's
| | 05:50 | why I'm looking at this area,
while I set my sharpening settings.
| | 05:53 | I'm going to leave them like this, we're
going to have a lot more sharpening passes on this
| | 05:58 | image as we move through this chapter.
| | 05:59 | But right now I think this is pretty
much right for my Camera Raw settings.
| | 06:03 | As I said before these are pretty typically
the settings I use for most Raw images, so
| | 06:07 | I don't spend a lot of time coming in here
into the Details tab and finessing it, but
| | 06:11 | it's a good idea to understand why it's there,
how it works, and why you need sharpening
| | 06:15 | at this stage of your workflow.
| | 06:20 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Looking at noise reduction| 00:00 | Noise, of course, is the speckly stuff that
can appear in your image, especially when
| | 00:05 | you're shooting at high ISO and usually there's
more noise in your shadows than your other areas.
| | 00:12 | Noise reduction is grouped here into the
Detail tab in Camera Raw alongside sharpening.
| | 00:17 | And in most image editing applications
you'll find noise reduction and sharpening grouped
| | 00:21 | together, because there are operations that
you typically want to perform at the same time.
| | 00:26 | The reason being, noise reduction usually
has a softening effect on your image because
| | 00:31 | the way noise is reduced is to apply very
purposeful localized blurs to your image.
| | 00:37 | Also sharpening can exaggerate noise, so you
want to be balancing your sharpening efforts
| | 00:43 | with your noise reduction efforts.
| | 00:45 | I am not actually going to spend much time
on noise reduction in this course, because
| | 00:50 | these days if you're working with a new camera
you're probably not facing a lot of bad noise issues.
| | 00:56 | Today's SLRs and even today's higher-end point and
shoot cameras do a fantastic job of managing noise.
| | 01:03 | If you would like to know more about noise
reduction and see some more advanced examples
| | 01:07 | of it, checkout my Foundations of Photography Low
Light course where in we take a deep look at noise.
| | 01:15 | For the sake of this discussion I am just
going to leave it at this noise reduction,
| | 01:19 | if your image needs it, would be performed
right now in Camera Raw at the same time that
| | 01:24 | I'm doing my input sharpening step.
| | 01:27 | If you're working with JPEG then you would need
perform noise reduction later in your workflow.
| | 01:32 | Usually you would probably want to try
your noise reduction right at the beginning of
| | 01:35 | your process, because if it doesn't work
you would probably abandon the image, and for
| | 01:39 | that you would use the noise reduction filters in Photoshop
or even go to a third party noise reduction plug-in.
| | 01:49 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Sharpening output with Smart Sharpen| 00:00 | Now I'm ready to get to the
serious sharpening stage of my workflow.
| | 00:04 | I have gone through all the other bits, I
processed my image in Camera Raw, I opened
| | 00:08 | it up here in Photoshop where I did some
retouching around her eyes, and I have also created this
| | 00:14 | Levels Adjustment layer to
get the image ready for print.
| | 00:18 | And I'd like to take a quick look at
that, here is before, here is after.
| | 00:23 | You can see that her face
is a little bit brighter.
| | 00:25 | I hope that now when you see the before you
can recognize that though it seems to have
| | 00:30 | good contrast it actually looks a little bit ashen
compared to here where it's got correct brightness.
| | 00:37 | And I'd like you to look at what I did here,
it's nothing that we haven't been doing throughout
| | 00:40 | this course, just want to really
reiterate how important this is.
| | 00:43 | I've created a Levels Adjustment layer, and
you can see that I dragged the white point
| | 00:47 | over here, I've pulled it in about 10
points so it's not a huge adjustment from 255 to
| | 00:54 | 244, but still it's enough to make a difference.
| | 00:57 | And I've painted a mask that
constrains the edit to only here on her face.
| | 01:02 | Again, as I add the mask my Histogram is
showing me only tones of those areas in the image
| | 01:08 | that are unmasked, so I know that for
her face I've got a good white point.
| | 01:14 | I did not, though, choose to brighten up her
neck and shoulders here, because again--before,
| | 01:23 | after, before, after--I just ended up liking
her face being brighter than the rest of her body.
| | 01:29 | It gives the image a little more depth
because now her body looks like it's a little bit
| | 01:33 | further behind your face, may be falling back
into a little bit of shadow, and it's bringing
| | 01:37 | more attention to her face.
So that's the printing edit that I've made.
| | 01:42 | Again, that came in after I'd adjusted the
image for screen the way that I liked it,
| | 01:45 | then I am gone back and rethought it in
terms of printing and made this adjustment layer.
| | 01:49 | I have also sized my image, I am at an 8 by
10 at 360, so I am ready to start sharpening.
| | 01:56 | Photoshop's sharpening
controls are applied as filters.
| | 01:58 | If I go up here to the Filter
menu I'll see a Sharpen submenu.
| | 02:02 | Now this is grayed out right now, in fact
all of my filters are grayed out, and that's
| | 02:06 | because I have my Adjustment layer selected.
| | 02:09 | If I come down here to my actual
image layer then I get Filters.
| | 02:13 | This is a mistake that I see a lot of
students making and getting confused, they don't know
| | 02:17 | why there filters aren't there or why they
are not having an effect and very often it's
| | 02:21 | because they're actually choosing to either
try to apply a filter to an adjustment layer,
| | 02:26 | or they're in the middle of editing a mask.
With this selected I am ready to go.
| | 02:30 | However, it's important to know that
sharpening is a destructive edit, there's no way to undo
| | 02:35 | it after I've saved the image or
printed or done some other things.
| | 02:39 | So I perform my sharpening on a
duplicate of my background layer.
| | 02:43 | I am going to take my background layer
here and drag it down here to create a copy of
| | 02:48 | it and then I am going to apply
my sharpening filter to this layer.
| | 02:53 | If you've got a more complex image that has a
bunch of layers that are composited together,
| | 02:58 | then you have a problem because you don't have a
single image layer that you can duplicate and sharpen.
| | 03:03 | At that point you may just have to
flatten the image and work from there.
| | 03:07 | Before I do something like that I do a Save,
so I keep my layered version and then I do
| | 03:11 | a Save As and create a new separate
flattened version that I then sharpen and print,
| | 03:18 | so that becomes my printable image at that
point, and if I ever need to make changes
| | 03:21 | I go back to my layered
version and work from there.
| | 03:24 | I am going to actually call this
Sharpened so that I don't get confused later.
| | 03:28 | And then I am going to go up here
to Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen.
| | 03:33 | Now a few things happen here,
one I see a very large nose.
| | 03:37 | That's not going to necessarily happen in your
image, I am going to move over here to the eyeball.
| | 03:41 | I get a couple of different
previews in my Smart Sharpen dialog box.
| | 03:45 | I get this preview here, but the sharpening
is also being applied to my main image, here.
| | 03:50 | However, I'm currently viewing at 25.97%, so there's
no way that I'm going to be able to see sharpening.
| | 03:56 | I would like to zoom in on this image.
| | 03:59 | What's cool about the sharpening filters in
Photoshop is your zoom controls still work.
| | 04:03 | I can use Command+Plus and Command+Minus to
zoom in and out, I can use Command+1 to go
| | 04:08 | all the way to 100%, I can
still even pan around my image.
| | 04:13 | So if you forget to zoom in before you
bring up the sharpening plug-in, don't worry, you
| | 04:17 | can always do it after it's up.
| | 04:20 | Another cool thing to know is that this
preview image, here, is showing me the effects of my
| | 04:26 | sharpening right now. If I click and hold the
mouse I get before, so that's no sharpening,
| | 04:31 | if I let go of the mouse I get sharpening.
| | 04:34 | So this is a really easy way
that I can see before and after.
| | 04:38 | As I mentioned in a couple of movies ago,
because these videos that you are watching
| | 04:42 | have been reduced in size from what I am
seeing on my monitor, you may not be able to see
| | 04:47 | some of the subtle sharpening differences
that I'm pointing out here in these movies.
| | 04:51 | You just going to have to open up some
images of your own and do some fiddling.
| | 04:56 | Something else to know about this preview
here, it's showing me the preview of only
| | 05:01 | the image layer, any adjustment layers that are
sitting above the image are not shown in this preview.
| | 05:07 | That's why this image here around the eye
looks a little bit darker than this does,
| | 05:13 | because, again, I have this Levels Adjustment
layer here that's brightening my image, and
| | 05:17 | that brightening is not being
reflected here in this preview.
| | 05:20 | So I am going to want to pay more attention
to this preview because, again, as I make tonal
| | 05:26 | adjustments I change contrast, and as I
sharpen I change contrast so I really want to see
| | 05:31 | how those two things work together.
| | 05:33 | I've zoomed in on her eye here because eyes
are really the critical thing in a portrait.
| | 05:38 | If I want to see a before and after of this
image over here since I've now decided that
| | 05:43 | this image is not so useful then I can simply
check and uncheck this Preview button right here.
| | 05:49 | So I am going to some uncheck that, and now
over here I can see this is my original image,
| | 05:54 | keep your eyes on her eye right there as I
check the Preview button, and there is sharpened.
| | 05:59 | Again I don't know if you are going to be
able to see that on your screen, I hope you will.
| | 06:03 | This is Photoshop's Smart Sharpen Filter.
| | 06:05 | There are a number of sharpen
filters available in Photoshop.
| | 06:09 | I am going to cancel out of here for a moment,
so that we can see that I have also got Unsharp
| | 06:14 | Mask, Sharpen More, Sharpen Edges, and Sharpen.
| | 06:17 | Right off the bat I can tell you just ignore
those three, you're never going to use them,
| | 06:20 | they are not really
useful for photographic work.
| | 06:22 | Unsharp Mask and Smart Sharpen are
actually basically the same technologies.
| | 06:27 | Smart Sharpen does a few extra
things that I like more than Unsharp Mask.
| | 06:34 | In the Basic controls I have two
simple sliders, Amount and Radius.
| | 06:38 | Amount controls how much lightning and
darkening is being applied to the edges in my image.
| | 06:44 | Radius controls how wide those areas of
brightening and darkening are The easiest way to understand
| | 06:50 | what these do is to look
at some extreme examples.
| | 06:52 | So I am going to crank the Amount slider up, and
that's looking awfully chunky and starting to get ugly.
| | 06:58 | And watch what happens as I increase the Radius
slider, it might actually be a little too much.
| | 07:04 | I think you are going to get a better view
of what Radius does if I turn this back down.
| | 07:10 | And now let's pick out an edge
somewhere and look at what has happened to it.
| | 07:16 | I want to zoom in a little bit further and
actually the difficulty I am having in finding
| | 07:22 | a good example here is an indication of
actually how sophisticated Smart Sharpen is.
| | 07:28 | It's doing it's best to hide what it's up to, but
obviously things are still going a little wrong.
| | 07:34 | I don't see any obvious halos,
here is one it's very faint.
| | 07:38 | There is just a very wide halo
around this eyelash right here.
| | 07:42 | So Radius is going to be the thing that really
starts getting your image looking visibly over-sharpened.
| | 07:50 | Having an Amount slider that's too high is
just going to make your image look kind of noisy.
| | 07:53 | I am going to go back out to 100% here.
Let's get these back where they were.
| | 08:00 | Typically, if an image has been well focused in
camera I go down a little bit from Photoshop's
| | 08:06 | default settings, and I find 100% and one
pixel to be a little aggressive, I usually
| | 08:12 | back off to somewhere between 90
and 95 and take this down to about 0.9.
| | 08:18 | So here a before, here is an after.
| | 08:21 | If I look at her eye I see just a very, very
subtle change in sharpness, and it's not going
| | 08:27 | to come out looking too over-sharpened.
| | 08:30 | If you are facing an image that's softer,
then you're going to want to increase the
| | 08:34 | Radius, and you may even want to
increase the Radius above one pixel.
| | 08:38 | If you have enlarged an image a lot and done
a lot of interpolation, you're probably going
| | 08:43 | to need some sharpening with a wider radius.
| | 08:47 | Obviously there is no straight recipe that
I can give you for what sharpening settings
| | 08:52 | you should use, so instead I'd like to talk
to your about how to recognize over-sharpening.
| | 08:57 | Rather than trying to tell you here the
sharpening settings that will be right for every image,
| | 09:01 | because there are not settings like that.
| | 09:03 | Let's look at sharpening
settings that are just wrong.
| | 09:06 | What I am looking at here is I crank up
is there is just more texture on her skin.
| | 09:12 | Her eyelashes actually start to, appear
to be lines that are breaking apart because
| | 09:17 | they've gone so sharp.
| | 09:18 | Here's some good examples over here, these
just look unnaturally sharp, both unnatural
| | 09:25 | in terms of what things look like in the real
world and unnatural in terms of what we were
| | 09:28 | used to seeing in a photo.
| | 09:30 | They are harsh, they are crunchy, and, of
course, the skin around here is picking up lots of
| | 09:34 | texture that I don't like.
| | 09:36 | It's a very subtle shift, but what I don't
want to see is an image that looks more visually
| | 09:43 | busy because the edges are so hard and so
defined that my eye latches onto every one of them.
| | 09:51 | Your eye hunts edges, it's a contrast detector,
it really likes to find edges because that's
| | 09:56 | a big part of how we recognize
shapes and faces and everything else.
| | 09:59 | So if your edges go too strong, your eye
gets overloaded and has too much to do.
| | 10:05 | Couple of other important settings here to
consider, remove Gaussian Blur, Lens Blur,
| | 10:10 | or Motion Blur, these are the three
types of blurs that your image may have.
| | 10:14 | Gaussian Blur is simply an over all softness.
Lens Blur can be a particular type of blurring
| | 10:20 | created by the typical optics found in lenses.
| | 10:23 | Motion Blur is obviously blur caused by
either moving camera or moving subject.
| | 10:29 | Smart Sharpen can attempt to lessen
each of these types of blurring effects.
| | 10:34 | For most images you will want
to leave it set on Gaussian Blur.
| | 10:37 | If you have got a lens that's soft in the
corners, if you have actually just gone way out of
| | 10:42 | focus then you may want to use Lens Blur.
| | 10:45 | If you've got a camera shake problem or a
moving subject then you may want to try changing
| | 10:48 | this to Motion Blur.
Last thing is this More Accurate check box.
| | 10:52 | If I check that, there is a chance that my
sharpening just gets a little bit better.
| | 10:56 | The reason that you might have it unchecked
is if you have a very slow computers, these
| | 11:00 | days there's really no speed
penalty for leaving that checked.
| | 11:03 | Again, no hard and fast recipes for
sharpening learn to recognize the difference between
| | 11:09 | a level of sharpening that introduces a
certain type of business and noise into your image
| | 11:15 | and a sharpening that gives you better
detail without over driving your eyes.
| | 11:22 | As I mentioned before, by default, I tend to turn
Photoshop's default sharpening settings down a little bit.
| | 11:27 | But I've enlarged an image, or if I have an
outright focusing problem, then I'm probably
| | 11:31 | going to want to increase the Amount a little bit,
and I might very well need to increase Radius as well.
| | 11:37 | That said after I sharpen this image
I still have some issues I don't like.
| | 11:41 | The eyes look great but I picked up some
extra detail in here that I'm not crazy about.
| | 11:46 | So we are going to need to look next at
some ways of selectively sharpening an image.
| | 11:51 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding selective sharpening| 00:00 | All righty, in the last movie you saw me sharpen
this image, and you saw me do it by duplicating
| | 00:06 | my Background layer and
sharpening that duplicate.
| | 00:09 | The idea with this is if I now print the
image and decide that it's over-sharpened, or not
| | 00:13 | sharpened enough, then all I have to do is
delete this layer, and I'm back to my original image.
| | 00:21 | I can now reduplicate this layer and
sharpen it again with different settings.
| | 00:25 | I'm going to Undo that because I
don't want to delete my sharpening layer.
| | 00:29 | This is the power of having
sharpening in its own layer.
| | 00:33 | There is another advantage though, take a
look at what happens if I turn off the Sharpening
| | 00:38 | layer, this should make sense to you.
| | 00:40 | This is my original image,
this is my sharpened image.
| | 00:43 | Hopefully, on your screen you can see the
differences that are happening, say, right
| | 00:48 | in here, keep an eye on this area right here, as I
turn off my Sharpening layer and turn it back on.
| | 00:55 | Her eye is getting a lot more detail, her
eyebrow is getting a lot more detail, but
| | 00:59 | this tiny amount of skin texture
right here is also getting more detail.
| | 01:04 | Watch her nose here as I turn Sharpening on.
| | 01:07 | I'm just picking up more skin texture and
while, in some cases, it might even be more
| | 01:12 | accurate, because as I sharpen, I start to
see tiny little downy hairs on her nose, that's
| | 01:18 | all actually there, and that might be more
accurate, but I don't think it's necessarily
| | 01:21 | that flattering in the portrait.
| | 01:22 | So what I would like to do is sharpen
really only her eyes and maybe her eyebrows and
| | 01:28 | maybe some of this hair over here.
Well, I have that already.
| | 01:32 | I've got her eyes sharpened, I just
have everything else sharpened also.
| | 01:35 | So what I'd like to do is constrain this
layer, so that it only shows certain things, and
| | 01:39 | I can easily do that with a mask.
| | 01:41 | With my Sharpened layer selected, if I go
up to the layer menu and choose Layer Mask >
| | 01:46 | Hide All, I get this.
| | 01:50 | Now over here in my layers palette, I now
see a layer mask attached to my layer, and
| | 01:54 | it's filled completely with black.
| | 01:56 | This works just like the
mask in an Adjustment layer.
| | 02:00 | This mask is effectively a stencil where it's
black, the attached layer is not showing through,
| | 02:06 | where it's white, it will show through, where it's a
shade of gray, I'll get some semi-opaque compositing.
| | 02:12 | So what I'm going to do is grab a paintbrush
and some white paint--and that's a paintbrush
| | 02:17 | that's way too big--and I'm just going to
make sure that my layer Mask is selected,
| | 02:22 | and I'm going to paint over her eyes, and
wherever I paint, I see things get sharper.
| | 02:27 | Just get that roughed in there, and I'll hit her
eyebrow here, and those areas are sharpening up.
| | 02:34 | And if you look in my mask here, you see two
holes punched in the mask, right where her eyes are.
| | 02:40 | So those white areas indicate that the
sharpened image is being shown in those areas, whereas,
| | 02:47 | the black areas reveal that
the lower image is being shown.
| | 02:50 | In other words, I've layered just the sharp eyes on
top of my other layer, which has no sharpening at all.
| | 02:56 | So I've managed to sharpen her
eyes without sharpening anything else.
| | 02:59 | Let's go down here and hit her teeth.
| | 03:03 | Teeth can often look nice with a
little bit of extra sharpness in them.
| | 03:07 | I might do her lips a little bit, but I
think that's going to bring out a little too much
| | 03:11 | texture on her lips, that looks okay.
| | 03:13 | Another thing I might want to do just because
they're at the same plane as her eyes is get
| | 03:18 | some of these hairs over
here sharpened up a little bit.
| | 03:21 | Viewer's attention is going to be on her eyes,
so we might as well make some of the surrounding
| | 03:25 | hair a little bit sharper.
So there we have it.
| | 03:28 | I've got her eyes sharpened without messing up
any of her skin texture, here's a before and after.
| | 03:35 | Again, I don't know if this shows up on your
reduced window size, but I'm getting a nice
| | 03:41 | pop in her eyes without
muddying her skin texture at all.
| | 03:45 | So sometimes you'll want to do just a
selective sharpening pass, sometimes you might find
| | 03:51 | that you need to do both a global
sharpening pass and a selective sharpening pass.
| | 03:56 | I might, for example, duplicate a layer
and sharpen the whole thing a little bit, not
| | 04:02 | super-aggressively, then make another
duplicate of my original layer and sharpen just the
| | 04:08 | eyes and mask all that together.
| | 04:10 | So sometimes I'll combine different
amounts of sharpening by using multiple sharpened
| | 04:14 | layers with different masks.
| | 04:16 | For the most part, you'll probably find
particularly in portraits that all you need to do is sharpen
| | 04:21 | only certain areas, and you can do
that with a single layer with a layer Mask.
| | 04:26 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Sharpening through an edge mask| 00:00 | In the last movie you saw me selectively sharpen
this image by duplicating the Background layer,
| | 00:07 | Sharpening it, and then adding a
layer Mask that hid the layer entirely.
| | 00:11 | I then took a white paintbrush and painted
into that mask to reveal only the areas of
| | 00:15 | the sharpened layer that I wanted to be able
to see, and that let me selectively sharpened
| | 00:20 | the eyes and the hair.
| | 00:21 | We are going to do the same thing in this
movie, but I'm going to use a different method
| | 00:25 | to create the mask, rather than
going in and having to paint it by hand.
| | 00:29 | I'm going have Photoshop create a mask for me.
| | 00:32 | There are lot of filters and image editing
operations in Photoshop that allow you to
| | 00:35 | create kind of weird special effects kind of looks,
and one of those filters is a filter called Find Edges.
| | 00:42 | I'm going delete this sharpened layer here.
| | 00:45 | And let's go up here to Filter > Stylize >
Find Edges and what that does is it goes through
| | 00:51 | my image and finds only edges and exaggerates
those and gives me this weird looking affect,
| | 00:57 | which actually does me no good at
all in terms of creating a final image.
| | 01:02 | But if I think about Selective Sharpening,
what I want to do when I selectively sharpen
| | 01:06 | is to sharpen only the edges in an image.
| | 01:09 | And with the technique we saw in the last
chapter, we saw that I could sharpen an image
| | 01:13 | and then create a mask that revealed
only areas that needed to be sharpened.
| | 01:17 | Well, here I've got a Filter that will
automatically find edges in the image, so if there's a way
| | 01:22 | that I could use this to build a mask,
then I could have Photoshop automatically find
| | 01:27 | edges, use those find edges as a mask and
then apply Sharpening through that mask and
| | 01:32 | so I'd be sharpening only edges, not
surface features, like skin texture.
| | 01:37 | So that's what we're going to do here and
the way we're going do it is we're going dive
| | 01:39 | into the Channels palette.
| | 01:42 | As you know, or as you should know I hope,
color in an image is created by mixing red,
| | 01:47 | green, and blue, and in Photoshop those separate red,
green, and blue components are stored as Channels.
| | 01:52 | And I can look at individual channels.
| | 01:54 | Here's all the Red information in the image,
here's all the Green, here's all of the Blue.
| | 01:58 | If you're wondering why they are Grayscale,
it's very simple, these images are showing
| | 02:02 | your density of each specific color.
| | 02:05 | So I'm looking at a map of the density of
Blue in the image, where there is Black, there
| | 02:11 | is no blue, where there is White, there is
Blue, where there is Gray, there is something
| | 02:16 | in between, same thing here for
Green, same thing here for Red.
| | 02:21 | If you think about skin tones, skin tones
have a lot of red in them, so that makes sense
| | 02:25 | that the Red channel would be very white on
her skin because there's a lot of red there.
| | 02:30 | It also makes sense that the Blue channel would
be very dark, because there's not much blue there.
| | 02:35 | Her teeth are light in all three images,
because white is an equal mix of red, green, blue,
| | 02:40 | same with the whites of her eyes.
| | 02:42 | So none of that's really necessary to
understand for the sake of what we're going to now.
| | 02:47 | All I want to do is look through these three
channels and find the one that has the most
| | 02:52 | useful edge information in it.
| | 02:54 | I'm watching her eyes and while I can see
good definition in her eyelashes and eyebrows,
| | 03:00 | in the Blue channel I see also all of this
skin texture, and of course, all of the skin
| | 03:04 | texture on her face.
| | 03:06 | Same with the Green channel, but in the Red
channel her face is mostly blank, it's mostly
| | 03:11 | white and all I see are
eyelashes and eyes and good hair detail.
| | 03:16 | I can see the lines that
define the edge of her face.
| | 03:19 | So this is a good starting point for trying to
get an image that's distilled down to only edges.
| | 03:26 | So what I'm going to do is duplicate my Red
channel, because now I'm going to mess with it.
| | 03:33 | This channel is just a normal grayscale
image I can do anything that I want to it, so I
| | 03:36 | am going to go up to Filter and go to Stylize and
choose my Find Edges, and when I do that, I get this.
| | 03:44 | Now Masks of course are simply black and white.
| | 03:47 | Black areas are masked, white edges are not,
so this is already starting to look a little
| | 03:50 | more like a usable mask.
| | 03:51 | I'm going to bring up my Levels
dialog box now and increase the contrast.
| | 03:55 | I want to really bring out the hard edges
that I what to lose some of that skin texture.
| | 04:00 | So I want to see if I get this down to just
looking like I'm only seeing lines that are
| | 04:06 | relevant to edges that I might want to sharpen.
Now that's looking pretty good.
| | 04:10 | I am seeing a lot of good stuff here under eyes.
| | 04:12 | I am going to do a little bit of sharpening
on the edge of her teeth, on her necklace,
| | 04:15 | lots of sharpening on her hair,
I am going to hit OK there.
| | 04:18 | Now the problem is black areas in a
mask are masked, they are protected.
| | 04:23 | In other words, sharpening is not going to
go through to these black areas, it's going
| | 04:26 | to go through to the white areas,
which are all her skin tone.
| | 04:29 | So what I need to do is invert this layer.
| | 04:31 | If I go to Image > Adjustments > Invert,
now I get the negative version of it.
| | 04:37 | This is looking really good.
| | 04:39 | If you remember the last tutorial, I painted white
into the mask in the areas that I wanted to sharpen.
| | 04:44 | This is looking like kind of stuff that I
might paint, but with the Level of Detail,
| | 04:47 | that I'd never do by hand, and
probably could not do by hand.
| | 04:51 | So now what I need to do
is load this as a selection.
| | 04:53 | If I pick up this channel and drop it on
this little Load Selection icon down here at the
| | 04:58 | bottom of the layers palette, I can
see my marching ants stuff around here.
| | 05:02 | So I now got a selection, I'm going to click
on RGB to go back to my Normal view, and go
| | 05:07 | back to my layers palette.
| | 05:09 | Now I'm going to duplicate my Background layer,
because again, I want to keep my sharpening
| | 05:13 | discreet, I want to be able to
throw it out later if I want.
| | 05:16 | I'd also like to get rid of
these marching ants, they're annoying.
| | 05:21 | I could do Command+H, or Ctrl+H, or I can go
up here and turn off Shows Selection Edges.
| | 05:27 | My selection is still there, it is just I
don't see all of that stuff on the screen.
| | 05:32 | Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen just like
we did before, and just as we did before,
| | 05:37 | I am going to zoom in here to 100%,
taking my Default values to start with.
| | 05:42 | I'm going to turn off Preview, and I'm
watching her eyes as I turn it on and off, and I'm
| | 05:48 | seeing a difference.
| | 05:49 | Her eyes are sharpening, so are her eyebrows.
I am not getting any change on her skin texture.
| | 05:55 | The sharpening is not quite as aggressive
as the same settings were previously, and
| | 06:00 | I think that's because the mask is
filtering some of the sharpening effect.
| | 06:03 | I am going to launch her hair
over here, as I turn that off.
| | 06:06 | I'm picking up some sharpening on her hair.
| | 06:08 | I am going to turn up the Amount just a little
bit to get a slightly more aggressive sharpening,
| | 06:13 | and I think that's a little too much,
since the mask seems to be filtering some of it
| | 06:19 | out, and I think that's looking pretty good.
| | 06:20 | I'm going to say OK and zoom out and just
see even from this distance if I can tell,
| | 06:28 | there are some differences overall.
| | 06:29 | So I don't see the mask that I've created,
it's just applied directly to the sharpening.
| | 06:35 | I could actually apply this as an Adjustment
layer, but there's really no need if I don't
| | 06:39 | like the Sharpening, I'm just going
to delete the layer and start over.
| | 06:42 | So, edge masking of this type is a way of
getting very complicated edge masks built,
| | 06:47 | so that you can again constrain your
sharpening just too some areas in your image.
| | 06:51 | Honestly I don't use this as often as I
use the technique we saw in the last movie.
| | 06:56 | But for times where I have got a really noisy
image, I want to be really careful about protecting
| | 07:00 | skin tone or for times where there's lots
of fine detail throughout the image that I'd
| | 07:04 | like to have sharpened,
this is a great technique.
| | 07:07 | In this case since it's really just her eyes,
that's an easy enough thing to paint, but
| | 07:10 | in the landscape image or maybe I have got
foliage all throughout the image that I
| | 07:13 | want to selectively sharpen,
this is a very easy way to do it.
| | 07:18 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Reviewing high-pass sharpening| 00:00 | I'm going to show you a
different sharpening technique.
| | 00:03 | This time we are going to sharpen
without using a sharpening plug-in.
| | 00:07 | As discussed previously, it's not
actually possible to sharpen an image.
| | 00:11 | When we sharpen, we are
creating an optical illusion really.
| | 00:14 | We're going in and performing lots of tiny
contrast adjustments on every edge in the image.
| | 00:20 | As the edges become more
contrasty, they appear sharper.
| | 00:24 | So anyway that we can find to increase localized
contrast in an image, meaning separate contrast
| | 00:30 | adjustments for localized areas in an image,
any time we can do that, we're going to create
| | 00:35 | an image that's sharper looking, and there
are a lot of different ways of doing that.
| | 00:39 | As before, I'm going to start by
duplicating my Background layer.
| | 00:44 | In other words I am going to be creating a
separate sharpening layer so that I can always
| | 00:47 | delete it later if I need to.
