IntroductionWelcome| 00:00 |
(music playing)
| | 00:04 |
Hello, I'm Tim Grey.
If you're like many photographers, you've
| | 00:07 |
probably struggled from time to time with
color corrections for your photos.
| | 00:11 |
At times you may have even felt that you
didn't have a good eye for color.
| | 00:14 |
This video course will address those
issues and more, to help improve your
| | 00:18 |
skill and confidence in applying accurate
color corrections.
| | 00:22 |
I'll start by presenting some of the
basic concepts related to your system
| | 00:25 |
configuration and color in general.
Including some great methods for
| | 00:29 |
evaluating the color in your photos.
Next we'll take a look at some of the
| | 00:33 |
basic techniques for color adjustments
including establishing accurate color in
| | 00:37 |
the raw conversion.
Using automatic adjustments, taking
| | 00:40 |
advantage of the incredible vibrants
adjustment.
| | 00:43 |
Applying a color tint or removing a color
cast and more.
| | 00:47 |
We'll then dive into focused color
corrections meaning color adjustments
| | 00:50 |
that only effect a specific area of the
photo.
| | 00:53 |
You'll see how to shift the color balance
for a specific range of colors, how to
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tone down problem colors, how to create
neutral highlight and shadow values, how
| | 01:00 |
to improve color in skin tones and much,
much more.
| | 01:05 |
We'll even take a look at a few methods
for matching specific color values in
| | 01:09 |
your images.
By the end of this course you'll have the
| | 01:12 |
knowledge and confidence you need to
apply accurate and effective color
| | 01:15 |
corrections in your photos.
Enjoy.
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1. Configuration ConsiderationsColor settings for maximum gamut| 00:02 |
As you're working to optimize the color
in your photographic images, you'll
| | 00:05 |
naturally want the best range of colors
possible.
| | 00:08 |
And that means both a wide range of
colors, so you'll have lots of options
| | 00:11 |
available, as well as a range of colors
that includes lots of saturated colors.
| | 00:17 |
Of course, that doesn't mean that every
image needs to have highly saturated colors.
| | 00:21 |
But you want to have options available.
And the Color Settings in Photoshop
| | 00:24 |
determine the range of colors that are
actually available for any photograph
| | 00:27 |
you're working on.
Let's get started by choosing Edit
| | 00:31 |
followed by Color Settings from the menu.
That will bring up the Color Settings dialog.
| | 00:36 |
This dialog might look a little a little
complicated, and it's actually going to
| | 00:39 |
look even more complicated in a few
moments.
| | 00:42 |
But there's actually only a few things
you need to concern yourself with here
| | 00:45 |
and really one primary setting.
And that's the working space for RGB images.
| | 00:51 |
When you're working on an RGB image, you
have a choice of the range of colors
| | 00:54 |
that's available to you.
The general options you'll want to choose
| | 00:59 |
among are SRGB, Adobe RGB, or ProPhoto
RGB.
| | 01:02 |
And ProPhoto RGB has the largest color
gambit of all these color spaces.
| | 01:08 |
That means it has the largest range of
possible colors that can be used within
| | 01:11 |
your image.
In fact, such a huge range of colors that
| | 01:14 |
some of the colors defined by ProPhoto
RGB aren't even real colors at all.
| | 01:19 |
They don't exist.
They're completely imaginary.
| | 01:21 |
And of course, many monitors and printers
are not able to reproduce the full range
| | 01:25 |
of colors.
But ProPhoto RGB does give you the
| | 01:28 |
maximum flexibility, and so it's the
color space that I recommend using when
| | 01:32 |
optimizing color in your photographs.
It's important, however, to keep in mind
| | 01:38 |
that with ProPhoto RGB.
Because the range of colors is so
| | 01:41 |
absolutely huge, there is a high risk of
posterization if you're working in the
| | 01:45 |
8-bit per channel mode.
So, while I recommend ProPhoto RGB as
| | 01:49 |
your working space for RGB images, I also
highly encourage you to always be working
| | 01:53 |
in a 16-bit per channel mode.
For other situations and in certain
| | 01:58 |
workflows, it might be appropriate to use
the SRGB color space.
| | 02:02 |
This can be thought of as a color space
ideally suited for digital displays.
| | 02:06 |
And for other situations, Adobe RGB is
also a good choice, especially if you'll
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be printing your images.
But again, the widest range of colors is
| | 02:13 |
available at ProPhoto RGB, so that is
what I recommend here.
| | 02:17 |
In most cases, under color management
policies, I'll set the option to convert
| | 02:21 |
to working RGB.
That means that if you open an image that
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has a different color space than your
working space, it will be converted to
| | 02:27 |
match that working space.
In other words, in this case, if I were
| | 02:31 |
to open an image that is not in the
ProPhoto RGB color space.
| | 02:35 |
It will be converted to ProPhoto RGB so
that I can take full advantage of that
| | 02:38 |
color space.
However, in some cases, such as when you
| | 02:41 |
open an 8-bit per channel image, you
don't want to convert.
| | 02:45 |
And therefore, while I set the option
here to convert, I also turn on all of
| | 02:48 |
the check boxes down below so that I will
be prompted in this situation.
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So that I can make a specific choice with
the convert to working RGB option set as
| | 02:57 |
the default.
You might notice that there is a More
| | 03:00 |
Options check box.
This will bring up a series of additional
| | 03:04 |
options that are available to you in
Color Settings.
| | 03:07 |
But I assure you, you really don't need
to worry about these options.
| | 03:10 |
You can leave all of these at their
defaults.
| | 03:13 |
There are certainly some workflows where
these options might come into play.
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But generally speaking, I recommend
leaving them at their default settings.
| | 03:20 |
And so, in fact, you can just leave the
fewer options set here to simplify that
| | 03:24 |
dialog just a little bit.
So again, the key setting here is that
| | 03:27 |
working space setting it in this case in
ProPhoto RGB.
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Most of the other settings here don't
relate to RGB images, which means they
| | 03:34 |
don't relate to you for most of the work
you're likely to do.
| | 03:38 |
When you're finished establishing your
Color Settings, you can simply click OK
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to apply those changes.
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| Color settings for RAW conversion| 00:02 |
If you're taking advantage of your
digital camera's raw capture capability,
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then when open a raw capture in Photoshop
you'll be presented with the Adobe Raw
| | 00:09 |
Camera dialog.
And here you can adjust a variety of
| | 00:13 |
settings for the image as it's being
converted from a raw capture to actual pixels.
| | 00:18 |
What you might not have been aware of
though, is that you can also specify the
| | 00:22 |
color space that that image should be
converted into.
| | 00:25 |
A raw capture, by its nature, doesn't
actually have a range of colors that
| | 00:29 |
specifically define the possibilities for
your photo.
| | 00:32 |
You're defining that at the time of
converting the raw capture, and those
| | 00:36 |
settings are found in the workflow
options dialog.
| | 00:39 |
There's a summary of the current settings
found down below the image.
| | 00:43 |
In this case, for example, you can see
that the current color space is Adobe RGB 1998.
| | 00:49 |
And my preference is to work in ProPhoto
RGB.
| | 00:51 |
So rather than converting the raw capture
into the Adobe RGB color space and then
| | 00:55 |
needing to further convert that image
into ProPhoto RGB, I can change the color
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space directly within Adobe Camera Raw.
To access the Workflow Options dialog,
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I'll simply click on the summary link
here.
| | 01:08 |
That will bring up the dialog so I can
specify which color space I'd like to use.
| | 01:12 |
From the pop-up you'll see that I have
Adobe RGB 1998, color match RGB, ProPhoto
| | 01:18 |
RGB, and S RGB.
The largest of these is ProPhoto RGB, so
| | 01:22 |
that's the color space I prefer to work
in.
| | 01:25 |
I'll go ahead and choose that option, but
one of the caveats of working in ProPhoto
| | 01:28 |
RGB is that because it's such a huge
color space, there is a relatively high
| | 01:31 |
risk of posterization if you're applying
strong adjustments to the image.
| | 01:37 |
And so it's very important to work in the
16 bit per channel mode so that you have
| | 01:41 |
as many colors available as possible.
You can see the depth is currently set to
| | 01:46 |
8 bits per channel.
I'll go ahead and click that pop-up and
| | 01:49 |
choose 16 bits per channel.
So, now I'm working in the largest
| | 01:53 |
possible color space and I have plenty of
actual colors by virtue of my 16 bit per
| | 01:56 |
channel bit depth and so this will give
me the best potential as far as applying
| | 02:00 |
color adjustments for the image.
I'll go ahead and click OK in order to
| | 02:06 |
accept those settings and those settings
will now become the default moving
| | 02:09 |
forward for Adobe Camera Raw.
It's not a bad idea to double check when
| | 02:14 |
you open an image in Adobe Camera Raw,
and you're adjusting your settings, take
| | 02:17 |
a quick look to make sure that you're set
to ProPhoto RGB and 16 bit per channel.
| | 02:23 |
But do be assured that once you've
established those settings, they will be
| | 02:26 |
the defaults for new images that you
open.
| | 02:29 |
So, with those settings established, I
can continue applying any adjustments
| | 02:33 |
before opening this image into Photoshop
to continue on with my color work.
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| The importance of calibration| 00:02 |
Color can be critically important to a
photographic image and it should go
| | 00:05 |
without saying, then, that accurate color
is critical when you're working on
| | 00:08 |
improving the color in your photos.
In other words, as you apply an
| | 00:13 |
adjustment, attempting to get more
accurate color, you want to be sure
| | 00:16 |
you're using an accurate representation
of the photo, so that your adjustments
| | 00:19 |
are based on accurate information.
In the context of working on your
| | 00:24 |
computer's display, what that means is
that, it's very important that you
| | 00:28 |
calibrate and profile your monitor.
And in particular, that you calibrate the
| | 00:32 |
display utilizing the package that
includes a sensor.
| | 00:36 |
It's called a Colorimeter and it's a
device that attaches directly to the
| | 00:39 |
front of your display and then reads a
variety of color values presented by
| | 00:42 |
speacial software.
That process will result in an ICC
| | 00:46 |
profile for your display and that profile
will be used to compensate for the
| | 00:50 |
behavior of the display to make sure that
the colors presented are accurate.
| | 00:57 |
I can't stress enough just how important
it is to calibrate and profile your
| | 01:00 |
monitor display.
Today's displays are quite stable and so
| | 01:03 |
you don't need to calibrate on too
regular a basis.
| | 01:07 |
Every six months is, really, probably
fine for most photographers, but you do
| | 01:10 |
need to do it at least initially.
And that's especially important because
| | 01:14 |
today's displays are also, generally
speaking.
| | 01:17 |
Very very bright.
In fact most LCD displays are about twice
| | 01:21 |
as bright as they really need to be and
going through a monitor calibration and
| | 01:25 |
profiling process will help compensate
for those issues.
| | 01:29 |
So if you want the most accurate color
possible it's really important, I can't
| | 01:33 |
stress enough, it is critically important
that you calibrate and profile that
| | 01:36 |
monitor display so that the colors you're
seeing are an accurate reflection of the
| | 01:40 |
information within your image files and
therefore your adjustments will be
| | 01:43 |
accurate as well.
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|
2. Evaluating ColorWild swings of color balance| 00:02 |
When discussing the subject of color
correction one of the things I hear most
| | 00:05 |
from photographers is that they just
don"t have a good eye for color.
| | 00:10 |
Sure they know good color when they see
it but they have a difficult time looking
| | 00:13 |
at an image and figuring out in which
direction they might need to shift the
| | 00:16 |
color balance.
I have a recommendation for an approach
| | 00:21 |
you can take while you're learning to
better see color in your photos, and that
| | 00:25 |
is to make wild swings in color balance.
Let's take a look.
| | 00:29 |
I'll start off by adding a new adjustment
layer for color balance.
| | 00:33 |
So I'll click on the Add New Adjustment
Layer button at the bottom of the Layers
| | 00:37 |
panel, and choose Color Balance from the
popup.
| | 00:40 |
That will cause the color balance options
to be displayed in the Properties panel,
| | 00:44 |
and here I can swing the adjustment
through their extremes.
| | 00:47 |
All the way from one side to the other,
of the full slider range.
| | 00:51 |
For this image, I might for example be
mostly concerned about the green, magenta
| | 00:54 |
axis, since there's a lot of green and
magenta in this photo, and I want those
| | 00:57 |
colors to look as accurate as possible.
I'll go ahead and click on the slider,
| | 01:02 |
and then drag all the way to the left,
and all the way to the right.
| | 01:06 |
This is sort of like an issue you might
run into when you're adjusting focus
| | 01:10 |
manually, when taking a picture.
If you're having a hard time deciding
| | 01:14 |
whether or not the image is in focus you
can take it all the way out of focus and
| | 01:17 |
then bring it back in focus and you'll
get a better sense, a better perspective
| | 01:20 |
on when the focus is accurate.
And it's the same thing here.
| | 01:25 |
By swinging through these extremes we
know that this is too much magenta and
| | 01:28 |
that's too much green.
And we can then start gradually zeroing
| | 01:32 |
in on a good range.
We also are training our eye.
| | 01:36 |
We are getting a better sense of how
different colors in the photo are
| | 01:39 |
affected by different shifts in color.
You don't have to actually think about that.
| | 01:44 |
You don't have to try to memorize the
relationships between colors but you will
| | 01:48 |
get a sense just by observing what
happens by swinging over toward yellow
| | 01:51 |
and then over toward blue.
You'll start to get a better idea even if
| | 01:56 |
you're not thinking about it, of exactly
how that's impacting the colors in your photo.
| | 02:01 |
What happens to those pink tones when we
shift toward blue or toward yellow for
| | 02:04 |
example, and that will give you a better
sense of exactly how you might adjust a
| | 02:08 |
photo in the future.
You'll start to have some level of
| | 02:12 |
intuitive sense, of which direction you
want to shift the color balance.
| | 02:17 |
The result, is that you'll be better able
to anticipate what sorts of adjustments
| | 02:20 |
you want to apply, and you'll know
exactly what it's going to take, to
| | 02:23 |
improve the color, in a photograph.
In the process you'll also possibly see
| | 02:28 |
some ways of interpreting a photo that
you wouldn't have anticipated.
| | 02:32 |
So take those sliders through their
extremes.
| | 02:34 |
Really get a sense of what might be
possible for the photo and start to get a
| | 02:37 |
better idea of how specific shifts in
color will impact an image so that you'll
| | 02:41 |
develop a better eye for color over time.
| | 02:45 |
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| Evaluating with a saturation boost| 00:02 |
As you're working on improving the color
in your photos, you might find that you
| | 00:05 |
sometimes tend to focus on just the most
dominant colors in the image.
| | 00:09 |
For example, here you might focus your
attention on the bright blue sky.
| | 00:13 |
But there can also be other hidden
colors, and those hidden colors can
| | 00:17 |
sometimes present a problem.
As you're evaluating an image, trying to
| | 00:21 |
decide on exactly what sort of color
adjustment might be necessary, one of the
| | 00:24 |
things that I find very helpful is to
really boost the saturation.
| | 00:29 |
And I don't mean just a little boost to
give the colors a little bit more pop.
| | 00:32 |
I mean, really make those colors scream
out, so that you can see what's going on
| | 00:36 |
in the image.
I'll go ahead and add an Adjustment layer
| | 00:40 |
by clicking on the Add Adjustment Layer
button at the bottom of the Layers panel,
| | 00:43 |
and I'll choose Hue Saturation.
And then on the Properties panel, I'll
| | 00:48 |
take that Saturation slider all the way
over to the right, to the maximum value.
| | 00:53 |
To be sure, the image is going to look a
bit odd.
| | 00:56 |
In some cases, you might like the effect,
but really here we're focused on it as an
| | 00:59 |
evaluative tool, so that we can get a
better sense of what sorts of colors are
| | 01:02 |
present in the image.
For example, the asphalt here, you would
| | 01:06 |
call gray, maybe even black, and yet its
very, very red with a little bit of
| | 01:10 |
magenta, some bits of blue here and
there.
| | 01:14 |
Its probably a little bit too warm.
You might want to shift the color balance
| | 01:18 |
to cool that down.
You can also see off in the distance, in
| | 01:21 |
the mountains, we have a lot of magentas,
some reds, yellows, oranges, and those
| | 01:25 |
values probably shouldn't be there.
For the most part, the gray of the
| | 01:29 |
mountains should be neutral, the snow
certainly should be relatively neutral,
| | 01:32 |
and the magenta probably shouldn't be
there at all.
| | 01:35 |
You might even notice there's some
magenta, some slightly pinkish tones,
| | 01:39 |
slightly red tones in the clouds.
Those colors are mostly caused, in this
| | 01:43 |
case, by refraction from the atmosphere.
But whatever the cause, whatever the
| | 01:48 |
reason, whatever the colors might be,
sometimes colors are found where they
| | 01:51 |
don't belong.
And by simply adding a hue saturation
| | 01:54 |
adjustment, and really kicking that
saturation up all the way to its maximum
| | 01:57 |
value, you'll get an opportunity to see
what colors are present in the image.
| | 02:03 |
And if there are areas of the photo that
you are especially concerned about, by
| | 02:06 |
all means, zoom in and get a closer look
at that portion of the photo.
| | 02:10 |
For example, looking into the background
here, I see some reds where I don't
| | 02:13 |
necessarily expect them.
Along this horizon line, you might say, I
| | 02:17 |
see some red, for example.
Whereas the greens and the hilltop here,
| | 02:21 |
and the blues up above are certainly
expected.
| | 02:24 |
There's some foliage here and this looks
like it's probably snow reflecting the sky.
| | 02:28 |
The point is, that by increasing
saturation significantly, we're able to
| | 02:31 |
get a much better sense of what colors
are in an image because we're
| | 02:34 |
exaggerating them.
So use this as an evaluative tool anytime
| | 02:38 |
you've got any question whatsoever, about
what colors are present or what sort of
| | 02:42 |
an adjustment an image might need.
And of course, when you're finished
| | 02:47 |
evaluating the image, you can either take
the saturation back down to a more
| | 02:50 |
appropriate level, if you wanted to
increase saturation with Hue Saturation,
| | 02:53 |
or you can simply throw away the
adjustment layer.
| | 02:57 |
In this case, I'd like to start with some
other adjustments first, so I'll go ahead
| | 03:00 |
and just drag the Hue Saturation
adjustment layer down to the Trash Can
| | 03:03 |
button at the bottom of the Layers panel.
So, there you have it.
| | 03:07 |
A simple, but very effective tool for
evaluating the colors, even hidden
| | 03:11 |
colors, in your photos.
| | 03:13 |
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| Using the Info panel| 00:02 |
When I'm applying adjustment to a photo I
like to get some feedback about my work.
| | 00:06 |
And that's especially important when it
comes to applying detailed Color adjustments.
| | 00:11 |
For example we might be trying to achieve
a perfectly neutral gray in our photo or
| | 00:15 |
we might want to get a red that that's
truly red, not a pinkish red or an
| | 00:18 |
orangish red.
When you're evaluating the various colors
| | 00:22 |
in your photo, the Info panel can be
extremely helpful.
| | 00:26 |
Let's take a look at some of the ways we
can work with the Info panel.
| | 00:29 |
To display the Info panel, I'll start off
by choosing Window followed by Info from
| | 00:33 |
the menu, that will bring up the Info
panel.
| | 00:36 |
I could certainly dock it somewhere if I
wanted to.
| | 00:39 |
But in this case, I will just leave it
floating.
| | 00:41 |
You'll notice that, as I mouse over the
image.
| | 00:43 |
The values for RGB, that's red, green,
and blue.
| | 00:46 |
The color model that I'm using for this,
and just about every photo.
| | 00:50 |
Those numbers change.
The numbers indicate the pixel value that
| | 00:53 |
is directly underneath my mouse pointer.
So, for example if we go up into an area
| | 00:57 |
of the sky, if I point to a bright area
of the cloud, you'll see the red green
| | 01:01 |
and blue values are very, very high.
In this case the pixel underneath my
| | 01:06 |
mouse happens to be exactly equal in
terms for the red, green and blue values.
| | 01:11 |
And what that means is that the pixel
under my mouse is perfectly neutral, it's
| | 01:15 |
a shade of gray with no color influence.
It's also a relatively bright value.
| | 01:21 |
The numbers here are being displayed in 8
bit values, so they range from 0 up to 255.
| | 01:27 |
An 208 obviously is relatively close to
255, so that tells us that, that value is
| | 01:32 |
relatively bright.
I'll move to a darker portion of the
| | 01:36 |
clouds, and you see, we don't have an
exactly neutral value down here.
| | 01:40 |
But it's close to neutral, but very much
darker, or much closer to those zero values.
| | 01:45 |
In addition to evaluating neutrality in
other words whether something is neutral
| | 01:50 |
gray with no color I can also evaluate
colors.
| | 01:53 |
If I point to the sky for example you'll
see that the red and green values are
| | 01:57 |
relatively low.
But the blue value is relatively high.
| | 02:01 |
And that makes sense, since this area of
the image, the sky, is quite blue.
| | 02:06 |
We also have a fair about of green, and
not much so much in the way of red.
| | 02:09 |
Which means that that color is also a
little closer to cyan than it would be to
| | 02:14 |
just a strict blue.
Taking a look at a different color value
| | 02:18 |
we'll point to the red hood of the car
here.
| | 02:20 |
And of course as expected we see the red
value is very, very high, and the green
| | 02:23 |
and blue values are low.
But blue is higher than green, and that
| | 02:27 |
tells us that there's a bit of blue in
the reds.
| | 02:30 |
Now you probably would expect that
because the hood of the car of course is
| | 02:34 |
reflecting some blues in the sky.
And that also causing the reds to appear
| | 02:38 |
a little bit more toward purple as
opposed to a pure red.
| | 02:42 |
You'll see the difference is stronger
over here.
| | 02:44 |
We can see visually that there's a fair
amount of pinkish tones there and sure
| | 02:48 |
enough we have a high value of red and a
relatively high value for blue compared
| | 02:51 |
to the green value, which is actually at
zero.
| | 02:55 |
So you can see that evaluating colors
within the photo can be helped by using
| | 02:59 |
the Info panel.
There's also some options for what
| | 03:02 |
information we want to display on the
Info panel.
| | 03:05 |
I'll go to the panel popup menu.
New at the top right of the info panel,
| | 03:09 |
and then choose panel options from the
popup menu.
| | 03:12 |
You'll want to make sure that the first
color read out option is set to actual color.
| | 03:17 |
That way you're seeing the actual color
values for the image as it currently stands.
| | 03:21 |
You might also, want to turn on the
Document Profile check box.
| | 03:25 |
I'll go ahead and leave that option
turned on, and then click OK.
| | 03:28 |
And you'll see that the color space is
indicated for the image.
| | 03:32 |
And this can be a good way of reminding
yourself.
| | 03:34 |
What color space the image is actually
set to.
| | 03:36 |
Normally, I prefer to work in the
ProPhoto RGB color space.
| | 03:40 |
In this particular case, I'm working with
an SRGB image, that might be because I'm
| | 03:44 |
preparing an image for online display.