As before, I am also going to zoom in to 100%.
| | 00:52 | This is an effect where you really need to
be looking at your image at full-size to be
| | 00:56 | able to judge your settings properly.
Filter > Other > High Pass.
| | 01:00 | Now when I pull this up, my image is going
to get weird looking, it goes gray, it's got
| | 01:05 | this weird kind of embossed look to it,
and it's got these weird color artifacts.
| | 01:09 | Photoshop's default settings for the High
Pass Filter are 10, normally they will come
| | 01:13 | in at your last used settings.
| | 01:15 | This is a fresh copy of Photoshop
so I have got the default ones here.
| | 01:19 | First thing I am going to do is slide all
the way to zero, and that brings my image
| | 01:22 | out to complete gray.
| | 01:24 | What I want to do now is slide to the right
until I just start to see details appearing,
| | 01:30 | and I can see some eyes there, I can go
farther and start to see more detail, but now I am
| | 01:36 | seeing skin texture, and I don't
want any skin texture sharpened.
| | 01:39 | So I am going to back off to about there.
| | 01:43 | There is no recipe here, your
image might be completely different.
| | 01:47 | I am just really basing it on can I
see the details that I want sharpened.
| | 01:51 | The reason I am showing you this technique
is High Pass sharpening is a great way of
| | 01:55 | getting a nice gentle effective sharpening
without risking over-sharpening built into
| | 02:00 | it as this kind of a localized thing.
| | 02:02 | I'm not really going to be sharpening skin tone,
which, as we have seen in previous movies, is a good thing.
| | 02:07 | So I am going to say OK now.
| | 02:10 | And there is a step that you may need to perform, we
don't really need to in this image, but I'll do it anyway.
| | 02:15 | Remember those color artifacts you saw
when we first brought up the High Pass Filter.
| | 02:20 | Some of those may still be in here, they are
really hard to see, but we can easily remove
| | 02:24 | them by going to Image > Adjustments and then
down to Desaturate, or we can hit Command+Shift+U.
| | 02:32 | So that will just pull out any of that color
stuff which will keep our process a little cleaner.
| | 02:36 | And now over here in the layers palette, I go to my
Blending mode menu, it's this one that says Normal.
| | 02:43 | Normally when I have got two layers
sitting on top of each other and Blending mode is
| | 02:46 | set to normal, pixels on top
simply replace pixels below.
| | 02:50 | Remember that every pixel is simply represented
by a numeric value, so by changing the Blending
| | 02:55 | mode, Photoshop basically does mathematical
operations between those pixel values to come
| | 03:01 | up with new values.
| | 03:02 | Fortunately rather than give the mathematical
descriptions, they give them these names that
| | 03:06 | may or may not make any sense.
| | 03:08 | For this, we want to switch to Overlay, and when I
do that, I get this, my image goes back to normal.
| | 03:14 | Now right away I can't really tell that
there's been any sharpening because I don't remember
| | 03:18 | what it looked like before.
So I am going to hide my High Pass layer.
| | 03:22 | So here's before, watch this area and here
it's very, very subtle, and after, her eyes
| | 03:27 | have just picked up a little bit of sharpening.
| | 03:29 | You may or may not be able to see down in your
smaller view that you're getting in this video.
| | 03:34 | What I want to do though is look at some of
these details down in here, areas that I don't
| | 03:38 | want to have sharpened.
| | 03:39 | So I am going to watch those, while I turn
sharpening off and on, and I see no change at all.
| | 03:45 | So this has done a really good job
of localizing itself to just her eyes.
| | 03:49 | This is a technique you should play with.
| | 03:50 | You should practice with it some, you
should see what you think about it and decide for
| | 03:54 | yourself whether it's a technique
you want to start using regularly.
| | 03:57 | Again, what I like about it is
it's got built-in localization.
| | 04:00 | This really went into just her eyes because
I kind of defined a mask when I was setting
| | 04:05 | my High Pass controls, and it's very rare
that you can get to the point of seeing full
| | 04:10 | on sharpening halos when you're
using a High Pass sharpening technique.
| | 04:14 | Finally, I do keep it as a discrete
sharpening layer, so I can always throw this out and
| | 04:19 | redo it later if I print it, and
decide I don't like the sharpened settings.
| | 04:24 | So fiddle around some with this High Pass
sharpening, it's a very good sharpening technique
| | 04:27 | to have in your post production toolbox.
| | 04:33 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying aggressive sharpening| 00:00 | Let's take a look at a more
difficult sharpening situation here.
| | 00:05 | This is a promotional picture I took for a
Improvisational Theater Company in San Francisco,
| | 00:09 | Bay Area Theatresports.
| | 00:10 | We were working on a fairly dark stage, and I
wasn't paying good enough attention, I'll admit it.
| | 00:17 | And I was working with a somewhat fast lens,
not great, but the camera opened up wide enough
| | 00:23 | that my Depth of Field was shallow enough that
the two people in the background went out of focus.
| | 00:28 | So I need to sharpen them and
they're full on out of focus.
| | 00:32 | So I'm not going to get a great level of detail,
but I can make them look a little bit better.
| | 00:38 | But they're going to need very different
sharpening settings, than the man in the middle.
| | 00:42 | Now, one thing to bear in mind when you're
sharpening is to keep an idea on what your
| | 00:46 | final printed output is going out to be.
| | 00:49 | I'm not going to worry about regaining too much
fine details, say, in his hair or his eyelashes,
| | 00:54 | because this is an image that's going to be
printed probably pretty small in say a weekly
| | 01:00 | newspaper, or a weekly
entertainment guide, or something like that.
| | 01:03 | So I don't need a lot of great detail, and I'm
going to pick up some detail from it going small.
| | 01:09 | I think I can make a pop a little more, what I've
done now is size this for kind of midsize poster output.
| | 01:16 | I'm going to be printing this out on an 11
x 17 inch piece of paper for display, in a
| | 01:21 | lobby there will be some
graphics going around it.
| | 01:24 | So it's going to be fairly big, it
does need to be a little bit sharper.
| | 01:27 | But again, this is the kind of thing where
people are going to be looking at it from
| | 01:29 | far away, and they're really going to be
seeing it to get information about show times and
| | 01:33 | so on and so forth.
They're not going to be analyzing fine detail.
| | 01:37 | So a lot of times acceptable sharpness
varies depending on how you're going to output and
| | 01:42 | how the viewer is going to be looking
at it, what they're looking at it for.
| | 01:45 | Still I can get this image looking better.
| | 01:48 | So what I need to do is think
about my different sharpening needs.
| | 01:51 | He needs to be sharpened, he needs to be
sharpened, and she needs to be sharpened, and I'm not
| | 01:55 | sure that she's defocused to
the same amount that he is.
| | 01:59 | It looks like maybe she is, so I think
maybe I can get away with two sharpening passes,
| | 02:03 | one for the two people in
the background and one for him.
| | 02:06 | I'm going to start with the people in the
background, because if I can't get them looking
| | 02:10 | good, I'm going to abandon the image.
| | 02:12 | So I'm going to do that by duplicating my
Background layer, and then going to Filter >
| | 02:17 | Sharpen > Smart Sharpen
just like I always would.
| | 02:20 | I'm going to zoom into 100% here in the background,
and you can see that I've got some noise in the image.
| | 02:28 | However, this was shot at 23 mega pixels,
so when I'm looking at this at 100%, this
| | 02:33 | noise is not real significant, I'm
not going to worry too much about it.
| | 02:37 | The Smart Sharpen dialog box comes in with
the last settings that I used, in this case,
| | 02:40 | 112% and a Radius of 1.2 pixels.
| | 02:44 | Radius is going to be the
critical parameter here.
| | 02:47 | If I think about how sharpening works.
| | 02:49 | The way Sharpening filter works is I look
for an edge, and I draw a halo around it.
| | 02:55 | Well, in this case, because the image is
soft, the edge is going to be very wide.
| | 03:00 | It's going to need a wider halo to
create a good strong sharpening effect.
| | 03:05 | Let's turn Preview off, and we can
see there's before, there's after.
| | 03:11 | So I'm getting a lot of exaggeration in the
noise, I'm going to want to ultimately mask this.
| | 03:16 | But for now, I want to just crank my Radius up.
| | 03:19 | What I'm going for is an appearance of good,
strong lines around his eyes and hands.
| | 03:26 | And I'm thinking it's maybe
going to even be that strong.
| | 03:29 | I'm going to back off a little bit down to
about 3, and I'm going to keep it right there.
| | 03:34 | Now you may think, wow,
that's really looks awful.
| | 03:37 | But again, we're going to mask this.
| | 03:38 | So I'm going to say OK, to take that and
then with my Sharpened layer selected, I'm going
| | 03:46 | to go up to Layer > Layer Mask > Hide All, and
now do that same technique that we saw earlier.
| | 03:53 | I'm going in with a white paintbrush, and
I'm just trying to hit areas where I want
| | 04:01 | some more definition, and you may think,
well you're just painting in a bunch of noise.
| | 04:05 | I am, but I'm trusting that that noise isn't
going to be super visible when I go out to print.
| | 04:13 | Again, this image is going to be viewed from
far away, what I'm ultimately doing is making
| | 04:19 | all of these lines stronger.
| | 04:21 | And maybe I end up there, now I'm going to
zoom out, and let me zoom in a little bit
| | 04:30 | so that it's a little bit bigger on your screen,
and watch these areas right in here, before, after.
| | 04:36 | I'm just getting a little more pop on his eyes.
| | 04:40 | Now I could also go in with a finer
paintbrush and deal with some of these noise issues,
| | 04:46 | but I'm not going to worry about them too much.
| | 04:48 | I could also, if I wanted, go hit these
with some noise reduction, so let's try that.
| | 04:54 | My mask is still in place, so I'm going
to go up to Filter > Noise > Reduce Noise.
| | 05:02 | This is going to bring up my Noise Reduction
dialog box, and so far I'm not seeing a lot
| | 05:08 | of improvement, so I'm going to increase the
Strength, and I'm going to turn down Preserve
| | 05:16 | Details, and here's a before, here's an after.
This really isn't getting me anywhere.
| | 05:26 | Let's turn off the Sharpen
Details, that's before, that's after.
| | 05:32 | A little bit of a change, not a lot.
| | 05:39 | So I don't see a huge change here, but again,
let's zoom back out a little bit, before, after.
| | 05:47 | I think this is worth trying.
| | 05:48 | I don't know for sure if the noise is
acceptable, I'm not going to know until I print.
| | 05:54 | With all of those settings in place, my noise
reduction and my sharpening applied to this
| | 05:58 | layer, I can now just do the
same thing, I can go and paint here.
| | 06:02 | Oops, I was actually painting on the
layer there, that's not what I want.
| | 06:05 | I want to select my mask and go here and paint
sharpness under her eyes, maybe hit her eyebrows,
| | 06:16 | and just hit a few spots around.
| | 06:19 | A lot of times you can create the appearance
of a sharper image just by making a few critical
| | 06:25 | lines sharper, the lines that people are
really going to see, like her eyes and the edge of
| | 06:29 | her nose can make a big difference.
So that's her before and after.
| | 06:34 | Her eyes are sharper, they're clearer.
| | 06:36 | Yes, they have some more noise, again,
I'm not sure it's going to matter.
| | 06:40 | So that has served to sharpen
the two people in the background.
| | 06:43 | I'm going to label this Back Sharpen.
Now we need to work on him.
| | 06:49 | So I'm going to duplicate my layer
again, and go through the same process.
| | 06:54 | This time I will be masking just him.
| | 06:57 | Sharpen > Smart Sharpen, I come in with the
settings that are going to be way too aggressive,
| | 07:01 | so I'm going to bump those back down to
100 and may be about 0.9, and I think even 100
| | 07:08 | is going to be too strong,
because this image does have some noise.
| | 07:12 | So let's see before and after.
| | 07:15 | I pick up a little bit on his eyes,
but I'm going to mask this just the same.
| | 07:20 | Layer > Layer Mask > Hide All, and now with
some white paint in my layer Mask I can bring
| | 07:28 | his eyes out a little bit more, and
maybe I'll hit a few lines here on his nose.
| | 07:34 | Again, these are going to be things that
just make a little bit of difference in print,
| | 07:40 | and we get a before and after, that
does make his eyes pop a little bit more.
| | 07:44 | So now what I need to do is do a print,
see if the noise levels are acceptable.
| | 07:49 | I can tell you already I have already
played with this print and these noise levels are
| | 07:53 | acceptable, but I want you to know that
sometimes you have to take your initial noise assessment
| | 07:58 | on faith, do a test print, see
if it's really visible or not.
| | 08:02 | So just to sum up here, I've got a
few different things going on here.
| | 08:06 | I have this layer here that is
sharpening the guy in the middle.
| | 08:11 | I've got this layer here that's
sharpening the two people on the edges.
| | 08:13 | The people on the edges had to have a very
aggressive sharpening, because they were actually
| | 08:18 | full on out of focus.
| | 08:19 | Remember, when you've got edges that are
very wide, because they're out of focus, you can
| | 08:24 | often bring them back by applying a
really wide sharpening radius around them.
| | 08:29 | If I hadn't had the noise problem in this image,
that sharpening would have been much more successful.
| | 08:34 | It works here, but I wouldn't have had to mask so
carefully, and I wouldn't have been exaggerating noise.
| | 08:39 | Still, this is how far you can
go with a sharpening plug-in.
| | 08:42 | You can't take a completely out of focus image
and bring it back, but an image that's little
| | 08:47 | to soft in places with some aggressive
sharpening, you can get it back to something useful.
| | 08:52 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Exploring advanced sharpening techniques| 00:00 | Hopefully, by now you've come to see that
sharpening is like a lot of image editing operations
| | 00:06 | in that it's a very subjective thing.
| | 00:08 | One person's sharp image might be another
person's blurry image or another person's
| | 00:13 | really over-sharpened image.
| | 00:15 | So sharpening is really a matter of
personal taste, and you'll come to understand what
| | 00:20 | sharpening settings you
like as you do more printing.
| | 00:23 | But there are also other factors
that weigh on your sharpening decisions,
| | 00:28 | one we've already seen, which is
the problem of the exaggerating noise.
| | 00:31 | The other has to do with more just an
understanding of how sharpen should work in an image.
| | 00:37 | I have here a landscape image
that I have finished editing.
| | 00:41 | I haven't done my printing edits yet, but
I've sized it, and now I want to try some
| | 00:45 | sharpening passes, and I've
got a few concerns in this image.
| | 00:49 | First of all, I have a lot of fine detail here in
the foreground. I'm going to want that sharpened.
| | 00:56 | But then I have these big puffy clouds up
here, and this was a fairly low light image,
| | 01:01 | so they've got some noise in them.
I really don't want these sharpened.
| | 01:05 | Even if they didn't have noise, I don't know
that I want to sharpen these wispy bits, because
| | 01:09 | clouds just shouldn't look really sharp
that way, but then here in the background I've
| | 01:13 | got some mountains that while there is some
atmospheric haze that might be obscuring them,
| | 01:18 | so I'm not sure that I don't want a
little bit sharpening applied there.
| | 01:21 | So I have these different areas in my image.
| | 01:23 | You've seen how we can apply Selective Sharpening
to an image, and that's what we're going to do here.
| | 01:28 | I'm not going to show you any techniques
here that you haven't seen before I don't think,
| | 01:32 | but I would like you to
kind of see my thought process.
| | 01:35 | I could start with a global sharpening pass
just to get the entire image up to a certain
| | 01:39 | level of sharpness, except that because of
these three different areas, I don't think
| | 01:44 | that's really appropriate.
| | 01:45 | I don't want any sharpening here, I want some
here, and I've got a really particularly strange
| | 01:50 | sharpening problem here in my foreground.
| | 01:52 | I'm going to start with the mountains. I'd
like to get some sharpening applied to them
| | 01:55 | just to see how it looks and to
see really what my noise situation is.
| | 01:59 | So I'm going to duplicate my Background layer
and bring up my Smart Sharpen dialog box.
| | 02:04 | Now of course, this is going to sharpen
the whole image, but I'm going to mask it out
| | 02:08 | later, so I'm going to ignore areas
that are ultimately going to be masked.
| | 02:14 | And I'm just watching this
ridgeline along here. I'd like it sharpened.
| | 02:18 | I need to turn on my
Preview box here, there we go.
| | 02:21 | That's pulling some of this into better relief.
| | 02:23 | So here in the Preview, I
like the way this is looking.
| | 02:27 | Here's before, after, it's subtle.
| | 02:30 | It's not just that it is making this edge
more distinct, it's pulling out a little bit
| | 02:33 | of extra contrast on the
mountains themselves, which I like.
| | 02:36 | The thing I need to worry about is
over-sharpening along this ridge.
| | 02:39 | This is the type of line where you're really
going to notice sharpening, because there's
| | 02:44 | a very pronounced light side and a very
pronounced dark side. That's the kind of thing that can
| | 02:48 | make a halo really, really visible.
| | 02:50 | There is also a chance, because this is a
dark contrasting line against a bright sky,
| | 02:55 | that there might be some
chromatic aberration troubles.
| | 02:58 | That's a lens artifact that can lead to a
colored halo along your edges, and sharpening
| | 03:02 | can sometimes exaggerate that.
So this is actually looking pretty good.
| | 03:06 | I'm going to shrink the size of the halo, though,
because I do feel like that edge is just starting
| | 03:11 | to get a little bit of a dark tinge to it.
| | 03:14 | The type of dark tinge that is indicative of
sharpening, and I want to just play that down.
| | 03:19 | I'm going to turn up the Sharpening to 100, but I
just want to make the halo a little bit smaller.
| | 03:26 | And at this point I expect you're not
really able to see what I'm doing because you're
| | 03:30 | viewing a smaller image than what I am.
| | 03:32 | But what was happening was there was a dark line--let
me zoom this a little more and see if we can see it.
| | 03:38 | Here you can see these dark
pixels that are appearing.
| | 03:41 | If I click and hold the mouse to show you
before, you don't see them, if I release, you see.
| | 03:46 | There are dark pixels that are in there
that are part of the sharpening process.
| | 03:50 | Now this particular preview is at 300%,
so I'm not going to see those in print.
| | 03:56 | Where my settings were before, up around .9,
.95, it appeared a little more visible to
| | 04:01 | me, and I just don't want to see it.
| | 04:03 | Still, with my Preview check box, I can see
that I am getting a nice sharpening effect in here.
| | 04:08 | So I'm going to say OK and trust that that's
a good level of sharpening for the mountains.
| | 04:13 | The problem is it is still being applied to
my entire image, so with that layer selected,
| | 04:18 | I'm going to add a Hide All layer mask and
then take my white paintbrush, and just go
| | 04:25 | over the mountains to get my
sharpening effect into them.
| | 04:29 | And I'm not being real careful here.
| | 04:31 | I can be a little bit sloppy along the top,
because all that's happening is I'm hitting
| | 04:35 | those clouds that are behind there.
| | 04:37 | I'm also staying a little bit out of the shadows,
because there's nothing in there to sharpen,
| | 04:41 | and I am exaggerating noise with this process.
| | 04:44 | Again, I'm trusting that the amount of
noise that's being brought out is just not going
| | 04:50 | to matter at my fairly large
print size that I'm printing out.
| | 04:54 | So I'm going to go up to here, and that's
my mountain sharpening layer, before, after.
| | 05:00 | It's just making them a tiny bit
more distinct, and I really like that.
| | 05:04 | So I'm going to label this Mountain Sharpen,
and I'm ready to think about the foreground.
| | 05:10 | Again, I'm ignoring the sky here,
I do not want to sharpen the sky.
| | 05:13 | There is a lot of noise in these areas.
| | 05:16 | It's not just speckly luminance noise,
it's actually colored chromatic noise.
| | 05:20 | I would be bringing magenta and blue
pixels into more attention if I sharpen up here,
| | 05:25 | and clouds are supposed to
be soft, I don't need it.
| | 05:27 | The foreground, though, it
does need some sharpening.
| | 05:30 | I've got a lot of fine detail in here.
| | 05:32 | Now here's the problem. If I just do a simple
sharpening pass over all the foreground, I'm
| | 05:37 | going to come up with an effect that's fairly
unrealistic looking--or un-photorealistic looking I should say.
| | 05:43 | I'm going to duplicate my background again,
and go back to Sharpen > Smart Sharpen, and
| | 05:52 | let's see what our last values do.
| | 05:54 | Again, the Preview in here does not show the
effects of any Adjustment layers, so in this
| | 05:59 | case it's not going to be
particularly useful to me.
| | 06:02 | So I'm just going to get it all the way out
of the way and look at my 100% preview here.
| | 06:07 | Before, after, I like the extra detail I'm
getting on these sticks, I like the way the
| | 06:12 | rocks are brightening, but there's a problem.
| | 06:15 | The sharpening is being applied evenly to
everything in the image, and so that means
| | 06:19 | that these rocks back here are
getting sharpened the same amount.
| | 06:23 | Textures back here that shouldn't really
be visible at all are getting sharpened.
| | 06:27 | And the fact is as things recede into the
distance, they appear less sharp to us, both
| | 06:31 | before optical reasons, and because the atmosphere is
thick and hazy, and it causes things to become diffused.
| | 06:39 | So I do not want to sharpen all of this equally.
| | 06:42 | What I'm going to do instead is just pay
attention to these foreground areas that I really want
| | 06:45 | to be the subject of the image or
at least the anchor for the image.
| | 06:48 | I want this stuff sharp, I don't care so
much about this, I like the sharpening settings
| | 06:53 | here, I don't feel like they're making the image
too crunchy, so I'm going to just go with those.
| | 07:00 | And as you've probably guessed
already, I'm now going to create a mask.
| | 07:03 | Layer > Layer Mask > Hide All.
| | 07:07 | And now what I want to do is simply create a
Gradient Mask that will ramp off my sharpening
| | 07:12 | effect, and I can do that very
easily with the Gradient tool.
| | 07:16 | White is the foreground color,
black is the background color.
| | 07:19 | I want maximum sharpness to end about
here I think, and ramp off to there.
| | 07:26 | Now if you look at my mask,
you see it's white at the bottom.
| | 07:29 | What's actually happening is it is white here, and
then it goes through a subtle gradient into full black.
| | 07:34 | I'm going to zoom back in, the practical
upshot of this is that here in my foreground the
| | 07:42 | things are getting my full sharpening effect,
starting about here they're getting some sharpening
| | 07:46 | effect, then it's wrapping
off to none at all back here.
| | 07:50 | So let's turn this off,
here is before and after.
| | 07:54 | And if I watch this area here, before
and after, it's sharpening up a lot.
| | 07:59 | If I watch this area out
here, here's before and after.
| | 08:03 | these little shrubby things aren't sharpening
up at all, these are sharpening a little bit.
| | 08:08 | So that's a very simple technique. The thing
is you got to learn to recognize that there
| | 08:12 | are some areas that need more sharpening
than others, and that what I would really expect
| | 08:16 | to see in an image is a lot of
sharpness upfront, and not as much in the back.
| | 08:21 | These same types of decisions are the ones
you make when you're thinking about Depth
| | 08:25 | of Field when you're shooting.
| | 08:27 | For example, when you're shooting, you would
probably want to put your focus point right
| | 08:32 | about here to ensure that your Depth
of Field includes all of this area.
| | 08:36 | If it drops off before it
reaches the mountains, that's okay.
| | 08:39 | It's okay for them to be a little bit soft.
| | 08:41 | As you seen, we can sharpen them up a little
bit, but mostly it's because we expect things
| | 08:46 | closer to us to be sharper.
| | 08:47 | So I'm simulating a little bit of that with
this controlled gradient sharpening effect.
| | 08:52 | As you can see, I've done two very
different sharpenings on two different parts of the
| | 08:56 | image, and none on another.
| | 08:58 | So again, very often you'll need multiple
sharpening passes of different kinds throughout
| | 09:03 | different parts of your image, to get
things looking the way that they need to be.
| | 09:08 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Exploring the Print dialog| 00:00 | At long last, I'm actually ready to print
an image. I know it's been a long time, but
| | 00:05 | you are actually going to see how the
Print dialog works right here in this movie.
| | 00:10 | Now earlier in this chapter, you saw me open
the Raw file for this image, which of course
| | 00:13 | was in color, and I did some input sharpening
there, that is I sharpened in Camera Raw to
| | 00:19 | restore little bit of detail.
| | 00:20 | Then I came to make through and made some
Tonal Adjustments, I put this Level Adjustment
| | 00:24 | on to brighten her face because I noticed
in Histogram that the whites are little off,
| | 00:29 | and I needed to be sure that the whites
particularly in her face were correct.
| | 00:33 | I chose not to tone her body because I like
the depth that it gives, I like having that
| | 00:38 | a bit darker, it makes your
face stand out a little bit more.
| | 00:41 | I then sized and sharpened, but also along
the way, it turns out she needs this as a
| | 00:45 | black and white head shot, so I've thrown
in a black and white layer, of course, so
| | 00:49 | far in this course, we've been
working just with black and white images.
| | 00:52 | We're going to continue to do that through
the end of this chapter, don't worry we're
| | 00:56 | going to go over Color in detail
in the next couple of chapters.
| | 00:59 | But as I said earlier, it's a little bit
easier to understand some of these concepts if we
| | 01:02 | remove color from the equation.
| | 01:05 | So we're working with
this black and white image.
| | 01:07 | I'm ready at last to print.
I'm edited, sized, and sharpened.
| | 01:11 | So I'm going to File and choosing Print. This
brings up Photoshop's Standard Print dialog box.
| | 01:18 | Now I'm in Photoshop CS6 here. If you're working
with CS5, you're going to see something very similar.
| | 01:22 | If you're working with earlier versions,
your Print dialog is going to differ.
| | 01:27 | Similarly, I'm printing to an Epson Printers so
you're going to see some things that are Epson specific.
| | 01:32 | Finally, you might not be using
Photoshop, you might be using something else.
| | 01:37 | So no matter what printer you're using, no
matter what version of Photoshop, no matter
| | 01:41 | what image editor you are using, you're
going to need to address the questions that I'm
| | 01:46 | going to address right now
in this Print dialog box.
| | 01:49 | So follow along here. Even if you're using
something different, that's okay because you
| | 01:53 | still need to think about each one of these
issues that I'm facing here and find the equivalent
| | 01:58 | way to handle it in your copy of
Photoshop or in your Image Editing Application.
| | 02:04 | So the dialog is showing me a nice big
Preview window over here. Over here it's giving me
| | 02:08 | some very critical information
about where my print is going to go.
| | 02:12 | I'm printing to an Epson Stylus Pro 3880,
that's a nice big color Inkjet Printer.
| | 02:18 | It's showing up in this menu because I've
already installed the printer driver and made
| | 02:22 | the printer active using the specific
controls that the Mac OS has for doing that.
| | 02:27 | I'm not going to go into here, you
should already know how to add a printer.
| | 02:31 | If not your printer will come with instructions
telling you How to install the driver and add it.
| | 02:35 | It's a very simple process.
| | 02:37 | So I do want to make sure if I got multiple
printers available--which I do--I do what to
| | 02:41 | make sure that I'm on the right one.
| | 02:42 | So I've selected the right
Epson printer, I want one copy.
| | 02:46 | I'm going to hit now the Print settings button.
This brings me to the Macintosh Standard OS
| | 02:53 | Level Printer Driver dialog box.
| | 02:55 | This is going to look different if you're
using Windows; it might look a little bit
| | 02:58 | different depending on the version
of the Mac OS that you are using.
| | 03:02 | If you don't see it this big, that's
because you need to flip this little switch right
| | 03:05 | here which reveals these Additional Controls.
| | 03:08 | Again, one copy, most of the
stuff I don't need to worry about.
| | 03:12 | I do need to worry about paper size.
I'm printing on a letter sized paper.
| | 03:16 | So I'm just going to keep that.
| | 03:18 | Note, however, that depending on your
printer, you might have some additional options.
| | 03:22 | For example, the printer I'm using can
be fed in a number of different ways.
| | 03:26 | It's got a front feeder, it's got rear feeder,
it's got a sheet feeder, it's got a manual
| | 03:31 | rear feeder, which is what I
use for really thick media.
| | 03:34 | I'm just going to choose the default one
which is the basic top loading sheet feeder that
| | 03:39 | this printer has, but know that if you do
want to use thicker media in a particular way in
| | 03:47 | your printer that is going through a particular
feeding slot, you may have to choose that right here.
| | 03:51 | Also, if your printer has a Borderless option
which mine does, that's how you activate it.
| | 03:56 | So just choosing Letter size doesn't
actually allow me to make a borderless print.
| | 04:00 | I have to say Letter size Borderless, and
I have a couple different Options in terms
| | 04:05 | of whether I want printer to
automatically expand it or not.
| | 04:08 | So I'm just going to stick with this. You'll
need to figure these configurations and settings
| | 04:12 | out for your own printer. Again, your
printer manual should detail all that for you.
| | 04:18 | There's a very, very critical setting that I
need to make here in the Print dialog box,
| | 04:22 | and you're going to need to find
the equivalent for your printer.
| | 04:25 | If I pop this thing open, I get
categories of additional settings.
| | 04:30 | These up here Layout, Color Matching, Paper
Handling, Cover Page, and Scheduler are all
| | 04:34 | OS Level Default settings.
| | 04:36 | Below that are a group of
printer specific settings.
| | 04:39 | These are things that Epson has inserted into
the dialog box. I want to choose Printer Settings.
| | 04:44 | For most Epson Printers, Printer settings is where
you're going to go choose your Paper Type or Media Type.
| | 04:51 | You need to find the equivalent for whatever
your printer is, whether it's an Epson printer
| | 04:55 | or another brand, you need to be able to tell
the printer what kind of paper you're printing on.
| | 05:00 | In this case, I'm printing on a matte paper
called Ultra Premium Presentation Paper Matte.
| | 05:06 | That is an Epson-made paper, and all the papers
that use listed in here are going to be Epson papers.
| | 05:12 | They want you to buy their papers, they're not
going to build-in settings for Non-Epson Papers.
| | 05:18 | If you're using a Non-Epson Paper check the
documentation that came with it because for
| | 05:22 | a lot of Fine Art third-party papers they will list
a specific Epson paper to pick here in the driver.
| | 05:29 | I cannot add new papers here.
| | 05:32 | I only get these stock ones, so
they will tell me which one to use.
| | 05:35 | For the most part, all this setting does when
I chose a particular paper is let the printer
| | 05:40 | driver know how much ink
it can lay down on the page.
| | 05:44 | Now it also does give it some information
about color and tone that can be used if I'm
| | 05:48 | printing with the Printer Driver rather than
having Photoshop manage the color, and we're
| | 05:52 | going to talk all about that
in the next couple of chapters.
| | 05:55 | For right now just know that you need to pick
the right kind of paper; otherwise, the printer
| | 05:59 | may lay down too much ink and then you end up
with paper that curled and buckled and rolled.
| | 06:03 | And again, if you're using a third-party paper,
see if they cue you into a specific Epson paper.
| | 06:09 | Next thing, if I'm printing in black and white,
I need to tell the printer that if the printer
| | 06:15 | has a specific black and white mode. Epson
printers do, some HP Printers do some Canon printers do.
| | 06:22 | Right now, my Print mode is AccuPhoto HD2,
which is just an Epson brand name for their
| | 06:26 | Color Technology. I am going to
switch to Advanced Black and White photo.
| | 06:30 | Now I could try printing this
black and white image in Color mode.
| | 06:34 | If I do, odds are my grays are not going to
be truly Neutral Gray, there are going have
| | 06:38 | a little bit of the Color Cast to them.
| | 06:40 | So I need to switch this to Advanced Black
and White photo. That will ensure that I get
| | 06:45 | truly neutral grays.
Rest of the stuff, I can ignore.
| | 06:48 | In Black and White photo mode, I've the options
for toning the print, making it warmer and cooler.
| | 06:53 | I just want Neutral, and I
can choose a Resolution Setting.
| | 06:57 | Most printers gives you an option between 1440 and
2880. Some also offer lower mode draft qualities.
| | 07:04 | I have never found a reason to go to a
higher resolution. 2880 I find it doesn't give me
| | 07:11 | any better detail, it doesn't make a better
looking print, it just using ink faster so
| | 07:14 | I tend to stay on 1440.
| | 07:17 | These draft modes may be available depending
on the paper choice that I make. If I switch
| | 07:21 | to plain paper, it may activate these draft
modes. All that does is give me a faster print.
| | 07:26 | I'm going to just stick with superfine,
I am going to leave High Speed checked.
| | 07:30 | Flip Horizontal is only useful if I'm
printing on transparency material, and it needs to
| | 07:36 | be printed backwards to work right, back
printed material like, black print film or transfers
| | 07:42 | from transparencies on to other
media might need horizontal flipping.
| | 07:46 | Finest Details and other one of the things, I don't
ever see a difference, and I just leave it unchecked.
| | 07:51 | The critical ones are making sure that
your Media Type is selected, and that you have
| | 07:54 | chosen the correct Color mode.
| | 07:57 | So I'm going to hit Save Now, and that's
going to return me to the Photoshop Print dialog.
| | 08:03 | This doesn't actually start the
print yet. I do that from Photoshop.
| | 08:07 | Within Photoshop, I can control the orientation
of the page. Obviously, I need that to the Portrait Orientation.
| | 08:13 | Now there's another critical
setting here, and that is color handling.
| | 08:18 | I have two choices for the Printer to
Manage Color or for Photoshop to Manage Color.
| | 08:24 | Because I'm printing in black and white,
because I need to use that Driver Level Black and
| | 08:29 | White setting to get a truly neutral gray, I
need to leave this on Printer Manages Colors.
| | 08:35 | This means there is now for sure no correspondence
between my screen and the printer, but if I've
| | 08:41 | been following my Histogram
correctly, that shouldn't matter as much.
| | 08:45 | So I'm going to stick with Printer Manages
Colors. I want to be sure that I'm tagged
| | 08:49 | with the profile, I am. It's Adobe RGB, that's
not real critical right now, but it's good
| | 08:54 | for the printer to know what kind
of Color Space I was thinking about.
| | 08:57 | So I'm going to leave those set there.
I just want normal printing.
| | 09:01 | I'm going to leave Rendering Intent set to
Relative Colorimetric. It's not going to really
| | 09:05 | have much impact on this image.
| | 09:06 | Finally, Position and Size, I had mentioned
before that's it's possible to size in the
| | 09:11 | Print dialog box, and I can.
| | 09:14 | I can grab these handles
here and shrink my image.
| | 09:18 | I said before that you should never size in
the Print dialog box, and I hope you understand
| | 09:23 | now why I need to size before I sharpen,
because I want to know that my sharpening settings
| | 09:30 | are building halos that are the correct with for
the particular size that I've scaled the image to.
| | 09:36 | If I scale it now, all that sharpening
that I carefully set up might be wrecked.
| | 09:41 | There is no guarantee that the Sharpening Settings
that I had carefully crafted at the size that
| | 09:45 | I was at before are still relevant to this size.
| | 09:48 | So I never size my image in the Print dialog box.
I always size it before and leave this alone.
| | 09:56 | I want it centered on the page.
| | 09:58 | If I want I can choose Crop Marks and
Registration Marks. That can be useful sometimes if you
| | 10:04 | are printing out images that need to be
overlapped or something like that. I can even print out
| | 10:09 | a Description in the label for fine art printing for
the most part. You're never going to use those things.
| | 10:13 | So with all those things set, I'm ready to go.
I now load paper into the printer, into
| | 10:19 | the appropriate slot, hit the
Print button, and wait for my print.
| | 10:24 | Once it comes out, I'm going to want to
assess whether my Tonal Adjustments were correct.
| | 10:28 | If they are, then I'm good to go.
| | 10:29 | I can Save this image and print it again anytime
I want to know that I'll get reproducible results.
| | 10:35 | If they work quite right, I can adjust things
because I have made all of my Edits into discrete layers.
| | 10:42 | At this point, I do a Save As. I am going
to just hit the Done button here which will
| | 10:47 | preserve my Print settings
and go up here and do Save As.
| | 10:51 | I do not want to save over my original image,
instead I am going to say, I am going to give
| | 10:57 | this a name and say that
it's letter size Epson matte.
| | 11:04 | I might find that I need different types
of adjustments for different types of papers
| | 11:08 | so if I'm going to print on a couple different
types of paper, I'll save out separate versions
| | 11:13 | for each different type of paper.
| | 11:14 | I'll also save out separate
sizes as we have talked about before.
| | 11:16 | I want to be sure that I always have my
original image preserved, and if I've made printer--
| | 11:21 | or rather, paper-specific adjustments--
I'll save separate files for each of those.
| | 11:26 | So I'm going to go get this printed and take
a look at it, and I expect it's going to come
| | 11:30 | out okay because I've been very
careful about keeping an eye on my Histogram.
| | 11:35 |
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| Proofing at smaller sizes| 00:00 | Test prints are a perfectly normal part of
the printing process, whether you're printing
| | 00:05 | black and white or color, whether you're
running a fully color managed system like we'll see
| | 00:09 | in later chapters or not, whatever you're doing, you're
going to need to do test prints on images where tone
| | 00:15 | and color are critical.
| | 00:17 | However, test prints don't mean that you
have to use a lot of paper and ink, because you
| | 00:21 | don't have to do test prints at full size
unless what you're hoping to test or proof
| | 00:26 | is detail and noise.
| | 00:29 | For tone and color there's no reason not to
do smaller test prints, and there is a very
| | 00:33 | easy way to do that in Photoshop.
| | 00:35 | I mentioned before that in the Print dialog you should
not resize because that will mess up your sharpening.
| | 00:41 | However, for the sake of a smaller test print
where we don't care about sharpness, because
| | 00:45 | we can assess it with smaller size anyway,
then using the Print dialog box's resizing
| | 00:50 | features are actually pretty handy.
| | 00:52 | So I have got this image that I'm ultimately
going to print out at 8x10, but I'd like
| | 00:56 | to do a test print of it.
| | 00:57 | So I'm going to do it in half size,
and there is a very easy way to do that.
| | 01:00 | I'm going to rotate my page by clicking on
the landscape orientation button and then
| | 01:05 | I'm going to scale it down.
| | 01:06 | I am going to scale it down to about 75%, and
maybe I need to go little smaller. We'll go 70%.
| | 01:12 | Now that drops it right in the middle of the
page, which is no good, because the leftover
| | 01:16 | page is still useless.
| | 01:17 | But if I uncheck the center button, I can
just click the image and drag it over to here,
| | 01:22 | and that's using up about half of the page.
| | 01:25 | So when I print this image, this side of the
paper is the side that's going into the printer
| | 01:30 | first, and it's the side
that's going to come out first.
| | 01:32 | So I can do my test print, look at this image,
and if I want to do another test print I can
| | 01:37 | make my adjustments configure the Print
dialog box like this again, but this time feed this
| | 01:42 | side of the paper into the printer first.
| | 01:45 | Or maybe I do this test print, find out the
images fine, and move on to another image.
| | 01:50 | That's fine I have still got
another half page for test printing.
| | 01:54 | This is a very easy way of getting test
prints to assess tone and color without using lots
| | 02:00 | of media and lots of ink.
| | 02:02 | If I want to assess sharpness, detail and/or noise,
then I still don't need to print a full size image.
| | 02:09 | Let's say I'm going to print at 24x36,
and I want to get an idea of how noisy or how
| | 02:13 | good the detail is, I could simply take a 4x6
or 8x10 crop out of a way representative
| | 02:18 | section of the image and print that.
| | 02:21 | For assessing tone and color I could take
that 24x36 image and shrink it down to half
| | 02:25 | size or even smaller.
| | 02:28 | So just because you need to do test prints,
there's no reason that you need to be going
| | 02:32 | through lots of media and ink.
| | 02:35 | Smaller test prints give you a perfectly
reasonable way of assessing tone and color.
| | 02:40 | Hopefully, if you follow the techniques in
this course, and you're being careful about
| | 02:43 | checking your tonal ranges throughout the
different parts of your image where it's critical,
| | 02:47 | then you're going to find that you
don't need to do lots of test prints.
| | 02:50 | I typically get away with just one test
print, unless it's a very tricky image--say
| | 02:55 | a low-light image or something like that--and
when I do test print, I use these techniques to
| | 02:59 | ensure that I don't have
to use so much paper and ink.
| | 03:04 |
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|
|
5. Making a Color PrintExploring how color works| 00:00 | In movie 2.2 of my Foundations of Photography:
Black and White course we looked at how red,
| | 00:06 | green, and blue--the three primary colors of
light--mix together to create all other colors.
| | 00:12 | If you haven't seen that movie, you should take a look
at it now and then come back here. Ink is different.
| | 00:19 | Inks are made from dyes or pigments, and they
have different primary colors than light does.
| | 00:23 | In ink, the primary colors are cyan, magenta, and
yellow. Unlike light, these primaries are subtractive.
| | 00:30 | As you mix them together, they get darker.
| | 00:33 | In reality, we can't create pigments or dyes
that are perfectly pure because they're made
| | 00:38 | up of physical elements and compounds.
| | 00:40 | It's impossible for us to create pigments and dyes
that don't have other colors and properties mixed in.
| | 00:45 | So, in the real world, if you mix a bunch of
cyan, magenta and yellow ink together, you
| | 00:50 | don't actually get black,
you just get a dark brown mush.
| | 00:53 | To get true black, a printer
uses a dedicated black ink.
| | 00:57 | This black also lets it
create darker hues of other colors.
| | 01:01 | We refer to this model for mixing color
as CMYK, cyan, magenta, yellow, and black.
| | 01:08 | We don't say CMYB because the B might be
confused with blue or burgundy or something.
| | 01:14 | So your camera represents images as mixes of
red, green and blue light, which mix together
| | 01:19 | to ultimately form white, while your
printer mixes cyan, magenta, yellow, and black inks
| | 01:24 | and maybe a few other colors which
mix together to ultimately form black.
| | 01:29 | If you have ever tried to print an image and
found that your results don't look anything
| | 01:32 | like what you saw on-screen, then you have
already encountered something that engineers
| | 01:36 | spend a lot of time wrestling with, it is
simply very complicated to translate additive
| | 01:41 | red, green, and blue primaries into
subtractive cyan, magenta, and yellow primaries.
| | 01:47 | As you will see in the rest of this chapter,
a big part of what makes color complicated
| | 01:50 | is that it's just a hard thing to describe and
a difficult thing to describe across different
| | 01:55 | devices that each might represent color in a
different way. Therefore, before we can explain
| | 02:00 | how you will work with color on your
computer, we need to cover a few terms.
| | 02:05 |
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| Reviewing color models| 00:00 | So look at this thing.
| | 00:02 | I would call this red, and if I was trying
to describe it to you over the phone, I might
| | 00:07 | say it's red like an Apple, and you
might say a Macintosh Apple or a Fuji?
| | 00:12 | To which I would respond, no, it's a really
waxed red delicious apple that's got that
| | 00:18 | really deep color, and then you might say, oh,
I only shop at the organic produce market
| | 00:23 | and they don't wax the fruits there.
So I don't know what you're talking about.
| | 00:26 | This is a problem with color: how
do you create a language for it?
| | 00:29 | When it comes time to build a device that
can send a color image to another device,
| | 00:34 | you have to have a way to describe color.
| | 00:37 | In other words to work with color, we need a
way to model it, a set of rules that describe
| | 00:42 | precisely what a particular color is.
| | 00:45 | Now there are a lot of
different ways to do this.
| | 00:47 | There are lots of different color models.
| | 00:49 | We've already discussed the RGB or red, green,
blue model wherein every color is described
| | 00:54 | as a mix of red, green, and blue values.
| | 00:57 | We've also discussed the CMYK model where colors are
described as a mix of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black.
| | 01:03 | There's also the HSL model which also uses
three numbers, one for the hue of the color,
| | 01:07 | another for saturation,
and the third for lightness.
| | 01:10 | The Apple color picker that you all
have on your Macintosh is an HSL model.
| | 01:14 | This is a standard color picker that
comes up in a lot of different applications.
| | 01:17 | I am in text edit right now.
| | 01:19 | What I have got is this color wheel here
that's showing me hue around the wheel, saturation
| | 01:26 | as I go out from the center to the edge, and
lightness as I move the slider up and down.
| | 01:33 | So you can actually think of this circle here
as a slice in a cylinder, and if the cylinder
| | 01:38 | is black at the bottom and white at the top, then moving
this up and down is just showing me a different slice.
| | 01:44 | So I can darken my colors by
going down toward a lower slice.
| | 01:48 | Right now, I've selected white.
| | 01:49 | If I wanted yellow obviously I would
follow this line here, and as I got further out,
| | 01:55 | you can see the saturation of my color increasing.
So this is still another way of modeling color.
| | 02:02 | This model is also sometimes referred to
as HSB or hue, saturation, and brightness.
| | 02:07 | All that a color model does is give us
a way to represent colors as numbers.
| | 02:12 | Now the reason we have different models is
that some models are better suited to some
| | 02:15 | tasks than others. Because a printer's
primary colors are cyan, magenta, and yellow,
| | 02:19 | it's sometimes easier to make adjustments
in a CMYK space rather than an RGB space.
| | 02:24 | If I have a particular shade of blue, and
I want to find a lighter shade, then working
| | 02:28 | with an HSL model might be
easier than working with an RGB model.
| | 02:32 | A color model, then, gives me a way to specify
a recipe or formula for a particular color.
| | 02:37 | If I'm using an RGB model, I would describe
this particular red using one set of numbers.
| | 02:42 | If I'm using a CMYK model, I would use a
different set of numbers to describe the same red.
| | 02:48 | So now I have a way of notating color, but unfortunately,
describing color has some additional complications.
| | 02:55 |
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| Defining gamut and color space| 00:00 | Different printing technologies are
capable of printing different ranges of colors.
| | 00:04 | For example, if you've got a box of crayons
you can lay down a broader range of colors
| | 00:09 | than you can with a box of pastels.
| | 00:11 | Now I'm not talking about number of colors.
Sure, with a box of 64 crayons you have more
| | 00:15 | separate colors than you get in a box of 12 pastels.
What I am talking about is range of color.
| | 00:21 | With the crayons you can create darker,
richer colors than you can with the pastels, but
| | 00:26 | you still have access to lighter colors as well.
| | 00:28 | With pastels all of your colors
are fairly light and unsaturated.
| | 00:32 | They are, in fact, pastel colors.
| | 00:34 | We refer to the range of colors that a particular
technology can produce as that technology's color gamut.
| | 00:40 | So a box of crayons has a bigger
color gamut than a box of pastels.
| | 00:45 | Similarly, a printer has a specific gamut
of colors that it can print, while a camera
| | 00:49 | has a particular gamut of
colors that it can capture.
| | 00:52 | A particular paper has a
gamut as does a specific monitor.
| | 00:56 | Different types of printers, cameras, papers,
and monitors all have different color gamuts.
| | 01:02 | That should be pretty easy to understand.
| | 01:05 | But because all devices have a different gamut,
and because all of those gamuts are a different
| | 01:09 | gamut than what your eye has, things
really get complicated. Here's why.
| | 01:14 | Let's say I take a picture with my camera,
and it decides that the color of this cup
| | 01:18 | is the brightest red that it can capture.
| | 01:21 | In other words the camera decides that
this cup is 100% red as far as it's concerned.
| | 01:26 | It is the red that sits on the
extreme red end of the camera's gamut.
| | 01:31 | For this specific pixels in the image that
represent this cup, the camera socks away
| | 01:35 | whatever number that it is
that represents 100% red.
| | 01:40 | That's all well and good except that 100%
red doesn't tell me anything useful.
| | 01:45 | There are a lot of reds in the
world. Which one is 100% red?
| | 01:49 | On its own, the camera's color
information doesn't really mean anything.
| | 01:53 | Before the data 100% red can be useful, we
need to know a specific color of red that
| | 01:59 | that value corresponds to, and so we map the colors
in the image into something called a color space.
| | 02:06 | A color space is nothing more than a
standard that defines a specific set of colors.
| | 02:11 | When we map the colors in our image into a
color space, then the color values that our
| | 02:15 | camera captures have specific meanings.
| | 02:18 | Now you may not know it's been doing this,
but your camera has been mapping its colors
| | 02:21 | into a color space all along.
| | 02:23 | Most SLRs offer a choice of two color spaces,
sRGB and Adobe RGB, and most cameras default to sRGB.
| | 02:31 | sRGB is a color space that was
defined by Microsoft and HP in 1996.
| | 02:36 | It specifies a range of
colors that's a little bit small.
| | 02:40 | What's nice about the sRGB color space is
that all of the colors are specified by it,
| | 02:45 | are within the gamut of most people's monitors.
| | 02:47 | In other words, there's probably no color specified
in the sRGB color space that your monitor can't show.
| | 02:53 | So if the colors in your image are mapped to
sRGB, there's a good chance that your monitor
| | 02:57 | will be able show you a very
nice version of your image.
| | 03:01 | But you won't necessarily be getting the
best image that you can out of your camera, and
| | 03:06 | to explain why, I want to show you something.
| | 03:08 | In the last movie you learned about the
idea of a color model, and you learned that in
| | 03:12 | RGB and HSL color models, colors are
represented by three numbers. This is called a tuple.
| | 03:19 | Because colors are represented by three numbers,
there's a way that we can visualize a color space.
| | 03:23 | We can simply take each tuple that defines the color
space and graph them all as coordinates in 3D space.
| | 03:30 | So, for example, we might graph their red
value of a color on the X axis and green on
| | 03:34 | the Y and blue on the Z.
| | 03:36 | This should be familiar to you.
It's just basic high school geometry.
| | 03:39 | If we graph all of the colors in a particular
color space this way, then we can see a visual
| | 03:44 | representation of the size and range of that
space, and that's what I've got right here.
| | 03:49 | This is a graph of the sRGB color space. So
what you can see is that--and I can rotate
| | 03:55 | this around--this is a piece of software
called ColorThink, and it's a really nice analysis
| | 04:00 | tool for learning more about what your monitor
and your printer and your camera are capable of.
| | 04:05 | So you can see that sRGB gives me a nice range here
into blue, and I've got reds, and I've got some greens.
| | 04:11 | So my darker colors don't go super dark, my light
colors go all the way to white, so this looks pretty good.
| | 04:19 | But if I switch my camera over to the
Adobe RGB color space, then right away pictures
| | 04:26 | that I take will have brighter reds and
greens and maybe a few extra blues, and here's why.
| | 04:31 | Watch what happens if I stop this
and bring up a graph of Adobe RGB.
| | 04:38 | So this is the Adobe RGB color space.
| | 04:41 | If you look down here at the bottom you
can see this line is the extent of sRGB, this
| | 04:47 | line is the extent of Adobe RGB.
| | 04:49 | I am going to turn down the Opacity on Adobe
RGB, and there you can see that the sRGB color
| | 04:56 | space fits entirely inside
the Adobe RGB color space.
| | 05:00 | I get all of this extra bright green out
here with Adobe RGB, I get a lot of extra reds.
| | 05:06 | About the only thing that's the same as over
here is on the extreme ends of my blues and
| | 05:12 | magentas, there's not a lot of difference,
but on every other access I get a lot more
| | 05:16 | colors out of Adobe RGB.
| | 05:19 | Now whether I will be able to see any of
those extra colors on my monitor or on the printed
| | 05:23 | page, that's a different story, and we'll
get to that later, but if you got a new monitor
| | 05:27 | you will probably see an immediate improvement
in the color of your images by switching your
| | 05:32 | camera to Adobe RGB.
| | 05:34 | Now at no time are the actual
color values in my file altered.
| | 05:39 | Pixels stored as 100% red
are still stored as 100% red.
| | 05:43 | When my camera writes out the file, it simply
makes a note in the files metadata that says
| | 05:47 | that this image should be mapped to either
sRGB or Adobe RGB depending on what I chose
| | 05:52 | in my camera set up.
| | 05:53 | The file is tagged with
that particular color space.
| | 05:57 | When I open an image in Photoshop, Photoshop
understands that it should map the color values
| | 06:01 | to the color space that
is specified in the file.
| | 06:05 | This means that I can change the color space at
any time, Photoshop will simply remap the colors.
| | 06:10 | Let's take a look at that.
| | 06:10 | I am going to switch over here to
Photoshop where I have an image open.
| | 06:14 | This image is currently tagged as an sRGB
image, so all of the different color values
| | 06:19 | are being mapped into that sRGB space.
| | 06:22 | Watch what happens, if I go up here to the
Edit menu and down to Assign Profile, and
| | 06:28 | change its profile from sRGB to Adobe RGB.
| | 06:32 | Keep an eye on these colors in here as I
make the change, boom! A lot of them just got a
| | 06:37 | lot brighter, my reds got
brighter, these blues got brighter.
| | 06:40 | All of those colors that we saw had more
space in Adobe RGB have in fact brightened up.
| | 06:45 | I haven't done any image adjustments or
anything. This is simply how different it can be when
| | 06:50 | you map into one color space or another.
| | 06:53 | Now there are larger
color spaces than Adobe RGB.
| | 06:56 | Photoshop in fact provides a
color space called ProPhoto.
| | 06:59 | Let's go back over here to
ColorThink and open up a new graph here.
| | 07:02 | I want to show you the difference between--
here is Adobe RGB and here is ProPhoto RGB.
| | 07:12 | ProPhoto is enormous. Look at all this extra color
that I get around here on the edges of ProPhoto RGB.
| | 07:20 | Again, there's a little bit of overlap with
blue, but I get far more greens, yellows, reds.
| | 07:24 | It's a much bigger color space.
| | 07:26 | So why wouldn't I choose to be in ProPhoto
all the time? And is it possible to have a
| | 07:32 | space bigger than ProPhoto?