Where the SRGB color space is a better
| | 03:48 |
fit in this particular case, it just
happens to be that I'm working with a
| | 03:51 |
relatively small image, in the SRGB color
space, for purposes of this video
| | 03:54 |
training course.
You'll also notice by the way that the
| | 03:59 |
image is in the 8 bit per channel mode.
That's the 8bpc indicated here, whereas
| | 04:03 |
normally I would be working in the 16 bit
per channel mode.
| | 04:08 |
But as you can see, there's a variety of
information about color that can be
| | 04:10 |
displayed right here in the Info panel.
And which can be very helpful as you're
| | 04:15 |
working on optimizing the color in your
photos.
| | 04:17 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Reading a histogram| 00:02 |
You may be accustomed to evaluating the
histogram on the back of your digital
| | 00:05 |
camera when you're checking your
exposures for example.
| | 00:09 |
But you might not be in the habit of
checking the histogram in Photoshop.
| | 00:12 |
And actually, evaluating the histogram
can be helpful in terms of evaluating
| | 00:16 |
some of the color information about an
image.
| | 00:19 |
Let's take a look at the histogram
display within Photoshop.
| | 00:23 |
To get started, I'll choose Window,
followed by Histogram from the menu.
| | 00:27 |
To bring up the Histogram panel, if it's
not already visible.
| | 00:30 |
You'll notice right away that we have
some color information presented.
| | 00:34 |
We also have a warning indicator.
There's an exclamation point and a triangle.
| | 00:39 |
And what that means is that the current
histogram that's being displayed is based
| | 00:42 |
on cached data.
It's not based on the actual pixel values
| | 00:46 |
within the photo.
Quite honestly this is rarely an issue
| | 00:49 |
you need to concern yourself with.
It's just helpful top know exactly why
| | 00:52 |
that warning symbol is there.
If you want to make it go away and
| | 00:56 |
refresh the histogram in the process you
can simply click on that warning icon.
| | 01:01 |
In most cases you'll notice a very slight
shift in the histogram display itself.
| | 01:06 |
Now that I've taken care of that, let's
consider some of the options for changing
| | 01:09 |
how the histogram is displayed.
I'll click on the panel popup menu, for
| | 01:13 |
the Histogram panel.
And from the popup, I'm going to choose
| | 01:16 |
Expanded View as a starting point, that
will give me a larger display, and it
| | 01:20 |
gives me some additional information
about the photo, here.
| | 01:24 |
Unless you're a mathematician, much of
this info is probably not meaningful.
| | 01:29 |
Nor helpful, but there is another display
option that can be very helpful.
| | 01:33 |
And that's to view all of the individual
channels individually.
| | 01:37 |
I'll go ahead and click that panel pop up
menu one more time.
| | 01:40 |
And I'll switch to All Channels view.
And now you can see that I have not just
| | 01:44 |
a composite histogram but also individual
red green and blue histograms.
| | 01:49 |
Now if you take a look at these
individual histograms and then compare
| | 01:52 |
them to the histogram we're seeing up
above.
| | 01:56 |
You'll notice some significant
similarities and that's because the
| | 01:59 |
colors histogram that's displayed by
default up at the top of the histogram
| | 02:02 |
panel is exactly the same things.
Its just those individual three channels
| | 02:07 |
stacked one on top of the other.
And in fact each of those channels is
| | 02:10 |
also displayed in a color that represents
that channel.
| | 02:13 |
So the red channel is presented as red.
The green channel is presented as green
| | 02:18 |
and the blue channel of course is
presented as blue.
| | 02:21 |
You'll notice, of course, that we're not
seeing only red, green and blue.
| | 02:24 |
And that's because some of these channels
are overlapping.
| | 02:27 |
In fact, all of them overlap in certain
places.
| | 02:30 |
And those areas are indicated in gray.
Other colors, for example yellow indicate
| | 02:34 |
where just a couple of the channels are
overlapping.
| | 02:38 |
So you can evaluate the overall image by
looking at the colors histogram display.
| | 02:42 |
But in some cases you might find it
easier to evaluate the individual histograms.
| | 02:47 |
Let's take a look at a couple of examples
of some of the information that we can
| | 02:50 |
gather from the histogram display.
To start with, we don't have a histogram
| | 02:54 |
that goes all the way over to the right
side and that indicates that there are no
| | 02:58 |
pixels in the image that have an actual
white value.
| | 03:02 |
But notice that the brightest value for
each of the historgrams shown here, red
| | 03:06 |
green and blue don't line up.
The red histogram goes way over to the
| | 03:10 |
right, almost to white.
Whereas the blue histogram stops at right
| | 03:14 |
around a middle grey value in terms of
luminance.
| | 03:18 |
That's telling us that the brightest
areas of the image are not neutral.
| | 03:22 |
They are not a shade of grey, not a value
of white for example.
| | 03:26 |
But are shifted toward red.
By contrast, the shadow areas are
| | 03:30 |
relatively neutral.
You can see that the green values are
| | 03:33 |
shifted a little bit more toward the
right.
| | 03:36 |
More toward the brighter value as
compared to red and blue.
| | 03:39 |
But the point is that the shadows are a
little more neutral not exactly neutral
| | 03:42 |
but closer to neutral compared to the
highlights.
| | 03:46 |
We can also see that the red channel
really constitutes the majority of the
| | 03:50 |
image which tells us that the image
contains a lot of red tones and cyan
| | 03:53 |
tones since red and cyan are opposites.
And therefore represented mostly by the
| | 04:00 |
red channel itself.
And looking at the image you can
| | 04:03 |
certainly see there is a fair amount of
red pixels within the image or pixels
| | 04:06 |
that at least shift a little toward red.
And we also have a fair amount of cyan
| | 04:10 |
tones in the shadows and that doesn't
necessarily mean that all we see are red
| | 04:13 |
and cyan values it just means that the
colors are shifted in those directions a
| | 04:17 |
little bit.
So for example the greens in the shadows
| | 04:21 |
have a little bit of a bluish tend to
them.
| | 04:25 |
They're a little bit cyan as oppose to
being a pure green.
| | 04:28 |
And of course we can determine that
information by looking at the colors
| | 04:31 |
histogram display as well.
With time you might find that the color
| | 04:35 |
display is easier to evaluate because you
have a little bit more information
| | 04:38 |
displayed in a smaller space compared to
looking at the individual red green and
| | 04:41 |
blue channels.
You can also choose a variety of
| | 04:45 |
different options for channel.
RGB is one that I do not recommend.
| | 04:49 |
This is just showing the overall
composite RGB data.
| | 04:53 |
It's not the same as the luminous chart
for example.
| | 04:56 |
It's just red green and blue values mixed
together so I don't reccommend that.
| | 05:00 |
You can view the individual red, green,
and blue channels at the top here.
| | 05:05 |
Obviously if you had the RGB channels
displayed below then you wouldn't need to
| | 05:08 |
switch between those individual channels.
But if you're using the smaller histogram
| | 05:12 |
display without thoe individual color
channels you could switch through the
| | 05:15 |
channels this way.
Luminosity can sometimes be helpful
| | 05:19 |
because it shows us the overall
distribution of tonal values within the
| | 05:22 |
photo, but for my money, I think the
colors display is the best option by far.
| | 05:28 |
It gives us the most information that
we're truly interested, in terms of
| | 05:31 |
evaluating our image.
So as you can see, it can be very helpful
| | 05:36 |
to evaluate the hystogram, not just when
you capture the image to check exposure,
| | 05:40 |
but also as you're evaluating colors
while you're optimizing your photo.
| | 05:47 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Reviewing color channels| 00:02 |
You may already be aware that in a
digital photo, color values are
| | 00:05 |
represented by individual values for red,
green, and blue.
| | 00:10 |
In other words, the color itself is not
actually identified per se, but rather
| | 00:14 |
identified based on how much red, how
much green, and how much blue light it
| | 00:17 |
will take to produce the desired color in
a given area.
| | 00:23 |
In other words, for a given pixel, those
red green and blue values in Photoshop,
| | 00:26 |
are represented by color channels, the
red, green, and blue channel, and we can
| | 00:30 |
view those channels thanks to the
Channels panel.
| | 00:35 |
If the Channels panel is not currently
visible, you can choose Window > Channels
| | 00:38 |
from the menu.
In my case, I already have it available
| | 00:42 |
along with my Layers panel.
So, I'll simply click the Tab for the
| | 00:46 |
Channels panel, you can see on the
channels panel that I have an RGB color channel.
| | 00:51 |
That's my composite color image, as well
as red, green, and blue channels.
| | 00:56 |
The RGB channel is actually not a channel
at all.
| | 00:59 |
It's just essentially a shortcut to
viewing the entire image, with red,
| | 01:02 |
green, and blue values completed and
blended together.
| | 01:05 |
But we can view the individual channels
at full size, if we'd like.
| | 01:10 |
Simply by clicking on the thumbnail for
the channel we want to take a look at.
| | 01:14 |
I'll click, for example, on the red
thumbnail, and you'll see, that now the
| | 01:17 |
visibility is enabled for the red
channel, but it's disabled for green and blue.
| | 01:22 |
And so, I'm now looking at only the red
channel, we can see for this image,
| | 01:26 |
there's a bit of noise on the red
channel.
| | 01:30 |
And that's not all too uncommon,
especially since in this case, the image
| | 01:33 |
was captured at a rather high ISO
setting.
| | 01:36 |
We can also get a sense of the level of
detail in the individual channel that
| | 01:38 |
we're looking at.
For example, the flower has a fair amount
| | 01:41 |
of red in it since the values there are
relatively bright.
| | 01:45 |
It looks like we might have some areas
where there has been a little bit of loss
| | 01:47 |
of detail in the red channels.
So, I'll want to keep an eye on that as I
| | 01:51 |
continue adjusting this image.
And of course, any areas of shadow
| | 01:55 |
within the photo will be dark on the red
channel, as well as on the other
| | 01:58 |
channels, on green as blue as well,
indicating that the value is very dark.
| | 02:04 |
But I can evaluate the channels one by
one, I can take a look at the red
| | 02:06 |
channel, then take a look at the green
channel, followed by the blue channel.
| | 02:11 |
And of course, I can switch back and
forth among them at will.
| | 02:14 |
Generally speaking, you'll find the
maximum amount of detail on the green channel.
| | 02:18 |
And that's because the green channel
represents the range of color values that
| | 02:22 |
are most likely to occur in the natural
world.
| | 02:26 |
That's also the reason that a typical
imaging sensor in a digital camera has
| | 02:30 |
two green pixels for every red or blue
pixel.
| | 02:34 |
So, in a typical sensor you'll have for
every four pixels, two green but only one
| | 02:38 |
red and one blue.
Taking a look at the blue channel that is
| | 02:42 |
usually where we're going to see the most
noise, and oftentimes the least amount of
| | 02:46 |
quality detail.
And so again this could give us a good
| | 02:49 |
sense of how much noise is in the image,
how much detail we might be losing in the
| | 02:52 |
shadows for example.
So, in this photo we're seeing a lot of
| | 02:57 |
blue in the flower, and a lot of red in
the flower, but not quite as much green,
| | 03:00 |
the green values are a little bit darker.
And that tells us that red and blue are
| | 03:06 |
the colors that make up that flower,
which makes sense, since the flower of
| | 03:09 |
course is purple and this case.
We also can see that the green areas of
| | 03:14 |
the photo are bright on the green
channel, but relatively dark on the red
| | 03:17 |
and the blue channels.
And so that gives us another sense that
| | 03:22 |
the greens are relatively dominant in
this photo, at least in portions of the photo.
| | 03:27 |
So, again by looking at the individual
channels we're able to determine where we
| | 03:30 |
might have noise.
Which color issues might be a problem,
| | 03:34 |
which colors are dominant in the photo
and even a sense of how much detail is
| | 03:37 |
present within the image and any areas
where we think we might have a loss of detail.
| | 03:42 |
For example the shadows here, you might
want to zoom in to get a closer look.
| | 03:46 |
You can see here not a lot of detail and
not a lot of smooth transitions on the
| | 03:50 |
red channel, and also on the blue
channel.
| | 03:53 |
Although for the most part just blocked
up on the blue channel, whereas for green
| | 03:56 |
the information looks reasonably good.
So, evaluating those individual color
| | 04:01 |
channels can be very helpful in getting a
sense in what your up against.
| | 04:05 |
What sorts of color problems might exist,
what sorts of noise levels you might see
| | 04:09 |
in the photo.
And which colors might have a loss of
| | 04:13 |
detail that you'll want to pay attention to
as you're optimizing the photo.
| | 04:18 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding color temperature| 00:02 |
For many photographers the concept of
adjusting color in a photo might bring to
| | 00:05 |
mind, red, green and blue.
The individual color channels for an RGB
| | 00:10 |
image and therefore the directions that
we might use for shifting color.
| | 00:14 |
We can go to the red channel and shift
between red and cyan for example.
| | 00:19 |
Or the green channel to shift between
between green and magenta.
| | 00:22 |
But in the context of our digital
cameras, the concept of color actually
| | 00:25 |
relates to color temperature.
Color temperature is measured on a range
| | 00:30 |
of degrees Kelvin.
On the Kelvin scale, what we think of as
| | 00:34 |
a cool color, a blue value for example,
is actually very high on the Kelvin scale.
| | 00:39 |
And what we think of as a warm value,
yellows and oranges, are fairly low on
| | 00:42 |
the Kelvin scale.
Your digital camera attempts to
| | 00:46 |
compensate for the color temperature of
the light.
| | 00:49 |
In other words, the actual color of the
light illuminating your subject to
| | 00:52 |
produce a more neutral or pleasing value.
It can be helpful to have a good
| | 00:56 |
understanding of color temperature as it
relates to the color adjustments we might
| | 00:59 |
apply to our images.
In your camera you have a variety of
| | 01:04 |
Preset options.
And it can be helpful to go through those
| | 01:07 |
Presets and get a sense of the
compensation that's being applied.
| | 01:11 |
For raw captures, those Presets actually
don't affect the color that's being
| | 01:14 |
recorded, the values that are being
interpreted by your image sensor.
| | 01:18 |
Instead, those color temperature
adjustments are applied after the fact.
| | 01:22 |
But if I choose a color temperature
Preset when working on my image in Adobe
| | 01:25 |
Camera Raw, I can get a better sense of
the compensation that's being applied.
| | 01:30 |
For example, cloudy causes the image to
be warmed up.
| | 01:34 |
And that's because cloudy conditions
result in a fairly cool appearance in a
| | 01:38 |
photo, more blues and cyan's rather than
reds and yellows.
| | 01:42 |
And so, Adobe Camera Raw in this case is
trying to compensate for that cool light
| | 01:45 |
by warming things up.
Of course, this photo is not in need of
| | 01:49 |
any warming.
We could choose a different option, for
| | 01:53 |
example, Tungsten, which in this case is
closer to what the actual color
| | 01:55 |
temperature of the light was.
A fairly yellow to orange light, and
| | 02:00 |
compensating for that value gives us a
more neutral result in the photo.
| | 02:06 |
So again, color temperature is really all
about compensating for the color of light.
| | 02:10 |
That doesn't mean of course, that we
always want to completely compensate for
| | 02:13 |
the color of light.
If I shift the temperature slider over to
| | 02:17 |
the left more, I might get a neutral
value.
| | 02:20 |
Where I don't have any influence at all
from the color of the light source.
| | 02:23 |
But that's not necessarily the most
pleasing result.
| | 02:26 |
So we're not always trying to entirely
compensate for the color of light.
| | 02:30 |
We just want to produce the most pleasing
result possible.
| | 02:33 |
By understanding the overall concept of
color temperature, you'll be able to get
| | 02:36 |
better results in your raw captures.
But I think you'll also find that you
| | 02:40 |
have a better sense of color overall.
And perhaps will be better equipped to
| | 02:44 |
apply idealized color adjustments to all
of your photos.
| | 02:48 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Color models and the color picker| 00:02 |
Throughout Photoshop you may find color
represented in a variety of different
| | 00:05 |
ways, and so it can be helpful to
understand the color models that are
| | 00:08 |
available within Photoshop.
And in some cases you'll also want to
| | 00:13 |
choose a particular color for a specific
task.
| | 00:16 |
We can explore both of these
possibilities by examining the Color Picker.
| | 00:20 |
To bring up the Color Picker, I'll simply
click on the foreground Color Swatch near
| | 00:24 |
the bottom of the toolbox, and that will
bring up the Color Picker Dialog.
| | 00:28 |
And one of the things that's interesting
about the Color Picker is that it
| | 00:31 |
provides us with a variety of different
color models to determine specific color values.
| | 00:36 |
Most photographers are probably already
familiar with the RGB color model for
| | 00:41 |
example, and here we have values of red,
green and blue, representing how much
| | 00:45 |
light of each of those colors it takes to
produce a specific color.
| | 00:51 |
At the moment for example we have black
set as the colour that has been selected,
| | 00:55 |
and that's represented by RGB values of
0, 0 and 0.
| | 00:59 |
0 red, 0 green and 0 blue, which means no
light of any of those three colors,and
| | 01:03 |
therefore no light at all, and a black
pixel.
| | 01:08 |
I'll go ahead and click on a different
color, in this case a shade of red, and
| | 01:11 |
you'll notice that those RGB values
change.
| | 01:14 |
We now have a relatively high value for
red, and a moderately low setting for
| | 01:18 |
both green and blue.
Those green and blue values are equal to
| | 01:22 |
each other which tells us that there is
no color contamination for the red.
| | 01:27 |
We have a tint, that is red without any
other color influence.
| | 01:31 |
It's not a pure red, there are other
values involved, but those values are
| | 01:34 |
shifting the color.
In addition to the RGB color model,
| | 01:39 |
though, we can also utilize the HSB
model, and that's Hue, Saturation, and Brightness.
| | 01:45 |
Hue is the basic color, that's
represented at the moment by this
| | 01:48 |
vertical gradient.
And so, I can choose, for example, a
| | 01:52 |
green value, or a blue value, or a red
value, hue is measured as degrees around
| | 01:56 |
a circle.
Specifically, a color wheel, with red at
| | 02:00 |
0 degrees, and all of the other values
being represented around that circle.
| | 02:05 |
In addition to the base color, the hue we
can also adjust Saturation and Brightness.
| | 02:11 |
Saturation is the purity, or intensity of
the color, and at the moment that's
| | 02:15 |
represent by the horizontal axis in this
larger gradient area.
| | 02:20 |
We also have Brightness and that's
represented by the vertical axis.
| | 02:25 |
So, I can have a very bright and vibrant
shade of green by moving up toward the
| | 02:28 |
top right corner for example.
Or a very dark and relatively neutral
| | 02:33 |
shade of green by moving down toward the
bottom left.
| | 02:37 |
The reason the vertical gradient is
currently allowing me to choose hue, is
| | 02:40 |
because that's the button that's
selected.
| | 02:43 |
If I click on S, I'll see Saturation
represented by that gradient, and if I
| | 02:47 |
click B, I'll see brightness represented
by that gradient.
| | 02:51 |
But I typically start off with hue
selected for this small vertical
| | 02:54 |
gradient, and then adjust the overall
color in terms of Saturation and
| | 02:57 |
Brightness using the larger two axis
gradient.
| | 03:01 |
We also have values for lab color, in the
Lab Color mode we're actually
| | 03:04 |
representing color based on the way the
human visual system interprets that color.
| | 03:09 |
We have a likeness value represnted by
the L channel, and then color represented
| | 03:13 |
by the A and B channels.
The L channel represents the luminance
| | 03:18 |
values for the pixels in other words how
bright the pixel is, while the A and B
| | 03:21 |
channels represent color.
The A channel represents the shift
| | 03:25 |
between green and magenta, and the B
channel represents the shift between
| | 03:29 |
yellow and blue.
For the HSB, RGB and Lab Color Modes,
| | 03:33 |
we're actually able to choose which
particular parameter will be represented
| | 03:37 |
by the vertical axis with the other
values available on the larger two axis gradient.
| | 03:45 |
However, we're not able to choose options
for CMYK, and that's because CMYK relates
| | 03:49 |
to ink levels, cyan, magenta, yellow, and
black that is used for printing an image.
| | 03:56 |
We can see CMYK values here, but those
reflect a particular CMYK profile.
| | 04:02 |
And so I don't recommend using CMYK
values when selecting a particular color
| | 04:06 |
in the Color Picker.
Instead I would stick with HSB, RGB or
| | 04:10 |
Lab, you're probably most familiar with
RGB in the contents of digital imaging.
| | 04:15 |
But the HSB option I think is the one
that makes the most sense for
| | 04:18 |
photographers when you're looking for a
particular color value.
| | 04:23 |
The key is to understand the various
color modes that are available within
| | 04:26 |
Photoshop, so that as that information is
presented to you, you'll be able to make
| | 04:29 |
sense of it.
And of course you can use these various
| | 04:33 |
color modes to find just the right color
when you need to perform some color work
| | 04:36 |
on an image.
For example, painting a color correction
| | 04:40 |
into a specific area of a photo.
For now, I'll go ahead and just click the
| | 04:44 |
Cancel button, in order to close the
Color Picker and leave my colors set to
| | 04:47 |
their defaults of black and white.
But of course in many cases, I'll want to
| | 04:52 |
use that Color Picker to find a color,
and in the process the Color Picker can
| | 04:55 |
also be helpful for helping understand
color.
| | 04:59 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Foundations of Color AdjustmentBasic color for RAW images| 00:02 |
If you're taking advantage of your
digital Cameras Raw capture capability,
| | 00:05 |
and I certainly encourage you to do that.
Then when you open that raw capture in
| | 00:09 |
Photoshop you'll be preseneted with Adobe
Camera Raw.
| | 00:12 |
This gives you the opportunity to apply a
variety of adjustments to the image in
| | 00:16 |
order to optimize the appearance of the
photo, including color.
| | 00:21 |
Before actually converting the raw data
gathered by your image sensor into actual
| | 00:26 |
pixel values, RGB values.
And RGB, red, green and blue, is the
| | 00:30 |
color model that you're probably most
familiar with.
| | 00:34 |
And it's the way color information is
presented to you in most cases within Photoshop.
| | 00:39 |
But in Adobe Camera Raw, you're not
dealing with RGB values, but rather color
| | 00:43 |
temperature adjustments, a white balance
setting.
| | 00:46 |
Color temperature, or white balance,
relates to the color of light.
| | 00:50 |
In other words what color was the light
illuminating the scene, and therefore
| | 00:54 |
what color do you need to compensate for
if you want to neutralize the colors in
| | 00:58 |
the scene.
We adjust color in the rocking version
| | 01:02 |
process by shifting the balance between
blue and yellow as well as green and magenta.
| | 01:07 |
And those happen to be by the way the
color values that are represented by the
| | 01:11 |
lab color model and also the way the
human visual system interpretes color.
| | 01:16 |
Beyond the temperature and tint sliders,
there are also a couple of other options
| | 01:20 |
available to you in terms of adjusting
color in the raw conversion process.
| | 01:25 |
You can choose a particular preset from
the white balance pop up.
| | 01:29 |
This is exactly the same as though you
had chosen particular preset on your
| | 01:32 |
camera as far as the white balance
setting is concerned.
| | 01:36 |
So for example if my camera were set to
cloudy, the image would be warmed up just
| | 01:40 |
a little bit.
Now bear in mind by adjusting the setting
| | 01:44 |
in camera, you're not actually changing
the information that was gathered by the
| | 01:47 |
image censor.
You're simply establishing a base line or
| | 01:51 |
a default value for the color in the
photo.
| | 01:54 |
You can always change that value during a
raw conversion process.
| | 01:59 |
I'll go ahead and switch to daylight for
example, and that means that the light
| | 02:02 |
was relatively warm.
And therefore as you can see the image is
| | 02:06 |
translated into a slightly cooler result.
I can also take a look at the other
| | 02:11 |
options, fluorescent will give me a very
cool result.
| | 02:14 |
Of course in this case the image
obviously was not captured under
| | 02:16 |
fluorescent lighting conditions.
So this is not exactly accurate, though
| | 02:20 |
it might be interesting in some cases.
In addition to the popup, we can also
| | 02:24 |
choose a particular value in the image,
by using our white balance tool.
| | 02:28 |
If I click on the eye dropper, on the
toolbar, I can then click in an area of
| | 02:31 |
the image, that I think should be
perfectly neutral.
| | 02:35 |
That, will cause the color in the image,
to be adjusted, so that the pixel I click
| | 02:39 |
on, is in indeed neutral.
If I click on a yellow area of the photo,
| | 02:43 |
for example, I'll get a very blue result.
If I click on that purplish sort of color
| | 02:47 |
in the flower, I'll get a much warmer
result.
| | 02:50 |
If I click down the wood here, there's
some other colors there that will cause a
| | 02:54 |
shift toward a cooler image.
But clicking on an area that should be
| | 02:58 |
neutral, gives me a relatively neutral
result in most cases.
| | 03:02 |
Of course, accurate color is not always
the best color and so it's important to
| | 03:05 |
consider possibly fine-tuning the
temperature and tint values.
| | 03:10 |
And in fact, because I'll end up
fine-tuning those values in most cases
| | 03:14 |
anyway, I tend not to use the Eye-Dropper
tool and I tend not to use the
| | 03:17 |
white-balance pop-up.
Instead, I simply work directly on the
| | 03:22 |
temperature and tint sliders.
I'll go ahead and switch the white
| | 03:26 |
balance back to as shot, so that I get my
initial starting point.
| | 03:29 |
And then I can adjust the temperature
slider toward more yellow or more blue as
| | 03:33 |
needed in order to produce a more
accurate result or a more pleasing result.
| | 03:38 |
Keep in the mind, the temperature
adjustment is both corrective and creative.
| | 03:42 |
I can try to neutralize the color, but I
can also shift things toward a slightly
| | 03:46 |
warmer value if I prefer.
The tint slider allows it to shift
| | 03:50 |
between green and magenta and that tends
to be purely corrective.
| | 03:54 |
We don't tend to want a green or a
magenta tint to our photos.
| | 03:58 |
So generally we're trying to compensate
for any tint that might exist to produce
| | 04:01 |
a more neutral value at least along that
axis.
| | 04:05 |
So that something that was grey in the
actual scene appears as an actual shade
| | 04:09 |
of grey.
You can start with that as your starting
| | 04:12 |
point and then fine-tune using the
temperature slider.
| | 04:15 |
Perhaps warming things up a little bit
more or cooling things down if you feel
| | 04:18 |
that's more appropriate.
But the key is to bare in mind that we're
| | 04:23 |
using a different scale than you might be
accustomed to as far as adjusting color
| | 04:26 |
when we're processing a raw capture.
We're shifting between blue and yellow
| | 04:32 |
and green and magenta rather than using
RGB values.
| | 04:35 |
With a little practice of course this
will become second nature and you'll be
| | 04:38 |
able to fine-tune the color in your
photos very very quickly, in order to
| | 04:41 |
produce a result that is as optimum as
possible right from the start, right from
| | 04:45 |
that raw conversion.
| | 04:48 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Automatic color with Levels or Curves| 00:02 |
Both the Levels and Curves adjustments in
Photoshop are generally perceived as
| | 00:05 |
being tonal adjustments.
And they are first and foremost aimed at
| | 00:09 |
applying tonal adjustments, rather than
color adjustments, but they can most
| | 00:13 |
certainly be used for color as well.
And in fact, they can both be used for a
| | 00:19 |
relatively automatic adjustment to color
in your photos.
| | 00:23 |
Let's take a look at how this can be
done.
| | 00:24 |
I'll go ahead and add a new Adjustment
layer.
| | 00:27 |
I'll click on the Add Adjustment Layer
button at the bottom of the Layers panel,
| | 00:30 |
and I'll choose either Levels or Curves.
In this case I'll go ahead and choose Levels.
| | 00:35 |
That will add a new Levels adjustment
layer, and you can see on the Properties
| | 00:38 |
panel, I have my controls for Levels.
There's an Auto button, and I could click
| | 00:43 |
that button to apply an automatic
adjustment to the image, but the default
| | 00:46 |
focus will be on tonality, not so much on
color.
| | 00:50 |
But we can adjust the settings for that
automatic adjustment, by going to the
| | 00:54 |
panel popup menu, up to the top right of
the Properties panel, and then choosing
| | 00:58 |
Auto Options.
This will bring up a dialog, where we can
| | 01:03 |
apply and adjust, all at once, the
settings for our adjustment.
| | 01:08 |
You can see that the Enhance Brightness
and Contrast option is established here
| | 01:11 |
in the Auto Color Correction Options
dialog, but that's not really adjusting
| | 01:15 |
the color.
If I choose one of the other options
| | 01:18 |
though, I can then also turn on the Snap
Neutral Mid-tones check box.
| | 01:22 |
And that will cause the mid-tones to be
adjusted in an effort to neutralize those
| | 01:26 |
mid-tone values, to produce a gray that
actually appears gray, for example.
| | 01:31 |
I can go through the other options.
Any of the first three here will allow me
| | 01:35 |
to Snap Neutral Mid-tones, and so really
I just want to find the option that
| | 01:39 |
produces the most accurate result.
I think the Enhanced Monochromatic
| | 01:44 |
Contrast option is working well here, and
I find that that actually tends to be the
| | 01:48 |
case for most images where I'm focused on
a color correction.
| | 01:52 |
But again, making sure that this Snap
Neutral Mid-tones check box is turned on,
| | 01:56 |
I'll go ahead and click OK.
I can then turn off the visibility for
| | 01:59 |
that Levels adjustment layer to see the
before version.
| | 02:03 |
I can click on the eye icon to turn off
the visibility of the Levels adjustment
| | 02:06 |
layer, allowing me to see a before
version of the image, and then I can
| | 02:09 |
click once again to see the after
version.
| | 02:13 |
We have much more accurate color in the
photo, and the best part is that it was
| | 02:17 |
very quick and easy to apply.
I could, of course, continue fine tuning
| | 02:21 |
the color with a variety of different
adjustments, but you can see I've
| | 02:24 |
achieved a very good basic result in
virtually no time at all, using those
| | 02:28 |
Auto Options for either Levels or Curves.
| | 02:32 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| The essentials of Color Balance| 00:02 |
If you've spent any time at all working
with Photoshop or other image editing
| | 00:05 |
applications, you're surely familiar with
the Color Balance adjustment.
| | 00:10 |
This is generally regarded as the most
basic Color Adjustment tool, and yet the
| | 00:13 |
Color Balance Adjustment actually
contains some hidden features that you
| | 00:16 |
might not be familiar with.
Let's start off by taking a look at the
| | 00:21 |
basics of working with Color Balance with
your images.
| | 00:24 |
I'll start of by adding an adjustment
layer.
| | 00:26 |
I'll click on the Add Adjustment Layer
button, the half black half white circle
| | 00:30 |
icon at the bottom of Layers panel.
And then I'll choose Color Balance from
| | 00:35 |
the popup menu that appears.
That will add a Color Balance adjustment
| | 00:38 |
layer, and it will also present the Color
Balance controls on the Properties panel.
| | 00:44 |
The sliders available for Color Balance,
allow you to shift between the primary
| | 00:48 |
color values: red and cyan, green and
magenta, and blue and yellow.
| | 00:53 |
Those represent the red, green and blue,
or RGB, primary colors for emitted light
| | 00:58 |
as well as the CMYK, the cyan, magenta
and yellow colors that are the primary
| | 01:02 |
colors for reflected light for
photographic prints for example.
| | 01:10 |
My general approach to using Color
Balance is to start with the biggest problem.
| | 01:14 |
In other words, if you've gone into Color
Balance, there's probably some color
| | 01:17 |
issue in the photo.
Here the image looks to have a little bit
| | 01:20 |
of a pinkish maybe reddish color tint,
and so I might start with the
| | 01:24 |
magenta/green slider for example, in
order to shift things away from magenta
| | 01:27 |
and toward green.
I'll go ahead and click and drag on the
| | 01:33 |
slider, and moving toward green, just a
little bit, you can see already a
| | 01:36 |
significant improvement within the photo.
I can then move among the other color sliders.
| | 01:42 |
And this is something that I really
strongly encourage.
| | 01:45 |
Even if you've adjusted one slider, and
things look pretty good, I encourage you
| | 01:48 |
to play around with the other two
sliders.
| | 01:51 |
You might find that even with only a
slight adjustment of one or both of the
| | 01:54 |
other channels, you're ending up with a
better result.
| | 01:58 |
For example, I might want to warm things
up a little bit with a yellow shift, or
| | 02:01 |
cool things down a little bit with
something of a blue shift.
| | 02:05 |
In any event, adjusting all three of
these sliders can be very helpful in
| | 02:09 |
terms of producing the best results and
in some cases results you might not have anticipated.
| | 02:15 |
Generally speaking, I'll leave the
Preserve Luminosity check box turned on.
| | 02:20 |
This will cause the color values in the
image to be adjusted so that the
| | 02:23 |
perceived luminance values, the perceived
brightness of the overall image, is left
| | 02:27 |
as it is.
And this primarily relates to the
| | 02:31 |
differences in terms of our perception of
luminance relative to different colors.
| | 02:36 |
So, if we shift more toward yellow versus
blue, normally there'd be a difference in
| | 02:40 |
the perceived luminance values.
With Preserved Luminosity turned on, that
| | 02:44 |
luminance will be maintained, so we'll
maintain the same overall brightness
| | 02:48 |
values for the photo.
We also have the ability to determine
| | 02:52 |
which tonal values within the image we're
really going to focus our attention on.
| | 02:57 |
The default is Midtones and that's
usually where I'll spend most of my time
| | 03:01 |
working because we'll have the most
impact on our photo by focusing our
| | 03:04 |
adjustments on those midtone values.
They're the most numerous in the photo
| | 03:09 |
and the ones where we're going to see the
biggest difference.
| | 03:13 |
But in some cases you might want to focus
your adjustment on the Shadows or the Highlights.
| | 03:17 |
I'll go ahead and choose Highlights for
example.
| | 03:19 |
And now as I shift between, in this case
red and cyan, you might not see too much
| | 03:23 |
of a difference compared to the Mid-tones
adjustment but, there is an emphasis as
| | 03:27 |
far as the adjustment on the brightest
values.
| | 03:31 |
So, I'm having a stronger effect in the
bright areas of the clouds than I am on
| | 03:34 |
the rest of the image.
In most cases, I'll tend to work
| | 03:38 |
exclusively on Mid-tones when I'm in
Color Balance, but I can fine tune the
| | 03:42 |
Highlights and Shadows just a little bit.
But generally speaking, those adjustments
| | 03:48 |
will be very, very modest.
I'll make very small adjustments for
| | 03:52 |
Highlights and Shadows using the
Mid-tones adjustments for my bigger moves.
| | 03:56 |
And quite honestly, if I want to have
that level of control over the color in
| | 04:00 |
the image, I'll tend to work with Curves
rather than Color Balance.
| | 04:04 |
So in most cases, I'll leave Tone set to
Mid-tones and work directly from there.
| | 04:08 |
So, again, working in Mid-tones and
starting off with the channel that
| | 04:12 |
represents the biggest color problem in
the photo, but then working with all
| | 04:15 |
three channels to see what results will
produce the best overall color in the photo.
| | 04:21 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Darkening for color| 00:02 |
When we're trying to improve the color in
our photos, we naturally tend to think
| | 00:05 |
about color adjustments and that makes
perfect sense, of course.
| | 00:09 |
We'll generally have the biggest impact
on color by focusing on color adjustments.
| | 00:13 |
But you might be surprised what a big
difference tonal adjustments can make
| | 00:17 |
when it comes to the color in your
photos.
| | 00:20 |
And specifically what I refer to as
adding density to an image.
| | 00:24 |
That really just means darkening down the
image so that there's darker values overall.
| | 00:29 |
But in that process, you'll actually
bring out a little bit more color information.
| | 00:33 |
Let's take a look at an example so we can
get a better sense of just what's going
| | 00:36 |
on here.
I'll start off with a very simple
| | 00:39 |
adjustment, a levels adjustment.
So I'll add a Levels Adjustment layer.
| | 00:43 |
An here with levels, I can adjust the
black point, the white point, or the
| | 00:46 |
mid-tone values, but I'm only going to
focus on the midtone values right now.
| | 00:51 |
An so I'll grab that center slider, the
gray slider, an move it over toward the right.
| | 00:57 |
As I do, the image gets darker, but you
also notice that the color intensity
| | 01:01 |
seems to go up.
It's almost like I've gotten a free boost
| | 01:05 |
in saturation.
What's actually happening is I'm just
| | 01:08 |
adding density to those colors.
There's essentially darker information,
| | 01:11 |
easier to see information and more
contrast.
| | 01:15 |
We don't have the washed out appearance
that I started with.
| | 01:18 |
If I move that slider over to the left,
you can probably appreciate this a little
| | 01:21 |
bit more.
As the image gets brighter and brighter,
| | 01:24 |
we're not able to see those colors quite
as well.
| | 01:27 |
Obviously, we can't just keep darkening
an image forever hoping to get more and
| | 01:31 |
more colors.
But notice as that image gets darker and
| | 01:34 |
darker, the saturation does seem to go up
quite a bit.
| | 01:39 |
That's not to say I would over darken an
image in order to bring out more color
| | 01:42 |
saturation, after all, we do have a
variety of ways of increasing saturation
| | 01:46 |
all by itself.
What I am saying though, is that in many
| | 01:50 |
cases, you might get a double benefit by
darkening the image just a little bit.
| | 01:56 |
By having greater density in those
midtone values, you have a less washed
| | 01:59 |
out appearance, a more pleasing
appearance in the photo.
| | 02:03 |
But you're also getting a free boost in
overall color saturation.
| | 02:06 |
So as you're adjusting your overall
brightnes values, if you're not sure
| | 02:10 |
exatly where you want to end up.
You're switching between slightly lighter
| | 02:14 |
versus slightly darker version of the
image, I would tend toward that slightly
| | 02:18 |
darker version.
Both because the density tends to look a
| | 02:22 |
llittle more pleasing as far as tonal
values, but also because those colors can
| | 02:25 |
pop just a little bit, with that added
density, with thedarkening of the photo.
| | 02:31 |
So pay attention as you're making your
tonal adjustments, and you may find
| | 02:34 |
you're getting from free benefits as far
as color adjustments along the way.
| | 02:39 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Vibrance vs. saturation| 00:02 |
There's a tendency to want the colors in
our photographs to be relatively well saturated.
| | 00:07 |
In other words, to stand out, to pop in
the image.
| | 00:10 |
We don't want to take things too far, but
we do want the colors to look their best.
| | 00:14 |
When we talk about saturation, what we're
really talking about is the purity of colors.
| | 00:19 |
When we increase saturation for colors,
we're moving those colors toward the more
| | 00:23 |
pure versions of the primary colors.
So for example, in an RGB image the
| | 00:28 |
primary colors are red, green an blue.
The subtractive primaries, the opposites
| | 00:33 |
of those are cyan, magenta and yellow.
So, as we increase saturation, we're
| | 00:38 |
shifting the colors more toward those
values, making all the colors appear a
| | 00:41 |
bit more intense.
But there are a couple of different ways
| | 00:45 |
we could approach an increase, or even a
decrease in saturation.
| | 00:50 |
Those include the Hue saturation
adjustment and the Vibrance adjustment.
| | 00:54 |
Let's take a look at both of these
adjustments so we can get a better sense
| | 00:57 |
of which you might want to use and how
they differ from each other.
| | 01:01 |
I'll start off with Hue saturation.
I'll go ahead and add a hue saturation
| | 01:04 |
adjustment by clicking on the Add New
Adjustment Layer button at the bottom of
| | 01:08 |
the Layer's panel.
And choosing Hue saturation from the pop
| | 01:12 |
up menu and then I'll increase
saturation.
| | 01:15 |
And in fact I'll increase it a lot.
And this gives us a clear sense of that
| | 01:19 |
purity concept.
The colors have been shifted toward the
| | 01:23 |
primary values.
And so we see reds, greens, blues, cyans,
| | 01:26 |
magentas, yellows.
And they're rather intense.
| | 01:31 |
Those colors are very very strong.
Obviously in this case far too strong,
| | 01:34 |
but it certainly gives us a sense of what
a saturation increase is doing to the image.
| | 01:39 |
And of course reducing saturation takes
us in the opposite direction.
| | 01:43 |
And taken all the way, will give us a
black and white image with no color at all.
| | 01:48 |
The bottom line is that in hue
saturation, the Saturation slider has a
| | 01:52 |
relatively strong effect on the image.
And it has a relatively even effect
| | 01:57 |
across all colors throughout the photo.
By contrast, we can use a vibrance
| | 02:02 |
adjustment to exercise a little bit more
self control, and to have a little more
| | 02:06 |
sophisticated effect on the colors.
I'm going to turn off the visibility of
| | 02:11 |
the hue saturation adjustment layer, by
clicking on the eye icon to the left of
| | 02:14 |
that adjustment layer.
And then I'll add a new adjustment layer,
| | 02:19 |
this time for vibrance.
Vibrance has two sliders, vibrance and saturation.
| | 02:25 |
But the saturation slider here is not the
same as the saturation slider in hue saturation.
| | 02:30 |
They're the same and general concept, but
what's going on behind the scenes is a
| | 02:34 |
little different.
And I think you can see that immediately
| | 02:37 |
as I increase saturation to its maximum
value here in vibrance.
| | 02:41 |
We certainly have a big boost in colors,
but it's not as severe as we saw with hue saturation.
| | 02:46 |
So right off the bat we can see that the
vibrance adjustment is exercising some
| | 02:49 |
more self control.
It's taking a more moderated approach to
| | 02:53 |
improving the appearance of colors in our
photo.
| | 02:58 |
What's really impressive about the
vibrant adjustment, though, is the actual
| | 03:01 |
vibrant slider.
I'll go ahead and increase the value here
| | 03:05 |
and you'll see the effect is actually
quite subtle.
| | 03:08 |
And that's not to say that it's just not
as strong an effect, it's actually
| | 03:11 |
operating in a completely different way.
When we increase vibrance, what we're
| | 03:16 |
doing is increasing the saturation for
colors that are not very saturated.
| | 03:21 |
More than we are adjusting the saturation
for colors that are already saturated.
| | 03:25 |
In other words, you can think of this as
evening out the saturation.
| | 03:29 |
Boosting the low saturated colors but for
the most part leaving the highly
| | 03:32 |
saturated colors alone.
For example, you can see that the blues
| | 03:35 |
and the oranges in the bark of the tree
have been boosted in their saturation.
| | 03:40 |
But the grass doesn't have a significant
increase in saturation relative to the original.
| | 03:46 |
If I go in the opposite direction, we'll
start off by reducing the saturation more
| | 03:50 |
significantly for the colors that are
highly saturated.
| | 03:54 |
So it's sort of the opposite.
We're equalizing saturation by reducing
| | 03:58 |
saturation Having a stronger affect on
the colors that have strong saturation already.
| | 04:03 |
In most cases, I would say that the
vibrance adjustment in the better place
| | 04:07 |
to start for adjusting overall intensity
of colors in your photo.
| | 04:12 |
If you want to increase saturation, I
would start off by increasing vibrance,
| | 04:15 |
taking it up to the level that seems
appropriate.
| | 04:18 |
And then, as needed, you can adjust the
overall saturation for the photo as well.
| | 04:24 |
What that really translates into is that
if I'm trying to increase the intensity,
| | 04:27 |
the purity of colors.
The overall impact of those colors in a
| | 04:31 |
photo, I'll use the vibrance adjustment.
I might use the bibrant slider or the
| | 04:36 |
saturation slider.
In many cases, I'll use both of those
| | 04:39 |
sliders, but I usually don't use a hue
saturation adjustment for increasing
| | 04:43 |
saturation for all colors within a photo.
There're still plenty of views for the
| | 04:48 |
hue saturation adjustment.
Just not as much use when it comes to
| | 04:52 |
Increasing the Intensity of colors now
that we have the Vibrance Adjustment available.
| | 04:59 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adjusting temperature in Lab mode| 00:02 |
When it comes to color and your digital
camera, you're probably going to think
| | 00:05 |
about color temperature.
Because the white balance adjustment that
| | 00:09 |
compensates for the color of the light is
what you're using when you adjust color
| | 00:12 |
in the camera.
And in fact, when you process your raw
| | 00:15 |
captures, maybe using Adobe Camera Raw to
convert the raw capture into actual pixel
| | 00:19 |
values, you're also using color
temperature.
| | 00:24 |
The Color Temperature Adjustments are
actually based on the Lab Color Mode.
| | 00:28 |
And the Lab Color Mode in turn, is
actually based on how the human visual
| | 00:31 |
system process color, in the real world.
If you find that you prefer using that
| | 00:37 |
approach, you can utilize the Lab Color
Mode to apply adjustments to an image
| | 00:40 |
that you've already converted from Raw
for example.
| | 00:44 |
You could certainly reopen your original
Raw in Adobe Camera Raw, or even open a
| | 00:48 |
derivative image in the TIFF or JPEG file
format in Adobe Camera Raw.
| | 00:53 |
But you can also work directly within
Photoshop utilizing the Lab Color Mode.
| | 00:57 |
It's important to keep in mind that when
we're switching back and forth between
| | 01:01 |
the Lab Color Mode and the RGB color
mode, we're not able to retain adjustment layers.
| | 01:06 |
And so, this is something that you'll
typically want to take advantage of right
| | 01:10 |
from the start when you first open your
image.
| | 01:13 |
Here I have an image with only a
background image layer, for example.
| | 01:16 |
I don't have any other image or
adjustment layers, and so this is a good
| | 01:20 |
time for me to take a look at Lab Color
Mode, if I want to use that to adjust the color.
| | 01:25 |
I'll go ahead and go to the Image menu
and choose Mode followed by Lab Color,
| | 01:29 |
that will convert this image into the Lab
Color Mode, rather than RGB.
| | 01:35 |
Now if I apply an adjustment, for
example, Color Balance, you'll see that
| | 01:38 |
my available options for shifting the
color balance are no longer red, green
| | 01:42 |
and blue representing the RGB channels,
but rather a green magenta axis and a
| | 01:46 |
blue yellow axis.