And if so, why not use that?
| | 07:36 | If I map colors into a larger
color space, they spread out.
| | 07:39 | I have the same number of tones to
spread across a larger range of colors.
| | 07:44 | This can be in the gradients in the image,
skies, reflections, subtle shadows those areas
| | 07:50 | can develop visible bands.
| | 07:52 | Also, if the conversion of a particular
color from a small color space to a large color
| | 07:57 | space is great enough, I might
see a noticeable shift in color.
| | 08:01 | Let me show you what I'm talking about.
| | 08:04 | Watch what happens to this image--
actually I am going to zoom in on this.
| | 08:07 | I want you to watch the hat here as I
switch from Adobe RGB to ProPhoto RGB.
| | 08:15 | Again, I am going to assign Profile in
Photoshop, and again this is not changing any of the
| | 08:20 | data in my image, it's simply reinterpreting it.
| | 08:23 | So watch in here as I go from here to
ProPhoto, boom! This has shifted from red to almost
| | 08:28 | being orange. I've actually
lost some subtle detail in here.
| | 08:33 | I am going to go back to Adobe RGB for a
minute. There is some intermediate tones that are
| | 08:37 | defined some shadows that go
away when I switch to ProPhoto.
| | 08:41 | Also, just in general of the colors have become
really overdone, they're looking kind of neat,
| | 08:46 | and this was a dimly lit room, colors were
not that saturated, so though this is a larger
| | 08:50 | color space, it's not really working in my favor.
| | 08:52 | So in general, I really recommend
working in the Adobe RGB color space.
| | 08:56 | It's a really good size for most of the
work that you'll do, it's got more colors than
| | 09:01 | sRGB, but not so many that you will encounter the
problems that you might face with a really large color space.
| | 09:07 | There might occasionally be times when a
switch to ProPhoto will give you a better
| | 09:11 | image, particularly if you're
having trouble with over-exposed colors.
| | 09:14 | But if your camera offers the
option, set it to Adobe RGB.
| | 09:18 | You'll also want to configure Photoshop to
work in Adobe RGB, but we'll discuss that later.
| | 09:22 | We are going to be talking about color
spaces for as long as we discuss color.
| | 09:26 | So just remember, a gamut is the range of
colors that a particular device can capture
| | 09:30 | or show, and a color space is a predefined
specification that delineates a particular group of colors.
| | 09:37 | We map the colors from a particular device
into a particular color space so that the
| | 09:42 | color values correspond to
specific colors out in the real-world.
| | 09:46 | Unfortunately, as you'll see in the next movie,
there might be times when a gamut of one of
| | 09:50 | your devices is smaller than the
color space that you will be working in.
| | 09:55 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Reviewing when colors go out of gamut| 00:01 | In the last movie you saw how I could
graph the contents of a color space in 3D using
| | 00:06 | this program called ColorThink to get a
visualization of what colors that space can hold.
| | 00:10 | I would like to show you now how a color
space might compare to what a particular piece of
| | 00:14 | paper can hold and how it might compare to
what colors are contained in a specific image.
| | 00:20 | Here is the gamut of the Adobe RGB color
space--you saw this before--and here is the gamut
| | 00:26 | of some Epson archival Matte paper. I am just
going to pull that up right here, and they're
| | 00:32 | going to be superimposed.
| | 00:33 | Now again, if I look at these two things
down below, this inner circle is the color gamut
| | 00:39 | of the Epson paper, this is the color gamut
of the entire Adobe RGB color space.
| | 00:46 | Let me turn down the opacity of Adobe RGB, and
you can see that for the most part, the paper
| | 00:53 | is contained completely within Adobe RGB.
There's actually a little bit of yellow that the paper
| | 00:58 | can handle that is
outside the gamut of Adobe RGB.
| | 01:01 | For the most part, the important thing to
recognize here is that there are lots of colors
| | 01:05 | in Adobe RGB that I simply cannot
print on this particular type of paper.
| | 01:11 | When you're printing and a color falls
outside of the gamut of your target paper, Photoshop
| | 01:16 | or your printer driver will attempt to remap
that out of gamut color in your image to the
| | 01:21 | closest color that fits
inside the paper's gamut.
| | 01:24 | There are several different ways that it can
choose to do this remapping, and we'll look
| | 01:28 | at them later because you control of
that once you get to the print dialog box.
| | 01:33 | That remapping may cause a color shift in
the remapped colors, most of the time it will,
| | 01:38 | as Photoshop tries to find some kind of
match that's within the paper's gamut.
| | 01:42 | Well, let's take a look at an actual image.
| | 01:44 | I am going to ditch the Adobe RGB gamut here,
and I am going to turn off the paper gamut,
| | 01:48 | and I'm going to open up an image file in
ColorThink, and what that's going to do is
| | 01:55 | show me a scatter plot of all the colors
within the image. This is going to be a little bit
| | 01:59 | different than the space maps that we've
seen before, because it's showing not a range of
| | 02:04 | colors but distribution of very
specific colors, and here it is.
| | 02:09 | So you can see that this image has an assortment
of colors, scattered around mostly in the reds.
| | 02:15 | So, if I now superimpose my paper's gamut
over these colors, we see that there are a
| | 02:26 | lot of colors that fall outside of the
paper's gamut, all of these colors down in here, and
| | 02:34 | there are a few up above here. Those actually
cannot be held by the paper. Because they're
| | 02:41 | out of gamut of the paper,
Photoshop is going to try to remap them.
| | 02:46 | The good news is that the bulk of the
colors in this particular image do fit inside the
| | 02:51 | paper's gamut. Let me turn down the opacity
here, and you can see that most of the colors
| | 02:55 | are with inside the gamut of the paper, just
some darker tones and some very light tones,
| | 02:59 | so our out of gamut
situation is not as bad as it seems.
| | 03:03 | At other times, we might have an image with a
lot of out of gamut colors. In those instances,
| | 03:07 | we might want to consider
switching to a different paper.
| | 03:10 | Look what happens here, if I lose the Epson
archival matte paper and switch to something
| | 03:16 | called exhibition fiber
paper, it's got a larger gamut.
| | 03:21 | Here is the gamut of the Epson archival
matte paper, here's the exhibition fiber paper,
| | 03:27 | so I pick up a lot of additional colors. It
has just a slightly larger gamut, but still
| | 03:33 | enough, it might make a difference just as a
different paper choice can improve the blacks
| | 03:37 | in the print switching to a paper with a
wider gamut can improve color reproduction.
| | 03:42 | Remember we haven't done anything wrong in
shooting or editing. The camera and monitor
| | 03:46 | will always have a wider gamut
than any paper that you find.
| | 03:50 | The trick is to minimize out of gamut colors,
adapt if we need to, and be careful about how
| | 03:55 | we control the remapping of colors
that lie beyond the paper's gamut.
| | 03:59 | One last thing, I want to mention that
ColorThink here is not actually graphing my images using
| | 04:04 | an RGB color model. It's using a color model
called LAB, which like RGB uses three coordinates
| | 04:11 | to define a color. The axes, though, are quite a
bit different. The L axis specifies lightness.
| | 04:17 | In other words, we have an axis dedicated
entirely to tone. The A and B axes specify
| | 04:23 | two different color ranges.
| | 04:25 | The reason ColorThink uses lab color is that
lab's gamut includes all of the colors that
| | 04:31 | can be perceived by the human eye.
| | 04:33 | That makes it larger than
the RGB or CMYK color models.
| | 04:37 | Therefore, it's big enough for me to look at all of
the different color spaces that I might want to analyze.
| | 04:42 | Don't worry right now about understanding
too much about lab color. Yes, it can make
| | 04:46 | some image edits easier, but for your everyday
color work it's not a color model that you'll
| | 04:51 | need to concern yourself with.
| | 04:56 |
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| Configuring Photoshop's color settings| 00:00 | Before you get started with serious color
work in Photoshop, it's a good idea to double
| | 00:04 | check Photoshop's color settings.
| | 00:07 | When you installed Photoshop, it may have asked
you to configure some color settings--although
| | 00:11 | different versions are more or less
aggressive about that than others.
| | 00:16 | So in Photoshop, just go to the
Edit menu and choose Color Settings.
| | 00:19 | Now if you're using a very old version of
Photoshop, say a pre-Creative Suite version,
| | 00:24 | then you probably won't have this.
| | 00:26 | If you're using a version that old, you're
not going to have a lot of color management
| | 00:30 | options anyway, so you might
want to consider an upgrade.
| | 00:33 | Color Settings basically let you insure that
Photoshop's default behavior is going to be
| | 00:39 | to use the color spaces that you prefer.
| | 00:41 | For example, as you've seen, your camera can be
set so that it shoots images and tags them
| | 00:48 | with either the Adobe RGB or sRGB color spaces.
There might be times, though, when your camera
| | 00:55 | screws up and doesn't tag the image properly,
and when Photoshop imports it it's not going
| | 01:00 | to know what color space
you want it to come in as.
| | 01:02 | And so it's going to fall
back to a default color space.
| | 01:05 | This is the default color
space in Photoshop for RGB images.
| | 01:10 | It's going to default to
putting them into sRGB color space.
| | 01:13 | So just pop that open
and change it to Adobe RGB.
| | 01:16 | From now on if you open an image that does
not have a color space tag, Photoshop will
| | 01:22 | automatically map it into Adobe RGB.
| | 01:25 | If you create a new document, say you're
going to create a new blank document at a certain
| | 01:29 | size and start pasting some photos into it
to build a collage, with your Color Settings
| | 01:34 | set like this, that new
document will have an Adobe RGB tag.
| | 01:39 | These other things, CMYK, Gray, Spot, you
don't really need to worry about those unless
| | 01:43 | you are preparing prints for
non-inkjet printing processes.
| | 01:48 | If you're in a pre-press situation where
your prints are actually ultimately going out to
| | 01:52 | a hard-core printing situation on a big
printing press, then you'll need to worry about these.
| | 01:57 | For our uses we only worry
about the RGB color space.
| | 02:00 | You might want to take a look at these
Color Management Policies down here.
| | 02:05 | This simply governs what's going to
happen with profile mismatches.
| | 02:09 | For example, if my Working Space is set to
Adobe RGB and my camera is set to sRGB, right
| | 02:16 | now it's going to preserve that embedded
profile, which means my images are going to come in
| | 02:21 | as sRGB rather than be converted.
| | 02:25 | If I want I can say Convert
to the Working RGB space.
| | 02:29 | I would set that to Convert to Working RGB,
because particularly if you have multiple
| | 02:33 | cameras, you might forget to set one of
them on Adobe RGB, it will default to shooting
| | 02:39 | an sRGB and then you'll be working in sRGB
throughout your workflow and maybe not realize
| | 02:44 | it, or maybe you reset your camera or the
battery dies for a long time, and it loses
| | 02:49 | its setting something like that.
| | 02:50 | This is just a way of ensuring that
you will always be working in Adobe RGB.
| | 02:55 | You also have this Off option which can be
handy if you are processing photos for use
| | 03:01 | in another program besides Photoshop,
maybe your processing photos to go into a video
| | 03:06 | image editing application of some kind.
| | 03:08 | If you switch this to Off then as you can
see down here, Turns off color management
| | 03:15 | for newly created documents and for newly
opened documents that have embedded color profiles.
| | 03:20 | So Photoshop is not going to mess with the
color. That means what you see on your screen
| | 03:23 | in Photoshop will better match what the image
looks like when you get it into another application.
| | 03:29 | But again, for most uses you're going
to want to say Convert to Working RGB.
| | 03:34 | You can also ask it to warn
you before it does these things.
| | 03:37 | Profile Mismatches, I can say ask me
what to do when you're opening the document.
| | 03:42 | In other words if I open an sRGB document now it
will say, ooh, this is sRGB. What do you want me to do?
| | 03:48 | I can also have it ask me when I'm
pasting an image into a document.
| | 03:53 | Finally, I can have it ask me when opening
what to do if there is a missing profile.
| | 04:00 | So I'm going to be picky here about my
profiles and leave all of this checked, because if
| | 04:04 | something comes in that's not Adobe RGB--
either through opening or pasting or if something
| | 04:10 | doesn't have a profile--I
really want to be reminded of it.
| | 04:13 | Finally, you have some more options
here, most of these you can ignore.
| | 04:18 | There are different color management engines.
On the Mac you have a choice between the Adobe
| | 04:21 | engine and Apple's Color Management
engine. Windows give you similar options.
| | 04:26 | Just leave it on Adobe. This Relative Colorimetric
Intent is great at its default, we'll discuss
| | 04:31 | what rendering intents are later.
Leave all of these checkboxes checked.
| | 04:34 | The only thing in here that you may want to
fiddle with is this Desaturate Monitor Colors By.
| | 04:40 | If you're finding that your prints are
always much less saturated than your monitor, then
| | 04:46 | you can tell Photoshop just
desaturate the colors by a certain amount.
| | 04:50 | This is a very blunt brute force way of
trying to get your monitor more in line with what
| | 04:55 | you're seeing on your printer.
| | 04:57 | I don't actually use this. I have a good monitor.
I have an understanding that how my monitor
| | 05:02 | relates to the page.
| | 05:03 | But if you're finding you've got an older
monitor that really pumps out saturated color,
| | 05:08 | this is a way of getting
that saturation back down.
| | 05:10 | So, those are the Photoshop Color Settings.
| | 05:13 | If you are using other applications in the
Adobe Creative Suite, such as Illustrator,
| | 05:17 | then you will have similar Color
Settings. InDesign has them also.
| | 05:20 | You can actually save this batch of
settings by clicking the Save button, and Photoshop
| | 05:26 | knows how to sync and share these color
settings across applications, so it's a nice way of
| | 05:32 | getting these Color Settings moved to all
of your other Creative Suite applications.
| | 05:36 | This is probably the only time you'll need
to look at this dialog box, just make sure
| | 05:39 | it's configured properly so that moving
forward you know that you will always be using the
| | 05:44 | color space that you want for your images.
| | 05:49 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Changing color space in Camera Raw| 00:00 | If you're working in Camera Raw, there's a
very important raw setting that you're going
| | 00:05 | to want to double check.
| | 00:06 | This is an image you saw earlier when were
sharpening, you saw the finished version of
| | 00:11 | this image, this is my original raw file of it.
| | 00:14 | And when I open it up, if I look down at
the bottom here I can see that the camera has
| | 00:19 | tagged it as an sRGB image, I
didn't have my camera set properly.
| | 00:24 | I can also see that it's currently being
converted into an 8-bit image at these pixel dimensions
| | 00:29 | with this resolution setting. I am going to
click on this here, because I need to alter
| | 00:34 | these workflow options, which is what
Adobe calls this particular set of parameters.
| | 00:39 | First of all, my camera shoots 12 to 14
bits of data per pixel, that's a really nice
| | 00:44 | big number, but as Camera Raw is converting
it, it's chopping those done to 8-bit numbers.
| | 00:50 | This does not affect my total range of colors,
but it does affect the amount of intermediate
| | 00:56 | colors that I have.
| | 00:57 | That means that as I start to edit, I'm not
going to be able to push my edits very far
| | 01:01 | before I start seeing banding and skies
and gradients and things like that, so I want
| | 01:06 | to change this to 16 bits per channel.
| | 01:07 | As long as you're shooting raw, you might
as well work in 16 bit color, it's going to
| | 01:12 | give you a lot more editing latitude than
what you'll get in 8-bit color, and it's one
| | 01:17 | of the great advantages of shooting in raw.
| | 01:20 | Color space, again, I forgot to set my
camera to Adobe RGB, so it has come in tagged as
| | 01:26 | Adobe RGB, so I'm just going to swap that
out. Let's just take a look and see if that
| | 01:30 | makes any difference.
| | 01:31 | Watch the histogram here as I hit the OK button,
and you can see my color is changed a little
| | 01:36 | bit, my shadows moved in a little bit,
my highlight is moved in a little bit that's
| | 01:40 | because Adobe RGB is a bigger color space.
| | 01:43 | My data doesn't fill as much
of the space as it did in sRGB.
| | 01:47 | That means I've got a little more room to
stretch my tones out and get more contrast,
| | 01:52 | so that's definitely something I want, I'm
glad to have that extra space as I start editing.
| | 01:57 | And of course, as we saw in the last movie,
I've configured the rest of my Photoshop color
| | 02:01 | settings to work in Adobe RGB mode, so I
definitely want Raw to match that. Look at these last
| | 02:07 | few settings here, I can actually
resize in Camera Raw, but I'm not going to.
| | 02:12 | First of all, if I go up I have no
control of how things are being interpolated.
| | 02:16 | If I go down and then do a bunch of edits
that I really like, then I performed a bunch
| | 02:21 | of edits that I really like on a smaller image
if I later want to print it bigger, I'm going
| | 02:24 | to have to interpolate upwards that doesn't
really make any sense, so I always leave this
| | 02:28 | set on the native size that's the one that
does not have a plus or minus next to it,
| | 02:32 | this is what the camera actually captured,
and I can scale up or down later as I see fit.
| | 02:38 | This Resolution setting is really just a
convenience, it's a way of ensuring that my raw file comes
| | 02:43 | in already set to a particular resolution.
| | 02:45 | Since for the time being, I will be working
on an Epson printer, I'm going to set that
| | 02:49 | to 360 pixels per inch.
| | 02:51 | Finally, if I want, I can have it apply
some sharpening settings, of course, I prefer to
| | 02:56 | sharpen after I've sized, so I'm
going to leave that set to None.
| | 03:00 | Open in Photoshop as Smart Objects tells Camera
Raw to open the image as a smart object rather
| | 03:07 | than a normal finished process raw file,
this allows me to maintain a link back to these
| | 03:12 | Camera Raw settings.
| | 03:14 | Smart objects are way beyond the scope of
this course that you can find plenty of tutorial
| | 03:18 | information about them in
other places in the lynda library.
| | 03:22 | The cool thing about these workflow options
is once I set them they will stay that way
| | 03:26 | not just for this image, but for any
other images that I open in Camera Raw.
| | 03:31 | So the next raw file that I open up will
be processed as an Adobe RGB image at 16 bit
| | 03:36 | color native size, and a setting of 360 pixels per
inch, so it's very important to double check these.
| | 03:42 | Again, you don't want to be going through the
extra storage constraints and whatnot of raw,
| | 03:47 | only to be getting an 8-bit image out of it,
you might as well shoot JPEG at that point.
| | 03:51 | And of course, having this Adobe RGB color
space gives me some extra room that's going
| | 03:56 | to allow me to pull my tones farther apart,
create more contrast and in general have more
| | 04:02 | kind of color overhead to work with to get
better color and more contrast out of my prints.
| | 04:09 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working in an advanced color space| 00:00 | I'd like to look at one more image here because I
think it's a good example of some color space theory.
| | 00:05 | It's also a good example of something I
think may help you understand a little bit more
| | 00:10 | about what's going on in Camera Raw,
as regards color and color spaces.
| | 00:14 | I have this image here, and take a look at the
Histogram as it should be your first impulse
| | 00:19 | when you open an image, and you can see that
| | 00:21 | I've got some highlight
clipping in the red channel.
| | 00:23 | I've over-exposed some of the reds a little
bit in the brightest highlights, I also have
| | 00:27 | some Shadow clipping in the blue channel.
| | 00:29 | Now if you look down here you'll see that
the image is currently being mapped into sRGB.
| | 00:34 | I did not have my camera set properly
so this is come in as an sRGB image.
| | 00:40 | So I'm just going to change that.
| | 00:41 | Now I want you to keep an eye on the Histogram
here as I make the change from sRGB to Adobe RGB.
| | 00:48 | You notice this, this
Highlights Spike went lower.
| | 00:52 | There's not as much red clipping when I'm in
Adobe RGB as there is in sRGB because Adobe
| | 00:58 | RGB can hold more red.
| | 01:00 | I am going to change this back here, keep
an eye on the Histogram again, and you'll
| | 01:05 | see what I'm talking about,
boom, the Spike went back up.
| | 01:08 | You also see some shifting down here, some
tones shifted back down towards black because
| | 01:13 | Adobe RGB also has room for more blues.
| | 01:16 | So I'm back in sRGB, now I want to do the
change to Adobe RGB again, this time I want
| | 01:20 | you to watch right in here.
| | 01:22 | Watch these top three petals here on the
flower, as I make the change to Adobe RGB.
| | 01:27 | Notice right now, they're very yellow so
just watch that area right there, I'm going to
| | 01:32 | change that Adobe RGB and hit OK, boom.
| | 01:35 | Did you see that they just brightened up?
And they didn't just brighten up, they turned
| | 01:39 | more orange, and if you think about
your color wheel this should make sense.
| | 01:43 | Adobe RGB has space for some more red in it,
that's why we have got less red clipping over
| | 01:48 | here, some of the red tones that we
are in here got pulled into the image.
| | 01:52 | So as I added more red to those bright
yellow tones, I got more than orange hue.
| | 01:58 | So this is, again, another example of why
Adobe RGB is a better choice here, it's giving me
| | 02:03 | more natural looking color, it's taken
that kind of over-exposed yellow look and made
| | 02:08 | it little warmer and little more red.
| | 02:10 | Let's take a at something else, I'm going
to now switch from Adobe RGB to ProPhoto
| | 02:15 | RGB, keep an eye on the Histogram as I hit the
OK button. Wow, looky there. All my shadow
| | 02:20 | and highlight clipping is gone.
| | 02:22 | And in general, the tones have moved more
towards the middle that's going to give me
| | 02:26 | the latitude to stretch them out more
and possibly end up with more contrast.
| | 02:31 | Why then don't I stand ProPhoto all the time?
| | 02:33 | Well, this is a fine example of ProPhoto
working well on this image to recover some
| | 02:37 | highlights and shadow detail,
that won't fit into Adobe RGB.
| | 02:41 | But in general, taking your colors and mapping them
across that big a color space can sometimes produce problems.
| | 02:48 | It can cause a color shift, your yellows
might go more in one direction or another.
| | 02:53 | It can also cause banding and skies or
gradients places where it is having to stretch color
| | 02:58 | across a broader space.
| | 03:00 | So you don't really want stand ProPhoto all
the time, but it is going to turn out to be
| | 03:05 | good for this image.
| | 03:07 | So again, our rule still holds, we want to
stay in Adobe RGB as you have seen it's bigger
| | 03:11 | than sRGB and so I get some more color but
there might be times, where I switch to Pro
| | 03:15 | Photo RGB can solve some over-exposure problems.
| | 03:19 | But I hope from this you're also taking away
something about Raw itself, Raw files are really, really raw.
| | 03:26 | They are open to great levels of interpretation.
| | 03:29 | And it's interesting to me that what Adobe
has done is taken my raw data, and rather than
| | 03:34 | mapping it into this color space
| | 03:36 | so there's no clipping at all, which they could
do, they could say these brightest tones don't
| | 03:40 | go any brighter than that, they have chosen to
allow some red clipping and some blue clipping
| | 03:45 | because really it's not going to result in
bright overexposed highlight or anything where.
| | 03:50 | It's just going to result in a little color
shifts so they've decided that's basically
| | 03:55 | an acceptable loss.
| | 03:57 | So if I take the same image and open it up
in a different Raw converter, I may not see
| | 04:02 | this highlight clipping.
| | 04:04 | There is no inherent correspondence
between a particular bit of Raw Data and where it
| | 04:08 | goes into a particular Color Space, that's up
to the engineers who write the Raw Converter.
| | 04:14 | An in this case Adobe has chosen to map the
image so that there's a little bit of clipping.
| | 04:18 | Here's something interesting.
| | 04:19 | If I go into my Camera Calibration tab, I can
actually change which version of Camera Raw is being used.
| | 04:27 | Camera Raw includes all of its
previous versions within it.
| | 04:30 | So here you can see the original 2003
version, the 2010 version, the 2012 version.
| | 04:35 | Watch this highlight area as I switch
back to 2003, boom, did you see that?
| | 04:40 | I have now actually got a little bit
of full three channel clipping in there.
| | 04:45 | Let me switch that back again to 2012.
| | 04:48 | And now watch this area in here as I switch
back to 2003, it went from that nice reddish
| | 04:55 | orange color to a really
overly bright yellow color.
| | 04:59 | So in the intervening years, Photoshop has
refined their idea of how to convert images
| | 05:04 | from this particular camera, and I
think they're doing a better job.
| | 05:08 | They are preserving more detail,
they are holding more color.
| | 05:12 | It doesn't look so overly saturated yellow now
as compared to how it did with the 2003 converter.
| | 05:19 | And again take a look at the Histogram as I switch
from 2003 back to 2012, I've also got less clipping.
| | 05:25 | So yes a Color Space is an area that colors
are mapped into a but your Raw Converter may
| | 05:30 | not choose to map them so that they fit
perfectly within a Color Space, here Adobe has chosen
| | 05:35 | not to, and I can either live with it or
try to make edits to solve these problems.
| | 05:42 | If I think there are problem.
| | 05:43 | For example, I can lower the highlights to
pulls some of those red tones back in, if
| | 05:48 | I deem them a problem.
| | 05:49 | So RAW files truly are raw you can map them
into Color Spaces however you want and depending
| | 05:54 | on which version of Photoshop you're using or which
Raw Editor using you may see very different results.
| | 06:00 | This is very subjective, it's up to you
whether a little bit of red clipping is a problem
| | 06:04 | or not, and as you'll see when you go to print
you're be going to be going into a much smaller
| | 06:08 | Color Space, so that a little bit of
red clipping really may not even matter.
| | 06:13 |
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| Assigning a color space in Photoshop| 00:00 | There might be times where you end up with an
image in Photoshop that has the wrong color space tag.
| | 00:07 | This is a student image by a student named
Charity Jack, and when she gave me the Photoshop
| | 00:12 | document to print, I noticed that it was not
tagged properly. And I noticed that because
| | 00:18 | when I went to the Print dialog box up
here under Document Profile, it says sRGB.
| | 00:25 | There are other ways you can find out.
| | 00:26 | One way is to go down here to
what is normally a memory meter.
| | 00:31 | And pop this open and change it to the
Document Profile, and now it tells me that it's sRGB,
| | 00:38 | and that it's an 8-bit image.
| | 00:40 | I can, of course, also get
that information up here.
| | 00:42 | So I need to change this to Adobe RGB
because that's really where I want to be working to
| | 00:47 | get the best color.
| | 00:48 | So I'm going to go up here to Edit, and I
choose Assign Profile and here I have a few options.
| | 00:53 | I can turn off Color Management altogether
I can say Don't Color Manage This Document.
| | 00:58 | And I hope you noticed a slight hue shift there.
| | 01:01 | This is a great option for times when you
need to take an image Adobe Photoshop into
| | 01:05 | another application may be a video
editing application or web design application.
| | 01:09 | And you don't want Photoshop
interfering with the color.
| | 01:12 | I'm going to change to our
Working RGB profile, which is Adobe RGB.
| | 01:17 | If I wanted, I could actually manually
choose a profile from here but for the most part
| | 01:21 | if you set your color settings properly, then always
going to the Working RGB profile is going to be fine.
| | 01:26 | I hit OK, and Photoshop may give you a warning saying
this is going to change what your document looks like.
| | 01:32 | I've turned that warning off, you should already
know that, you have seen examples of how colors
| | 01:36 | shift around as we change color space.
So I'm now ready to go.
| | 01:41 | I'm back in Adobe RGB it's a good idea to keep an eye on
your color space, make sure that you're tagged properly.
| | 01:47 | And you want to use Assign Profile.
| | 01:48 | If you choose Convert to Profile, you get
a similar dialog box but what this is going
| | 01:53 | to is, actually change the
color values in your image.
| | 01:57 | Right now, with the profile assigned it's
taking the original color values and reinterpreting
| | 02:01 | them into a particular color space.
| | 02:03 | This is going to bake that
reinterpretation back into the image.
| | 02:07 | If you do like the way it looks in a
particular color space, that's a way of baking those
| | 02:11 | changes into the image before you send it
off to another application or things like that.
| | 02:15 | But for the printing workflow that we use we
do not need to use convert, we can simply assign.
| | 02:20 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Correcting a color image| 00:00 | We are now ready to prepare this color image for print.
| | 00:03 | This is another student image. This is by
a student named Charity Jack.
| | 00:07 | And she gave me this image to print, I've
assigned the color space that I want, and
| | 00:10 | I am ready to go, I just need to
start in on my adjustments.
| | 00:14 | Now Photoshop provides you with a huge array
of tools for adjusting and correcting color.
| | 00:20 | And for the most part I find that my color
adjustments as I get ready for print are very slight.
| | 00:26 | If you follow the things that we've been doing
in this course and get your tones adjusted
| | 00:30 | properly, you're probably going to find that
your color falls into place.
| | 00:34 | So in this course I am not going to show you
a lot of color manipulation, we're not
| | 00:38 | going to dive into Hue/Saturation dialogs
and Color Balance and Selective Color and
| | 00:43 | all that kind of stuff, there are lots of
places in the lynda library
| | 00:45 | where you can learn to do that.
| | 00:47 | Instead I'd like to now show you the tonal
correction techniques that we've been doing
| | 00:51 | but in terms of color, and I am going to show
you one color adjustment that might come up
| | 00:56 | more often than you realize, and it's a subtle
thing, it's easy to miss, and it's pretty
| | 01:00 | critical for getting good color.
| | 01:03 | So if you really want to learn how to do wild
color alterations and how to really know how
| | 01:07 | to drive every single color correction tool
in Photoshop, you can find those in some other
| | 01:12 | courses, but here I am going to stick with
just the simple, sometimes very subtle color
| | 01:17 | adjustments that I tend to do when I need
to get an image ready for print.
| | 01:20 | So I like this shot a lot, I want to, of course,
check my Histogram so I'm going to add a
| | 01:25 | Levels Adjustment layer here. And when I do
that I can see that my whites are a little off.
| | 01:32 | I'm not clipping anything, which is good, but
my significant tonal data doesn't really start
| | 01:37 | till about right there.
| | 01:38 | I expect that these bits here are these clouds,
maybe the brightest spots on her shirt, so I'm
| | 01:44 | going to pull this over to here with the
hope that that's going to really
| | 01:49 | punch up the rest of my tones.
| | 01:50 | Let me give you a before and after, here's
before, here's after, and sure enough as we've
| | 01:54 | seen throughout this course that takes that
gray pal off the image, it's just got more pop.
| | 02:02 | Just as it did in a black and white image,
getting contrast correct is making the whole
| | 02:06 | image look better, but watch what
it's doing in terms of color.
| | 02:09 | The color of her skin and her hair is really
saturating up in a nice way.
| | 02:15 | So here's a way where I fixed that color in
her hair, her hair should be somewhat yellowish
| | 02:20 | and here it's a little more gray, here it's
got some of that yellow back.
| | 02:23 | I've fixed the color of her hair, not with
a color adjustment but with a tonal adjustments,
| | 02:28 | this is why, again, I will reiterate that getting
your tones correct is crucial, not just for
| | 02:32 | overall contrast and to eliminate that gray
smear that was over the image, but to get
| | 02:36 | color where it needs to be.