And that relates to temperature, the blue
| | 01:52 |
yellow axis and tint which is the green
magenta axis.
| | 01:56 |
So, I can adjust the overall color
temperature and tint for the image using
| | 02:00 |
these two sliders.
So, perhaps I want to cool down some of
| | 02:03 |
the yellow areas of the photo or I might
want to shift things a little bit toward magenta.
| | 02:09 |
I can shift the balance for those colors,
again, magenta, green or blue yellow
| | 02:13 |
simply by adjusting these individual
sliders.
| | 02:17 |
There's really no magic happening here,
we could achieve very much the same
| | 02:21 |
result with other adjustments in the RGB
color mode.
| | 02:25 |
It's just that the Lab Color Mode is
based on the way our eyes perceive color,
| | 02:28 |
and based on what we're used to as far as
our digital cameras our concerned.
| | 02:33 |
So many photographers find working in Lab
Mode to make a lot more sense, in terms
| | 02:37 |
of overall color adjustments.
The other benefit, of working in Lab
| | 02:42 |
Mode, is that we're separating color
adjustments from tonal adjustment.
| | 02:46 |
So, we don't need to worry about the
impact of that color on the overall
| | 02:49 |
luminance value, within the photo.
Once you're finished working in Lab Mode,
| | 02:54 |
chances are you're going to want to
return to the RGB color mode, and so you
| | 02:58 |
could choose Image > Mode and then RGB
Color from the menu.
| | 03:03 |
In this case, I've added an adjustment
layer, a Color Balance Adjustment Layer,
| | 03:06 |
and that's not something I can retain
when I take the image between modes.
| | 03:11 |
So, I either need to discard the Color
Balance Adjustment which I certainly
| | 03:14 |
don't want to do, or I need to flatten
the image in the process of converting
| | 03:17 |
modes and that'll be the option that I'll
choose here.
| | 03:22 |
So, I'll click the Flatten button, and
now I'm taken back into the RGB Color
| | 03:25 |
Mode for this image but, it is a
flattened image.
| | 03:29 |
So, again you might find that you prefer
to work within the Lab Color Mode for
| | 03:32 |
certain images.
But that does mean that you're going to
| | 03:36 |
be working on a flattened version of the
image ultimately, once you've converted
| | 03:39 |
back to RGB for example.
So, you might want to focus most of these
| | 03:43 |
types of adjustments in the Raw
Conversion Process.
| | 03:46 |
But that said the Lab Color Mode can
certainly be very helpful for applying
| | 03:50 |
very fine tuned color adjustments to your
photos.
| | 03:54 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Correcting with a hint of tint| 00:02 |
I'd be the first to admit that sometimes
applying Color Corrections in Photoshop
| | 00:05 |
can be a little bit tricky.
And not because the tools are necessarily
| | 00:09 |
all that complicated, but rather that we
might have a difficult time figuring out
| | 00:12 |
what direction we want to take the photo.
Sometimes what that translates into is
| | 00:17 |
that we know essentially what color we
want to add to the image.
| | 00:21 |
We're just not sure how to get to that
destination.
| | 00:24 |
And in those cases, a Photo Filter
Adjustment can be just the trick.
| | 00:28 |
Let's go ahead and add a Photo Filter
Adjustment Layer to this image.
| | 00:31 |
I'll click on the Add Adjustment Layer
button at the bottom of the Layers panel,
| | 00:35 |
and then choose Photo Filter from the pop
up menu.
| | 00:38 |
The default is a warming filter, you can
already see a bit of a warming effect.
| | 00:43 |
The image looks a little bit orangish,
but of course I can change that setting.
| | 00:46 |
I'll go ahead and click the pop up for
the Filter option on the Properties
| | 00:50 |
panel, and I'll start off with a cooling
filter.
| | 00:53 |
And that gives me a nice cool effect
which actually happens to be what I'm
| | 00:56 |
after for this particular photo.
In other words, in my mind I could sort
| | 01:00 |
of envision what color I would want to
add to the image to create the effect.
| | 01:05 |
I can think about what I feel like the
average color for the photo might be for
| | 01:08 |
example and in this case, I'd like to
cool down the photo.
| | 01:12 |
I want to add something of a blueish
tint, so that the mood of the photo is
| | 01:15 |
exemplified by that color.
There's a variety of options available on
| | 01:20 |
that filter pop up, but if you can't find
what you need, you can also specify a
| | 01:23 |
particular color.
I'll go ahead and choose the Color option
| | 01:27 |
and then click on the Color Swatch in
order to bring up the Color Picker.
| | 01:32 |
I'll move the Color Picker out of the
way, so we can see more of the photo.
| | 01:35 |
And as I adjust through various color
values in the image you can see an
| | 01:39 |
immediate update in the photo itself.
And so I can use this approach to find
| | 01:44 |
just the color I need.
Making a color that is a little more
| | 01:48 |
neutral versus a little bit more vibrant.
And just overall fine tuning the effect
| | 01:52 |
to figure out exactly what I'd like to do
for the image.
| | 01:56 |
Let's assume that this is a good shade of
blue, sort of a cyan blue color.
| | 02:01 |
I'll go ahead and click OK to accept that
color as the color I'm going to use for
| | 02:04 |
my Photo Filter.
But then I can also adjust the strength
| | 02:07 |
of the effect, and this is applicable
whether I'm using the Filter option or
| | 02:11 |
the Color option.
I can increase the density to add more of
| | 02:15 |
that color, or decrease the density to
not add quite so much of the color.
| | 02:21 |
It can be tempting to take that density
up very far so that you're creating a
| | 02:24 |
strong impact in the image, but more
often than not, less is more.
| | 02:29 |
So, I really encourage you to back off
the adjustment if you've taken it up
| | 02:33 |
maybe around 50%, unless you've selected
a very subdued color.
| | 02:38 |
But generally speaking, you don't need
too strong an adjustment to have a
| | 02:41 |
significant impact on the photo.
I'll go ahead and turn off the visibility
| | 02:45 |
of the Photo Filter Adjustment Layer, and
you can see the image now looks quite
| | 02:49 |
warm by comparison.
And turning that Adjustment Layer back
| | 02:53 |
on, we now have a very cool effect in the
photo.
| | 02:56 |
Note by the way that I have the Preserve
Luminosity check box turned on.
| | 03:00 |
Whenever we're shifting color values, we
can also change the perceived
| | 03:04 |
luminescence values in the photo.
Certain colors are simply perceived as
| | 03:08 |
being brighter than others.
And having that Preserved Luminosity
| | 03:11 |
check box turned on, will cause the
colors to be adjusted in such a way that
| | 03:14 |
the perceived brightness values remain
about the same.
| | 03:19 |
For this photo I might apply some other
adjustments of course, but I think in
| | 03:22 |
terms of color, I've gotten a good effect
here just by adding a color tint, to the
| | 03:26 |
overall photo.
And very often, all you're really trying
| | 03:30 |
to accomplish is to add a little bit of a
shift in color.
| | 03:33 |
But if you don't feel confident about
which direction you need to shift those
| | 03:36 |
colors, you might try a Photo Filter
Adjustment Layer.
| | 03:40 |
You can simply choose the color that you
want to be represented within the photo,
| | 03:44 |
an then adjust the density to determine
the strength of that effect.
| | 03:48 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Removing strong color casts| 00:00 |
When the color-correction you need to
apply for a photo is extremely strong,
| | 00:04 |
you might find that a quick technique
actually produces a great result very easily.
| | 00:12 |
This is a technique that I commonly use
with older photographs that have had a
| | 00:15 |
color shift, over time, due to fading or
other damage.
| | 00:19 |
This images has a very strong green color
cast.
| | 00:23 |
So let's take a look at how we can use a
very quick technique to improve the color
| | 00:26 |
in this photo.
I'll start off by creating a copy of the
| | 00:30 |
Background Image Layer and so I'll drag
the thumbnail for the Background Image
| | 00:33 |
Layer down to the Create New Layer
button.
| | 00:37 |
That's the blank sheet of paper icon at
the bottom of the Layers panel.
| | 00:41 |
I like to rename the layers as I create
them, so I am going to double-click on
| | 00:44 |
the name Background Copy here and then
I'll type a new name.
| | 00:48 |
I'll just call this Color Fix since I'm
using this duplicate layer to correct the
| | 00:52 |
color in the photo.
I want to figure out what the actual
| | 00:56 |
color of the color cast is here, so I'll
go to the Filter menu and then choose
| | 01:00 |
Blur followed by Average and this will
blur the image so much that every single
| | 01:04 |
pixel on this image layer represents the
average color in the photo.
| | 01:12 |
You can see that average color in this
case happens to be a shade of green.
| | 01:15 |
But I don't actually want this color, I
want the opposite color because I'm going
| | 01:19 |
to apply that opposite color in order to
compensate for the color cast in the image.
| | 01:25 |
So, I'll go to the Image menu and then
choose Adjustments, followed by Invert,
| | 01:29 |
in order to invert this layer, the color
fix layer, from that green value to its
| | 01:32 |
opposite which is a shade of magenta.
I'll then change the blend mode for this layer.
| | 01:40 |
Currently the blend mode is set to
Normal, which means this layer does not
| | 01:44 |
interact with the layer below in any way.
In fact, it's simply covering up that
| | 01:48 |
background image layer.
But if I change the blend mode I can
| | 01:52 |
change the interaction between this
layer, and the layer below.
| | 01:56 |
Specifically, I want to use this layer,
to adjust the color of the underlying
| | 01:59 |
photo, and so I'll change the blend mode,
to the Color Blend Mode.
| | 02:05 |
You can see this is certainly taking care
of that green color cast, but it's done
| | 02:08 |
so a bit too much.
I now have an entirely magenta color cast.
| | 02:12 |
And that's just because the adjustment I
applied was a little bit too strong.
| | 02:16 |
It was a very complete effect that I've
applied to the image.
| | 02:19 |
I just need to tone down the opacity.
In order to mitigate the effect and so
| | 02:24 |
I'll go to the top right of the Layers
panel and click on my opacity popup and
| | 02:28 |
then click and drag to reduce the value
for opacity.
| | 02:32 |
If I go down to zero I'll be back to the
original image because that will
| | 02:35 |
effectively eliminate the effect of the
Color Fix layer.
| | 02:38 |
At 100% I have the full effect of that
color fix layer.
| | 02:42 |
In most cases I'll want to be somewhere
around a 50% value.
| | 02:46 |
It will depend on the image of course,
and I'll continue dialing in that opacity
| | 02:50 |
setting until I find a value that's
working well.
| | 02:54 |
I'll turn off the visibility for the
Color Fix layer.
| | 02:57 |
Here you can see the before version of
the image and there's the after version
| | 03:00 |
with the Color Fix layer turned back on.
Naturally I might want to adjust the
| | 03:04 |
overall image in other ways.
For example, at the very least I would
| | 03:08 |
probably add a Vibrance Adjustment layer
and increase the vibrants of the colors
| | 03:13 |
in the image.
This will also help make it more clear if
| | 03:17 |
I've achieved an accurate result.
I'll go back to the Color Fix layer here,
| | 03:21 |
and we can adjust the opacity, increasing
the value of magenta or reducing the
| | 03:25 |
value of magenta, going back to that
greenish tint, but finding just the right
| | 03:29 |
value for that opacity, so that I'm
compensating for the problematic color
| | 03:33 |
cast, but keeping the colors as rich as I
possibly can.
| | 03:39 |
But there you have it, a very simple
technique, all I need to do is make a
| | 03:43 |
copy of my Background Image Layer, use
the Average Blur Filter, invert that
| | 03:46 |
layer, and then adjust the Opacity.
And that gives us a much improved result
| | 03:52 |
when we had a very strong color cast to
begin with.
| | 03:55 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Focused Color CorrectionsBalancing a specific color| 00:02 |
When you're working on optimizing color
in your photographic images, you might
| | 00:05 |
have a tendency to focus on the overall
image.
| | 00:07 |
Even if you're really paying attention to
a particular color, you might be
| | 00:11 |
adjusting color for the entire image.
An you might even assume that if you
| | 00:15 |
wanted to apply an adjustment that only
affected a particular area of the photo,
| | 00:18 |
that you needed to use a Layer mask.
And that's actually not true, if the area
| | 00:23 |
that you want to adjust can be identified
based on the color values.
| | 00:28 |
In this photo for example, perhaps I'd
like to adjust the color for the flowers
| | 00:32 |
just a little bit.
I can use a Hue Saturation adjustment to
| | 00:36 |
apply color correction to just that area
of the photo based on the colors.
| | 00:41 |
This, is one of the reasons that the Hue
Saturation adjustment continues to be
| | 00:45 |
incredibly valueable, even though, for
many photographers, myself included, the
| | 00:49 |
Vibrance adjustment has replaced the
saturation portion of Hue Saturation.
| | 00:54 |
But that's when we're working on all
colors in the photo, on the entire image
| | 00:58 |
all at once.
When we want to focus our attention on a
| | 01:02 |
specific range of colors, Sue Saturation
just can't be beat.
| | 01:06 |
I'll start off by adding a new adjustment
layer for hue saturation.
| | 01:09 |
So I'll click on the Add Adjustment Layer
button at the bottom of the Layers panel,
| | 01:12 |
and then choose Hue Saturation from the
pop up menu.
| | 01:15 |
On the Properties panel, I now have the
adjustment controls for Hue Saturation,
| | 01:19 |
but by default, these adjustments will
affect the entire image.
| | 01:24 |
So it will affect all colors throughout
the photo.
| | 01:27 |
But that's because we're working on the
master channel.
| | 01:29 |
If I click the pop-up you'll see that not
only do I have a master channel, I also
| | 01:33 |
have individual color channels.
These represent the additive and
| | 01:38 |
subtractive primary colors.
So, we have the Reds, Greens and Blues as
| | 01:43 |
well as the Cyans, Magentas and Yellows.
What I want to do is select the channel
| | 01:49 |
that I think represents the color that
I'd like to adjust.
| | 01:52 |
For these lilacs I think magenta is
probably the most dominant color there.
| | 01:57 |
Somewhere between red, magenta, and
perhaps a little bit of blue.
| | 02:00 |
So I'll start off with magentas.
And then I'm going to apply an
| | 02:04 |
exaggerated adjustment so that I can get
a better sense of which portion of the
| | 02:07 |
image I'm affecting.
In most cases I'll simply reduce
| | 02:11 |
saturation all the way down to it's
minimum value.
| | 02:13 |
And you can see that for the most part
the lilacs have now turned a shade of grey.
| | 02:18 |
But there are still some portions of the
lilacs where I can see some color.
| | 02:22 |
And so I need to adjust the color range
that I'm affecting.
| | 02:25 |
What's happening here is that Photoshop
has decided what it thinks magenta is and
| | 02:30 |
the lilacs go a little bit beyond that
range.
| | 02:33 |
The specific range is represented between
the two rainbow gradients at the bottom
| | 02:37 |
of the Properties panel.
The two vertical bars represent the range
| | 02:42 |
of colors that are being comlpletely
affected by this adjustment.
| | 02:46 |
In this case, mostly magenta's of course.
Outside of those vertical bars, you'll
| | 02:50 |
see a couple of shapes that indicate the
extent of feathering or of the transition
| | 02:54 |
between areas that are being completely
affected and areas that will not be
| | 02:57 |
affected at all.
Again, based on color values within the photo.
| | 03:03 |
In this case, I think I need to expand
the color range over toward the right so
| | 03:06 |
that we get more of the reds included in
that selection.
| | 03:10 |
And I want to maintain a little bit of
transition.
| | 03:13 |
So rather than only moving the vertical
bar or perhaps, only moving the outer shape.
| | 03:18 |
I'll point my mouse in between the two
shapes and then click and drag in order
| | 03:22 |
to move that construct.
So, I'm able to change the range of
| | 03:26 |
colors that I'm affecting, just by moving
these controls.
| | 03:30 |
If I move over toward the left, narrowing
the range of colors that are being
| | 03:33 |
affected, you'll see that most of the
lilacs now retain their color, with just
| | 03:37 |
a few areas that are showing up in grey.
I'll go ahead and move these controls
| | 03:42 |
over toward the right, though.
And I want to just expand enough so that
| | 03:46 |
I'm including the adjustment for all of
the colors, all of that range for the
| | 03:51 |
lilacs which essentially is purples and
reds.
| | 03:56 |
That looks to be pretty good.
At that point, I'm also going to increase
| | 03:59 |
saturation just so that I can get a
better since of any other areas of the
| | 04:02 |
photo that are being affected.
And so I'll boost the saturation all the
| | 04:06 |
way up.
And you'll notice that some of the
| | 04:08 |
rooftops over on the right side of the
photo are also showing up some color.
| | 04:12 |
And that's because there are some red and
slightly pinkish elements in the roof
| | 04:16 |
probably reflected from the sky.
Or perhaps a little bit of atmospheric
| | 04:20 |
scatter caused by moisture in the air.
In any event, I don't think that those
| | 04:24 |
areas are going to be a problem.
Because for the most part, they're
| | 04:28 |
neutral areas.
They are relatively gray.
| | 04:30 |
They just have a little bit of color
that's showing through with this
| | 04:33 |
exaggerated adjustment.
So I'll go ahead and bring my saturation
| | 04:36 |
down to a more level.
I'll keep it a little bit increased in
| | 04:40 |
terms of saturation, but then I'm going
to shift the Hue.
| | 04:43 |
And now you can see that I'm able to
change the color of those flowers.
| | 04:48 |
In essence, taking anything that had been
purple in the image before and changing
| | 04:51 |
it to a completely different color.
In other words for all intents and
| | 04:56 |
purposes, applying a color balance
adjustment to a specific range of colors
| | 04:59 |
within the image.
I can make the colors look a little more
| | 05:04 |
purple to blue.
Or I can take the adjustment over to the
| | 05:07 |
right a little more and have them look a
little more reddish to pink.
| | 05:11 |
The point is that we can effect quite a
significant change on just the narrow
| | 05:14 |
range of color values.
It's important to keep in mind that in
| | 05:18 |
most cases, you'd want to apply a
relatively modest adjustment.
| | 05:22 |
We don't want to get too exaggerated and
create an artificial appearance in the photo.
| | 05:27 |
But of course in many cases the colors in
the image may not look entirely accurate
| | 05:30 |
and just a little bit of adjustment.
Focusing on a specific range of colors
| | 05:35 |
can make all the difference in the world.
| | 05:38 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Eliminating a problem color| 00:02 |
When you're happy with the overall color
in a photo, but there's one color that's
| | 00:05 |
proving to be a little bit problematic
sometimes you might want to simply remove
| | 00:09 |
or at least partially remove that one
individual color.
| | 00:13 |
With this photo for example I think the
reds of the peppers look great and the
| | 00:16 |
greens of the peppers look pretty good.
But this sort of pinkish bluish tone in
| | 00:21 |
the reflection on the peppers, is not
looking all that good, it's a little too
| | 00:25 |
magenta I'd say.
It's just a reflection from the sky,
| | 00:29 |
looks like sorta blue sky blending with
red pepper to create this purplish tone.
| | 00:34 |
But to me it's a bit distracting and I'd
like to either tone it down or perhaps
| | 00:38 |
remove it all together.
And that calls for an adjustment where
| | 00:42 |
we're focusing our attention on a
specific range of color values.
| | 00:46 |
For that, I'll use the Hue Saturation
Adjustment, so I'll go ahead and click
| | 00:49 |
the Add Adjustment Layer button at the
bottom of the Layers panel.
| | 00:54 |
And then I'll choose Hue Saturation from
the popup menu, that will add a Hue
| | 00:57 |
Saturation Adjustment layer.
And provide me with the Adjustment
| | 01:01 |
Controls on the Properties panel.
But by default, I'm working on the Master
| | 01:05 |
Channel, which means I'll be affecting
all of the colors throughout the entire image.
| | 01:10 |
In this case, I just want to focus on
that problem color, which to me looks
| | 01:13 |
mostly pinkish, which would fall in the
magenta's range.
| | 01:18 |
So, I'll click on the popup where Master
is the default, and I'll go ahead and
| | 01:21 |
choose magenta's from that popup list.
I can then apply an exaggerated
| | 01:26 |
adjustment to help me get a better sense
of whether I've selected the correct range.
| | 01:30 |
I'll go ahead an increase Saturation by
the full 100% for example, and then I can
| | 01:35 |
fine tune the range of color values to be
included in the adjustment.
| | 01:41 |
If I drag between the two controls on the
right, I can expand the right extent of
| | 01:44 |
the color range.
And if I drag in between the set of
| | 01:48 |
controls over on the left, I can expand
that range of colors further to the left.
| | 01:53 |
Over to the left in this case would be
more towards the blue tones, and over
| | 01:56 |
toward the right, for the right side of
controls will be into the reds and the
| | 01:59 |
yellows, and eventually the greens of
course.
| | 02:03 |
In this case, I think we want just a
range of magenta's and so I'll fine tune
| | 02:06 |
the position here.
And then also perhaps, take a look at
| | 02:11 |
reducing Saturation, so that I can try to
optimize that range of colors.
| | 02:17 |
I can already tell just by looking at the
result that I'm getting in the image so
| | 02:20 |
far, that I probably don't want to
completely reduce Saturation for these
| | 02:23 |
areas of the image.
But I certainly want to reduce Saturation
| | 02:28 |
at least a little bit.
I'll go ahead and fine tune the range of
| | 02:31 |
colors that I'm affecting, and then I can
once again swing that Saturation slider
| | 02:35 |
through its extremes.
And certainly I want to reduce
| | 02:38 |
Saturation, in this case.
I could also shift the hue, I'll raise
| | 02:42 |
the Saturation up a little bit, so that
we can see the effect a little more clearly.
| | 02:46 |
And then shift that hue and you'll see
that I'm able to shift the color balance
| | 02:50 |
for that specific range that I'm
adjusting.
| | 02:54 |
But I think in this case, probably the
hue is Okay.
| | 02:57 |
I could shift it just a little bit closer
toward red so that those areas will blend
| | 03:00 |
into the rest of the image, but I think
the most important thing is to reduce Saturation.
| | 03:06 |
I think not quite completely but very
nearly, so in order to reduce that sort
| | 03:10 |
of pinkish, purplish appearance in the
reflections on the peppers.
| | 03:15 |
I'll go ahead and turn off the visibility
of the Hue Saturation Adjustment and turn
| | 03:19 |
it back on again, and if you pay
attention to the reflections, I think you
| | 03:22 |
can see a somewhat significant change.
I do think I'll shift the color a little
| | 03:27 |
further over toward red, and maybe adjust
the Saturation just a little bit more.
| | 03:33 |
And then I'll take another look at the
before and after.
| | 03:35 |
So, here with the Hue Saturation
Adjustment Layer turned off, you can see
| | 03:39 |
quite a bit of pinkish, purplish tones in
those reflections.
| | 03:43 |
And turning that adjustment back on, you
see that we have a big improvement in
| | 03:46 |
terms of essentially neutralizing that
color issue.
| | 03:51 |
So, by using Hue Saturation we're able to
focus our adjustment on a specific range
| | 03:55 |
of colors.
And naturally I can continue to refine
| | 03:58 |
the range of colors and to refine my
adjustments as I see fit in order to
| | 04:02 |
produce the best results for this photo.
| | 04:05 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Recovering color detail| 00:02 |
With subjects that have a pretty good
amount of saturation to begin with, and
| | 00:05 |
especially when they're very brightly
lit, you may find that you lose detail in
| | 00:09 |
some of the more highly saturated areas
of the photo.
| | 00:13 |
These flowers, for example have a very
vibrant look to them, but if we look
| | 00:17 |
closely, we'll see that actually we've
lost a little bit of detail or at least
| | 00:20 |
it seems that we've lost a little bit of
detail in those areas of the flowers.
| | 00:26 |
And it really just looks a little bit
artificial.
| | 00:29 |
Let's take a look at the overall exposure
information.
| | 00:32 |
I'll go to the Window menu and choose
histogram so that I can see a histogram
| | 00:35 |
for this photo and you'll see that the
red channel is certainly the brightest of
| | 00:38 |
the three channels.
It's the channel that extends the
| | 00:42 |
furthest over to the right in the
histogram display.
| | 00:45 |
We can see that both in the individual
color channels here.
| | 00:48 |
And also in the colors histogram display
up at the top.
| | 00:52 |
Where red extends the furthest over
toward the right.
| | 00:55 |
What that means, essentially, is the red
channel is very close to being overexposed.
| | 01:01 |
Just a little bit brighter in the photo.
And we would have lost detail in the reds.
| | 01:05 |
Even though we still have detail
elsewhere in the image and even though we
| | 01:09 |
have not blown out an area of the photo
to pure white.
| | 01:13 |
Just because we don't have blown out
white pixels doesn't mean that there
| | 01:16 |
aren't areas of overexposure within the
image.
| | 01:19 |
And in this case we have very nearly some
overexposure in those red tones and
| | 01:23 |
perhaps a little bit into the magenta
tones as well.
| | 01:27 |
I'll go ahead and close the histogram
display and then, zooming in once again
| | 01:31 |
so we can get a closer look at this
particular flower in the foreground.
| | 01:36 |
I'll go ahead and add a hue saturation
adjustment layer by clicking on the add
| | 01:39 |
adjustment layer button at the bottom of
the layers panel, and then choosing hue
| | 01:42 |
saturation from the pop-up menu.
I'll go ahead and just simply reduce the
| | 01:47 |
saturation overall.
And you'll start to see a little bit more
| | 01:51 |
detail appearing within the photo.
But I want to focus my adjustment on just
| | 01:55 |
those red to magenta tones, so on the
master channel I'll bring that saturation
| | 02:00 |
back up to a value of zero, and then I'm
going to choose a specific channel to
| | 02:04 |
work with.
So I'll click where it says Master, and
| | 02:09 |
from that popup I'll choose magentas, so
that I can focus my adjustment on just
| | 02:13 |
the magentas.
Because it looks like this area's
| | 02:17 |
probably mostly magenta.
I'll go ahead and reduce the saturation
| | 02:21 |
completely, so that I can see the
specific area that I'm affecting, and I
| | 02:24 |
see here that I do need to expand my
range.
| | 02:28 |
So, in this case I need to expand the
range of colors over toward the right, so
| | 02:31 |
I'll use the right set of controls,
pointing in between the vertical bar and
| | 02:34 |
the trapezoid on the right side, so that
I can then drag that construct over
| | 02:38 |
toward the right, and increase the range
of colors that I'm affecting, so that it
| | 02:41 |
includes some more reddish tones as
opposed to just the magentas.
| | 02:48 |
Now you'll see that we do do seem to have
lost just a little bit of detail in the photo.
| | 02:53 |
The histogram didn't reflect that because
the area wasn't completely blown out, but
| | 02:57 |
I'd say the over exposure is bad enough,
that we did lose a little bit of detail
| | 03:01 |
in this area of the picture, and probably
in the other flowers as well.
| | 03:07 |
But zooming out, you might also notice,
that I'm affecting not just the flowers
| | 03:10 |
with this adjustment, which is still
obviously an exaggerated adjustment, but
| | 03:13 |
also some of the.
Areas in the background where some of
| | 03:17 |
those same color values are visible in
the rocks.
| | 03:20 |
I'll go ahead and turn off the visibility
for the hue saturation adjustment layer
| | 03:24 |
by clicking the eye icon to the left of
that adjustment layer and as I toggle,
| | 03:27 |
you might notice that the magenta to
reddish tones in the background there,
| | 03:31 |
are also being affected by this
adjustment.
| | 03:36 |
It's a relatively subtle change but a
change nevertheless.
| | 03:39 |
And so I'd really like to have the
adjustment I apply.
| | 03:42 |
Only affect the flowers, if at all
possible.
| | 03:45 |
So, I'm going to bring my saturation back
up, to a more appropriate level, and I
| | 03:48 |
think right about there, will probably
work well.
| | 03:52 |
I'll toggle that visibility once again,
and you can see, a rather significant
| | 03:56 |
difference, the colors don't look quite
as vibrant, perhaps, but they do look a
| | 04:00 |
lot more realistic.
Now to make sure that these adjustments
| | 04:05 |
are only affecting the flowers, I can
effectively paint this adjustment into
| | 04:08 |
just those areas of the photo.
So I'll start off by clicking on the
| | 04:13 |
layer mask for my hue saturation
adjustment layer, and then I'll choose
| | 04:16 |
Edit from the menu followed by Fill, and
I'll make sure that my use pop-up is set
| | 04:20 |
to black, and then I'll click OK.
This fills the layer mask for my hue
| | 04:26 |
saturation adjustment layer, with black
so that this adjustment is now not
| | 04:29 |
effecting any of the image.
But then I'll choose the Brush tool, from
| | 04:34 |
the tool box, make sure that the Brush
hardness is set to a 0% value, that the
| | 04:38 |
blend mode is set to normal, and the
opacity 100%, and then I'll press the
| | 04:42 |
letter D.
On the keyboard for the default colors,
| | 04:46 |
and that will cause white to be my
foreground color since I'm currently
| | 04:50 |
working on a layer mask.
I can then move my mouse out over the
| | 04:54 |
image and adjust the brush size as
needed, using the left square bracket key
| | 04:57 |
to reduce the size of the brush, or the
right square bracket key to increase the
| | 05:00 |
size of the brush.
And then I can simply click and paint in
| | 05:05 |
order to paint the adjustment into the
areas of the image that need it.
| | 05:11 |
In other words, just painting over the
flowers and I don't even have to be all
| | 05:14 |
that careful.
Because remember I'm only affecting the
| | 05:18 |
magenta to red color values within the
photo.
| | 05:21 |
So, essentially, as long as I paint over
the flowers and not over those rocks in
| | 05:25 |
the background, I'll be in good shape.
I'll go ahead and toggle that Hue
| | 05:30 |
Saturation Adjustment Layer off and and
then on again you can see we now have
| | 05:34 |
applied a focused adjustment that is
improving the overall effect in the photo.
| | 05:40 |
Improving the level of detail that we can
perceive in the flowers and making those
| | 05:44 |
colors look not quite so artificial.
So, a good improvement with just a couple
| | 05:48 |
of minor adjustments to the image.
| | 05:50 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Neutralizing highlights and shadows| 00:02 |
When the color in a photo looks a little
bit inaccurate, you might immediately
| | 00:05 |
jump to the Color Balance adjustment.
And that makes sense because the Color
| | 00:09 |
Balance adjustment is relatively easy to
use and in most cases it will certainly
| | 00:13 |
help you improve the overall color in a
photo.
| | 00:16 |
But sometimes you might want to take a
little more detailed approach to
| | 00:20 |
adjusting color in the image, focusing
your adjustments on not just the overall
| | 00:24 |
midtone values in the image, but
specifically on the shadows and
| | 00:27 |
highlights in the image as well.
Let's take a look at an approach you can use.
| | 00:33 |
In fact, two different approaches with
the same Levels adjustment.
| | 00:37 |
I'll go ahead and click on the Add
Adjustment Layer button at the bottom of
| | 00:40 |
the Layers panel, and then choose Levels
from that popup menu.
| | 00:44 |
And we'll start off by taking a look at
the individual color channels in Levels
| | 00:48 |
and adjusting the black points and the
white points for each channel individually.
| | 00:54 |
I'll start with the Red channel, and we
can see that obviously the shadows are
| | 00:57 |
clipped on the Red channel, so I'll leave
the blacks alone.
| | 01:01 |
But I will adjust the white point,
holding the Alt key on Windows or the
| | 01:05 |
Option key on Macintosh so that I can get
a Clipping Preview as I apply the adjustment.
| | 01:11 |
I'll apply an adjustment so that just the
smallest number of pixels are still visible.
| | 01:16 |
So I'm dragging over to the right until I
see some colored pixels appear, in this
| | 01:20 |
case red pixels since I'm working on the
Red color channel.
| | 01:24 |
And then I'll move the slider back over
toward the right until nearly all of
| | 01:27 |
those pixels completely disappear,
keeping in mind that I'm holding the Alt
| | 01:30 |
key on Windows or Option key on Macintosh
while applying that adjustment.
| | 01:36 |
I'll then switch to the Green channel and
once again I'll apply an adjustment
| | 01:40 |
holding the Alt or Option key while I
adjust the white point for the image.
| | 01:46 |
I'll go ahead and bring that inward a
little bit and then back off just a
| | 01:49 |
little until most of those pixels have
disappeared, and then I'll switch to the
| | 01:53 |
Blue channel and repeat that process,
holding the Alt or Option key.
| | 01:59 |
Dragging the white point slider inward
and then back over toward the right,
| | 02:02 |
until nearly all of those pixelds have
disappeared.
| | 02:06 |
I'll go ahead and turn off the visibility
of this adjustment and turn it back on
| | 02:09 |
again, and there's just a subtle shift.
It maybe difficult to see unless you're
| | 02:14 |
looking very, very closely at the image,
but a little bit of a shift that is
| | 02:17 |
focused on the highlight.
So the brightest areas, for example this
| | 02:21 |
shoulder area on the squirrel, look more
neutral.
| | 02:24 |
We don't have as much of a color cast in
those areas.
| | 02:27 |
I could continue working in this way on
each of the individual color channels,
| | 02:31 |
adjusting the black point, the white
point, and the midtone value for each
| | 02:35 |
individual color channel to produce the
best overall effect, but I can also use
| | 02:38 |
the Eyedroppers.
These provide a little bit more automated
| | 02:44 |
approach to this adjustment.
I'll go ahead and switch to my RGB master
| | 02:48 |
channel here, and then I'll click on the
black Eyedropper, and click on an area of
| | 02:52 |
the photo that should be perfectly
neutral and that I want to have appear
| | 02:56 |
completely black.
I'll go ahead and click on a dark area of
| | 03:01 |
the eye for example, and that will
establish my black point.
| | 03:04 |
So now, I've established a white point,
in this case, manually using the sliders
| | 03:08 |
on the individual channels and then I've
established a black point using the
| | 03:11 |
Eyedropper tool.
Now keep in mind that as you're working
| | 03:15 |
you might want to click on various areas
of the image to see if you can produce a
| | 03:19 |
better result.
In this image, the darkest shadow areas
| | 03:23 |
are actually a little bit darker than the
eye.
| | 03:26 |
So I think I'll apply an adjustment by
clicking in this back dark shadow area.
| | 03:30 |
I'll then choose the gray Eyedropper, and
this Eyedropper is purely focused on
| | 03:34 |
color adjustments, and it allows me by
default to neutralize the color in the photo.
| | 03:40 |
So if I click on an area of the photo
that should be perfectly neutral gray, an
| | 03:44 |
adjustment will be applied to each of the
individual color channels in order to
| | 03:47 |
make the area that I clicked on appear
perfectly neutral.
| | 03:52 |
I'll go ahead and click on a few areas so
we can see the effect.
| | 03:56 |
Clicking on the fur here for example,
causes one adjustment.
| | 03:59 |
If I click on an area that has a
relatively strong color, the color will
| | 04:02 |
of course be shifted in the opposite
direction.
| | 04:06 |
This naturally does not produce a very
realistic effect.
| | 04:09 |
But I can continue clicking on various
areas of the image, until I find just the
| | 04:13 |
right pixel to click on to produce a good
result, and right about there actually
| | 04:16 |
looks to be pretty good.
I want an ever so slightly warm
| | 04:21 |
interpretation of the photo.
I want to neutralize the overall color,
| | 04:25 |
but have the photo appear just a little
bit warm, shifted ever so slightly toward
| | 04:30 |
a yellow or reddish value.
I'll go ahead and turn off the visibility
| | 04:34 |
for the Levels adjustment, and you can
see we've really made some significant
| | 04:37 |
progress with this photo.
I'll toggle the visibility of that
| | 04:41 |
adjustment layer on, and then off.
And you see we start off with this
| | 04:45 |
reddish to magenta tint in the image, and
then with just a couple of very basic
| | 04:49 |
adjustments I'm able to remove that color
and produce a much more pleasing result.
| | 04:54 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Sophisticated color with Curves| 00:02 |
The Curves Adjustment in Photoshop is
very very powerful.
| | 00:05 |
And yet most photographers think it's
really just focused on Tonal Adjustments.
| | 00:10 |
But it can be used to great effect, to
improve color within your images.
| | 00:14 |
Let's take a look at how we can use
curves, to apply some sophisticated color
| | 00:17 |
adjustments to your photo.
I'll start off of course by adding a
| | 00:21 |
Curves Adjustment Layer.
So, at the bottom of the Layers panel,
| | 00:24 |
I'll click on the Add Adjustment Layer
button, and then choose Curves from the
| | 00:27 |
popup menu.
That will give me the curves adjustments
| | 00:31 |
on the Properties panel, and I'm going to
focus on mostly adjusting color.
| | 00:36 |
But I do want to start off with a basic
Tonal Adjustment, mostly expanding the
| | 00:40 |
tonal range of the photo.
So, I'm going to hold the Alt key on
| | 00:44 |
Windows or the Option key on Macintosh
while dragging the white point slider
| | 00:48 |
over toward the left, and I'll drag to
the left until I start to see colored
| | 00:52 |
pixels appear.
Those pixels indicate which areas of the
| | 00:57 |
photo are loosing detail, and in fact we
get an indication of which channel or
| | 01:00 |
channels are actually losing that detail.
Once I see those pixels appear, I'll drag
| | 01:06 |
back over toward the right, until the
point where just the last of those pixels
| | 01:10 |
disappear, and that will set a nice
bright white point for me.
| | 01:16 |
I can also do the same basic thing for
the shadows.
| | 01:18 |
I'll hold the Alt key on Windows or
Option key on Macintosh, while I click
| | 01:22 |
and drag that black point slider.
But in this case, you can see that I
| | 01:26 |
already have some lost detail in the
image based on the exposure.
| | 01:31 |
And so I'm not going to drag that slider
any further to the right.
| | 01:34 |
I'll keep it all the way over to the left
to minimize the amount of information
| | 01:37 |
that's been lost in the image.
I can then set about applying some Color
| | 01:42 |
Adjustments to the image.
And in this case, what I want to do is
| | 01:46 |
really focus on improving the overall
color values, in the brightest and some
| | 01:50 |
of the darker areas of the photo.
I'm going to work on the green channel,
| | 01:56 |
which makes perfect sense, since this
image is mostly green and magenta and
| | 01:59 |
magenta, in fact, is the opposite of
green.
| | 02:02 |
So, most magenta and green information,
is going to be found on the green channel.
| | 02:07 |
So, from the popup that defaults to RGB,
meaning I'm affecting overall tonality
| | 02:12 |
for the photo, I'll choose the Green
Channel.
| | 02:15 |
I can then apply an overall Color Balance
Adjustment, just by grabbing that curve
| | 02:19 |
at its center point, and dragging upward
to increase the amount of green, or
| | 02:23 |
downward to reduce the amount of green.
But I can focus that adjustment, on
| | 02:29 |
specific tonal values within the photo.
So for example, adding a little bit more
| | 02:33 |
green to those highlights, or perhaps
adding a little more magenta to the highlights.
| | 02:39 |
But in this case, I think what I want to
do is to add some green.
| | 02:42 |
In other words, to remove some of the
magenta, from those brightest areas of
| | 02:46 |
the image, and then actually to remove
green from some of the darker areas of
| | 02:50 |
the image.
So that the green values, the foliage
| | 02:55 |
there, will get, in essence a little bit
of magenta.
| | 02:58 |
But I'm not trying to make pink foliage,
I'm just trying to tone down some of the
| | 03:02 |
greens in that area of the image.
That foliage was looking, just a little
| | 03:07 |
bit too green, a little bit too yellowish
green, and so I think this will improve
| | 03:10 |
that overall color.
Of course, I can switch among the other
| | 03:14 |
channels as well.
I might go to the Blue Channel for
| | 03:17 |
example, and then adjust the amount of
blue versus yellow, perhaps adding just a
| | 03:21 |
small amount of yellow into the shadow
areas.
| | 03:25 |
And maybe just a little bit of blue, just
a tiny, tiny amount of blue, into those
| | 03:29 |
highlights, to help cool off the
highlights just a little bit.
| | 03:34 |
I don't want to add more of that magenta,
sort of pinkish color, but I do think
| | 03:38 |
just cooling off the highlights a little
bit, will help improve the overall appearance.
| | 03:44 |
And as long as I am checking all the
channels, I might as well go to red as
| | 03:47 |
well, and perhaps see if I can improve
the photo.
| | 03:51 |
And I think removing a little bit of the
red from the tulips, from the bright
| | 03:54 |
areas of the tulips, will help improve
the overall appearance of the image.
| | 03:59 |
And then I might take a look at those
shadows, and see if I want to add or
| | 04:03 |
remove any of the red from those shadows
areas.
| | 04:07 |
But I think those areas I'll leave
largely untouched, just applying a
| | 04:11 |
relatively minor adjustment for the reds,
focused on those highlights.
| | 04:16 |
So, I think right about there is looking
pretty good, but as always, when you're
| | 04:19 |
applying an adjustment, it's a really
good idea to turn off the visibility of
| | 04:23 |
your Adjustment Layer.
So, that you can see the before version
| | 04:27 |
of the image, at least before that
Adjustment Layer was added, and then
| | 04:30 |
click once again to turn on the
adjustment.
| | 04:34 |
And I can see a rather significant
improvement.
| | 04:37 |
Obviously I brightened up the highlights,
but I also shifted the color of those
| | 04:40 |
highlights, and adjusted the color of the
shadows as well.
| | 04:44 |
So, you can see, with the Curves
Adjustment we're able to apply some very
| | 04:48 |
sophisticated color adjustments, without
too much difficulty at all.
| | 04:52 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding a gradient of color| 00:02 |
When I'm reviewing an image and decide
I'd like to add a little bit of a color
| | 00:05 |
influence to a particular area.
Usually what first comes to mind is using
| | 00:09 |
an Adjustment layer in conjunction with a
Layer mask so that I can focus an
| | 00:13 |
adjustment on a specific portion of the
photo.
| | 00:17 |
But sometimes the adjustment that you
want to apply essentially falls along the gradient.
| | 00:22 |
And the Gradient tool itself can provide
all you need in order to add that effect.
| | 00:28 |
Let's take a look at how we can use the
Gradient to apply a color effect to a photo.
| | 00:33 |
Here, I'm happy with the foreground
color, but I'd like to add a little bit
| | 00:36 |
of warmth to the sky and so I want that
warmth, that yellowish, to slightly
| | 00:39 |
orange tone.
To affect the sky but then taper off as
| | 00:44 |
we get down toward the bottom of the
image.
| | 00:47 |
And that's a perfect example of a
situation where the Gradient tool can be helpful.
| | 00:51 |
Let's go ahead and get started by adding
a new empty image layer, not an
| | 00:54 |
adjustment layer, but an actual pixel
layer, but of course that pixel layer
| | 00:58 |
will initially be empty.
So I'll click that Create New Layer
| | 01:03 |
button, the blank sheet of paper icon at
the bottom of the Layers panel and that
| | 01:06 |
will add a new empty image layer.
I'll go ahead and double-click on the
| | 01:11 |
Name for that layer and then type a new
name.
| | 01:14 |
I'll just Type Sky Gradient here since
I'm going to be adding some color to the
| | 01:18 |
sky via a gradient.
I'll then choose the Gradient tool from
| | 01:23 |
the toolbox and then I can take a look at
the settings on the Options bar.
| | 01:27 |
I'm going to use a Linear Gradient,
that's the first of the five options,
| | 01:30 |
because I simply want a gradient to go
from top to bottom.
| | 01:34 |
The Mode should be set to Normal an the
Opacity at 100%.
| | 01:38 |
I don't want to reverse the colors, I
want to just simply draw them in the
| | 01:41 |
direction that I decide to create those
colors.
| | 01:44 |
I will include dither, an I'll leave the
Transparency option turned on.
| | 01:48 |
Dithering provides for some smoother
blending, especially for 8 bit per
| | 01:52 |
channel images, an transparency enables
me to retain transparency if desired, for
| | 01:56 |
the photo.
In other words, for my new sky gradient
| | 02:01 |
layer which contains nothing but
transparent pixels.
| | 02:04 |
I can retain transparency if I use a
gradient that includes transparency.
| | 02:08 |
We'll start off with a solid gradient and
I'm going to choose one of the presets.
| | 02:13 |
So, at the far left of the options bar
for the Gradient tool, I'll click that
| | 02:17 |
popup and then I'll choose one of the
gradients that I think might work.
| | 02:21 |
In this case, a purple to orange gradient
and then I'll simply Click and Drag
| | 02:25 |
within the image and that will add the
gradient to my Sky Gradient layer.
| | 02:30 |
Of course, this completely replaces the
photo altogether but that's because I'm
| | 02:34 |
painting pixels onto a layer above my
Background Image layer.
| | 02:39 |
What I really want to do is have this
color influence only the color of what's below.
| | 02:43 |
So, I'm going to change the Blend mode
for my Sky Gradient layer to Color, that
| | 02:48 |
will cause this layer to only affect the
color of the underlying image.
| | 02:53 |
So, you can see, I've retained all the
texture and detail, I've only changed the
| | 02:57 |
color appearance, not for the better,
mind you.
| | 03:00 |
Obviously, this color is really not
working for the photo, but it does give
| | 03:03 |
us a sense of what's posssible.