Now this is resulting in some clipping.
| | 02:39 | I've lost this detail here in my clouds,
maybe a little bit on her shoulder.
| | 02:43 | So I am just going to fix that with a little masking.
| | 02:45 | I am going to take a 50% gray, roughly, click
on my layer Mask, grab myself a nice big brush
| | 02:53 | and just retouch those clouds there to pull
the tones back where they need to be.
| | 02:57 | I think I am going to hit her shoulder the
same way, because it's looking a little hot.
| | 03:00 | So that looks good, I feel like overall we've
got our tonality in the
| | 03:04 | image more where it needs to be.
| | 03:06 | I think her face is a little bit dark, so
I am going to pull up another Levels Adjustment
| | 03:10 | layer and make an adjustment here that I am
going to target to only her face.
| | 03:15 | Now, I don't really know where to put this
adjustment right now because my Histogram
| | 03:18 | is showing me the Histogram for the entire image.
| | 03:21 | So I'm just going to ballpark it, I am going
to brighten that up, and now I am going to
| | 03:25 | put my mask in place and then I'll be able
to assess whether my
| | 03:28 | tones are correct on her face.
| | 03:29 | So, I am going to select all and with black
as my background color, which I have here,
| | 03:34 | I am going to hit Command+Delete, and that
fills my mask with black.
| | 03:39 | And now again this is a little bit of a bug
in CS6, I believe this is also in CS5, it
| | 03:44 | has not updated my Histogram, I can get it
to update by just making a little adjustment.
| | 03:48 | Oh! I am sorry it has not updated my histogram
because I don't have a hole in my mask yet.
| | 03:53 | So I'm going to switch to white paint in my
foreground and then I am going
| | 03:57 | to just paint onto her face.
| | 03:59 | And where I paint I am punching a hole in
the mask, and that's brightening her face up.
| | 04:03 | Okay, now here is that bug I was talking about,
it has not yet updated the Histogram.
| | 04:07 | If I click here, it does.
| | 04:10 | Okay so I can see that my brightest tone within
the area that's showing through the mask is
| | 04:16 | way over here, but I have my
white point set way over here.
| | 04:20 | So I am going to go ahead and slide that on
over, and that's going to brighten up her
| | 04:22 | face quite a bit more.
| | 04:24 | Now if that's looking too bright to you I
would say don't worry about it, trust the
| | 04:29 | Histogram for now, that's going to give us
a print with a lot of nice tonality in her face.
| | 04:34 | The problem is my mask is uneven.
| | 04:35 | So I am going to go to a smaller brush here
and start trying to touch
| | 04:41 | up the mask here on her face.
| | 04:44 | Getting a little bit of a halo up there, I
think I am going to not worry about that too
| | 04:48 | much, because it just looks like part of the sky.
I do want to get some of this blackness off of her nose.
| | 04:56 | Now to really make this
mask work what I probably
| | 04:58 | need to do is go in with Photoshop Selection
| | 05:00 | tools and build a mask the right way using
maybe the Quick Select tool and Refine Edge.
| | 05:06 | But for the sake of expediency I am going
to just do that and again you can look up
| | 05:11 | those masking tools at other places in the lynda library.
So I think that's looking pretty good.
| | 05:15 | Let me show you again a before and after.
| | 05:17 | Here's before, here's after, definitely like
her face brighter, also look at the color
| | 05:22 | values in her skin tones.
| | 05:24 | Can't really see any red in her lips there,
here I am starting to notice the difference
| | 05:28 | between the color of her lips and her face.
| | 05:30 | Also notice that I'm not bothering to open
up this area, or the area along her hair, I
| | 05:34 | like having those shadows there, gives her face some depth.
| | 05:37 | Again I'll want to ultimately retouch this
mask and get that working well.
| | 05:41 | One last thing I think, and that's the whites
of her eyes, they are just a little dull right
| | 05:46 | now and even though she's not looking into
the camera, I think it would still be nice
| | 05:50 | to have a whiter white in her eyes.
| | 05:52 | So I am just going to brighten that up a bit
and again put a mask in
| | 05:55 | place to brighten that up.
| | 05:59 | Okay, I am not seeing much change yet so I'm
going to, there we go, crank that up, and
| | 06:05 | that's before and after.
| | 06:07 | So I think that's looking better, ooh boy,
I don't know, maybe the eyes are a little
| | 06:10 | too white now, it's looking a little Stepford
wife-ish somehow, okay take that
| | 06:15 | back down I like that better.
| | 06:17 | Now, those are my tonal corrections, I feel
like I've got the tone in the image looking
| | 06:20 | good, that has corrected the color
in her face and her hair.
| | 06:24 | But I am going to challenge you now to look
at this image and tell me if the whites in
| | 06:28 | the image truly are white.
| | 06:31 | And that may sound like a trick question here,
but look at the brightest
| | 06:35 | white here is that really white?
| | 06:37 | If you can kind of separate the correction
that your eye is doing, because your eye always
| | 06:42 | tries to correct a whitish color to appear white.
| | 06:45 | If you can learn to look
at it really objectively
| | 06:47 | you might see that this actually looks a little
| | 06:50 | blue, in fact the whole image has a little
bit of a blue cast.
| | 06:54 | And just to double-check then I am going to
grab my eyedropper here and open up my Info
| | 06:58 | palette, and I am going to just mouse over
this area right here.
| | 07:02 | Now I can't, unfortunately, gesture to the screen
with my mouse without moving the eyedropper.
| | 07:06 | So let me just say I am going to want you
to look at these three numbers right here
| | 07:10 | and what you see is that in this area 214,
221, 232 there is a little bit
| | 07:18 | more blue than anything else.
| | 07:20 | As I move that around I find that consistently
I've got more blue than anything else and,
| | 07:25 | of course, to get white I want fairly equal
parts of red, green, and blue.
| | 07:28 | So I am going to go under the assumption that
this image actually is off in its color balance.
| | 07:33 | This was a shady cloudy
situation that's something
| | 07:36 | that can easily trick an auto white balance
| | 07:39 | mechanism and usually trick it into erring
on the side of blue.
| | 07:42 | So I think what this image really needs is
another Levels Adjustment, so
| | 07:46 | I am going to do that up here.
| | 07:49 | And this time I don't want to correct tone,
I want to do a color correction.
| | 07:52 | I want to grab this midpoint eyedropper here
and click it on something in the image that's
| | 07:57 | supposed to be gray.
| | 07:58 | And I am going to for this area right in here,
and as I do that the image warms up a lot,
| | 08:04 | it warms up too much. I am going
to undo that and click more down here.
| | 08:09 | And that's better but still not quite right.
I am looking for a good gray, I like that.
| | 08:14 | So let's see a before and after, before, after.
You can see it's just put a little bit of
| | 08:19 | warmth back into the image, it has ultimately
for all intents and purposes
| | 08:22 | corrected the white balance.
| | 08:25 | This is a critical thing to pay attention
to particularly when you're shooting in shade.
| | 08:28 | This is the color correction that I make the most often.
| | 08:32 | Sometimes white balance is just off a little
bit and image needs to
| | 08:35 | be warmed up a little bit.
| | 08:36 | And if you can do it in Camera Raw that's
great, but if you're already here in Photoshop
| | 08:41 | making a midpoint
adjustment using that eyedropper,
| | 08:44 | really makes a big difference.
| | 08:46 | So I am almost ready to print here, the last
thing I would do, would be to go in and fix
| | 08:50 | up my masking here on her face.
| | 08:52 | But those are the types of color adjustments
that I typically work out towards printing.
| | 08:55 | Making sure that my tone is correct, because
that's going to put colors in place and making
| | 08:59 | sure that my overall white balance is in place.
| | 09:02 | I don't spend a lot of time tweaking the color
of the sky or things like that, I tend to
| | 09:06 | go for more naturalistic look in my images,
the fact is cameras today are very, very good
| | 09:11 | at capturing color.
| | 09:12 | Once you get black and white in place the
rest of your colors should be fine.
| | 09:17 |
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| Printing a color image| 00:00 | With this image adjusted, we're actually ready to
get to the print dialog box and do our printing.
| | 00:05 | So I'm going to go up here
to File and choose Print.
| | 00:10 | This should look pretty familiar to you.
| | 00:11 | It's the same print dialog box we used when
printing a black and white image and for the
| | 00:15 | most part we need to make
all of the same settings.
| | 00:17 | We're going to do one
thing a little bit differently.
| | 00:20 | First thing I'm going to do as I did before is
make sure that my printer is chosen correctly
| | 00:24 | and then I'm going to Print
Settings and choose My Media.
| | 00:28 | If you are not familiar with these steps that
I'm doing, you need to go back and watch the
| | 00:32 | earlier print dialog movie.
I'm just picking my paper.
| | 00:36 | This time, this is a color image, so I'm
leaving Print mode set to AccuPhoto HD2.
| | 00:43 | There are two ways of printing
color pictures from Photoshop.
| | 00:46 | One is to let the printer driver figure
out how color should work and the other is to
| | 00:51 | let Photoshop figure out how color should work.
| | 00:54 | In this example we're going to let
the printer driver figure the color.
| | 00:58 | The advantage of this is it's easy to do.
| | 01:02 | The Epson printer driver does
a great job of choosing color.
| | 01:06 | The disadvantage is there's no way to figure
out a match between the screen and printer.
| | 01:13 | There's no time here when Photoshop is
making any effort to figure out how to translate
| | 01:18 | the on-screen image to the printed image.
| | 01:21 | Now you may think why would I
ever then want to print this way?
| | 01:25 | Well, I think you find that actually your
results can be very, very good, especially
| | 01:28 | if you've been following the
techniques we've outlined in this course.
| | 01:32 | In the next chapter we'll show you how to
do a color managed printing workflow wherein
| | 01:37 | you try to get the screen to match the page
and while that's great when it works, I think
| | 01:41 | you'll see that there are some
disadvantages to that as well.
| | 01:44 | So I've set my Print mode to AccuPhoto
HD2, which is Epson's color print mode.
| | 01:51 | Your printer might be different.
| | 01:53 | I am going to set my Color mode to Adobe RGB,
because, of course, that's where I'm choosing
| | 01:58 | to work, and I am going to hit Save.
| | 02:01 | I need to make sure that color
handling is set to Printer Manages Colors.
| | 02:06 | I have two options here, Printer
Manages Colors or Photoshop Manages Colors.
| | 02:10 | Now we configured this popup in our last Print
dialog tutorial, because I needed the printer
| | 02:16 | to manage colors because I was
using a special black and white mode.
| | 02:20 | Here, I want the same things.
| | 02:22 | I'm leaving that set like that making
sure that my profile is set properly.
| | 02:26 | Now Rendering Intent controls how
Photoshop will map colors into the particular color
| | 02:34 | space that the printer needs.
| | 02:35 | For the most part all you ever need
to do here is Relative Colorimetric.
| | 02:39 | For sure, you do not need to do Saturation.
| | 02:42 | You might want to experiment sometime
with Perceptual, maybe Absolute Colorimetric.
| | 02:47 | You will get different
results if you choose those.
| | 02:49 | So that's worth doing a
little experimenting with.
| | 02:51 | For driver color I usually leave
it set to Relative Colorimetric.
| | 02:54 | I rarely find that changing the Rendering
Intent here really makes any difference.
| | 02:59 | I want the image centered, I'm not scaling,
and I don't need any of printing marks.
| | 03:03 | So I'm ready to print this image.
| | 03:05 | When I'm working with driver color, this is
really all I have to do whether or not I get
| | 03:09 | a good print is really contingent on the edits
that I've made and whether or not I have successfully
| | 03:15 | adjusted the tone and color for the
different parts of my image accordingly.
| | 03:20 | As I mentioned before, test
prints are pretty much always required.
| | 03:23 | So I might choose to do this at a smaller size.
I'm pretty confident about this image.
| | 03:27 | I'm going to hit the Print
button and see how it comes out.
| | 03:32 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Evaluating the print| 00:00 | My print is done, its come rolling out of
the printer, and it looks pretty good.
| | 00:04 | Before I show it to you, though,
| | 00:05 | I want to take a look at this. This is a
print of the image that the student gave me.
| | 00:10 | So this is the original image that I got
this is the image that had been edited up to the
| | 00:14 | point where it looked good on screen.
| | 00:16 | And it's a good print,
it's a great shot obviously.
| | 00:19 | There is a problem with the
print though as we looked at it.
| | 00:22 | It's just a little too blue, it's a subtle thing.
The whites aren't as white as they could be.
| | 00:26 | That's what I've got here on my screen.
| | 00:28 | And as you'll recall we made one edit
which was to add an adjustment layer that warmed
| | 00:33 | it up, not adding warmth,
| | 00:35 | but getting the whites back to where they
need to be, and when I printed that, I got
| | 00:39 | this image right here.
So I'm hoping these shows up on camera.
| | 00:43 | You can see the before and after.
| | 00:45 | And my upper image, though it looked right
on screen, when it printed, it just wasn't
| | 00:50 | really quite there.
| | 00:51 | The whites weren't where they really needed
to be, and that was affecting her hair, the
| | 00:55 | clouds in the sky as well as her skin tones.
| | 00:57 | And it was a very simple levels adjustment
to just shift that extra blue back out and
| | 01:02 | get the colors back to where they need to be.
| | 01:05 | Color printing then is not that much
different from black and white printing.
| | 01:09 | Obviously, there are big color changes that
you can make but the really critical little
| | 01:13 | adjustments are going to be about ensuring
that black and white are where they need to
| | 01:17 | and your neutral tones or neutral,
so that you don't have a color cast.
| | 01:21 | Remember your eye sometimes
works against you in this regard.
| | 01:24 | In this case, when you're looking at it on
screen your eye might be correcting that cast
| | 01:28 | and hiding from you the fact
that color is a little off.
| | 01:32 | So you need to be sure to work by the numbers.
| | 01:34 | Now, this final print that I got, this one
that I think looks really nice, what does
| | 01:38 | it look like compared to my screen?
| | 01:39 | Well, if I hold it up here, it's
close but it's really not an exact match.
| | 01:45 | I'm getting more yellow here than I am here.
So am I disappointed by that? No not really.
| | 01:51 | I, I feel like a print that I got is good.
I like the way this looks.
| | 01:56 | But if I really wanted to be able to proof
the image on screen, I would have to take
| | 02:00 | an entirely different course of action, and
that's what we are going to look at in the next chapter.
| | 02:05 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
6. Color ManagementWhat is color management?| 00:01 | When most people print for the first time,
they're usually shocked to see how much their
| | 00:04 | print mismatches what they see on their monitor.
| | 00:08 | Hopefully by now though you understand why
getting a match between your monitor and the
| | 00:12 | printed page is so difficult.
| | 00:14 | Still it seems like it should be possible
for your screen and prints to match.
| | 00:18 | Fortunately, a lot of really smart people
agree with that thought, a lot of work and
| | 00:22 | engineering has gone into technologies that
will allow you to get a better match between
| | 00:27 | your monitor and your printer.
| | 00:28 | In this chapter we're going to look at these
color management technologies, I'm going to
| | 00:32 | show you how they work and show you what you
need to do to build a color-managed printing workflow.
| | 00:39 | Before we get started though I want to issue
the disclaimer that what you see me doing
| | 00:43 | here may not work with the monitor that you already have.
| | 00:47 | Unfortunately, to get a color-managed workflow
that works you've got to spend some money.
| | 00:52 | You might need to buy a new monitor, and you'll
definitely need to buy some
| | 00:55 | calibration hardware of some kind.
| | 00:58 | If you've been following along with the techniques
that I've already shown you then you should
| | 01:01 | already be getting good prints with very few,
if any, test prints.
| | 01:06 | You could probably pay for a lot of test prints
with what you'd spend on a new monitor and
| | 01:09 | calibration hardware, so you may or may not
find color management to be a worthwhile goal.
| | 01:16 | Color management technology is simply a combination of some special
hardware and some agreed-upon standards.
| | 01:23 | You use this hardware and these standards
to ensure that your monitor and printer are
| | 01:28 | in agreement about what a particular color looks like.
| | 01:31 | What makes color management work are small
files called profiles or more specifically
| | 01:36 | ICC profiles, these are little text files
that get stored on your computer.
| | 01:40 | The ICC or International Color Consortium
is a group of companies that have agreed upon
| | 01:45 | a specification for describing the color
capabilities of a particular device.
| | 01:51 | Monitors can be profiled as can specific printer
paper combinations.
| | 01:55 | What an ICC profile does is describe how a
particular device differs from a set standard.
| | 02:02 | So, for example, an ICC profile for your
monitor might indicate that your particular
| | 02:07 | monitor displays certain blue tones with a
little bit of green cast, and meanwhile an
| | 02:12 | ICC profile for a specific printer and paper
might indicate that those same blue tones
| | 02:17 | print a little bit darker on
paper than the accepted standard.
| | 02:21 | Both Photoshop and probably the OS you're
using include a color management engine that
| | 02:25 | knows how to take advantage of this profile information.
| | 02:28 | So, when you print, the color management engine
would look at the monitor profile and realize
| | 02:33 | that what you're considering to be blue is
actually a little greener than the accepted
| | 02:37 | standard, and then it would look at the printer
profile and figure out what hues and tones
| | 02:41 | the paper can actually hold.
| | 02:42 | It would then shift the colors in your image
on the way to the printer in an attempt to
| | 02:47 | make the printed output match your expectation,
your original image is never actually altered.
| | 02:53 | Now this might sound like
a fairly straightforward
| | 02:55 | idea on paper, but in reality it's a really
difficult thing to pull off.
| | 03:00 | First of all, for color management to work,
you have to have very accurate profiles of
| | 03:03 | your various devices, and throughout the rest
of this chapter we'll
| | 03:06 | talk about how to get those.
Further complicating all of this are viewing conditions.
| | 03:12 | If your profiles are built under particular
lighting then they may not be accurate if
| | 03:16 | you switch to different lighting or if the
lighting in your workspace changes.
| | 03:20 | This is why we have come to this windowless
studio where we can control all of our lighting.
| | 03:26 | Finally, you need to manage your expectations.
| | 03:28 | Your printed image is never going to exactly
match what's on your monitor.
| | 03:33 | For the simple reason that your monitor is
shining transmissive light directly into your
| | 03:38 | eyes and a print is showing reflected light.
| | 03:41 | The qualities of the light and color between
these two technologies is fundamentally different,
| | 03:46 | so a printed image is always going to look
different than an image on your monitor.
| | 03:51 | As I mentioned earlier a good color management
system can be expensive and
| | 03:53 | can take a long time to set up.
| | 03:55 | The goal with color management is to reduce
the number of test prints that you need to
| | 03:59 | make, but as we've seen careful work with
the Histogram can go a long way toward getting
| | 04:03 | you better prints straight out of the printer.
| | 04:05 | So, before you run out to buy a color management
gear I'd recommend watching this entire chapter,
| | 04:10 | so you can see exactly what's involved with
color management and then decide if you think
| | 04:14 | it's worth the time and money.
| | 04:19 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Profiling a monitor| 00:00 | For color management to work, you need
quality profiles for your monitor and your printer.
| | 00:06 | Now your monitor might have come with a
stock profile of some kind, for example, an Apple
| | 00:10 | iMac comes with a built-in profile, but
honestly, these are never going to work very well.
| | 00:14 | If you're serious about getting a good match
between your monitor and your prints then you
| | 00:18 | have to invest in profiling hardware.
| | 00:21 | A monitor profiler is a small gizmo that you
can lay on the front of your monitor, it will
| | 00:27 | analyze the colors that come out of your monitor
and create, and usually install, an ICC profile for you.
| | 00:33 | There are a lot of profiling options out
there and different ones provide different levels
| | 00:38 | of accuracy and quality.
| | 00:40 | I have here a Datacolor Spyder4 Elite, which
I like a lot, other options include the X-Rite
| | 00:46 | ColorMunki, which we'll
look at in the next movie.
| | 00:49 | I am not going to walk you through every
detailed step of using this Spyder, because you might
| | 00:54 | have a different device, what's more, all
of the currently shipping devices that I've
| | 00:58 | seen lately offer very good tutorials and
documentation, so you can learn what you need
| | 01:03 | to learn about your specific device from those.
| | 01:06 | However, most devices will ask you some of
the same questions, so we'll go over those
| | 01:10 | questions in this movie, and along the way
I've got a few things to say about monitors.
| | 01:15 | Because calibration can take a while I want
to get it started right now and then we'll
| | 01:19 | get into some of those other topics.
| | 01:21 | So, I have the Spyder plugged into the USB
port on my computer, in this case, it's actually
| | 01:26 | running through my monitor.
| | 01:28 | All of these devices are USB devices, so they just
plug-in just like your printer and keyboard would.
| | 01:33 | It comes with software that I've installed,
this is the Spyder4 Elite software, and it's
| | 01:37 | basically going to take care of just
driving the whole device, and it has this wizard,
| | 01:42 | it reminds me of a few things your monitor
really needs to be warmed up for at least
| | 01:46 | half an hour before you start calibrating.
| | 01:48 | When you first turn it on its colors may
not be quite where they will be over the long
| | 01:52 | haul, so it's good to let it warm up.
| | 01:54 | They are asking me some things about lighting
conditions, do I have any bright lights shining
| | 01:58 | directly on to my monitor as we discussed
before, viewing conditions of prints is critical
| | 02:03 | to getting a good assessment of print quality,
same thing for your monitor, I don't want
| | 02:07 | lights shining directly on to the monitor, I
don't want bright lights behind me, if you're
| | 02:11 | really serious about color you can go really
nuts with this, you can paint the walls your
| | 02:15 | room gray, you can wear a gray smock, all
that kind of stuff, so that you don't have
| | 02:19 | any color reflecting on to your
monitor, I'm not that far gone yet.
| | 02:24 | I have set my monitor's contrast controls
to kind of a default value it may, or you
| | 02:31 | may or may not have a lot of controls on your
monitor, you may not have brightness controls,
| | 02:35 | you may not have both brightness and contrast,
you may not have color temperature, that's
| | 02:38 | all going to vary
depending on the monitor you have.
| | 02:41 | So I am just going to work my way through
here, oh, it wants me to check these off to
| | 02:44 | let it know that I'm not lying about having
done these things, so I'm going to go on here.
| | 02:49 | It asks me what type of monitor I'm using,
these days, you'll probably be using an LCD
| | 02:54 | monitor, you have options here for CRT,
laptops, and the Spyder and most other calibrators
| | 02:59 | today will let you calibrate and profile
projectors, which is really great if you are someone who
| | 03:04 | does a lot of presenting of your photos.
| | 03:07 | So I'm just selecting that I have an LCD monitor,
and it's asking me what controls I have contrast,
| | 03:13 | brightness, or color temperature, I can
select all of those things, I'm taking brightness.
| | 03:17 | I have a few options here about what the
target profile that I'm going for is, and this is
| | 03:23 | going to come up in just about any profiling
device you have, Gamma, White Point, and Brightness,
| | 03:28 | and any monitor profiling hardware that you
run is going to give you recommendations and
| | 03:33 | in every device I've seen lately these
recommendations are the ones that you should take.
| | 03:37 | I've set to a Gamma of 2.2, that's an
indication of the contrast capabilities of the monitor.
| | 03:43 | I have set to a White Point of 6500, that
means that ideally I am looking at my monitor
| | 03:49 | under light with a temperature of 6500 and
Brightness value of 120, I'm just going to
| | 03:54 | take those, and now it's
telling me to place the Spyder.
| | 03:58 | What's cool about the Spyder is it just got
this little weight on the cord, so I can just
| | 04:02 | put it right where it says I should,
and hang the weight off the back.
| | 04:06 | Now as I do that the device is kind of
dangling here, it's not actually touching the monitor.
| | 04:11 | If you look on the back of it you'll see that
there are these sensors here and they've got
| | 04:16 | this kind of ring around them, that's to give it a
good seal to block out any ambient light coming in.
| | 04:21 | So, I'm going to tilt my monitor backwards
a little bit at least I am going to try to,
| | 04:26 | to get a better conceal between the
calibrator and the monitor screen.
| | 04:30 | Now when I do that I want to make sure that
I'm not getting some big piece of glare on
| | 04:35 | there, but I think that's going to
be okay, that looks pretty stable.
| | 04:37 | I hit the Next button, and you see some lights
flashing on it, it's now going to start doing
| | 04:43 | a bunch of different things.
| | 04:44 | After, in this case, giving me some warnings,
Ambient level is very high, this level is not recommended.
| | 04:49 | If you must work in these
conditions use a monitor hood.
| | 04:52 | A monitor hood you may have seen, it's simply,
you can make one yourself out of cardboard
| | 04:56 | or foam core, it's going to just cover the
top and maybe the upper half of the monitor
| | 05:01 | that's going to block a lot
of ambient light coming in.
| | 05:04 | We are working in a somewhat unusual
lighting situation, because we've had to light the
| | 05:09 | set here, I'm going to accept this as it is,
it's giving me a warning that I should try
| | 05:14 | and cut the ambient light
that's hitting the monitor.
| | 05:17 | That's a good advice, but I'm going to
ignore it for right now, because I think this is
| | 05:20 | probably going to work okay.
| | 05:22 | It's telling me where to put the
calibrator, I hit Next, and it's off.
| | 05:26 | So what it's doing here is it's showing a
few different things to the calibrator and
| | 05:30 | the calibrator is taking measurements of them,
so I've got white, I've got black, it's going
| | 05:35 | to go through component colors, it's going to go
through a lot of different just swatches of color and tone.
| | 05:41 | Analyze them, see how far off they are from
the given specification, for example, here
| | 05:47 | is red, if the Spyder is reading it and
finding out that it's not as red as it's supposed
| | 05:51 | to be, it's going to sock that information
away in the profile that it builds, and that's
| | 05:54 | going to help me be more accurate later.