I'll go ahead and choose Edit > Step
| | 03:07 |
Backward, and then, Edit > Step Backward,
one more time, from the menu.
| | 03:12 |
In order to take two steps back and get
back to my image beofre I addded that gradient.
| | 03:17 |
And then I'll choose a different
gradient, specifially, the foreground
| | 03:21 |
color to transparent gradient.
It looks like, black to transparency or
| | 03:25 |
perhaps black to checkerboard.
But that black color, for this particular
| | 03:30 |
gradient preset is actually simply the
foreground color and the checkerboard is
| | 03:34 |
what indicates transparency in Photoshop.
So I'll choose that option and then I can
| | 03:39 |
go down to the bottom of the toolbox and
click on the Foreground Color Swatch in
| | 03:43 |
order to bring up the Color picker.
So that I can choose the foreground color
| | 03:48 |
that I want to use with that gradient.
I'll choose a value that is that is
| | 03:53 |
relatively vibrant orange.
And then I'll click OK and you can see
| | 03:57 |
that that orangish value has been set as
my foreground color.
| | 04:02 |
I can now Click and Drag within the image
in order to define that gradient.
| | 04:07 |
The area where I begin dragging will have
the foreground color and the area where I
| | 04:11 |
release the mouse will have conceptually
the background color.
| | 04:15 |
But in the case, transparency and there
will be a smooth gradiation in between.
| | 04:19 |
So, you can see for example that I get
that orangish tone up at the top of the
| | 04:23 |
image and then it slowly transitions into
nothing at all.
| | 04:27 |
I'll turn off the Background Image layer
and we can get a better sense of that.
| | 04:31 |
Again, we have the orange value up at the
top and then transparency at the bottom.
| | 04:36 |
With a very smooth transition in between.
I'll turn on the Visibility of that
| | 04:39 |
Background Layer once again and then I'll
change the Blend mode for that Sky
| | 04:43 |
Gradient Layer from the default of Normal
to Color.
| | 04:47 |
So that I'm only adjusting the overall
color appearance within the image.
| | 04:50 |
I can also reduce the Opacity.
I'll click on the Opacity control and
| | 04:55 |
then Drag the slider over to the Left in
order to reduce the Opacity, the strength
| | 04:59 |
of the effect, for that Sky Gradient
Layer.
| | 05:03 |
And of course at any time, I could also
change that Foreground color.
| | 05:06 |
Let's, for example, shift to something
that's a little bit more vibrant.
| | 05:11 |
I'll go ahead and switch that color,
click OK in the color picker, and then
| | 05:14 |
Click and Drag within the image, in order
to draw that gradient.
| | 05:18 |
And once again you see a very strong
color in this case, I might need to
| | 05:21 |
reduce the Saturation further if I want
to use that type of color.
| | 05:26 |
But the point is that we can use the
gradient tool to add color into a
| | 05:29 |
specific area of the photo.
In this case, the top portion of the
| | 05:33 |
photo is getting the color and the bottom
portion is not.
| | 05:37 |
And I've reduced the Opacity so that I'm
only getting a relatively subtle effect.
| | 05:42 |
In this case I would probably take down
that Saturation a little bit more.
| | 05:45 |
Perhaps somewhere around there and I'll
turn off the visibility of that sky
| | 05:48 |
gradient layer and turn it back on.
If I decide I didn't quite get the
| | 05:52 |
gradient exactly where I wanted it, I can
simply draw again, in this case, since I
| | 05:56 |
actually would like to take that gradient
a little bit further.
| | 06:01 |
But of course, I could also Undo and
start over if I felt the need.
| | 06:05 |
So whenever you'd like to perhaps add
some color to one portion of the image
| | 06:08 |
and have it gradually taper off.
The Gradient tool taking advantage of the
| | 06:13 |
ability to create a color to transparency
gradient can be especially helpful.
| | 06:18 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Whitening and brightening| 00:02 |
With photographs of people of course we
want to present the person in the best
| | 00:05 |
light possible, and that can mean
brightening an whitening the teeth, if
| | 00:08 |
you get a nice smile in the photo.
Let's take a look at a couple of quick
| | 00:13 |
techniques for whitening and brightening
teeth in a photo.
| | 00:17 |
We'll start off with whitening the teeth,
and that calls for essentially
| | 00:21 |
neutralizing the color, although not
completely.
| | 00:24 |
I'm going to start by adding a new image
layer, but I'm going to hold the Alt key
| | 00:28 |
on Windows or the Option key on
Macintosh, while clicking on the Create
| | 00:31 |
New Layer button to bring up the new
layer dialog.
| | 00:36 |
I'll go ahead and type the new name for
the layer.
| | 00:39 |
We'll just call this Whitened Teeth.
And I'll change the blend mode for this
| | 00:43 |
layer to color, because I'm going to be
changing just the color of the teeth,
| | 00:47 |
getting rid essentially of any color
element, some yellowish tones in the
| | 00:50 |
teeth for example, in order to help
neutralize that color.
| | 00:56 |
So, I'll choose Color from that pop up,
and then I'll click OK in order to add
| | 01:00 |
that whitened teeth layer.
Next, I'll choose the brush tool and then
| | 01:05 |
I'll simply paint with any shade of grey.
I can press the letter D on the keyboard
| | 01:09 |
for the default colors, which will happen
to be black for the foreground color and
| | 01:12 |
white for the background color.
And then I can zoom in on the photo
| | 01:17 |
taking a closer look at those teeth, and
adjust the brush size as needed using the
| | 01:20 |
left square bracket key to reduce the
size of the brush, and the right square
| | 01:24 |
bracket key to increase the size of the
brush.
| | 01:28 |
I want to make sure that the brush is set
to a soft edge brush with a 0% hardness.
| | 01:35 |
I also want the blend mode for the brush
to be set at normal.
| | 01:38 |
We'll use the color blend mode for the
Whiten Teeth layer.
| | 01:41 |
But for the brush itself, we want the
normal blend mode, and I'll make sure the
| | 01:45 |
opacity is set to 100%.
Even though I don't want to actually
| | 01:49 |
completely remove the color, I'm going to
start off by doing exactly that.
| | 01:54 |
So, having adjusted my brush size I'll go
ahead and paint, with black in this case,
| | 01:58 |
so that I am painting black onto my color
correction layer, that Whiten Teeth layer.
| | 02:04 |
And because there's no color element to
black at all, that causes, because of the
| | 02:09 |
Color Blend mode, all color to disappear.
In other words, at the moment I'm
| | 02:15 |
essentially converting the teeth to black
and white.
| | 02:18 |
Now that I've gotten to some of the large
teeth, I can increase the size of the
| | 02:21 |
brush, and I'll just go ahead and quickly
paint across the teeth.
| | 02:25 |
Generally speaking, what I'll do is start
off with just the edges of the area that
| | 02:29 |
I want to work on, and once I've defined
the outline of the teeth, I'll go ahead
| | 02:33 |
and come back and fill in the inner areas
of the teeth.
| | 02:39 |
So I'll just go ahead and paint along
those edges, and then I'll turn off the
| | 02:42 |
visibility of my background image layer
by clicking on the eye icon to the left
| | 02:46 |
of that layer.
And now it's very easy to see which areas
| | 02:51 |
represent the outline of the shape that I
need to work on and which areas represent
| | 02:55 |
the interior, and I just need to paint
then into those interior areas in order
| | 02:59 |
to fill in all of the teeth.
So I don't even need to be able to see
| | 03:05 |
the teeth at this point to be able to
paint reasonably accurately in terms of
| | 03:09 |
removing that color.
I can always apply some corrections a
| | 03:13 |
little bit later.
I can use the erase tool, for example, to
| | 03:16 |
erase the effect as needed in specific
areas of the teeth.
| | 03:20 |
I'll go ahead and quickly wrap up this
painting work though, and then we can
| | 03:24 |
always apply some corrections later if
needed.
| | 03:28 |
I'll turn on the visibility of that
background layer once again.
| | 03:32 |
And you can see that we have indeed
removed the color from the teeth.
| | 03:35 |
I'll turn off the Whiten Teeth layer, so
we see the before version, and then turn
| | 03:39 |
that layer back on so that we can see the
after version.
| | 03:43 |
Naturally, we're going to want to tone
this down a little bit, but we'll save
| | 03:45 |
that for just a moment later.
Because now, I also want to brighten the
| | 03:49 |
teeth up just a little bit.
So I'll add another layer.
| | 03:53 |
Once again, holding the Alt key on
Windows or the Option key on Macintosh,
| | 03:56 |
while clicking on the Create New Layer
button.
| | 04:00 |
And then I'll type a name, in this case
Brighten Teeth for the new layer.
| | 04:04 |
And for this layer, I'm going to change
the blend mode to Screen and that is a
| | 04:08 |
brightening blend mode.
So, I'll choose the screen blend mode and
| | 04:12 |
click OK.
And this time, I'll once again paint with
| | 04:16 |
the brush, with a soft edge and a normal
blend mode at 100% opacity.
| | 04:21 |
But I'm going to press the letter X to
switch or exchange the foreground and
| | 04:25 |
background colors so now white is my
foreground color, and I'll once again
| | 04:29 |
paint across the teeth.
I'll use a slightly larger brush just to
| | 04:34 |
move a little more quickly.
You can see that I am most certainly
| | 04:37 |
brightening the teeth.
Brightening very, very significantly, way
| | 04:41 |
too much in fact, but we'll come back and
mitigate the effect here in just a moment.
| | 04:46 |
So I'll paint across the bottoms of the
teeth and then paint to the tops of the
| | 04:49 |
teeth, and then I can come back and fill
in, in-between in just a moment.
| | 04:55 |
So going ahead and tracing that outline
essentially, I won't worry about doing an
| | 04:59 |
absolutely perfect job in this case.
I'm sure you can believe that if I were
| | 05:04 |
to take the time I can get an absolutely
perfect result here, but for our purposes
| | 05:08 |
I'll just illustrate the concept and
perhaps not get a perfect result, but
| | 05:12 |
that looks to be pretty good.
Now of course the teeth are looking
| | 05:18 |
incredibly artificial.
I'll zoom out just a little bit so we get
| | 05:21 |
a little bit of a context, and you can
see just how ridiculous things are
| | 05:24 |
looking at the moment.
I'm brightening the teeth, but I'm
| | 05:27 |
brightening them completely.
So the first thing I want to do is tone
| | 05:30 |
down that brightening effect.
So for the brighten teeth layer, with
| | 05:34 |
that layer active on the Layers panel,
I'll click on the Opacity pop-up at the
| | 05:38 |
top-right of the Layers panel and reduce
the Opacity for that Brighten Teeth layer
| | 05:42 |
rather significantly.
In this case, taking it down oh, maybe
| | 05:47 |
just somewhere around 20 or 25%.
I'll then switch to the Whiten Teeth
| | 05:51 |
layer, and here too I want to reduce the
effect just a little bit.
| | 05:55 |
So I'll go to the Opacity slider once
again and reduce that opacity.
| | 06:00 |
If I take the opacity down to 0% for the
Whiten Teeth layer, we'll see a little
| | 06:03 |
bit of that dingy yellow color coming
through again.
| | 06:07 |
And if I take it up to a 100%, we'll see
grayscale teeth completely black and
| | 06:11 |
white teeth, and I want a relatively
modest value for opacity.
| | 06:16 |
I want a relatively low value, so that
some of that color is showing through.
| | 06:19 |
We're not trying to make perfectly white
teeth.
| | 06:22 |
We're just trying to improve the overall
appearance of the teeth.
| | 06:26 |
That's looking to be a pretty good
result.
| | 06:28 |
I'll go ahead and hold the Alt key on
Windows or the Option key on Macintosh
| | 06:31 |
and click on the eye icon to the left of
the background image layer.
| | 06:35 |
That will cause only the background layer
to be visible, and then I'll hold the Alt
| | 06:39 |
or Option key and click again so that all
layers are visible.
| | 06:43 |
And repeating that Alt or Option clicking
to cause the Brightened Teeth and
| | 06:47 |
Whitened Teeth layers to be hidden, and
then Alt or Option clicking again to
| | 06:50 |
bring back those layers, we can see the
overall before and after.
| | 06:55 |
And so, you can see, we've really
produced a good effect as far as
| | 06:58 |
brightening the teeth and whitening the
teeth but without too strong an effect so
| | 07:01 |
that we don't have a really artificial
appearance in the photo.
| | 07:06 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Painting a color fix| 00:02 |
At times I'll run into a situation where
I have what I refer to color contamination.
| | 00:07 |
And that essentially just means color
where it doesn't belong.
| | 00:10 |
And very often that color contamination
will literally be just color contamination.
| | 00:16 |
In other words a change in color or an
undesirable color where the texture is
| | 00:20 |
actually perfectly fine.
I can see exactly that type of situation here.
| | 00:25 |
There's some green in the bark of the
tree.
| | 00:27 |
I'm guessing there was an object close to
the lens that was rendered completely out
| | 00:31 |
of focus.
And so we have a color tint where we
| | 00:33 |
don't want it, but the texture is
perfectly fine.
| | 00:36 |
So, all we need to do is, change the
color in that particular area.
| | 00:40 |
And we can do that, thanks to the Color
Blend Mode and the Brush tool.
| | 00:44 |
I'll go ahead and start off by adding a
new image layer, but I want a new image
| | 00:48 |
layer with special properties.
So I'm going to hold the Alt key on
| | 00:52 |
Windows or the Option key on Macintosh,
while clicking on the Create New Layer button.
| | 00:58 |
the blank sheet of paper icon, at the
bottom of the Layers panel.
| | 01:01 |
And that, will bring up the New Layer
dialog, where I can establish specific
| | 01:04 |
properties for this layer.
The first thing I'll do, is type a new
| | 01:09 |
name for this layer, I'll just go ahead
and call this layer Color Fix.
| | 01:13 |
And then, I'm also going to change the
Blend mode for for the layer.
| | 01:17 |
I'm going to paint a color onto this
layer, but I only want it to affect the
| | 01:21 |
color of the overall image, and so I'm
going to use the Color Blend Mode.
| | 01:27 |
I'll go ahead and choose that from the
mode popup, and then click OK.
| | 01:31 |
And I now have my Color Fix Layer, ready
to apply a color correction that will not
| | 01:34 |
affect Luminance values or Brightness
values in the photo.
| | 01:39 |
And therefore will not effect texture in
the areas where I'm painting.
| | 01:43 |
I'll go ahead and choose the Brush tool
from the toolbox.
| | 01:46 |
I'll make sure that I'm working with a
regular round brush with a zero percent
| | 01:50 |
hardness, in other words a soft blended
edge brush.
| | 01:54 |
I wanted the blend mode to be set to
Normal.
| | 01:57 |
I'm using the Color Blend mode for my
Color Fix layer, but for the brush itself
| | 02:00 |
I want the Normal Blend mode.
And of course I want a complete fix for
| | 02:05 |
the image.
So, I'll leave that Opacity set to 100%.
| | 02:09 |
Next, I need to choose which color I'm
going to paint with.
| | 02:13 |
I have a green color that I don't want
but, what I do want is bark color perhaps
| | 02:17 |
some of these grays, some of these
oranges and reds.
| | 02:21 |
So, let's start off with a color that
seems most dominant.
| | 02:24 |
Maybe some of the grey areas in the bark.
So with the Brush tool Active, I'll hold
| | 02:29 |
the Alt key on windows or Option key on
Macintosh and that will temporarily give
| | 02:33 |
me the Eyedropper tool.
I'll go ahead and click on an area of the
| | 02:37 |
bark and that will sample that color
making it my foreground color.
| | 02:42 |
So again I can hold the Alt key on
Windows or Option key on Macintosh while
| | 02:45 |
clicking any area of the photo in order
to sample that color.
| | 02:50 |
But bear in mind I'm not going to be
adjusting the overall luminance values in
| | 02:53 |
the photo I'll only be affecting the
color.
| | 02:57 |
So I'll go ahead and adjust my brush size
using the left square bracket key to
| | 03:00 |
reduce the brush size or the right square
bracket key to increase the brush size.
| | 03:05 |
And then I'll simply paint into the area
that I want to correct, so you can see
| | 03:09 |
that I'm removing all of that green.
And replacing it with a bit of a gray tone.
| | 03:15 |
Now, for the moment, I'm painting in this
entire area, I'm not going to worry about
| | 03:18 |
the specific colors too much.
Because I can always come back and Fine
| | 03:23 |
tune the effect.
For example there are some areas that
| | 03:25 |
look a little bit redish.
I'll go ahead and click to sample that
| | 03:29 |
redish color and then in some of these
darker areas.
| | 03:32 |
I'll adjust my brush size and paint into
those dark areas, so that we can add a
| | 03:36 |
little bit of that redish effect.
I can also choose some of the other color
| | 03:41 |
values that we find find within the
photo.
| | 03:43 |
And essentially just painting various
color values into different areas of the
| | 03:47 |
photo to try and produce the most
realistic effect possible.
| | 03:51 |
Trying to essentially mimic, what the
rest of the image looks like.
| | 03:55 |
Now, I can continue in this way, painting
additional colors into specific areas of
| | 03:59 |
the photo in order to produce the best
result.
| | 04:03 |
With a removal of the color
contamination, a retention of the
| | 04:07 |
texture, and the result being a very nice
effect.
| | 04:11 |
I'll go ahead and turn off the Color Fix
layer.
| | 04:13 |
And you can see we've gone from this
green blob to an image that looks to have
| | 04:16 |
reasonably accurate color.
I'll continue doing a littel bit of touch
| | 04:20 |
up work here getting all the colors just
right.
| | 04:23 |
But you can see, I'm able to apply that
color fix on a separate layer so it's
| | 04:26 |
completely non destructive and only
adjusting the color without adjusting the texture.
| | 04:32 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Removing color from lens flare| 00:02 |
Quite often I like to point my lens
toward the sky, and in fact, include the
| | 00:05 |
sun in the frame and that can produce a
cool effect or an interesting effect anyway.
| | 00:11 |
It also can produce lens flare within the
image.
| | 00:15 |
Now sometimes I find lens flare to be
just offensive, it's bothersome and I
| | 00:18 |
want to to get rid of it all together
using some of the image clean up tool
| | 00:21 |
with in Photoshop.
But in other cases I actually find that I
| | 00:26 |
don't mind (INAUDIBLE) the lens flare
itself, I just mind the color effect.
| | 00:31 |
Another words I don't mind the bright
shapes from the lens aperture showing up
| | 00:35 |
throughout the photo, but I don't like
the distracting color.
| | 00:39 |
Fortunately it's very easy to remove just
the color from lens flare.
| | 00:43 |
Let's take a look at how it's done.
I'm going to start by adding a new image
| | 00:46 |
layer, but I want a layer with special
properties.
| | 00:49 |
So instead of just clicking on the Create
New Layer button, I'm going to hold the
| | 00:52 |
Alt key on Windows, or the Option key on
Macintosh, and then click on the Create
| | 00:56 |
New Layer button at the bottom of the
Layers panel.
| | 01:00 |
I'll go ahead an call this color fix, an
I'll change the blend mode to color,
| | 01:04 |
because I'm going to be changing just the
color, of the lens flare.
| | 01:09 |
I'll go head then, and click OK, to
create that layer.
| | 01:11 |
And now, I can look throughout the image,
and try to find areas that contain lens flare.
| | 01:17 |
I'll zoom in on some of the lens flare,
here, so we can get a better look.
| | 01:20 |
And then, I'll choose the Brush tool,
from the toolbox, make sure that I'm
| | 01:24 |
working with a soft edge brush, a 0%
hardness, and that the Brush Blend mode
| | 01:27 |
is set to normal.
The color blend mode will be used for the
| | 01:32 |
layer itself, the brush should be on the
normal blend mode and at 100% opacity,
| | 01:36 |
because I want to completely remove the
color for that lens flare.
| | 01:41 |
Well, it's not so much that I want to
remove the color per se from the lens
| | 01:44 |
flare, but rather that I want to change
the color to something that will match
| | 01:48 |
with the background.
And so with the brush tool active I'm
| | 01:52 |
going to sample a color from the
background.
| | 01:55 |
I'll hold the Alt key on Windows or the
Option key on Macintosh so that while I'm
| | 01:58 |
working with the brush tool I have access
to the eyedropper tool.
| | 02:02 |
And then I'll simply click on an area of
the image that I think represents a good
| | 02:06 |
color to replace my lens flare.
I'll go ahead and paint over the lens
| | 02:11 |
flare, and you can see, now I'm getting
the exact same color as that background area.
| | 02:17 |
All I'm really doing is changing the
color, and so I still have the luminance
| | 02:20 |
changes, I still have the brightness of
the lens flair, but I no longer have
| | 02:24 |
those odd colors.
You'll see I can paint into this
| | 02:28 |
additional area.
I'll pan across here, and paint to remove
| | 02:32 |
all of the color from the lens flair up
here in this corner.
| | 02:36 |
And I can pan down and you can see a
variety of different areas where I might
| | 02:40 |
want to paint to remove the effect of
that lens flare.
| | 02:44 |
And even in situations where it might
seem a little bit trickier.
| | 02:47 |
For example here where we have the sun
rays.
| | 02:49 |
I can still just do the exact same thing.
Alt or Option click on an area that
| | 02:54 |
represents a good source color.
And then paint over the random colours
| | 02:58 |
that appear in that lens flare.
So I can continue with this process,
| | 03:02 |
sampling a new colour each time I feel
that I need to choose a different colour.
| | 03:07 |
Each time I have a different background
where that lens flare appears.
| | 03:12 |
And then simply paint over the lens flare
in the photo.
| | 03:15 |
So, a very simple approach to cleaning up
the color effect, within lens flare.
| | 03:20 |
And as I say, that very often provides
me with all that I really need, in terms
| | 03:24 |
of correcting that flare.
You can see, now, zooming out a little
| | 03:29 |
bit, I'll toggle the visibility of that
color fix layer, Off, and then, On, and
| | 03:32 |
you can get a sense of the really
significant improvement.
| | 03:36 |
I think as far as removing the color from
the lens flare without altering the
| | 03:40 |
overall tonality.
I have a little bit more cleanup work to
| | 03:43 |
do here.
So, more colored lens flare to resolve
| | 03:46 |
but, you can see the process is rather
straight forward and very effective.
| | 03:50 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using an adjustment layer to paint in a correction| 00:00 |
And when you are trying to achieve a
specific color effect in a photo,
| | 00:04 |
sometimes you need to mix a variety of
different techniques.
| | 00:09 |
And I think this photo illustrates
exactly that type of a situation.
| | 00:13 |
The foreground of the image, roughly the
bottom half of the image, is in shadow
| | 00:17 |
and so the light appears quite a bit
cooler.
| | 00:20 |
The snow, for example, has a rather
significant cyan to blue element to it.
| | 00:25 |
And I think I would like to reduce that a
little bit, perhaps brighten up the
| | 00:29 |
shadows just a little and maybe even add
a little bit more saturation into these
| | 00:33 |
areas of the photo.
The top half I think is perfectly fine,
| | 00:38 |
El Capitan in the distance here looks
good, its just this foreground that I'd
| | 00:41 |
like to adjust.
And so I want to apply some specific
| | 00:45 |
adjustments but I also want to focus
those adjustments on particular areas of
| | 00:49 |
the image and since I think I'd like to
apply multiple adjustments, I'm going to
| | 00:54 |
make use of a layer group, a layer mask.
And some focused adjustments.
| | 01:01 |
I'll start off by adding some adjustments
as I think I want to apply them.
| | 01:05 |
I'll go ahead for example and add a hue
saturation adjustment layer, and then
| | 01:10 |
choose the Cyans Channel and reduce
saturation for the cyans.
| | 01:15 |
I'll go ahead and start off by reducing
saturation completely and then perhaps
| | 01:19 |
expanding the range, dragging the right
side of the range essentially from cyan a
| | 01:23 |
little further into blue.
Now keep in mind because cyan is at the
| | 01:28 |
edge of the gradient, what's actually
happening is I am spanning across that gradient.
| | 01:34 |
The gradient here, you can think of as a
circle or a loop and it's simply been cut
| | 01:38 |
and unrolled so cyan at the left meets up
with the cyan at the right.
| | 01:43 |
So, I have the right extent as it were of
the color range that I'm adjusting over
| | 01:47 |
here at the left end of the gradients and
the left extent of the range over here at
| | 01:51 |
the right.
So, I can expand into the greens for
| | 01:55 |
example and what I'm adjusting is not the
reds but the cyans and end of the blues
| | 01:59 |
just a little bit.
You can see of course that that's
| | 02:03 |
affecting the overall water in addition
of the snow so I'll maybe adjust that
| | 02:07 |
range to bring it back closer to cyan not
so much of the blue because the blues are
| | 02:11 |
in the water and the cyans are mostly in
the snow.
| | 02:16 |
Now keep in mind, at the moment, the
adjustment is affecting the entire image.
| | 02:20 |
So, for example, the sky is being reduced
in saturation a little bit.
| | 02:24 |
I'll bring the saturation levels up just
a bit because I don't want to reduce all
| | 02:27 |
of the saturation from the foreground,
just a little bit of that saturation.
| | 02:32 |
I also want to warm up that foreground
area a little bit.
| | 02:36 |
So I'll go ahead an add a color balance
adjustment layer, and shift that color
| | 02:39 |
balance just a little bit toward yellow.
Perhaps just a little bit toward red.
| | 02:44 |
I don't want to go too far.
I don't want to create an unnatural
| | 02:47 |
appearance in this portion of the photo.
But I do want to warm things up just a little.
| | 02:52 |
And I also think I'll brighten things up
just a little bit, just a really small
| | 02:56 |
amount with curves, just to finalize that
overall impact in this area of the photo.
| | 03:02 |
Of course, as I mentioned, I'm affecting
the entire image because each of these
| | 03:06 |
adjustment layers has a layer mask that's
filled with white.
| | 03:10 |
And in the context of a layer mask, white
reveals.
| | 03:12 |
So it's revealing the entirety of all
three of these adjustments.
| | 03:16 |
I'd like to constrain all three of these
adjustments so that all all of them only
| | 03:20 |
effect the lower half of the photo, that
foreground area of the image.
| | 03:25 |
And so I'm going to click on the
thumbnail for my first adjustment layer,
| | 03:28 |
that's the curves adjustment and then
hold the Shift key and click on the last adjustment.
| | 03:33 |
My hue saturation adjustment so that all
three of my adjustment layers are selected.
| | 03:38 |
I'll then go to the top right of the
Layers panel and click on the panel Popup
| | 03:42 |
menu and choose New Group from layers
from that menu that will bring up the New
| | 03:46 |
Group From Layers dialog where I can
specify a name for this layer group.
| | 03:53 |
I'll go ahead and call this Foreground
Fix since I'm using this layer group to
| | 03:56 |
fix the foreground.
And then I'll simply click OK to create
| | 04:00 |
that foreground fix layer group that if I
expand the group you can see contains
| | 04:05 |
multiple adjustment layers.
Now those adjustment layers are still
| | 04:09 |
effecting the entire image.
They're just placed inside of a layer
| | 04:13 |
group essentially for organizational
purposes at this point but next I'm going
| | 04:16 |
to add a layer mask to this layer group
so that all of the elements inside of
| | 04:20 |
this layer group, all three of my
adjustment layers will be constrained
| | 04:24 |
based on that single layer mask.
So if I ever need to modify the mask I
| | 04:30 |
only need to modify it in one place.
I can actually add a layer mask directly
| | 04:35 |
to a layer group and that will constrain
the visibility of everything inside the
| | 04:39 |
layer group.
I can add a layer mask by clicking on the
| | 04:43 |
Add Layer Mask button at the bottom of
the Layers panel.
| | 04:46 |
That's the circle inside of the square
icon.
| | 04:48 |
But in this case, I actually want a layer
mask filled with black, so that the
| | 04:51 |
adjustments are not visible at all and
then I'll paint the adjustments into the image.
| | 04:57 |
So I'm going to instead of simply
clicking on the Add Layer Mask button,
| | 05:00 |
I'm going to hold the Alt key on Windows,
or the Option key on Macintosh, while
| | 05:03 |
clicking on that button.
And that will add a layer mask that is
| | 05:08 |
filled with black.
Next I'll choose my brush from the
| | 05:12 |
toolbox, I'll press the letter D on the
keyboard to set the colors to their
| | 05:15 |
defaults, which in the context of the
layer mask means white is my foreground color.
| | 05:21 |
I'll make sure I'm working with a soft
edge brush with the normal blend mode and
| | 05:25 |
a 100% opacity, and then I'll adjust the
brush size as needed using the left
| | 05:28 |
square bracket key to reduce the brush
size and the right square bracket key to
| | 05:31 |
increase the brush size.
And then I can paint the adjustment.
| | 05:38 |
Into the photo, and you can see, the
adjustments that I've applied are now
| | 05:41 |
affecting only the lower half of the
image.
| | 05:44 |
At any time, of course, I can go back to
my adjustments and fine-tune the effect.
| | 05:50 |
So, for example, I'll go to the color
balance adjustment, and then I'll shift
| | 05:53 |
the color balance between magenta and
green and you can see that I'm only affecting.
| | 05:59 |
The lower half of the photo and so all of
the adjustments I've applied, the curves
| | 06:03 |
adjustment, color balance adjustment and
hue saturation adjustment are only
| | 06:07 |
affecting the lower half of the image.
I can go back and modify the layer mask
| | 06:12 |
as needed or modify my adjustments but,
the key point is that I'm able to
| | 06:16 |
actually apply specific adjustments To
specific areas of an image.
| | 06:22 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Toning down color in skin| 00:01 |
Accurate color can be important in any
photographic image, but when that image
| | 00:05 |
contains a person, color can be
especially important.
| | 00:09 |
If skin tones don't look accurate, they
can be really problematic.
| | 00:13 |
And one of the most common issues I see
when it comes to skin tones is excessive
| | 00:17 |
saturation, and especially excessive
saturation of reddish to magenta tones.
| | 00:23 |
It can cause some artificial appearance
in skin tones that stands out as looking
| | 00:27 |
just not quite right.
With this photo, for example, we can see
| | 00:31 |
that the skin tones are just a little bit
too saturated.
| | 00:35 |
It looks almost like a little bit of a
sunburn or perhaps some strong lipstick,
| | 00:38 |
but it's actually just that the color is
a little bit too strong in the image.
| | 00:43 |
Let's take a look at how we can quickly
and easily apply a correction.
| | 00:47 |
I'm going to add a Hue Saturation
Adjustment layer.
| | 00:49 |
So, I'll click on the add Adjustment
Layer button at the bottom of the Layers panel.
| | 00:53 |
And then choose Hue Saturation from that
popup, I'm then going to choose the reds
| | 00:57 |
option from the popup.
The default is master, and that will
| | 01:01 |
cause the Hue Saturation Adjustment to
affect all colors throughout the photo.
| | 01:06 |
So, I'll switch to reds, and then I'm
going to apply an exaggerated reduction
| | 01:10 |
in Saturation.
And you can see that for the most part,
| | 01:13 |
those skin tones have been toned down
completely, but we do still have just a
| | 01:17 |
little bit of orange to yellow tones
within the skin.
| | 01:21 |
And so I'm going to expand the range of
colors, so that we're adjusting more than
| | 01:25 |
just the reds.
I'm going to expand over into the yellows
| | 01:29 |
just a little bit, and so I need to
expand the range of colors to the right.
| | 01:33 |
So, I'll use the right set of controls
putting my mouse in between the vertical
| | 01:37 |
bar and the trapezoid to the right, and
then I will click and drag over to the
| | 01:40 |
right in order to expand that range of
colors.
| | 01:44 |
I only want to expand just enough so that
I'm getting all of the skin tones.
| | 01:49 |
So, I'll perhaps move over to the left so
that I can see some colors showing
| | 01:52 |
through in the skin, and then move to the
right very slowly until the last of that
| | 01:56 |
color disappears.
I can also increase Saturation to make
| | 02:01 |
sure that I'm getting that full range and
that certainly appears to be the case.
| | 02:05 |
So, I'll reduce the Saturation slider,
and then take it over to the left to a
| | 02:09 |
negative value, so that I'm reducing
Saturation and I'll reduce it just enough
| | 02:13 |
so that those skin tones look a little
bit more natural.
| | 02:18 |
We want to make sure not to take the skin
tones down too far, because then we get
| | 02:21 |
an ashy gray look in the skin.
But we don't want to keep it too high,
| | 02:25 |
because then those colors look a little
bit artificial, so I think right about
| | 02:28 |
there is going to work well for this image.
Of course, if I zoom out, you'll notice
| | 02:33 |
that in addition to reducing the
intensity of the reds in the skin tones,
| | 02:37 |
I've also reduced the intensity of the
reds throughout the image.
| | 02:41 |
Toggling the visibility of my Hue
Saturation Adjustment Layer off, and then
| | 02:45 |
on for example.
You can see that the bricks and other
| | 02:48 |
areas on the photo have really lost a lot
of Saturation.
| | 02:52 |
So, I'm going to use a Layer Masks in
order to have this effect only apply to
| | 02:56 |
skin tones.
The Hue Saturation Adjustment Layer, just
| | 03:00 |
like all adjustment layers comes with a
Layer Masks by default, and it's filled
| | 03:04 |
with white, which means that this Layer
Masks is affecting the entire image.
| | 03:09 |
I'm going to start off by changing that
Layer Masks, so that it affects none of
| | 03:13 |
the image.
The Hue Saturation Adjustment will not be
| | 03:17 |
seen anywhere in the photo, and then I
can paint the effect just where I want it.
| | 03:23 |
I'll go ahead and choose Edit Fill from
the menu, I'll make sure the use popup is
| | 03:27 |
set to black.
And then I'll click Ok in order to fill
| | 03:30 |
that Layer Masks with black, so that the
effect of Hue Saturation Adjustment Layer
| | 03:34 |
is blocked for the entire image.
I'll then choose the Brush tool from the
| | 03:40 |
toolbox, and then moving my mouse out
over the image, I'll use the left and
| | 03:43 |
right square bracket keys as needed in
order to adjust the size of the brush.
| | 03:48 |
The left square bracket key will reduce
the brush size, and the right square
| | 03:51 |
bracket key will increase the brush size.
And I want a brush size that is just a
| | 03:56 |
little bit smaller than the area that I'm
going to paint into.
| | 04:00 |
In this case, painting white into the
face to reveal my Hue Saturation Adjustment.
| | 04:05 |
I do want to make sure that the Brush
Hardness is set to 0%.
| | 04:09 |
So I'll click on the Brush popup on the
Options bar and make sure Hardness is at
| | 04:13 |
0%, so that the effect will blend into
the surrounding image.
| | 04:17 |
I'll also Press the letter D on the
Keyboard for Default Colors, and that
| | 04:21 |
will make sure that my foreground color
is set to white.
| | 04:25 |
And finally I'll make sure that I'm
painting with a 100% Opacity, and that
| | 04:29 |
the brush is set to the Normal Blend
Mode.
| | 04:32 |
Now I can simply move out over the image,
I'll go ahead and zoom in so I can get a
| | 04:36 |
closer look.
And then I'll click and paint into the
| | 04:39 |
photo just over the skin tones, there we
go.
| | 04:42 |
And then if I turn off the visibility of
that Hue Saturation Adjustment, you'll
| | 04:46 |
see the before version of the skin tones.
And then clicking to turn on the effect
| | 04:50 |
of the Hue Saturation Adjustment Layer,
you can see that we've reduced the
| | 04:53 |
saturation of the reds in those skin
tones.
| | 04:57 |
But we preserve the nice reds throughout
the rest of the photo.
| | 05:01 |
So, as you can see, applying an
adjustment to correct skin tones can be
| | 05:04 |
fairly simple and yet very, very
important to the overall quality of the photo.
| | 05:09 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Selection-based, targeted color correction| 00:02 |
There are many ways that you can focus an
adjustment on a specific area of a photo.
| | 00:06 |
When you want to apply a color correction
to just a specific portion of the image.
| | 00:11 |
But a given method won't work in every
situation.
| | 00:14 |
For example here, I might want to focus
my adjustment on color values.
| | 00:18 |
May be I'm just going to focus the
adjustment on the oranges, reducing
| | 00:21 |
saturation just for those orange tones.
But the problem is that in the
| | 00:26 |
background in the rock surface here of
orange as well, then I might not want to adjust.
| | 00:32 |
In those type of situations, I can use a
selection to focus the adjustment to a
| | 00:36 |
particular area of the photo.
Let's take a look at an example here.
| | 00:41 |
I'll go ahead and choose the Quick
Selection tool from the toolbox.
| | 00:45 |
And then, I'll move out into the image
with my mouse and adjust the Brush Size
| | 00:48 |
as needed, using the left square bracket
key to reduce the Brush Size.
| | 00:53 |
Or the right square bracket key to
increase the Brush Size.
| | 00:56 |
I want a brush that's just a bit smaller
than the object I plan to paint on.
| | 01:01 |
So, in this case, for example, I want to
be sure that I can paint within the links
| | 01:04 |
of the chain.
I'll then go ahead and Click and Drag
| | 01:07 |
across the chain.
I'm really essentially sampling the
| | 01:11 |
chain, sampling various portions of the
chain.
| | 01:15 |
So that Photoshop knows what sorts of
colors, textures and tonal values I want
| | 01:19 |
to include in my selection.
I have the entirety of the chain selected
| | 01:23 |
at this point.
But I also have portions of the
| | 01:25 |
background selected that I don't want
included in the selection.
| | 01:29 |
So now, I'm going to use the Subtract
from Selection option.
| | 01:32 |
I'll hold the Alt key on Windows or the
option key on Macintosh, and then click
| | 01:36 |
and paint in areas of the image that I
want to remove from the selection.
| | 01:42 |
I'll even paint down into some of these
lower areas, reducing the Brush Size with
| | 01:45 |
the left square bracket key.
And then, holding the Alt or Option key
| | 01:49 |
in order to access the Subtract from
Selection option.
| | 01:52 |
When I release the Option key, I'll be
back to the Add to Selection option, and
| | 01:56 |
I can continue fine-tuning the selection
in this way.
| | 02:00 |
Adjusting Brush Size as needed, holding
the Alt or Option key when I need to
| | 02:03 |
subtract from the selection.
And then, of course, painting without the
| | 02:07 |
Alt or Option key if I need to add to the
selection.
| | 02:11 |
At this point, I think I have a good
basic selection of the chain here.
| | 02:15 |
So, I'm ready to add an Adjustment layer.
In this case, I think I'll use a Hue
| | 02:18 |
Saturation adjustment in order to reduce
the overall saturation for the chain.
| | 02:23 |
So, I have a selection active.
I'll go to the bottom of my Layers panel
| | 02:27 |
and click on the Add Adjustment Layer
button.
| | 02:30 |
That's the half black, half white circle
icon at the bottom of the Layers panel.
| | 02:34 |
And then, I'll choose Hue Saturation from
the popup menu.
| | 02:37 |
Because I had a selection active when I
added this New Adjustment Layer.
| | 02:42 |
Notice that the layer mask associated
with the Hue Saturation Adjustment
| | 02:46 |
automatically reflects my selection.
Areas that had been selected are white
| | 02:51 |
and areas that are deselected are black.
And that means areas that were selected
| | 02:55 |
will be affected by this adjustment, and
areas that were not selected won't be
| | 02:59 |
affected by the adjustment.
I'll go ahead and swing the saturation
| | 03:03 |
slide through its extremes, and we can
see that, sure enough, we're only
| | 03:06 |
affecting the chain.
I'll go ahead and reduce the saturation a bit.
| | 03:11 |
Perhaps, right about there will do the
trick.
| | 03:13 |
I don't want to remove too much of that
color, but I would like to tone things
| | 03:16 |
down a little bit.
So that the chain doesn't look quite so
| | 03:19 |
garish and almost artificial, that I
think will work well.
| | 03:22 |
But the adjustment is affected the
selected area and not the surrounding
| | 03:26 |
area with no transition in between.
And that's because the selection was not
| | 03:31 |
feathered with the Quick Selection tool.
I am not able to control the feather, but
| | 03:36 |
I can adjust feathering for the layer
mask itself.
| | 03:39 |
So, with the layer mask for my Hue
Saturation Adjustment layer active, I'll
| | 03:43 |
go ahead and click on the Masks button on
the Properties panel.
| | 03:47 |
And then, I can increase the value for
feather.
| | 03:50 |
I'll go ahead and increase the value
significantly.
| | 03:53 |
And we can see some of the saturation is
starting to come back into the chain
| | 03:56 |
because we've now blended the result.
I don't need too much blending, I'll just
| | 04:01 |
use a fairly small feathering amount.
So that we're transitioning from the area
| | 04:05 |
being adjusted to the area that's not
being adjusted.
| | 04:09 |
I'll go ahead and hold the Alt key on
Windows or the Option key on Macintosh
| | 04:12 |
while clicking on the layer mask for the
Hue Saturation Adjustment layer.
| | 04:16 |
And then, I'll adjust the Feather Amount
and you can get a sense of the effect in
| | 04:20 |
the image.
With feather at zero pixels, we have a
| | 04:24 |
crisp edge, in other words a crisp
selection that I started with.
| | 04:29 |
And if I increase the value, you'll see
that I get a blurred version of that
| | 04:32 |
layer mask.
In this case, I want just a small degree
| | 04:35 |
of transition that should work.
But let's go ahead and take a look at the
| | 04:39 |
actual image.
I'll hold the Alt key on Windows or the
| | 04:42 |
Option key on Macintosh once again, while
clicking on the layer mask for the Hue
| | 04:45 |
Saturation Adjustment layer.
And that looks to be a good effect.
| | 04:50 |
I'll zoom in a bit on the edge of the
chain here, for example.
| | 04:54 |
And sure enough, I think we have a nice,
smooth transition, no obvious indications
| | 04:58 |
of that adjustment.
So by creating a selection and then
| | 05:01 |
adding an Adjustment layer, we're able to
apply an adjustment that only affects a
| | 05:06 |
specific area of the photo.
| | 05:09 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Warming up shadows| 00:02 |
It doesn't take a new photographer very
long to figure out that there are
| | 00:05 |
different qualities of light in shadows
versus brighter areas of a scene.
| | 00:10 |
Shadow areas tend to have a cooler color
to them.
| | 00:13 |
A little bit more blue to cyan, for
example.
| | 00:16 |
Whereas more brightly lit areas tend to
have a little warmer appearance, perhaps
| | 00:20 |
yellows, oranges or even some reddish
tones.
| | 00:24 |
And often you might find that you want to
apply adjustments differently.
| | 00:28 |
In the brightest verses the darkest areas
of a photo for example you might want to
| | 00:31 |
warm up the shadow areas of an image a
little bit.
| | 00:35 |
Let's take a look at how we can use a
relatively automated technique for
| | 00:38 |
applying adjustments to specific tonal
ranges within the image.
| | 00:43 |
I'm going to start off by making a copy
of my background image layer because the
| | 00:47 |
process I'll use to create a selection
for my image is destructive.
| | 00:52 |
So, I'll drag the thumbnail for the
background image layer down to the blank
| | 00:55 |
sheet of paper icon, the create a new
layer button at the bottom of the layers panel.
| | 01:01 |
That will create a background copy layer,
which is an exact duplicate of my
| | 01:05 |
background image layer and I'm going to
change the opacity for that layer down to about.
| | 01:11 |
50% using the slider at the top right of
the layers panel.
| | 01:15 |
That isn't going to accomplish anything
at the moment because we're essentially
| | 01:19 |
seeing through the background copy layer
to some extent but, then seeing an exact
| | 01:22 |
copy down below.
But in a moment that 50% opacity will
| | 01:27 |
prove quite helpful.
My next step is to go to the Image menu
| | 01:31 |
and then choose Adjustments, followed by
threshold.
| | 01:35 |
When I do so, I'll see a threshold
dialog, but I'll also see an interesting
| | 01:39 |
overlay on the image.
Essentially what's happening here is that
| | 01:44 |
the threshold command is causing the
background copy layer to be changed to
| | 01:47 |
pure black and white, with no shades of
grey in between.
| | 01:52 |
And I can specify at what luminance
value, at what brightness value I want
| | 01:56 |
that transition from black to white to
occur.
| | 02:01 |
So as I drag the slider over to the left,
you'll see fewer areas have a black overlay.
| | 02:05 |
And as I drag to the right you'll see
more areas have that black overlay.
| | 02:09 |
And I can fine tune as needed.
Because I've reduced the opacity of my
| | 02:13 |
background copy layer I'm able to
actually see through the black and the
| | 02:17 |
white down to the original colors below,
and that makes it much easier.
| | 02:22 |
To determine when I've established a good
value for threshold.
| | 02:26 |
In this case, a value that will cause the
shadow areas to be black and the rest of
| | 02:29 |
the image to be white.
That looks to be a pretty good value for threshold.
| | 02:33 |
So I'll go ahead and click the OK button.
And then I'll bring the opacity back up
| | 02:38 |
to 100%.
Now we can see the full effect of that
| | 02:41 |
threshold command.
I want to use this layer to create a
| | 02:45 |
selection, so that I can apply a targeted
adjustment for the shadows.
| | 02:49 |
So I'm going to go to the Channels panel.