Let's talk for a bit about monitors.
| | 05:59 | I mentioned before that I had some things
to say about monitors, and that's because
| | 06:02 | I've been having monitor difficulty lately.
| | 06:05 | I have, at home, an Apple Cinema Display that
I've had for about five years, it's a nice
| | 06:11 | monitor, I like it a lot, and I cannot get a
good profile of it, and I think that's simply
| | 06:15 | because of its age.
| | 06:17 | Monitors change dramatically over time, and
in addition to that I'm not sure it was ever
| | 06:22 | that great a monitor anyway
in terms of color accuracy.
| | 06:26 | There are two things you need to be
concerned about with your monitor, it's gamut and how
| | 06:30 | accurate it is within that gamut.
| | 06:32 | That old Cinema Display that I have has a
gamut that's a little bit smaller than Adobe RGB.
| | 06:37 | So if I'm working in the Adobe RGB color
space that means that inherently my monitor cannot
| | 06:42 | show all of the colors that I might capture, so
I decided I wanted a monitor with a bigger gamut.
| | 06:48 | I have here an ASUS PA246Q, it's a 23-inch
monitor that is a wide gamut LCD monitor.
| | 06:56 | This monitor can display
the entire Adobe RGB gamut.
| | 07:00 | I've been very impressed with this monitor
so far and one of the most impressive things
| | 07:04 | is it's a lot cheaper than the Apple monitor I
had before, you can get one of these for under $600.
| | 07:09 | Another good option right now is the Dell
2410 also a wide gamut monitor capable of
| | 07:15 | displaying the entire Adobe RGB gamut.
| | 07:18 | Both of these motors have USB hubs built into
the side, they even have SD card readers built
| | 07:22 | in the side, which is very handy.
| | 07:24 | Most importantly though I've got that wide
gamut and they're very accurate within that gamut.
| | 07:29 | The other problem I was having with my
Cinema Display was that even the colors that were
| | 07:34 | within the gamut, the monitor wasn't
necessarily able to reproduce them properly just because
| | 07:38 | the computer has sent a particular color
value to the monitor doesn't mean that the monitor
| | 07:43 | has been able to accurately deliver it, and
I couldn't profile it back into usable shape.
| | 07:48 | Another problem with the monitor you might
have, and this is true with iMacs and a lot
| | 07:51 | of laptop screens both Mac and Windows
laptops is they'll have a glossy surface.
| | 07:55 | A glossy surface is as you may have already
discovered, brutal for looking at photographs,
| | 08:00 | it crunches your dark shadow tones down to
complete black, it's got lots of glare over
| | 08:04 | it, and it can really
complicate the calibration process.
| | 08:08 | So this is what I meant when I said earlier
that before you commit to color management
| | 08:12 | you may need to realize that you've got to
get a different monitor, and that's not just
| | 08:16 | about spending the money for a different monitor,
it's about deciding, well, I have this iMac,
| | 08:19 | what do I do if I need a second monitor also?
Do I, does that mean I need a new desk?
| | 08:23 | does that mean I have to have more space?
| | 08:24 | These are considerations you need to think about
before you commit to the color management process.
| | 08:30 | We're going to go through the process now
of building this profile, and then I'm going
| | 08:33 | to show you something else cool that the
Spyder does which is it'll then analyze your profile
| | 08:37 | again for accuracy, and then we're going to see if
this profile that we've made is actually any good or not.
| | 08:44 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Evaluating a monitor profile| 00:00 | So the Spyder is done. It's
taken all of its measurements.
| | 00:03 | It's created an ICC profile, and it went ahead saved
it for me, it's actually showing me where it saved it.
| | 00:08 | It's saving it in the ColorSync folder
which is where ICC profiles go on the Mac.
| | 00:13 | On Windows they have a particular location
that they go into, but again the software
| | 00:17 | is going to take care of that for you.
| | 00:19 | Another thing that it did earlier was ask me
how often would I like to be reminded about
| | 00:24 | re-profiling, and it
suggested an interval of two weeks.
| | 00:27 | You may think, wow, profiling every two weeks.
Really your monitor can change that quickly.
| | 00:31 | If you're going to be critical about color,
it's not a bad idea to go through this profiling
| | 00:35 | process very regularly and most profiling
software can be set up to give you a reminder
| | 00:40 | that it's time to do it again.
| | 00:43 | So what we've got here is a chance to
see kind of a before and after thing.
| | 00:48 | This is what it looks like using the new
profile, that's what it looked like before.
| | 00:54 | So it's mighty subtle but what I'm
seeing here is an overall change in contrast.
| | 01:00 | This is a little grayer, the
blacks are stronger in my profiled view.
| | 01:04 | And if you've watched the rest of this course you
should know by now that I am really excited about that.
| | 01:07 | That's making some very
subtle changes in color saturation.
| | 01:11 | So my monitor was doing pretty
well before even without the profile.
| | 01:16 | Bear in mind this monitor came out of the
box about a week ago, so it's pretty much
| | 01:19 | brand-new, hasn't had a lot of wear
and tear, so that's why it's not way off.
| | 01:23 | Still that extra little bit may
be critical for getting good color.
| | 01:28 | I've also got an option here
to manually tune the profile.
| | 01:31 | I can alter the white point, both,
blue and red, purple and green.
| | 01:35 | I can alter the Gamma and the Brightness,
you typically won't do this if you're working
| | 01:38 | with a single monitor.
| | 01:40 | This is about trying to get a
bunch of different monitors to match.
| | 01:42 | First, you'd profile them and then you've
got these manual controls for going in and
| | 01:46 | trying to skew these different
parameters around to get them to match.
| | 01:49 | If you work with more than one monitor
that's a reason that the Spyder is a good choice,
| | 01:53 | it gives you that extra capability.
So I'm going to keep going through here.
| | 01:58 | It's giving me some other stuff, it's showing me
how my monitor compares to some other standards.
| | 02:04 | I can see that I have 100% of the sRGB
color space, meaning I can show the whole thing.
| | 02:11 | I've gotten 95% of Adobe RGB.
| | 02:14 | Ooh! I'm supposed to have 100% of Adobe RGB,
and I've got 88% of NTSC, that's a standard
| | 02:21 | definition color space.
| | 02:23 | I don't care about sRGB or NTSC,
I want that Adobe RGB color space.
| | 02:28 | Why do I only have 95%?
| | 02:30 | Because the profiling process is not perfect,
I could go back right now, put the Spyder
| | 02:35 | back on, do another profile, and
I might get a different result.
| | 02:38 | I might get 96%, I might
get 93%, I might get 100%.
| | 02:42 | Very often you're going to need to re-profile
a few times, save each profile and then take
| | 02:48 | the one that's the best.
| | 02:49 | I can't give you an
explanation for why it's so variable.
| | 02:52 | My personal feeling is that it has to do
with ambient light, leaking into the profiler,
| | 02:57 | might also have to do with maybe the
monitor has warmed up in someway or another that
| | 03:01 | makes one profile better than another.
| | 03:03 | If you are finding variability between
your profiles, don't worry, that's normal.
| | 03:09 | What I've started to do lately is to say I'm
going to profile it three times and take the best one.
| | 03:14 | If they keep getting worse then maybe I'll
keep going and hope they get better again.
| | 03:18 | One nice thing about the Spyder is it has some
other tools for assessing the quality of the profile.
| | 03:23 | There's a software I can run, that will
allow me to put the profiler back on, and it will
| | 03:28 | basically shine tests through its
profile to measure the quality of the profile.
| | 03:34 | I can also measure it across the screen so
I can see if there is color differential in
| | 03:38 | the corners or from the top to bottom.
| | 03:41 | These are great tools that make the Spyder
well worth it for a monitor calibrator because
| | 03:47 | they allow you to assess
the quality of your profile.
| | 03:49 | And if you're finding it's lacking then you know
that maybe it's time to go in and profile again.
| | 03:55 | So now that I've got my profile done
and installed you may think, well, great.
| | 04:00 | Now I can open up images and they're going to look
just like they do on paper, and that's not actually true.
| | 04:06 | Having a profile installed doesn't mean that
the color that's being displayed on your computer
| | 04:11 | monitor is already adjusted
for a particular piece of paper.
| | 04:15 | That is a complex process all on itself
called soft proofing, wherein I tell Photoshop what
| | 04:21 | kind of paper I'm using it uses that paper
profile in conjunction with my monitor profile
| | 04:26 | to generate a more accurate view on screen.
| | 04:30 | We can't do that yet though because we
need to think about paper profiles, and that's
| | 04:34 | what we're going to discuss in the next movie.
| | 04:39 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Exploring paper profiles| 00:01 | So my monitor is profiled now. That's only
the first half of the color management process,
| | 00:06 | and I don't actually know yet if the monitor
profile I've got is really right.
| | 00:10 | The Spyder software gave me some ideas about
it, but I need to test it out in a full color
| | 00:14 | management workflow before I decide if maybe
I need to go back and do
| | 00:17 | another monitor profile.
| | 00:18 | So I need to move on to the second half of
my profiling process, which is to be sure
| | 00:23 | that I've got profiles installed for my printer,
more specifically for the printer and the
| | 00:28 | specific type of paper that I want to print on.
| | 00:31 | You can't simply profile the printer, you
have to have separate profiles for every type
| | 00:36 | of paper that you want to print on.
There are few different ways of getting those.
| | 00:40 | First of all, when you install your printer
driver software it should install a whole
| | 00:45 | bunch of paper profiles for you.
| | 00:47 | So, for example, Epson, this is an R2880
that we have back here.
| | 00:52 | When I install the driver it installs ICC
profiles for all of the Epson branded paper
| | 00:57 | that they recommend for the 2880.
| | 01:00 | In fact, in some cases it might install more
than one profile for those different paper
| | 01:05 | types, because the Epson
has a couple of different
| | 01:07 | black ink options that you can use.
| | 01:09 | After you get the Epson profiles installed
or driver installed you might actually want
| | 01:14 | to go to the Epson website because you will
see on the 2880 support site or any of the
| | 01:20 | other support pages for your relevant printer,
you'll see a link to
| | 01:22 | something called Premium ICC Profiles.
| | 01:25 | Yes, Epson will give you better printer profiles
than what they ship.
| | 01:30 | I've never understood why they don't just
ship the good profiles but if you go to the
| | 01:34 | Epson's website you can get better profiles
that you can then install,
| | 01:37 | and that's really worth doing.
| | 01:39 | No matter what type of printer you have you
will probably get some stock profiles installed.
| | 01:43 | Now if you're printing on third-party paper
you can probably go to the paper vendor's
| | 01:47 | website and find ICC profiles.
| | 01:49 | Hahnemuhle, for example, Moab, a lot of
the other companies are very good about putting
| | 01:55 | ICC Profiles up for download.
| | 01:57 | So if you find that you really like a particular
say Hahnemuhle paper, check out the Hahnemuhle
| | 02:02 | website, you will need to go look by your
specific printer type because every specific
| | 02:07 | printer needs to be profiled for every type
of paper, and you can download the appropriate
| | 02:12 | profile for this paper that you'd like to
use, install it, and then it will show up
| | 02:16 | with the rest of your profiles.
| | 02:18 | So downloading is one
option for getting profiles,
| | 02:20 | another option is to make one yourself.
| | 02:23 | I have here an X-Rite ColorMunki, which is
another monitor profiler.
| | 02:28 | I can use this for profiling my
monitor, but I can also use it for
| | 02:32 | profiling a printer paper combination.
The way it works is through the ColorMunki software.
| | 02:37 | I print out a test page, so this is a bunch
of color swatches printed on the type of paper
| | 02:43 | that I want to profile.
| | 02:44 | If I need to profile ten different types of
paper I'm going to do this whole process ten
| | 02:48 | different times, once for each type of paper.
| | 02:52 | And so once I've got this target printed,
and there are actually
| | 02:54 | ultimately two pages to this target.
| | 02:56 | I then follow the instructions and at the
appropriate time it guides me to take the
| | 03:02 | profiling gizmo and run it across these strips of patches.
| | 03:06 | If I get it wrong, if I move too quickly or
too slowly it'll ask me to do it again and
| | 03:10 | then I move on to the next one.
| | 03:12 | And what it's doing is it's going through
then measuring each one of these colors, now
| | 03:16 | it knows what it thinks each one of these
colors are supposed to be so it can compare
| | 03:20 | what it reads to what it expects and figure
out where your printer goes off.
| | 03:25 | Another nice thing about the ColorMunki software
is, I can go back later and refine a profile,
| | 03:31 | I can actually hand it a specific image that
I want to print, and it will analyze the colors
| | 03:35 | in it and say, oh well actually I'm not too
sure about how to print this color.
| | 03:40 | Let me print out some swatches and have you
read those, and I can then build up a very
| | 03:43 | refined profile even for a specific document.
So that's another option.
| | 03:47 | Finally, a third option is to pay someone
to make profiles for you.
| | 03:52 | There are a lot of different websites that will do this.
| | 03:54 | They will email you a target that you print
and then you mail that target back to them,
| | 04:00 | regular mail, and then they'll scan it and
email you a profile back that you can install.
| | 04:06 | It's usually about 25 bucks to have one of
these made, and if you think that's expensive,
| | 04:10 | bear in mind that a ColorMunki will cost you $500.
| | 04:13 | Granted that gets you monitor profiling,
but you can pick up a monitor profiler for
| | 04:17 | 300 bucks that leaves you
$200 for paper profiles,
| | 04:22 | 25 bucks a piece, that's eight profiles.
| | 04:24 | They are usually very,
very high-quality profiles,
| | 04:26 | and odds are, you're probably not going to
regularly use more than four or five different paper types.
| | 04:33 | So the ability to profile paper at will may not
actually be worth spending a lot of money
| | 04:37 | on when for 25 bucks,
| | 04:39 | if you decide there is a new type of paper
that you want to use, and you use it for a
| | 04:42 | few years that profile might be well worth the $25.
So those are my paper profiling options.
| | 04:49 | I can download from a printer or paper vendor's
website, I can build one of my own with a
| | 04:53 | paper profiler, or I can go to an online
website that will generate a profile for me.
| | 05:00 | I've got to do one of those, I have to have
a paper profile installed for the paper I
| | 05:05 | want to print on before any of this color
management stuff will work.
| | 05:09 | So once I've got my monitor profile installed
and my printer profile file installed I'm
| | 05:13 | ready to start the soft proofing process.
| | 05:18 |
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| Understanding soft proofing| 00:00 | I have got my monitor profile installed, I
have got my printer profiles installed, I
| | 00:04 | have got lot of them because I just downloaded
every Epson printer profile that I could find,
| | 00:10 | but my screen doesn't really look any
different. As I mentioned before, simply installing a
| | 00:13 | monitor profile and a printer profile doesn't
mean that suddenly Photoshop will be showing
| | 00:18 | you what things are going to look like on paper.
| | 00:21 | You have to go through an explicit soft proofing
step. In other words, I'm generating an electronic
| | 00:27 | proof of what the whole system thinks
my final image is going to look like.
| | 00:31 | So you saw this image before.
| | 00:33 | And what I need to do now is tell Photoshop
that I want to see what this is going to look
| | 00:37 | like when printed on a very particular
piece of paper in a very particular way.
| | 00:42 | To do that, I go up here to the View menu.
And you'll see a few different things.
| | 00:46 | Everything in this upper section up here is related
to color management, color matching, and soft proofing.
| | 00:52 | I want to go to Proof Setup, which is where
I will configure exactly what type of paper
| | 00:57 | I want to print on and some additional controls
about how the ink is going to go on to the paper.
| | 01:03 | So I have my Customized Proof Condition dialog
box here. I can actually load and save presets,
| | 01:08 | so once I get this built, I
could save all this up here.
| | 01:10 | Instead, I have got to
work all this out by hand.
| | 01:13 | Device to Simulate, you are going to
see a whole bunch of things in here.
| | 01:16 | A lot of these are stock devices that are
installed with Photoshop, everything from
| | 01:21 | here down to here and a few things after are going
to be in Photoshop, no matter what else you have done.
| | 01:27 | What I've got here is some Hahnemuhle paper that I
download a profile for off of the Hahnemuhle website.
| | 01:34 | This is their Photo Rag Duo, so I am going to pick
that, and as soon as I do that, my image changes.
| | 01:40 | Now you probably missed it here.
| | 01:41 | So I am going to uncheck this preview box,
so you can see it, this is before and after.
| | 01:47 | Again, before and after.
Number of interesting things are happening here.
| | 01:52 | Watch her chin right here.
There's a shadow that's there
| | 01:57 | before I soft proof that goes away after.
| | 01:59 | We are also seeing a lot of
change in her skin tone here.
| | 02:03 | Again, that's before, that's after.
Seeing a lot of changes down here.
| | 02:08 | Before we really evaluate those changes and
decide if we like them, it's just interesting
| | 02:11 | to note that, okay, something is changing.
Photoshop is generating a different image
| | 02:15 | based on my proofing settings.
So I picked the device that I want to simulate.
| | 02:21 | The next really major thing that I
need to decide is Rendering Intent.
| | 02:25 | So you've already seen that when my color
spaces don't match or when my gamuts don't
| | 02:31 | match, I have colors that fall
outside the range of different devices.
| | 02:35 | So what does Photoshop do if my image has
colors that fall outside the gamut of, in
| | 02:42 | this case, my piece of paper?
| | 02:44 | Well, it has to try and figure out how to work
them back into the gamut. It has to do a conversion.
| | 02:48 | There are lots of different
ways that I can do this conversion.
| | 02:51 | Well, actually, there are four.
| | 02:52 | But I am going to consider that a lot
because I have to explain all of them.
| | 02:55 | The first one is Perceptual.
| | 02:57 | Perceptual Rendering Intent tries to preserve
the visual relationships that exist between colors.
| | 03:03 | It's designed to mimic what
color looks like to the human eye.
| | 03:07 | It's a good choice for images
that have out of gamut colors.
| | 03:10 | So here's what Perceptual looked like, and you
can see it did just change between Perceptual
| | 03:16 | and the rendering intent I had before.
| | 03:17 | I have picked up a little bit of the shadow
back, I have gotten more detail back in here,
| | 03:21 | I'm liking these skin tones,
that looks pretty good.
| | 03:24 | Let's see what else we have got.
| | 03:26 | Saturation, really effected no change here
at all. It's actually not a rendering intent
| | 03:30 | that's relevant to photos, it's designed
for charts and business graphics, things that
| | 03:34 | have big solid blocks of very saturated colors.
So you can almost always ignore that one.
| | 03:39 | Relative Colorimetric tries to preserve--or
actually does preserve--the white point in
| | 03:46 | the source and destination spaces, but then
all the other colors are shifted according
| | 03:51 | to what that white is.
| | 03:53 | The idea with Relative Colorimetric is that
it will preserve more of the original colors
| | 03:57 | in the image than the
Perceptual intent that we saw before.
| | 04:01 | Let me switch between those two for you so
you can see this is Relative Colorimetric,
| | 04:05 | and that's Perceptual, again,
Perceptual, Relative Colorimetric.
| | 04:12 | With the Relative Colorimetric, I'm seeing
more contrast show up in here. Her hair is
| | 04:15 | looking a little more yellow
to me here than it is here.
| | 04:19 | There is an overall loss of saturation with
perceptual, and that's probably to do as it's
| | 04:24 | shifting the colors around once
it has determined the white point.
| | 04:28 | Absolute Colorimetric is the last option here.
| | 04:31 | It actually does the opposite of
what Relative Colorimetric does.
| | 04:35 | It starts with black, and it adjusts for
differences in the black points between my source space
| | 04:40 | and my destination space.
| | 04:42 | And then it maps the full range of colors
from the source space into the destination space.
| | 04:48 | This is great if your original image and your
paper profile have roughly the same size gamut,
| | 04:54 | mine don't actually.
| | 04:55 | It's not a huge change here, but here's
Relative Colorimetric, here is Absolute Colorimetric.
| | 05:02 | So do you need to remember all that stuff?
| | 05:04 | No, you don't need to remember the definitions
of those things. Just remember that Saturation
| | 05:07 | is never going to do much for you.
| | 05:09 | What you need to do here in your Soft Proof is
just pick the one that you think looks the best.
| | 05:14 | I can't tell you more than that, pick the
one that you think looks the best.
| | 05:18 | Trust your own eye and your own taste.
| | 05:20 | Know that below that is also this Black
Point Compensation box, which is going to change
| | 05:25 | how Photoshop thinks about black in the
image. It's worth turning that on and off.
| | 05:29 | And actually turning it on fixes the shadow here,
drains some saturation that I didn't like there.
| | 05:35 | Let's see what it looks like over here.
| | 05:38 | Not all of these give you a Black
Point Compensation option, Perceptual does.
| | 05:43 | I think that I'm going to go with Relative
Colorimetric with Black Point Compensation.
| | 05:47 | All I am looking for are the things we have
been looking for throughout this course, good
| | 05:51 | white, good black, a
range of colors that I like.
| | 05:54 | And now I am going to remember that,
Relative Colorimetric and Black Point Compensation.
| | 05:58 | So this is what I think--
I'm going to hit OK now.
| | 06:01 | This is what Photoshop thinks my image
is going to look like when it's printed.
| | 06:06 | Based on this, I can now do
some image editing if I wanted.
| | 06:08 | I'm probably not going to
get a big shift in blacks.
| | 06:10 | If I'm seeing a color shift that I
don't like, I could try to edit it away.
| | 06:14 | Bear in mind that when soft proofing is on
my editing tools are not going to feel
| | 06:19 | like they have got as much latitude, they
are not going to feel like they are doing
| | 06:21 | as much because my colors are
constrained to the paper gamut colors.
| | 06:25 | So I may not be able to pull a really
bright red out of the image that I could get with
| | 06:29 | soft proofing turned off.
So there is my soft proof.
| | 06:32 | When I get it the way that I
like it, I am ready to print.
| | 06:36 | That's just what you've always done.
I go to File, and I choose Print.
| | 06:40 | And now I need to be sure that I have configured
the Print Settings, which I am going to do up here.
| | 06:45 | This takes me to the normal Print dialog box,
and what you see now may differ on your printer,
| | 06:50 | because Print dialogs differ from vendor to
vendor and even from printer model to printer model.
| | 06:55 | My main concern here is that I want to be
sure that at least on an Epson printer, under
| | 07:00 | Print Settings that I have chosen
the media type that I'm printing on.
| | 07:05 | Now I'm not going to see a
third-party printer paper in here.
| | 07:08 | So I don't see Hahnemuhle, but I know that
Ultra Premium Presentation Matte is a good
| | 07:12 | choice for the type of
paper that I am printing on.
| | 07:14 | I want to be sure that
Color Settings is turned off.
| | 07:18 | Now in the later versions of the Mac OS
and some Windows operating systems, Photoshop
| | 07:22 | can communicate to the
print driver and turn that off.
| | 07:26 | I want this off because Photoshop
is already manipulating the colors.
| | 07:30 | I don't want it to manipulate the colors and
then hand that to the printer driver and the
| | 07:34 | printer driver go, oh my! These colors are
all wrong here, let me adjust them for you.
| | 07:38 | I want to be sure that that's all turned off.
| | 07:40 | This is a critical step in the color
managed printing processes is making sure that the
| | 07:45 | driver is not interfering with your color.
| | 07:48 | With that all done, I am ready
to hit Save, and then I can print.
| | 07:51 | I have already printed this image.
| | 07:53 | So we don't have to wait to see the
results, I am going to just cancel out of here.
| | 07:57 | I want to make sure the Proof Colors is
turned on, this lets me toggle my proofing on and
| | 08:01 | off once I have got it configured.
| | 08:04 | So I've got Proof Colors turned on,
and now I want to see how things compare.
| | 08:09 | So I am going to hold my
print up to the screen here.
| | 08:11 | Now, this is a little bit tricky because
you are seeing this through a video camera and
| | 08:17 | then the video is being compressed, and
I don't know what your monitor is like.
| | 08:21 | So, you may not be seeing what I'm seeing here,
but I am going to tell you what I'm seeing.
| | 08:25 | And what I am seeing is a pretty
good match, but not a perfect match.
| | 08:29 | I am liking these pink tones
down here, I think they're good.
| | 08:33 | The overall tonal relationships are right. My
shadow detail down here is about what is up here.
| | 08:39 | Up here, her hair is a pretty good match.
| | 08:42 | Where the image is
falling apart is in two places.
| | 08:46 | Here in these white tones on her shirt, those
are warmer in my final print and here in the
| | 08:51 | sky, the blues are way off.
| | 08:54 | Here I am getting a really cyan blue,
here I'm getting more of a magenta blue.
| | 08:59 | So at that point, I might want to
think wow, where--what's the problem?
| | 09:03 | Something interesting comes up if I go back
here to ColorThink and do a little graphing.
| | 09:06 | I have got my image
graphed against my paper profile.
| | 09:11 | So this blob here is showing me
the gamut of my paper profile.
| | 09:15 | And what I'm finding is that almost all of
the images that are falling out of gamut are
| | 09:21 | in the blues to magentas.
| | 09:23 | So first of all I can say right off the bat,
well, yeah, blues and magentas are going to
| | 09:27 | be hard for me to print, this image on this
paper because the paper can't handle those tones.
| | 09:33 | But the whole point of color management is
that Photoshop is supposed to know that the
| | 09:38 | paper can't handle those tones, and it's
supposed to adjust image on my screen to compensate
| | 09:42 | for that, and that's not happening.
| | 09:44 | So what that makes me think is it's time for
me to go back and tweak my monitor profile.
| | 09:48 | As I said, profiling more than
once you might get different results.
| | 09:52 | I am also in a situation
where it's difficult to profile.
| | 09:55 | So I am going to go back to my Spider Software,
build another profile, run the profile analysis
| | 10:00 | software on it and see what it says about
the cyans and try and get that profile built
| | 10:05 | up to something better.
| | 10:06 | I am going to keep the old one because
I need to compare all of these things.
| | 10:11 | What you've just seen is a pretty typical
color management situation. I've got it almost
| | 10:17 | matching--it's not quite matching. It's
never going to match all the way, but this shift
| | 10:21 | in color and sky is something
that I would like to know about.
| | 10:25 | I don't expect my image to look like an
illuminated image on screen, but I do want to be able
| | 10:30 | to have predictable flesh tones and predictable
large areas of color, because as it is, I might
| | 10:34 | go, well, the sky is too magenta. I
was really expecting it more cyan.
| | 10:38 | To do that, I am going to have to go back and
adjust my monitor profile and hope that it works.
| | 10:43 | And there's no guarantee that it will.
| | 10:45 | This is the tricky bet, it may be that my
monitor is not accurate in those tones, especially
| | 10:48 | if it's an older monitor.
| | 10:49 | It may be that the monitor used to be, and
now it's got a little older, and by a little
| | 10:53 | older, I mean maybe only two years.
| | 10:55 | So I am going to have to go
back and juggle with that.
| | 10:57 | That's all going to take time, it's going to
require more test prints and so on and so forth.
| | 11:01 | If I can get it working, it's great,
but it is going to take some work.
| | 11:05 | So that's the thing I want you to know
about color management is you can invest in the
| | 11:08 | hardware, and you can get it to work, you
have got to think about whether it's worth
| | 11:12 | the time and the money and the
consumables you are going to go through.
| | 11:16 | One last thing I want to know to mention, this is
Photoshop managed color. I think it's a nice print.
| | 11:21 | Earlier, I did a print done with the
Epson driver, it was also a nice print.
| | 11:25 | in some ways it was a better print, it didn't
match the screen, but I still liked the results.
| | 11:29 | Maybe it would've taken me a test printer,
too, to get everything exactly the way that
| | 11:33 | I wanted it, but it's actually turning out
that that's going to happen with my color
| | 11:36 | managed workflow, too, at least for a while.
| | 11:38 | So these are the things you want to think
about and consider before you could dive too
| | 11:41 | heavily into color management.
| | 11:42 | I am not saying you shouldn't try it, I'm
not saying it isn't great when you get it
| | 11:46 | working, all I am saying is that
getting it working can be a little tricky.
| | 11:51 |
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|
|
7. Choosing a PaperUnderstanding how paper quality affects the appearance of black in prints| 00:00 | We've been talking about color, tone,
localized adjustments, and image-editing, but of course,
| | 00:05 | printing has some physical
real-world concerns as well.
| | 00:09 | You are making a physical object.
| | 00:11 | And so will sometimes want to give some thought to how
your print will ultimately be displayed and presented.
| | 00:17 | I'm here in the framing studio of
my friend a Colleague Konrad Eek.
| | 00:21 | Konrad is a photographer, teacher, and
framer, and he' s going to be joining me later in
| | 00:25 | this chapter to talk about some matting in
framing considerations that you may want to
| | 00:29 | think about before you start printing.
| | 00:32 | Right now, though, I'm going to talk about
Paper. It can, of course, be really frustrating
| | 00:37 | to get an image adjusted so that it looks
exactly how you want it on screen and then
| | 00:41 | find it looking different when you print.
| | 00:44 | Now hopefully, what you've been saying so far in
this course is helping you get more predictable results.
| | 00:48 | Ultimately, the biggest change you are probably
going to see when your image hits the paper,
| | 00:52 | though, is that the blacks in the image
won't be as black as what you see on screen, and
| | 00:57 | once your Black is off, the rest of your
contrast will be messed up, and if you are working
| | 01:01 | in color, your color saturation will change.
| | 01:05 | When you see a weak black in a print, your
first impulse will probably be to go back
| | 01:09 | to your computer and crank up the
blacks by whatever means you prefer.
| | 01:14 | But if your histogram is already showing
black in your image, a further adjustment probably
| | 01:19 | isn't going to help.
| | 01:20 | In fact, it's probably going to make your
image worse because as you crank the blacks
| | 01:25 | further, you'll be dropping larger
lower darker grays down into complete black.
| | 01:30 | So now if you have got true black in your
image file but you're not seeing a good dark
| | 01:35 | black in your print, that is a
function of your paper choice.
| | 01:39 | Some papers are simply better at
holding a dark black than others.
| | 01:43 | So paper choice is going to have a
huge impact on your final image quality.
| | 01:48 | For example, this print came rolling
out of the printer, looks pretty good.
| | 01:52 | I might be pretty satisfied with it until I see the
exact same file printed on a higher-quality paper.
| | 01:58 | Look at the difference in here. Really
nice dark blacks in here as compared to here.
| | 02:03 | I want that extra darker black is getting
me is a much broader contrast range, and we
| | 02:08 | can really see that when come
at here. Look at the hands here.
| | 02:11 | I've got a much finer selection
of intermediate gray tones in here.
| | 02:15 | Overall, I am getting a more silvery look,
thanks to all those extra grays that I'm
| | 02:19 | getting here, and that's all the function of
having a really nice dark black in this print.
| | 02:24 | So while inexpensive paper might feel like
a real score--especially when you compare
| | 02:29 | it to what other papers cost--
| | 02:31 | you will pay an image quality
cost for your price savings.
| | 02:35 | Now T-MAX is the metric that is used to measure
the black of a specific ink paper culmination.
| | 02:41 | The higher the T-MAX number, the
blacker the blacks that you will get.
| | 02:44 | Unfortunately, most vendors don't
publish T-MAX specs for their papers.
| | 02:48 | But a little Googling around will
usually turn up reviews for specific papers.
| | 02:51 | You will often find T-MAX scores that
people have arrived at independently or at least
| | 02:55 | a subjective assessment of the
black capabilities of the paper.
| | 02:59 | I'm starting this paper choice chapter with a
discussion of blacks because you will usually
| | 03:03 | make your paper choice based on image quality.
| | 03:06 | There might be times when image quality won't
be your primary concern, you might more focused
| | 03:11 | on affordability or size for
some particular presentation need.
| | 03:15 | But most of the time, image quality will be
the way to choose a paper, and a paper's ability
| | 03:20 | to hold a good black is going to be
your key measure for judging paper quality.
| | 03:25 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Looking at third-party papers| 00:00 | If you have ever refilled your printer with
ink, then you've probably already figured out
| | 00:04 | that printer vendors make their money by selling
you the printer at near cost and then charging
| | 00:08 | a premium for your consumables.