And then, at the bottom of the Channels
| | 02:53 |
panel, I'll click the first button, which
is Load Channel as Selection.
| | 02:58 |
That will create a selection where white
areas are selected and black areas are deselected.
| | 03:04 |
That means the sky, for example, is
currently selected, and the dark shadow
| | 03:07 |
areas of the hillside are not selected.
That's actually the opposite of what I want.
| | 03:12 |
So, I'll choose Select Inverse from the
menu, in order to invert the selection.
| | 03:18 |
So, now the dark areas are selected and
the white areas are not.
| | 03:23 |
I'll return to my Layers panel and I'll
go ahead and turn off the visibility for
| | 03:26 |
the Background Copy Layer.
And now, you can see that I have a
| | 03:30 |
selection that defines the darkest areas
of the photo.
| | 03:33 |
And I'd like to warm those areas up, just
a little bit.
| | 03:36 |
So with that selection active, I'll go to
the bottom of the Layers panel, and I'll
| | 03:39 |
click on the Add Adjustment Layer button.
That's the half black, half white circle
| | 03:43 |
icon at the bottom of that Layers panel.
And I'm going to choose color balance, so
| | 03:48 |
that I can shift the color balance for
just the shadow areas of the photo.
| | 03:52 |
I'll go ahead and shift the value
extremely over to yellow, and then over
| | 03:56 |
to blue.
And you can see a rather strong effect in
| | 03:59 |
the image.
I'll do the same thing for the magenta
| | 04:02 |
green slider.
And you can see, perhaps, and even
| | 04:04 |
stronger effect.
Now I don't want to create an extreme
| | 04:07 |
result of course, I just want to warm up
those shadows a little bit and so, I'm
| | 04:11 |
going to shift a little toward the yellow
and maybe just a little bit toward red
| | 04:15 |
and I'll probably leave the magenta green
axis at a value of zero.
| | 04:22 |
I'll go ahead and turn off the visibility
for the color balance slider and then
| | 04:25 |
turn it back on.
By clicking on the I icon to the left of
| | 04:28 |
that Color Balance Adjustment layer so we
can see the before, and then the after
| | 04:32 |
version of the image.
And as you can see, I've adjusted only
| | 04:37 |
the color of the darkest areas of the
photo.
| | 04:40 |
I do have one last adjustment that I need
to apply.
| | 04:43 |
I'm going to apply an extreme adjustment
here just so that we can get a better
| | 04:46 |
sense of what's going on.
And then I'll zoom in, and you can see
| | 04:50 |
that the transitions between the area
being affected and the area not being
| | 04:54 |
affected are rather harsh.
And that's because I did not feather my
| | 04:58 |
selection, but I can feather after the
fact with my mask settings.
| | 05:03 |
I'll go ahead and click the Masks button
on the Properties panel, and then simply
| | 05:06 |
increase the value for feather, and
you'll see that I get some blending for
| | 05:10 |
that transition between the area being
adjusted and the area not being adjusted.
| | 05:16 |
I can then go back to the actual
adjustment, in this case color balance
| | 05:19 |
and I'll zoom out a little bit and of
course correct the adjustment.
| | 05:24 |
Getting things back to approximately the
level I had them moments ago.
| | 05:28 |
And just a little bit of red, a little
bit of yellow.
| | 05:31 |
And nothing going on with the magenta
green channel, I think.
| | 05:34 |
But right about there seems to be a
pretty good adjustment.
| | 05:37 |
So an adjustment that only affects in
this case the shadows.
| | 05:40 |
I could also perform essentially the same
steps to create a selection for the highlights.
| | 05:45 |
But the point being is that I can apply a
color adjustment for just the brightest
| | 05:51 |
or darkest areas of a photo very, very
easily.
| | 05:56 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Color MatchingAchieving a neutral gray| 00:02 |
When there's a strong grey element to a
scene, we have a tendency to want to make
| | 00:05 |
sure that that grey element is perfectly
neutral grey with no color influence at all.
| | 00:11 |
And sometimes that works really well and
it's quite easy, in other times it can be
| | 00:15 |
a little bit tricky.
But in situations where you're not
| | 00:18 |
exactly sure if you're achieving a
perfectly neutral grey or if you even
| | 00:22 |
actually want a perfectly neutral grey.
I tend to take a several pronged approach
| | 00:27 |
to help determine exactly what adjustment
is going to work best for the photo.
| | 00:32 |
Let's take a look.
Theoretically if I wanted to make a
| | 00:35 |
neutral gray, making sure that the foggy
areas here, for example, are perfectly
| | 00:39 |
neutral with no color cast, then I might
use the Gray Eyedropper in the Levels Adjustment,.
| | 00:45 |
I'll go ahead and add a new Adjustment
Layer for levels, and then I'll click on
| | 00:48 |
the Grey Eyedropper.
And I'll click out in a grey area of the
| | 00:52 |
photo, or an area that I think should be
perfectly neutral grey.
| | 00:56 |
But it can be difficult to evaluate,
especially in a case like this where
| | 01:00 |
there's a lot of grey tones without much
in the way of color, I just don't know
| | 01:03 |
whether or not there's a very subtle
color shift.
| | 01:08 |
So I can exaggerate the effect to get a
better idea of what's going on with the
| | 01:12 |
colors in the image.
And for that I'll apply a significant
| | 01:16 |
boost in Saturation.
So, I'll go ahead and add a Hue
| | 01:20 |
Saturation Adjustment Layer, and then
increase Saturation all the way to its
| | 01:24 |
maximum value of plus 100.
So, now I have a Levels Adjustment that I
| | 01:29 |
can use to try and achieve a neutral
gray.
| | 01:32 |
And also a Hue Saturation Adjustment
that's being used just temporarily, so I
| | 01:35 |
can get a better sense of the colors in
the photo.
| | 01:39 |
And we can see the upper portion of the
photo still has a fair amount of magenta
| | 01:42 |
and a little bit of blue, maybe even some
red.
| | 01:45 |
And the lower portion has a lot of
oranges and yellows in it, and so I think
| | 01:49 |
we're not quite to the neutral point here
yet.
| | 01:53 |
I'll go back to my Levels Adjustment and
then click on that Gray Eyedropper.
| | 01:57 |
And then I can click on an area of the
photo that has that sort of pinkish
| | 02:01 |
magenta tone, and as I do, I can watch
the change in the image.
| | 02:06 |
And what I want in this case, I think, is
to have mostly green tones and some
| | 02:10 |
yellow tones.
In other words, I'm not really
| | 02:14 |
necessarily looking to achieve a
perfectly neutral grey result throughout
| | 02:17 |
the entire image, because there's going
to be some influence of the foliage in
| | 02:21 |
the foreground and fading off into the
background.
| | 02:25 |
And that means lots of greens and
yellows, so this is looking to be a
| | 02:28 |
pretty good result, I think, obviously
it's still a bit over saturated.
| | 02:33 |
But I can simply turn off the visibility
of the Hue Saturation Adjustment, and
| | 02:37 |
then take a closer look at the image.
And it does look like I have a good
| | 02:41 |
neutral result with a little bit of that
green showing through, but that green is
| | 02:45 |
obviously naturally present within the
photo.
| | 02:49 |
I can also use the Info panel, I'll go
ahead and choose Window Info from the
| | 02:53 |
menu in order to bring up the Info panel,
and then as I mouse over the image I can
| | 02:57 |
pay attention to the RGB values on the
Info panel.
| | 03:03 |
When I do mouse over the image, because
I've applied adjustments to the photo,
| | 03:06 |
you'll see that I have two values for
red, green, and blue.
| | 03:10 |
The values on the left are the before
values for the pixel underneath my mouse
| | 03:14 |
at the moment, and the values on the
right are the after values.
| | 03:18 |
In other words, on the right reflects the
adjustment layer, the levels adjustment
| | 03:22 |
that I've applied, and on the left is
without that adjustment.
| | 03:26 |
So, as I move around the image, I can
take a look at the before and after
| | 03:29 |
values, and hopefully the after values
are closer to each other.
| | 03:33 |
You can see right now, for example, I
have 217, 221, and 220 as my RGB values.
| | 03:40 |
And those are all very, very close to
each other, of course about as close as
| | 03:43 |
the original values for that pixel.
But we can move through the image and get
| | 03:48 |
a sense of exactly how we've adjusted the
overall colors, and by enlarge ideally
| | 03:52 |
finding that the colors are closer to
matching each other.
| | 03:57 |
The individual red green and blue values
are closer to matching each other in the
| | 04:01 |
after values than they were with the
before values.
| | 04:04 |
But both the Info panel and the Hue
Saturation Adjustment Layer with a
| | 04:07 |
significance saturation boost, are
methods for evaluating the work that
| | 04:11 |
we're already doing with a different
adjustment, in this case the level's adjustment.
| | 04:16 |
And I think that's one of the most
important things to keep in mind as
| | 04:19 |
you're adjusting colors in a photo.
You might be using a particular technique
| | 04:23 |
in order to achieve the result you're
after.
| | 04:25 |
But if you can use some other techniques
to help evaluate the results you're
| | 04:29 |
getting, so much the better.
| | 04:31 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| One-click color values| 00:02 |
When you consider using the gray
eyedropper in the levels or curves
| | 00:05 |
adjustment, you're probably thinking
about neutralizing something that should
| | 00:09 |
be perfectly gray.
In other words, an area of the image that
| | 00:13 |
should have no color at all.
But that gray eyedropper can also be used
| | 00:17 |
to achieve a target color value to apply
a quick adjustment.
| | 00:21 |
With this photo, for example, the reds
are just not quite right.
| | 00:25 |
They look a little perhaps magenta, a
little bit too much yellow.
| | 00:28 |
Suffice it to say, not very red, and so
I'd like to apply a quick adjustment, if
| | 00:31 |
possible, that can get those reds looking
better.
| | 00:36 |
And if at all possible, I'd love to use
the gray eyedropper, which does make it
| | 00:39 |
possible to achieve a target color value
very quickly and easily.
| | 00:44 |
Let's see if it will work in this case.
I'll go ahead and add a levels adjustment layer.
| | 00:49 |
So I'll click on the Add Adjustment Layer
button at the bottom of the Layers panel.
| | 00:53 |
And then click on Levels in the pop up
menu that appears.
| | 00:56 |
And I can then choose the gray
eyedropper.
| | 00:59 |
But I don't want to achieve a neutral
gray in the image.
| | 01:02 |
What I actually want to do is change the
value of red.
| | 01:06 |
That does mean changing the overall color
for the entire image, but with a focus on
| | 01:10 |
the red.
In other words, if I can get the red
| | 01:12 |
right, everything else should look good
as well.
| | 01:15 |
So, instead of having the default value
of gray for the gray eyedropper, I'll
| | 01:19 |
double-click on that gray eyedropper to
bring up the Color Picker.
| | 01:23 |
And then I'll choose a shade of gray that
I think represents a good possibility, a
| | 01:27 |
good value for the red here, focusing of
course primarily on the hue.
| | 01:33 |
But I can also take a look at saturation
and brightness.
| | 01:36 |
In this case, sort of a brick red you
might say.
| | 01:40 |
Hopefully a barn red.
I'll go ahead and click OK to accept that change.
| | 01:44 |
Now, I'll get a dialog asking if I want
to set this new color value as the
| | 01:47 |
default for that gray eyedropper.
I do not want to do that.
| | 01:52 |
Generally speaking, I would use the gray
eyedropper to achieve a neutral value in
| | 01:55 |
the photo.
In this case I'm using it to achieve
| | 01:58 |
hopefully an accurate red, and that's not
a typical situation.
| | 02:02 |
So I'll go ahead and click No, so that
the default will still be a neutral value
| | 02:06 |
for that gray eyedropper.
And then I'll come out into the image,
| | 02:10 |
and click on an area that's red.
Now I might need to click on a couple of
| | 02:14 |
different areas to try to find just the
right red.
| | 02:17 |
But if I can't find the right spot to
click on, in other words if clicking
| | 02:20 |
doesn't produce the best result, then I
perhaps just need to change my target value.
| | 02:26 |
I'll go ahead and double-click on the
gray eyedropper again.
| | 02:30 |
And I can shift to a different red value
or perhaps take things a little bit
| | 02:33 |
further on the hue scale.
Perhaps that will work better.
| | 02:37 |
I'll click OK and once again click No to
not change the defaults.
| | 02:41 |
And then I'll click within the photo.
And that looks to be a much better result.
| | 02:46 |
I'll go ahead and turn off the visibility
of the levels adjustment and then turn it
| | 02:50 |
back on.
And you can see, by adjusting the target
| | 02:53 |
value for that gray eyedropper, and then
clicking on the area of the image that I
| | 02:57 |
think should have that actual color
value, I'm able to achieve a very quick
| | 03:00 |
and easy color correction for my photo.
| | 03:04 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Matching color between images| 00:02 |
If you photograph the same subject, under
the same lighting conditions, you'll
| | 00:05 |
probably want to achieve the exact same
color result.
| | 00:09 |
But in some cases, circumstances may
conspire against you.
| | 00:12 |
Perhaps the color was just simply off in
the first place, and you've only
| | 00:15 |
corrected one of the photos.
Or perhaps, you just had different
| | 00:19 |
settings for the two images.
In any event, I have two images here, one
| | 00:23 |
that has, what I would consider to be
correct color and another that has
| | 00:26 |
incorrect color, but of the same subject.
So, if we can just find an area of these
| | 00:31 |
images to match up, I think we'll be able
to achieve a good result.
| | 00:36 |
I'm going to start off by setting these
images side by side, so that we can see
| | 00:39 |
both of them.
So I'll go to the Window menu and choose
| | 00:42 |
Arrange and then 2 Up Vertical.
That will give me both images side by side.
| | 00:48 |
I'll zoom out just a little bit so we can
see more of each image.
| | 00:52 |
And I can pan across so that we're
looking at more of just the trucks.
| | 00:56 |
You'll notice that the colors differ
quite a bit.
| | 00:58 |
The image on the left looks fairly green.
And so we would like to apply an
| | 01:02 |
adjustment that corrects for that, making
things look more like the image over on
| | 01:06 |
the right.
Whenever I'm trying to perform color
| | 01:10 |
matching between two images, I generally
find it's best to focus on a shadow area,
| | 01:14 |
a relatively dark area that should be
neutral and that we can use as the basis
| | 01:18 |
of matching up the two images.
I'll go ahead and make sure that I'm
| | 01:23 |
working on the image that needs the
correction, and then I'll add a levels
| | 01:26 |
adjustment layer.
So, I will click on the Add Adjustment
| | 01:30 |
Layer button at the bottom of the Layers
panel and then choose Levels from that pop-up.
| | 01:36 |
I'll then double-click on the gray eye
dropper.
| | 01:38 |
That gray eye dropper allows me to
specify the value that I want to use as
| | 01:42 |
the basis of my correction.
Essentially the target value that I will
| | 01:46 |
assign to the photo.
In this case, I'm going to work with the tire.
| | 01:51 |
The tire's a nice dark area and it has a
pretty obvious color cast.
| | 01:54 |
So I think that will work pretty well, as
far as an automatic correction, or a
| | 01:58 |
relatively automatic correction for the
photo.
| | 02:02 |
But I need to use the accurate color
photo in order to achieve a specific
| | 02:06 |
target value.
So instead of clicking within the image
| | 02:09 |
that I'm correcting, I'm going to sample
from the tire in the image that I think
| | 02:13 |
is already good.
I'll go ahead and click on the tire in
| | 02:16 |
that photo.
You can see that the color selected is a
| | 02:19 |
blue hue, but very, very dark, and
relatively neutral, not exactly neutral,
| | 02:23 |
but pretty close to it.
I'll use that as the basis of my color correction.
| | 02:28 |
So I'll go ahead and click the OK button
to close the Color Picker.
| | 02:32 |
I'll then be asked if I want to set the
particular color that I established for
| | 02:36 |
my gray target value as the new default.
I do not want to do that because this is
| | 02:41 |
certainly not a typical situation.
Normally I would use that gray eye
| | 02:45 |
dropper to establish a perfectly neutral
value in a photo.
| | 02:49 |
So I'll click the No button to not change
those default settings, and now I'm ready
| | 02:52 |
to work with the image that needs the
correction.
| | 02:56 |
Again, I've adjusted the value for that
gray eye dropper.
| | 02:59 |
In other words, I've changed the target
for this color correction.
| | 03:03 |
And so now all I need to do is click on
the tire and that will make the specific
| | 03:07 |
area that I click on, match the tire that
I used as my source.
| | 03:13 |
And I think in this case that's actually
achieved a very good result.
| | 03:16 |
I'll go ahead and zoom out a little bit
more so we can see more of that photo and
| | 03:19 |
then I'll zoom out the other image as
well.
| | 03:23 |
And you can see we now have a much better
match between the two images, because I
| | 03:27 |
used the tire in my source image as the
basis of the adjustment that I've applied
| | 03:31 |
to what we'll call the destination image.
Of course, I could also switch back to
| | 03:37 |
this image and continue using that eye
dropper, clicking on various areas of the image.
| | 03:42 |
Try to find the best spot to click to
achieve the most accurate color.
| | 03:46 |
But in this case, it's proven to be
relatively straightforward.
| | 03:50 |
I've got a good adjustment.
I can certainly continue fine tuning,
| | 03:53 |
perhaps darkening the image up a little
bit, boosting saturation.
| | 03:57 |
But overall the color cast has been
removed and we have a good match between
| | 04:01 |
the two photos.
| | 04:02 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Sampling for a specific color| 00:02 |
Quite often we'll apply color corrections
to an image just based on a visual
| | 00:05 |
evaluation of the photo.
But in some cases you may want to
| | 00:09 |
establish a particular value, or at least
a particular value might get you pretty
| | 00:12 |
close to the final result that you're
after.
| | 00:16 |
In this photo for example, we've got a
fairly strong color cast and it can be a
| | 00:19 |
little bit difficult to figure out what
that color cast is since we've got a lot
| | 00:23 |
of neon lights that are illuminating the
scene.
| | 00:27 |
The roadway for example looks to be a
little bit magenta in areas, a little bit
| | 00:31 |
blue in other areas, and that might just
be because of the light.
| | 00:35 |
So, maybe it's not an indication that
there's a color problem, but I will say
| | 00:39 |
that the color of the taxi definitely
does not look right.
| | 00:43 |
Now, this is a yellow cab, and yet the
color that we would want to achieve for
| | 00:47 |
the taxi or an accurate color, is not
exactly yellow, it's a little bit closer
| | 00:50 |
to an orange.
But let's take a look and see if we can
| | 00:55 |
establish a value as our target value for
the taxi, in order to get a good result.
| | 01:02 |
In this case I'm going to use a color
sampler so that I can monitor the values
| | 01:05 |
for the particular pixel value while I'm
working, in order to get a better sense
| | 01:09 |
if I'm heading in the right direction.
I'll go ahead and click and hold my mouse
| | 01:14 |
on the button for the eye dropper tool on
the toolbox, and I'm going to choose the
| | 01:18 |
color sampler tool.
I'll then click on an area of the photo
| | 01:22 |
that is a representative area for the
taxi.
| | 01:27 |
You'll see that I now have a color
sampler indicated for the image with RGB values.
| | 01:32 |
Now, I've gotten somewhat familiar with
the particular color values for the
| | 01:36 |
yellow cabs here.
It's a little bit of an orange-ish tone.
| | 01:39 |
I'm going to bring up the color picker by
clicking on the foreground color swatch,
| | 01:43 |
and then I'll shift the hue to a value
that I think is pretty close to what that
| | 01:47 |
cab should look like.
I think right about there looks to be
| | 01:52 |
close to the sort of yellowish orange
that we tend to see for the taxis.
| | 01:57 |
So, I'll leave the hue value at that
point.
| | 02:00 |
I can also adjust the overall saturation,
and there I want a relatively high value.
| | 02:05 |
In fact I might even maximize the value,
and then for brightness I also want to
| | 02:10 |
have a relatively high value, because I
want a nice bright color.
| | 02:16 |
So, maybe somewhere around there I think
represents a reasonably accurate color.
| | 02:20 |
A little bit on the orange side but
pretty close to what that taxi would
| | 02:23 |
actually look like.
So, I now know what my target values
| | 02:28 |
might look like.
And you can see I have RGB values of 216,
| | 02:32 |
132 and one, and so I can use those as a
rough guide to help me to determine if
| | 02:36 |
I've gotten to the right point.
I'll go ahead and click okay to leave
| | 02:42 |
this color as my foreground color so I
can go back and reference it at any time.
| | 02:47 |
I'll then go ahead and add a color
balance adjustment.
| | 02:50 |
So, I'll click on the add adjustment
layer button at the bottom of the layers
| | 02:53 |
panel and then choose color balance from
that pop up.
| | 02:57 |
It looks like I need to reduce the amount
of red, for starters.
| | 03:01 |
I'm going to turn off the preserve
luminosity check box so that as as I
| | 03:04 |
adjust each of the individual color
channels, I will only be effecting one channel.
| | 03:09 |
I won't have all three of the channels
being adjusted at the same time, and so
| | 03:13 |
as I shift the cyan, red color balance,
you can see on the info panel that only
| | 03:17 |
the red after value is changing.
The green and blue values are remaining unchanged.
| | 03:24 |
I'll go ahead and reduce the value for
red.
| | 03:27 |
Taking the image a little further toward
a cyan value, which hopefully will get
| | 03:30 |
that yellow looking a little bit more
accurate.
| | 03:34 |
That's looking to be a bit better.
I'll go ahead then and work on the green
| | 03:38 |
magenta axis, increasing or decreasing as
needed.
| | 03:43 |
Again, looking to achieve values that are
reasonably close to what I saw in the
| | 03:48 |
color picker for the green magenta
slider, that would be a green value of
| | 03:52 |
around 130 or so.
And then I can take a look at the yellow
| | 03:57 |
value, the yellow blue.
I'll shift to the right and left, and
| | 04:01 |
fine tune as needed.
And in this case, also paying attention a
| | 04:05 |
bit to the roadway here as I continue
applying that adjustment.
| | 04:09 |
You see that I have values of 217 for
red, 131 for green, and zero for for blue.
| | 04:14 |
I'll go ahead and click on my background
image layer, and then click on the color
| | 04:18 |
swatch to bring up the color picker.
And I can evaluate that against my
| | 04:23 |
original results, and you see I'm very,
very close to what had been my target values.
| | 04:29 |
So, I've certainly achieved the target
value that I was looking for, and looking
| | 04:33 |
at the image overall, I think that's a
much more accurate yellow for this cab.
| | 04:38 |
I'll go ahead and close the info panel,
and then I'll toggle that color balance
| | 04:42 |
adjustment layer off, and then on.
And you can see by using an established
| | 04:47 |
value, by using a value that I've become
familiar with through other images, or
| | 04:51 |
perhaps the value that was given to me by
a client who's trying to achieve a
| | 04:55 |
specific color.
I'm able to target that value in order to
| | 05:01 |
apply an overall color correction to the
photo.
| | 05:04 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
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