In addition to ink, of course, there's also paper.
| | 00:13 | Your printer manufacturer probably sells many
different kinds of paper.
| | 00:17 | And what's nice about these options is that
your printer driver will have these different
| | 00:21 | paper types built in as choices when you print.
| | 00:24 | What's more, since the printer manufacturer
knows the properties and qualities of both
| | 00:28 | the ink and paper, they can engineer them to
work very well together.
| | 00:32 | At the time of this shooting, both Epson and Canon
offer robust collections of very high-quality papers.
| | 00:38 | Epson has got the larger selection, and I've
always been very impressed with Epson papers
| | 00:42 | in terms of image quality
price and its physical characteristics.
| | 00:46 | But as you may have discovered, there are also
lots of third-party papers from a variety of vendors.
| | 00:51 | Crane, Red River, Arches, Moab, Ilford, Hahnemuhle,
and others all produce a huge variety of papers
| | 01:00 | engineered specifically for Inkjet Printing.
| | 01:02 | In fact, once you get start looking, you may
find yourself a little overwhelmed by the
| | 01:06 | quantity of options available right now.
| | 01:08 | Here are some things to consider if you want
to start exploring more paper options than
| | 01:12 | just those provided by
your printer manufacturer.
| | 01:15 | First, most manufacturers of paper are going
to offer similar options.
| | 01:19 | They are all going to have a range of matte
papers and gloss papers and semi-gloss papers.
| | 01:24 | They're probably also going to have some fine
art papers and maybe some canvases.
| | 01:29 | Second, you don't have to b everything.
| | 01:32 | Most people ultimately find a matte paper
that they like and a glossy and maybe a fine
| | 01:38 | art or semi-gloss, and once they have chosen
those papers, they tend to just stick with those choices.
| | 01:42 | So you don't need to worry that you're supposed
to have some understanding of the subtle differences
| | 01:46 | in a dozen different matte papers and then
carefully choose the precise paper that's
| | 01:50 | right for the specific print on.
| | 01:52 | I tend to have two or three papers that I
use consistently, and I move from one to another
| | 01:56 | as I decide which finish that I want.
| | 01:58 | But these papers that I've chosen are very
different from one another.
| | 02:01 | I don't keep a lot of subtle variations of
just matte paper lying around, for example.
| | 02:06 | As you become more skilled, or as you start
pay attention to the paper choice that you
| | 02:10 | see in other prints, then you might want to
experiment with some other options.
| | 02:14 | You can always hope for a paper that gives
you better blacks or finer details at a lower price.
| | 02:19 | Your printer driver will not have an option
for your third-party paper choices.
| | 02:24 | And most drivers don't allow
you to add more paper types.
| | 02:27 | However, most paper vendors are now diligent
about including instructions for what paper
| | 02:33 | type to select for popular fine are printers.
| | 02:35 | For example, they might include instructions
that say if you're using an Epson printer,
| | 02:40 | you should set the paper type
to, say, Epson Velvet Fine Art.
| | 02:44 | These paper settings are usually just let
the driver know how thick the paper is and
| | 02:48 | what kind of ink densities can be laid down.
| | 02:50 | Now few vendors such as Hahnemuhle, Epson,
and Moab sell paper sample packs.
| | 02:56 | So for about 25 bucks, you get two sheets
of every type of paper that they make.
| | 03:01 | This is a great way to experiment with these
specific paper types.
| | 03:04 | But it's also a chance to get to see some
categories of paper that you might not normally
| | 03:09 | use or have much experience with.
| | 03:10 | Finally, while there are lots of great third-party
papers out there, don't give short shrift
| | 03:15 | to your vendor supplied papers.
| | 03:17 | I hear a lot of people who are resistant to
the stock papers, and the fact is that Epson,
| | 03:23 | Canon, and HP labeled fine art papers are very good.
| | 03:26 | In fact, these papers are simply usually
third-party papers that the printer vendors
| | 03:31 | have licensed and are selling under their own name.
| | 03:33 | In the rest of this chapter, we're going to
look at properties and characteristics that
| | 03:37 | you will want to weigh and consider
when you're making a paper choice,
| | 03:40 | whether or not you're looking at a third-party
paper or printer vendor supplied paper.
| | 03:45 |
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| Looking at paper finish| 00:00 | If you've ever dropped prints off of the
photo lab, then you're already familiar with the
| | 00:04 | idea of different paper finishes, though you've probably
only ever had to choose between two, matte and glossy.
| | 00:10 | You still have those same options when
you're choosing an inkjet paper, but you've got a
| | 00:13 | lot of variations, and you have some
additional finish choices besides just matte and glossy.
| | 00:19 | Glossy papers, of course, have a shiny
surface that creates super saturated colors, while
| | 00:24 | matte papers have a non-reflective surface
that tends to yield colors that appear less
| | 00:29 | saturated and perhaps
blacks that appear less black.
| | 00:32 | You also might find variations in gloss.
| | 00:34 | For example, a semi-gloss or a luster paper
will have a little bit of shine to it, but
| | 00:40 | not that full-on glare that you
get from a full-on gloss paper.
| | 00:44 | Now, a lot of people are drawn to glossy papers because
they produce such deep blacks and supersaturated colors.
| | 00:50 | However, I often find that the blacks on glossy
paper actually looks less black than a quality
| | 00:54 | matte because of that gloss layer. And in
many lighting situations, gloss can create
| | 01:00 | glare that impacts your perception
of both color saturation and black.
| | 01:04 | Personally, I find that, that gloss layer
that's on there kind of creates an extra layer
| | 01:09 | between me, and the image, and it
greatly complicates the display of the image.
| | 01:13 | So, I stick with matte paper
for my serious fine artwork.
| | 01:17 | If you would like to split the difference
of glossy look without all the gloss, then
| | 01:21 | you'll want to consider the various
luster options that are available.
| | 01:25 | Sometimes these are labeled semi-gloss.
| | 01:28 | Within matte papers, you'll find two
different categories, smooth and natural.
| | 01:32 | Smooth papers are just what they say they
are, paper with a completely smooth surface,
| | 01:36 | natural papers will have a textured finish,
and the amount of texture can vary from just
| | 01:42 | slightly visible grain to extremely textured.
| | 01:45 | Textured papers are tricky, though, because for
one thing they look nothing like traditional
| | 01:49 | photographic paper, and also because if
light hits them at an angle, the texture of the
| | 01:54 | paper can create shadows on the image
itself, and those shadows can be distracting.
| | 01:59 | Textured papers are great if you have an
image that's served well by a fine art look, but
| | 02:03 | you probably won't want to use a
textured paper for everyday work.
| | 02:07 | As much as I love matte papers for their
contrast and their color and their lack of glare, a
| | 02:11 | lot of people find them disappointing because
they don't look and feel like what they think
| | 02:15 | printed photos are supposed to look like.
| | 02:17 | The prints you get from a photo lab or the
drugstore are typically on thicker paper and
| | 02:22 | they possibly have a very smooth
glossy finish or a slightly pebbled finish.
| | 02:25 | You will get a pebbled finish from luster papers,
and a smooth glossy finish from glossy paper.
| | 02:30 | If you're used to working in a darkroom,
then you're probably accustomed to a fiber-based
| | 02:34 | paper that has a particular heft and finish,
and there are now several vendors that produce
| | 02:39 | such a paper for inkjet printers.
| | 02:41 | Epson Exhibition Fiber, Ilford Fibre Gold
Silk, Harman, Gloss Baryta by Hahnemuhle,
| | 02:47 | and Museo Silver Rag all give you that
authentic fiber-based look and feel that you used to
| | 02:53 | have in the darkroom.
| | 02:54 | And of course, unlike real darkroom paper,
you don't need different papers for color
| | 02:57 | and black and white printing.
Alternately, there is canvas.
| | 03:01 | Now, a lot of people are surprised by the
idea of printing on canvas, and I think that's
| | 03:05 | because they think, the first thing they
think of when they think of canvas as some kind
| | 03:08 | of material that you might make a tent out of.
| | 03:10 | When actually what we're talking about is
the kind of canvas that you would stretch
| | 03:14 | on a frame and then paint on.
| | 03:16 | Inkjet canvas has a slightly textured surface,
but what's great about it is that when it's
| | 03:20 | time to display, you don't
put glass in front of it.
| | 03:22 | And without glass, there's nothing to block
the colors and contrast in the image, so very
| | 03:26 | often the image just really
seems to leap across the room.
| | 03:30 | Expect to do a little experimentation to zero in on
the types of finishes that you like for different occasions.
| | 03:34 | In general, it's best to just work with a
few papers at a time until you really learn them.
| | 03:39 | Then you can feel free to branch
out if you want to try something new.
| | 03:44 |
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| Understanding paper traits| 00:00 | Whether you like matte or glossy with a
smooth or really textury finish, there are certain
| | 00:06 | things you'll need to look for when
you're evaluating a specific type of paper.
| | 00:11 | By now, you can probably guess that the first thing
I am going to say is look at the blacks in the print.
| | 00:15 | Are they dark enough?
| | 00:16 | If they are, how does the
overall contrast range look?
| | 00:19 | Do you see a lot of fine mid-tones
where you need them?
| | 00:22 | Skies, reflections, shiny, curved surfaces,
these are all places where you need lots of
| | 00:26 | good intermediate tones of various kinds.
Next, how does the color look?
| | 00:31 | Is it saturated enough for
you if that's what you like?
| | 00:34 | Are some colors more saturated than others?
| | 00:36 | For example, maybe the blues look
good, but the reds are muted somehow.
| | 00:39 | Believe it or not, different papers have
different abilities to show detail and sharpness.
| | 00:43 | If a paper absorbs a lot of ink causing the
ink to spread and diffuse, then you may not
| | 00:48 | see as much sharpness and detail as with a paper that
holds the ink on its surface where it doesn't diffuse.
| | 00:53 | So, consider the detail and sharpness in your image
when you're evaluating a particular type of paper.
| | 00:59 | Different papers have different brightnesses.
| | 01:01 | Now, obviously a paper won't emit light on
its own, but a whiter paper will reflect more
| | 01:07 | light than a yellowish or a natural paper.
| | 01:10 | The practical upshot is that the whites in
your image will be truly white on a really
| | 01:14 | bright paper, and that might give you a broader range
of contrast than you'd get on a paper that's not as white.
| | 01:20 | Now, before you run out to find the brightest
paper that you can, be aware that some papers
| | 01:25 | such as this one achieve their whiteness
through the use of artificial brighteners which bleach
| | 01:30 | the paper out to bright white.
| | 01:32 | The problem with these brighteners is that
they'll decay over time when they're exposed
| | 01:36 | to light, and as they do, the paper will yellow.
| | 01:38 | Sometimes, this yellowing can happen very
quickly, within a matter of weeks if the paper
| | 01:42 | is exposed to some direct sunlight.
| | 01:44 | As the paper yellows, and it may only be a
light yellowing, the brightest parts of your
| | 01:49 | image won't be as bright as they were
when they originally came out of the printer.
| | 01:52 | This means that your overall
contrast may change over time.
| | 01:55 | Now, the yellow print won't necessarily look
any worse. It just means that over the long
| | 02:00 | haul, you'll have less predictability
about what the print will look like.
| | 02:06 | Archivability is not something you can assess
simply by looking at a print. A paper's archivability
| | 02:10 | is simply the measure of how long a
print will last on the paper without fading.
| | 02:14 | Now, if the paper is rated at 75 years,
that doesn't mean that on the first day of the
| | 02:18 | 75th year, you'll be facing a blank piece of
paper. It just means that if handled properly,
| | 02:24 | the image will last 75 years
before you see a color shift.
| | 02:28 | Yellow inks tend to
degrade faster than other colors.
| | 02:31 | So, what you'll start to see after you've gone
beyond the paper's archival limits is a loss of yellow.
| | 02:36 | This doesn't just mean that yellow
things in your image will begin to fade.
| | 02:39 | It means any color that includes yellow as
a component will shift to a different color.
| | 02:44 | Archival ratings for a particular paper
are always dependent on a particular ink set.
| | 02:47 | Certain inks on certain papers can be very archival.
The same ink on other papers may not last as long.
| | 02:54 | Now, there's no way to know for sure if a
print will last 100 years. Inkjet print has
| | 02:59 | only been around for a fraction of that time.
| | 03:01 | But Wilhelm Imaging Research is generally
regarded as being an accurate viable source
| | 03:05 | for data about the archivability of
certain ink and paper combinations.
| | 03:09 | Wilhelm Research has developed complex ways
of aging and weathering paper to determine
| | 03:13 | its archival characteristics, and you
can look up specific types of inks
| | 03:16 | and paper combinations on their website.
| | 03:20 | If you're going to sell your work, you'll
want to have some kind of idea of how archival
| | 03:23 | your paper choice might be. In fact, some galleries
or patrons may demand to know an archival rating.
| | 03:30 | It's important to note that for all of these
traits, we're talking about the specific ink/paper
| | 03:34 | combination of your printer and a particular
type of paper. The same paper in another printer
| | 03:39 | might not have problems that
you're seeing with your printer.
| | 03:42 | Finally, there are physical characteristics
to consider. How thick is the paper?
| | 03:46 | These days, most printer paper is
measured using the metric scale.
| | 03:49 | So, if you're used to the old English system
which measure paper in pounds, don't be surprised
| | 03:53 | if all of the paper specs you see list weight
as GSM or Grams Per Square Meter.
| | 03:59 | Obviously, higher numbers mean thicker paper.
| | 04:01 | Thicker papers may mean
trouble for your printer.
| | 04:04 | Before you invest in a large quantity of
thick heavy media, you want to be sure that your
| | 04:08 | printer has a way of feeding it.
| | 04:10 | Most quality photo printers have a straight
through paper path of some kind for handling thick media.
| | 04:16 | Thicker prints are fun to handle.
| | 04:18 | So, if you're going to present your images
in a way where people can sift through them,
| | 04:21 | then thicker media might be nice.
| | 04:23 | Note however that some matte papers,
especially thicker fine art and watercolor papers, can
| | 04:28 | easily scuff if they brush
up against something else.
| | 04:32 | Curl is something that you want to pay
attention to as you experiment with different papers.
| | 04:36 | A dense print can mean a lot of ink going
on to the page, and as the paper absorbs all
| | 04:41 | that liquid, it might curl on the edges.
| | 04:43 | Depending on what you want to do
with the print, this might be an issue.
| | 04:45 | It can also mean that as the paper goes
through the printer, it gets messed up by ink that
| | 04:52 | stuck on rollers and things like that, so
the edges of your print can be messed up.
| | 04:56 | Finally, as you work with a paper over time,
you're going to want to consider consistency.
| | 05:00 | When you buy a new box of the same type of
paper, do you feel like it has the same qualities
| | 05:05 | and characteristics as the
last box that you bought?
| | 05:08 | Epson, Hahnemuhle, and most other big-name vendors
all offer very good consistency from box to box.
| | 05:13 | If you're an Epson user, you might have noticed
that they sometimes change the name of their papers.
| | 05:17 | For example, Archival Matte became Enhanced Matte,
which eventually became Ultra Premium Presentation Matte.
| | 05:24 | They do this anytime they switch to a
different paper supplier so that you'll know that the
| | 05:29 | next box may not precisely match the
one that you bought with the older name.
| | 05:32 | In my experience, I've never noticed a change in
quality or characteristics as they've changed vendors.
| | 05:37 | Earlier, I mentioned the sample packs that
you can get from Epson and Hahnemuhle and
| | 05:41 | Moab, these are a great way to
assess everything about a paper.
| | 05:44 | Sample packs usually come with two
sheets of each paper the vendor makes.
| | 05:47 | I print it black and white on each type of
paper, and then I do the same with a color image.
| | 05:51 | Being able to see the paper side by side makes
it easier to identify different traits and capabilities.
| | 05:57 | Note that sometimes a paper will simply
yield a better print, and you won't know why.
| | 06:02 | I was recently comparing some papers that were
very similar, but one was about $25 more per box.
| | 06:08 | And as much as I wanted the cheaper paper to be
as good as the expensive paper, it just wasn't.
| | 06:13 | The more expensive paper just had
this extra something in the mid-tones.
| | 06:16 | I felt like I could see more detail and
the mid-tones, and this luminous quality that
| | 06:20 | wasn't present in the cheaper paper.
But I just couldn't tell you why.
| | 06:24 | It's okay just to go with what you like,
regardless of whether you can explain why you like it.
| | 06:29 |
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| Discussing paper choice and presentation| 00:00 | If your ultimate goal for your
print is to matte it, frame it, and hang it on a
| | 00:04 | wall, there are some things that you might
want to think about during the printing process.
| | 00:08 | So, to address those, I
brought in my friend Konrad Eek here.
| | 00:12 | We've been working in his framing gallery
here, and he's going to answer a couple of
| | 00:16 | questions that I've got, the same types of
questions that you might want to ask whoever
| | 00:20 | it is you have frame your work.
| | 00:22 | I think you're going to find that Konrad is
incredibly knowledgeable about matting and framing.
| | 00:27 | I think you're also going to
find that right now he sounds awful.
| | 00:31 | Konrad, you sound awful.
Konrad Eek: Thank you very much for noticing.
| | 00:34 | I am trying to work through a little bit of a cold,
and it's made my voice a little bit rougher than usual.
| | 00:40 | Ben: All right! Well, hopefully it's
not going to impact any of your answers.
| | 00:43 | Konrad: No, no it
hasn't penetrated that far.
| | 00:46 | Ben: So, I've got a print.
| | 00:48 | My first question when I'm printing is, well,
I've got my matte papers, I've got my glossy
| | 00:52 | papers, and I'm thinking I'm aiming this
print towards framing, which means I'm going
| | 00:55 | to put glass in front of it.
| | 00:57 | Does it matter if I'm choosing matte or
glossy paper if I'm going to have a glossy piece
| | 01:01 | of glass in front of it?
What are the differences?
| | 01:03 | Konrad: I tend to prefer matte paper
on the glass because with a glossy paper you
| | 01:07 | can sometimes get two layers
of shine out of the same thing.
| | 01:13 | So, if you've got a duller paper underneath
the glass, it tends to read a little bit better.
| | 01:17 | Ben: So it's just one less--going with matte is
one less layer of interference between you and--
| | 01:22 | Konrad: Exactly! And there are also
glass types you can use that will
| | 01:26 | cut down on reflection, but they
have their own inherent problems.
| | 01:29 | One of them is they make your
voice sound a lot like Mickey Mouse.
| | 01:32 | Ben: Wow! I wouldn't have expected that.
| | 01:35 | Konrad: But you can see here, this is a
reflection control glass, and when you put
| | 01:39 | it in front of the work, as you get it closer,
there is a certain milkiness to it that disappears.
| | 01:44 | But if you've got any kind of separation, you
can really start to lose contrast in the image.
| | 01:50 | And so if you have a lot of reflections in
the area, you're going to hang your work,
| | 01:53 | you might consider this.
| | 01:55 | Another way to go is with a museum glass
which has reflection control as well but doesn't
| | 02:00 | cause any of the milkiness.
| | 02:02 | The disadvantage of the museum glass is it
costs quite a bit more than the reflection control glass.
| | 02:07 | Ben: I've been talking to them about
different paper choices and how some paper
| | 02:13 | choices might have just slightly
better contrast than another paper choice.
| | 02:17 | If I'm putting some of this in front of it,
and it's maybe going to be milky or take away
| | 02:22 | some contrast, do I just go with a cheaper paper, or
is it better to have the best possible image I can?
| | 02:26 | Konrad: I thing you want to start with
the best image you can, man, because if you
| | 02:30 | are going to lose contrast, if you're starting
off with something that's a little bit flatter,
| | 02:34 | and then you lose more by the addition of
the glazing, I really think you're taking
| | 02:38 | away from the quality of the work.
Ben: Okay.
| | 02:41 | So it sounds like another thing that I'm
balancing in here is maybe I like this glass because
| | 02:46 | it doesn't reflect, but if I have chosen a
framing style or something where the glass
| | 02:51 | is going be father away,
this is not a great option.
| | 02:53 | Konrad: Yeah, the reflection control is
not a good option if you're adding a lot of
| | 02:56 | depth in the matting
technique, I would not recommend it.
| | 02:59 | Ben: So I need to have some idea about the
matting technique before I make this glass choice.
| | 03:03 | Konrad: Yeah, and I talk quite a bit in
an upcoming course on matting, framing, and
| | 03:08 | hanging photographs about it's a group of
decisions you need to make while you're getting
| | 03:13 | ready to present your work.
| | 03:14 | The frame, the matting technique, and the glazing are all
integral to the final appearance of the work.
| | 03:21 | Ben: Okay, let's talk about image size.
| | 03:23 | We've gone through in this course
how you size your image for printing.
| | 03:28 | But I've got a lot of different
options when it comes to framing.
| | 03:31 | I can go with pre-built frames that come in
particular sizes, I can go with custom framing,
| | 03:34 | how do I want to think about that?
| | 03:36 | Konrad: Typically, Easel Back frames
that we have some examples here are used mostly
| | 03:41 | for portrait work, and those are very difficult
to find in anything other than standard sizes.
| | 03:46 | So, if you're shooting portraits with the
intent of maybe putting them on a table or
| | 03:51 | a metal piece in your home, I think it's
best if you can even pre-visualize shooting to
| | 03:56 | a standard size, because the typical sensor
in a DSLR or a digital camera does not really
| | 04:02 | match up very well with
the standard sizes.
| | 04:05 | Ben: Right. Yeah, most of these standard sizes are
not a 3:2 aspect ratio, so that doesn't work.
| | 04:10 | So is it a good idea to buy the
frame first before I even start printing?
| | 04:13 | Konrad: Not necessarily, because there
is a small number of standard sizes.
| | 04:18 | If you just kind of think that you're going to
lose about 20% of the width of your image when
| | 04:23 | you compose, that works well.
| | 04:28 | Then having the frame one hand is great, but
if you don't have a chance to go shop first,
| | 04:32 | if you just think of a standard 4x6, 5x7,
and 8x10 sizes, it's pretty well served.
| | 04:38 | Ben: So, I've got this camera that's got lots
of pixels in it, and I've got dozens of megapixels.
| | 04:44 | I can print really big and maybe I am on a
landscape shoot, and I am thinking, wow!
| | 04:47 | I want to make a really big print, and I
like to frame it, and hang it on my wall.
| | 04:51 | Is that just going to cost me a fortune?
| | 04:52 | Konrad: You've got money?
Ben: Okay.
| | 04:54 | Konrad: No, it is. The larger costs more.
Every time you step up in size in your matting
| | 04:59 | and framing, there is an increase in cost.
| | 05:02 | There is a big cut off point at 32x40 inches, which is
the limitation of standard sizes of matting and glazing.
| | 05:10 | There are some alternative ways to
present things, though, that can help reduce cost.
| | 05:14 | One of the things I've been doing lately
is printing on a more of the fine art paper,
| | 05:18 | and you can mount that fine art paper on board
and varnish it, and at that point you've protected
| | 05:23 | the surface with a varnish, and so you
don't need to add the glazing in front of it, so
| | 05:28 | you can eliminate the need for the matting,
and the glazing which are two of the bigger
| | 05:32 | costs in matting and framing the piece of work.
| | 05:35 | Ben: Interesting! Are there standard sizes
at larger size or is that always a custom frame?
| | 05:39 | Konrad: There are a whole series of standard
sizes that go all the way up to 32x40, and
| | 05:45 | you can often find open back frames in
those sizes that you can get quite a bit cheaper
| | 05:50 | than if you have to go with custom framing.
Ben: Okay.
| | 05:53 | We looked earlier at canvas which is a
really fun inkjet option, because you don't need
| | 05:58 | to put glass in front of it.
| | 05:59 | What are some of my
presentation options with canvas?
| | 06:01 | Konrad: With canvas, typically you'd
either want to mount it on board with an adhesive,
| | 06:06 | or if you've got enough space on the edges of
it, you can stretch it like a typical painter's
| | 06:11 | canvas on stretcher bars.
| | 06:14 | And then in some of the editions I've
done on canvas, the artist will then go in and
| | 06:19 | varnish that canvas just
as they would a painting.
| | 06:22 | Once again, that varnish, it's an acrylic-
based varnish, and it doesn't interact with the
| | 06:27 | inks at all, and it provides a
nice protective layer for the print.
| | 06:31 | Ben: Okay, that's great!
Konrad can go on like this all day long.
| | 06:35 | He is really the guy to talk to about matting
and framing, and you can see an entire course
| | 06:41 | packed with detail about this stuff, and
it's called Matting, Framing, and Hanging...
| | 06:45 | Konrad: Your Photographs.
| | 06:46 | Ben: Your photographs, okay, that's
better than like your neighbors.
| | 06:50 | Konrad: Yeah. We don't want to hang them--
Ben: Okay, right, right.
| | 06:53 | And they will actually be able to
hear you and everything in that.
| | 06:55 | Konrad: Yeah, in that course I actually am
able to speak English in an understandable way.
| | 07:00 | Ben: All right! Well, check that out,
and thank you very much Konrad.
| | 07:03 | Konrad: My pleasure! Thanks Ben!
| | 07:08 |
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|
|
8. Printing: From Start to FinishPrinting a black-and-white image| 00:00 | Just to help tie it all together, I am going
to take you through a complete process from
| | 00:05 | opening an image to getting a final print.
| | 00:07 | This is going to be a black and white printing
process, and as you have already seen, that
| | 00:11 | involves some different
steps than color printing.
| | 00:13 | But I am going to get this image adjusted.
I am going to need to do the other things
| | 00:16 | in my workflow, sizing, checking the noise
reduction, sharpening it, and then finally,
| | 00:21 | delivering it to the printer. So I have
this shot here that I took of an old piano.
| | 00:26 | I want this to be a black and white image
and the main reason being the little bits
| | 00:30 | of color that are in here, I don't think they really
add anything, I think they are actually distracting.
| | 00:35 | And this image is so much about these hard
lines and about the tonality that I think
| | 00:39 | is just going to work better as black and white.
| | 00:41 | So I have already set up a black and white
adjustment layer in Photoshop that's doing
| | 00:46 | my black and white conversion.
| | 00:47 | There wasn't a lot of toning to do in the
black and white layer.
| | 00:50 | And it turns out that actually just my exposure
is pretty good. I had done some work originally
| | 00:54 | in Camera Raw to get a little vignetting,
get my exposure set right.
| | 00:57 | So again, those are all the initial edits that
you should already know how to do.
| | 01:00 | I get in here, I look at it, and I go this
is looking pretty good.
| | 01:03 | In fact, maybe I will just print it, but I
am going to take a look at my histogram first
| | 01:06 | just to see what's going on.
| | 01:09 | So I have profiled my monitor. That doesn't
really mean anything because I am not working
| | 01:13 | in a color managed environment right now because
I am working in black and white, but it's a brand-new monitor.
| | 01:18 | I'm tempted to really distrust it and what
I've been thinking is, oh! I have got some
| | 01:22 | nice whites in here and some nice blacks.
| | 01:24 | Turns out I am right about blacks, I have
got pretty good blacks, but I really don't
| | 01:28 | have much in the way of white.
| | 01:30 | So I need a Levels adjustment on here just
to get white set properly.
| | 01:34 | So I am going to add a Levels adjustment layer.
| | 01:36 | And I am going to crank my whites over to
here, and that definitely did brighten up
| | 01:42 | the image, here is before, here's after.
But I am going to think about this.
| | 01:46 | Any time I see blobs of data in the histogram,
I want to think about what they might mean,
| | 01:51 | and what I mean is I got this blob of data
hanging out here on its own, what is that?
| | 01:56 | Well, white is over here on the right.
This chunk of data is probably the keys.
| | 02:01 | So I have a hunch that if I print this right
now, overall it's going to appear pretty dark
| | 02:07 | because even though I have got my white points
set to the rightmost point one of my data,
| | 02:11 | the bulk of the image is all of this stuff
in here and all of this down here, and I say
| | 02:17 | it's the bulk because I can see that, I can
see that it grasp, the majority of the tones
| | 02:21 | are there below middle gray.
| | 02:23 | Statistically, the image is trending towards
below middle gray, that's going to give me
| | 02:27 | an overall impression that's just dark.
So I would like to brighten up these parts.
| | 02:33 | The significant part of the data, then, if
I take out the keys, really starts about right
| | 02:39 | there, so I think I am going to move my white
point to there. I am going to go ahead and
| | 02:42 | just crank this all the way over here.
| | 02:44 | Now, ignore this part for now and watch what
happens in my before, after, all of this stuff
| | 02:50 | has brightened up a lot. It's also got more
contrasty because I have reduced the amount
| | 02:54 | of space between black and white.
| | 02:56 | There is less contrast, less distance between
the blackest and lightest points, so that's good.
| | 03:01 | I want to do a quick look around and see if
in increasing the contrast I've introduced
| | 03:06 | any banding or posterizing in
some of these abstract shapes.
| | 03:10 | I don't want them to just turn into really
geometrically clean gray blobs or anything,
| | 03:15 | but now I am still seeing nice smooth gradients in there.
So I think that's going to be a good edit.
| | 03:21 | The problem is I have blown out the keys here.
They have gone too white.
| | 03:24 | So I need to do a little masking.
| | 03:26 | I am going to grab the paintbrush and some
black paint and my mask is selected here,
| | 03:32 | so if I paint into these, I'm darkening the keys back up.
I really want to watch my histograms while I am doing this.
| | 03:40 | Now the problem is in darkening up the keys,
I think they're actually going too dark, they
| | 03:47 | are going back to their original tonality,
which now that I have seen the rest of the
| | 03:51 | image I realized, well, actually they were
looking kind of nice brightened up a little bit.
| | 03:54 | So I would like to brighten them.
| | 03:56 | I could add another Levels adjustment layer
to brighten these areas up, but easier than
| | 04:00 | that would be to simply
not mask them completely.
| | 04:04 | So instead, I'm going to switch from a black down to
a middle gray tone and paint with that into my mask.
| | 04:11 | So that's allowing some brightening to go
in, but not all of it.
| | 04:15 | Now I am losing a little bit of detail there, so I
think that that little gray tone might be too much.
| | 04:19 | I am going to go out here to a darker gray.
There we go.
| | 04:22 | I am painting back in a little bit of detail right
here, I am getting some more texture showing in here.
| | 04:29 | But still I'm getting overall brighter tone on the keys.
So I think that's going to make for some nicer contrast.
| | 04:37 | All right! I am liking that.
I think that's probably pretty good.
| | 04:42 | One thing that's nice is now that my mask
is in place, I can adjust my overall Levels
| | 04:48 | adjustment as I see fit, and when I do that,
my histogram updates.
| | 04:53 | So now I can see that with my mask in place,
my white point is set really at the brightest
| | 04:58 | part of the masked data.
So I am thinking this is looking pretty good.
| | 05:02 | I might ultimately need to get the white point
over to here to get these looking okay, but
| | 05:06 | I am going to stick with it right here. I
am going to--I think I have read that correctly.
| | 05:10 | So my image is adjusted. I need to think
about sizing, noise reduction, and sharpness.
| | 05:15 | First of all, I can tell by looking at the
image, I don't have a noise problem. I was
| | 05:18 | shooting in the fairly bright scenario with
a camera that's really good at high ISO, but
| | 05:23 | also because it's an image with shallow depth
of field, if there is a lot of noise in the
| | 05:28 | shadow, it's being blurred out, it's being
hidden. Overall, I don't think this image
| | 05:31 | has a noise reduction problem.
| | 05:33 | So I am just going to skip that and move onto
sizing and sharpening.
| | 05:38 | Sizing of course is done up here under Image >
Image Size, and I can see that my image
| | 05:43 | has defaulted or at least come into the camera
at this point at a resolution of 240 pixels
| | 05:47 | per inch, which gives me a document size of 15x10.
| | 05:51 | I'm aiming for an 8x10 here, so I am going
to change my width to 10 inches wide, which
| | 05:56 | gives me 10 inches at 6.67, which actually
ends up being the resolution that I want, 360.
| | 06:02 | So I don't need to worry about resampling anything,
this image has sized properly, I am ready to go.
| | 06:07 | It means the next thing is sharpening. I try to
always do my sharpening in a non-destructive manner.
| | 06:14 | I'm going to duplicate my Background layer
and sharpen that duplicate.
| | 06:18 | If it turns out after printing that I decide
any more sharpening or my sharpening was too
| | 06:22 | aggressive, I will be able to just ditch that
Background layer and start over.
| | 06:26 | Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen, so I am not
seeing the effects of any of my adjustment layers,
| | 06:33 | That's okay, because all I'm looking for is detail.
I am at 100% at a radius of about 1.
| | 06:39 | Because I do have some noise down in here,
noise that's not going to really probably
| | 06:42 | show up in print, but I'd rather not exaggerate
it, I could think about a selective sharpening pass.
| | 06:47 | I don't think I am going to need one. I am
just going to get it right here with this
| | 06:50 | one global sharpening adjustment.
| | 06:52 | Because a lot of this image is in soft focus,
I could increase my Radius to get more sharpness
| | 06:59 | into those blurred areas.
I don't think I want that focus.
| | 07:03 | I am going to actually go below 1.
I am going to go down to about .8 or .9.
| | 07:09 | And I'm just previewing this a little bit
by holding the mouse button, letting go.
| | 07:13 | And all I am looking for is an exaggeration
of halos anywhere in the image, want to bump
| | 07:18 | that up just a little bit to about 110.
I think that's looking pretty good, hit OK.
| | 07:23 | All right! I am ready to print this.
| | 07:26 | So, File > Print, and I just need to be sure that my
Print dialog box is configured properly. Ah! It's not.
| | 07:34 | It is set for Photoshop Manages Colors.
| | 07:37 | Because this is a black and white print, I
cannot leave Color Management to Photoshop
| | 07:41 | because I won't get a neutral print that way.
| | 07:44 | Photoshop doesn't necessarily understand how
this particular printer can achieve neutrality.
| | 07:50 | That's a real proprietary thing on Epson's part.
| | 07:53 | So I need to be sure that the printer is set
to manage colors. This is why I was saying
| | 07:57 | I am not really working in a color managed
system because with the printer managing colors,
| | 08:01 | there is no soft proofing that I can do.
| | 08:03 | I am going to go into Print Settings, make
sure that I have the right paper set, which I do.
| | 08:11 | Now I need to be able to change color to, say,
Advance Black and White and sometimes when
| | 08:18 | that goes off the way that you get it back
is you come up here to Color Matching, and
| | 08:22 | you go from ColorSync back to the EPSON Color
Controls--this is a Mac thing, it's just a
| | 08:27 | weird thing about ColorSync which is the OS
level color management engine.
| | 08:31 | Sometimes it takes over, if you've been printing
with Photoshop managed color.
| | 08:35 | With that said, I can go back to Print Settings
and make sure that color is set to Advanced
| | 08:40 | B&W Photo. I don't want any Toning.
Everything else looks okay.
| | 08:43 | I am going to hit Save, and I'm ready to print.
It's off to the printer.
| | 08:49 | Let's see what it looks like.
So this is what has come out of the printer.
| | 08:53 | And it's close, but it's not perfect.
| | 08:56 | I am liking the piano keys, I think they are
the right level of brightness.
| | 08:59 | I actually think I have got the right level
of brightness in the background, I think I
| | 09:02 | got that edit right in
terms of overall illumination.
| | 09:06 | But it's boring looking, it's just this blah of gray.
| | 09:10 | There could be more contrast back here. There
are some highlights that could be brought out.
| | 09:14 | So I want to go back and now
work on this background part.
| | 09:18 | The trick here is going to be that I have
still got these two main blobs of data in my image.
| | 09:25 | I've kind of bypassed one or brightened up
around one of them. The problem is that lower
| | 09:30 | blob of data which makes up the background,
I need to spread it out some more, I need
| | 09:34 | more contrast in those darker tones.
So I'm going to create a new Levels adjustment.
| | 09:41 | And this time I'm going to take my Midpoint
slider and just move it a little more to the right.
| | 09:50 | And you may be thinking, well, you're going
absolutely the wrong direction. The background
| | 09:53 | is getting darker. That's true, but I am going
to make up for that by moving my white point over.
| | 09:58 | So what I am trying to do is increase the
contrast in the background, and I have done
| | 10:01 | that by lessening the distance between the
midpoint and the white point.
| | 10:06 | I'm possibly running the risk of blowing some
things out there. I am not sure that I care.
| | 10:10 | I think they look okay, they have
still got some detail in them.
| | 10:13 | Of course, the problem is I've blown this out. Easy
enough to mask that out with a big black paint brush.
| | 10:19 | So I will just paint over this stuff.
| | 10:22 | Notice that I am not being real careful, I
am not meticulously staying within the lines
| | 10:27 | or anything like that.
| | 10:29 | And that's because I've got a soft edged brush,
and this image can just stand up to the edge
| | 10:36 | of this having a rough mask.
So I think that's looking pretty good.
| | 10:40 | Now note that I am in Photoshop CS6 here.
| | 10:43 | My histogram in my Levels adjustment doesn't
update all the time until I click on the sliders again.
| | 10:50 | So I am just adjusting the white point a little
bit to be sure that these very brightest points
| | 10:53 | in here are actually white.
I am feeling more confident about that.
| | 10:57 | Let's print that one.
| | 10:58 | So here is the first print that I did, and
now here's where I'm at.
| | 11:03 | Now with my revised print, I like it much more.
Again, what I was going after was this area up here.
| | 11:12 | I've put a lot of contrast in it, I brought
some brightness, it's just a lot more interesting
| | 11:16 | than it was before.
| | 11:17 | So the mistake that I made that first time
was not following my own advice for each different
| | 11:23 | area of big tonality in the image I needed
to look at the black white and midtone of
| | 11:27 | each one of those areas separately.
| | 11:29 | I adjusted the keys properly, I got overall
brightness pretty good, but I didn't then
| | 11:34 | go back and consider this area on its own
terms and think about where black and white
| | 11:38 | should be just for those.
| | 11:39 | So I think I have got a good print here, I
am going to stick with this and move on next
| | 11:43 | and do some color printing.
| | 11:48 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Printing a color image| 00:01 | So I've got this color
image that I want to print here.
| | 00:04 | It needs quite a bit of work to get it usable.
This was a pretty high dynamic range situation.
| | 00:08 | The camera metered for the sky, which is great,
I protected all these beautiful wispy colored
| | 00:12 | clouds here, but I lost
the foreground in shadow.
| | 00:16 | So I have already gone and
made a bunch of adjustments.
| | 00:19 | I first worked on the contrast to the
clouds to see if I could really get them the way
| | 00:24 | that I wanted, because that's kind of what
had attracted me to this in the first place.
| | 00:27 | And once I found out that I could get the sky
looking nice, I went ahead and brightened the foreground.
| | 00:33 | The problem is that it looks just a little
flat, so I decided to then add an additional
| | 00:38 | brightening through a gradient
mask to give it more depth.
| | 00:42 | So I have got brightening here that's
ramping off as I head towards the horizon.
| | 00:45 | Finally, I decided to add a little bit more depth
by painting in some shadows here in the mountains.
| | 00:52 | So I've got some darkening coming in here to
try and add some more plains of depth of here.
| | 00:58 | So now I am thinking about the color.
| | 01:00 | The image is very red, and I think I like
that, but I'd like to also see what it would
| | 01:06 | look like if the color
was a little more natural.
| | 01:08 | All of these white rocks down
here have gone kind of pink.
| | 01:11 | I could have made that adjustment in Camera
Raw which is definitely a better way to do it.
| | 01:15 | I'm going to just quickly go in here with
my Levels eyedropper the Midpoint dropper
| | 01:20 | and click on something gray, it's turning
my image green, there we go, that's getting
| | 01:26 | the rocks more white, that's a
more natural color down here.
| | 01:30 | But it's really messing up the sky.
| | 01:32 | This might be more accurate color, but I sure don't
like it as much as the less accurate reddish image here.
| | 01:41 | And it might be that this scene really was
this red, and I don't remember it's been a
| | 01:43 | few years, but I'm going to go with this.
| | 01:45 | This may not be the most accurate color.
Sometimes color accuracy is actually not something you're
| | 01:49 | going for. I am going to make a subjective
choice here to render the color a little false,
| | 01:54 | a little red, a little too
warm, because I like that.
| | 01:57 | My other problem with the color
is it's lacking in saturation.
| | 02:02 | I'd like it to have to more oomph, and so when
that happens, your first impulse is usually
| | 02:06 | to go to the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer
or dialog box and start cranking the Saturation,
| | 02:13 | and I just really don't like that at all.
| | 02:16 | My colors have shifted from red into orange,
they are starting to band and posterize over here.
| | 02:21 | It just doesn't look realistic,
it's a really false kind of color.
| | 02:26 | So I'm going to ditch that because actually I
think my saturation problem here is more one of tone.
| | 02:33 | If I throw on a Levels Adjustment layer, I
find that sure enough my black is weak.
| | 02:39 | Bumping that up puts my saturation back where I
want it, also gets me more contrast overall.
| | 02:45 | I think it's making the image a little too
dark. I am going to brighten up the Midpoint
| | 02:48 | and boost the black point a little
more and put things right about in there.
| | 02:53 | I am liking that as an overall look, but
now it's time to do the thing that I have been
| | 02:56 | talking about: I need to think about the
different areas of brightness and look at their white
| | 03:01 | and black points independently.
| | 03:03 | The cool thing is I have kind of got these
areas of brightness already separated out
| | 03:07 | because of the layer masks
that I have already made.
| | 03:09 | My biggest area of concern is
this brightness here in the front.
| | 03:12 | I am just not quite sure if it's right.
| | 03:14 | So I am going to look one more time at this
adjustment, and I think it could go a little bit brighter.
| | 03:22 | Obviously, the edge of the data is
way out there, that's not bright enough.
| | 03:25 | I am going to crank it in more into here.
| | 03:27 | I don't really have any highlights that I
need to worry too much about blowing out.
| | 03:31 | There might be one or two in there.
I am not going to worry about those.
| | 03:33 | Of course, prints always go darker.
So I am going to leave it in here.
| | 03:37 | I think this image is ready to go.
I have got two options.
| | 03:40 | I can soft proof it and let Photoshop take
care of the color, or I can not worry about
| | 03:45 | the print matching my screen and hope
that driver color does the best job.
| | 03:48 | I am going to walk you
through soft proofing here.
| | 03:51 | I am going to go up to my Proof Setup into
Custom and make sure that my Device to Simulate
| | 03:56 | is set on my paper, in this case it is my
Hahnemuhle Matte Paper that I am printing on.
| | 04:01 | I need to choose a Rendering Intent.
| | 04:03 | I am going to go here with Absolute
Colorimetric because that tends to modify the blacks, and
| | 04:09 | I like the blacks in this
image, but it's messing them up.
| | 04:11 | I have lost a lot of detail
in here, I don't like that.
| | 04:14 | Watch what happens when I shift it back to
Relative Colorimetric: this stuff all opens
| | 04:18 | up, these oranges in here go back to normal.
| | 04:20 | So I am thinking this is
probably how I am going to go.
| | 04:22 | I am going to turn off Black Point Compensation
just to see what it looks like, and that actually
| | 04:26 | kind of puts it back to looking like Absolute
Colorimetric, so I am going to turn that back on.
| | 04:30 | I'll take a quick stab at Perceptual, and
it's flattened some of this out, it's not
| | 04:36 | as contrasty as it was.
So I am going with Relative Colorimetric.
| | 04:40 | I have these Display Options here that we
haven't talked about, mostly because I don't
| | 04:43 | think they work very well.
| | 04:45 | If I click Simulate Paper Color, it washes
out my image because what it's trying to do
| | 04:50 | is say, well, rather than show you white, I
am going to show you what I think the color
| | 04:53 | of the paper is and how it
might shine through some of ink.
| | 04:56 | And it gives me this washed out look.
| | 04:58 | The thing is the paper never actually
washes out this bad. The ink doesn't wash out to
| | 05:03 | reveal that much of the paper color.
So I tend to not use that.
| | 05:06 | I have another option which is to try to get
it to simulate the black ink of the printer.
| | 05:10 | Again, my image shows this washed out view, and
the actual print is not going to be this washed out.
| | 05:15 | So I tend to ignore these two options.
| | 05:17 | Now it may just be that for the particular
printer paper combinations that I print on the most,
| | 05:22 | these aren't accurate. That might have to do
with paper profiling. Maybe on your printer
| | 05:25 | with the paper you use, these
do show a more accurate proof.
| | 05:29 | It's worth doing a print with Photoshop
managed color and taking a look at these and seeing
| | 05:35 | if they give you a better match than without
for--and based on my experience with my printer
| | 05:39 | and my paper, I find that they don't.
| | 05:41 | So Relative Colorimetric with Black Point
Compensation I hit OK, and it's saying that
| | 05:46 | this is what my image is going to look like.
I like it, I think it looks fine.
| | 05:50 | I am not seeing bad color shifts, I am not
seeing a terrible loss of black or of contrasts,
| | 05:55 | so I am thinking this is pretty good.
| | 05:57 | There is a way to find out if any of my
colors have gone out of gamut, and that is to go
| | 06:01 | up to the View menu and
turn on the Gamut Warning.
| | 06:04 | At this point, any colors that are beyond the gamut
of the paper would have gray pixels superimposed over them.
| | 06:11 | I can show you what that would look like
by simply throwing some colors out of gamut,
| | 06:15 | I'll throw on a Hue/Saturation layer
and crank my saturation. Ah! Look.
| | 06:20 | It's now saying that these really awful shades
of orange are out of gamut of the paper, meaning
| | 06:24 | I can't necessarily trust
how they are going to look.
| | 06:28 | So Gamut Warning can be handy if you're
having trouble keeping your colors within the gamut
| | 06:34 | of your paper, but I don't have any really
extreme colors here. I am not too worried about that.
| | 06:38 | I'm ready to move on to printing.
| | 06:40 | I like the way this is looking. I
like what my soft proof is showing me.
| | 06:45 | So to ensure that what I have proofed on
screen is what goes out to the printer, I'm going
| | 06:50 | to switch Color Handling over
to Photoshop Manages Colors.
| | 06:53 | I am, of course, working in my Adobe RGB Color
Space because that's a nice big color space,
| | 06:58 | without being too big, it's the
color space that's just right.
| | 07:01 | So I have got my Photoshop Manages Colors.
| | 07:03 | I need to pick the paper that I'm printing
on, and I need to be sure that my Rendering
| | 07:07 | Intent and Black Point Compensation are set
the way they were in my Soft Proof, if I want
| | 07:12 | the image to look like that proof which I do.
| | 07:15 | Then I am off to Print settings to make sure
that my Paper settings are set correctly and
| | 07:21 | to be very, very sure that no printer driver
color correction is happening and those are
| | 07:25 | all set correct, I can hit
Save and then I can print.
| | 07:29 | I am not actually going to print with
Photoshop color, though. As you saw earlier, I found out
| | 07:33 | that my monitor profile isn't quite right.
I need to go back and tweak it, make some
| | 07:37 | new ones, I haven't had a chance to do that.
| | 07:39 | So actually I am going to go with Printer Driver
Color. I am switching to Printer Manages Colors.
| | 07:44 | Now just a few years ago if you were serious
about printing, and you'd dialed in Printer
| | 07:48 | Manages Color, serious photo nerds would
have really laughed at you, but nowadays Printer
| | 07:53 | Driver Color is a really viable perfectly
reasonable choice for getting good prints.
| | 07:58 | They won't necessarily look like they do on
screen, but in a lot of cases, you may find
| | 08:02 | that you like them better than what you saw
on screen with your Proof Situation.
| | 08:06 | Certain textures just might be rendered differently.
So I am going to go with Printer Manages Colors.
| | 08:11 | I am going to hit my Print Settings button
here and make sure that I am set for the paper
| | 08:17 | that I want, and I need to be sure that
Printer Color Management is turned on. I don't have
| | 08:21 | that option right now, which means I need
to go back up here to Color Matching, hit
| | 08:26 | EPSON Color Controls and then make sure that
these are set accordingly. I want Color on.
| | 08:31 | I don't want any Color Adjustment.
| | 08:32 | I am going to hit Save, and I think I'm
ready to print, let that come out of the printer,
| | 08:38 | and we'll see what it looks like.
All right! Here it is.
| | 08:41 | I am pretty pleased with it, actually.
| | 08:43 | I like that I have got a nice contrast in
here, it's fading off nicely, I still have
| | 08:49 | a good detail back here, the clouds are good.
| | 08:52 | There are some completely dark places over on
the edge of the frame. I think those work okay.
| | 08:56 | Overall, the contrast, the white and black
point and mids of this area, this area, and
| | 09:01 | this area are all good. I had
to tackle them each separately.
| | 09:05 | I know I've been saying that to you over and
over and over in lots of different contexts
| | 09:09 | throughout this course, but that's really
the key to getting good prints is understanding
| | 09:14 | that each part of your image has its own little
dynamic range situation that you need to figure out.
| | 09:20 | You have got to get those bits of your tones
set right. When you do, most of the time your
| | 09:25 | color will fall into place.
| | 09:26 | If you need to skew color in one direction
or another, that's fine. Just be sure that
| | 09:30 | you never skew it so far that you introduce artifacting,
banding and posterizing, and that kind of thing.
| | 09:36 | I went with driver color here.
I think I got a good print.
| | 09:38 | It's not matching my screen.
My screen is more saturated.
| | 09:41 | But that's often going to be the case.
| | 09:43 | This paper is not going to hold the
same level of saturation as my monitor.
| | 09:47 | A lot of times when you print, if you're
really used to seeing the image on screen, and you
| | 09:50 | are not soft proofing, it's a good idea to
walk away from the monitor for a while before
| | 09:54 | you look at the print. Get that monitor
image out of your head, try to judge the print on
| | 09:59 | its own terms. Again, reflected light is very
different from transmissive light. It's never
| | 10:03 | going to match exactly.
| | 10:05 | But if you're really thinking this image is
going to be emitting light and really saturated
| | 10:09 | and whatnot, you are
always going to be disappointed.
| | 10:11 | If you step away from the monitor, open a
different image, don't look at it for a while,
| | 10:16 | and then try to judge
your print on its own terms.
| | 10:19 | One other thing to be aware of, recent studies
have shown that the longer you look at a scene,
| | 10:24 | the less ability you have to
process contrast in that scene.
| | 10:27 | I am not talking about just images, but
any scene that you see in the real world.
| | 10:32 | The idea is that visual processing uses up so
much of your brain's power that we simply
| | 10:38 | develop the ability to cut down on some
of that visual processing after we've looked
| | 10:42 | at something for long enough.
| | 10:44 | Basically, if I look at a scene, and it
doesn't kill me after a while, my brain decides okay,
| | 10:48 | there is only so much that I need to know
about that, and it stops processing contrast.
| | 10:52 | I have noticed before that when I have spent
half an hour or 45 minutes working on an image
| | 10:57 | really tweaking it and printing it and tweaking it
again, what happens is I keep adding more contrast.
| | 11:02 | Very often I come in the next day, look at
it and go, whoa! That image is too contrasty
| | 11:06 | because I was losing my ability to perceive
contrast the longer I spent with the image,
| | 11:10 | and so I was constantly cranking it up.
| | 11:12 | It's not a bad idea to do a print, walk away from it
and try to come and look at it with very fresh eyes.
| | 11:18 | Let it sit for a while and then maybe think
about some more adjustments, maybe even spread
| | 11:22 | that process over several days if you're
working on something with a lot of fine detail.
| | 11:26 | So, that's a complete
color printing process there.
| | 11:30 | Again, this all gets easier with practice.
| | 11:35 |
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ConclusionGoodbye| 00:00 | As with most things, your printing
will improve as you get more practice.
| | 00:04 | Some of that necessary practice is mechanical,
getting better at driving your image editor.
| | 00:08 | While some of it stems from improving your
print aesthetic and your understanding and
| | 00:12 | recognition good tone, color, and contrast.
| | 00:15 | You'll be well served by practicing and
experimenting with those print-specific image adjustments
| | 00:20 | that we worked at learn your histogram.
| | 00:22 | Remember to check your blacks and whites and
experiment with expanding your midtones and
| | 00:26 | remember to apply individual edits to
each differently lit area of your image.
| | 00:31 | Practice, though, can also come from
looking at other people's prints.
| | 00:34 | When you look at a photo
book or any image that you like,
| | 00:36 | see what you learn about how black,
white, and gray are used throughout the print.
| | 00:40 | Conversely, when your see a print that you
don't think is very good, try to figure out why.
| | 00:43 | Is it because the black isn't black enough?
Is it because there's no true white? Is the color
| | 00:48 | slightly warm or cool?
Personally, I find printing to be a lot of fun.
| | 00:52 | But I think you might also be surprised
to find how printing affects your shooting.
| | 00:56 | As your understanding of tone and color improves,
you'll be able to better pre-visualize prints
| | 01:01 | while you're out in the field with your camera,
and that might give you a very different view
| | 01:04 | of your subject matter or even
help you recognize new subject matter.
| | 01:08 | So don't think that the end of
this course is a stopping point.
| | 01:10 | You're really just getting started.
Load up some more images.
| | 01:13 | Practice with some more prints and have fun.
| | 01:18 |
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