IntroductionWelcome| 00:04 | Hi! My name is Richard Harrington, and I'd
like to welcome you as we explore nondestructive
| | 00:08 | techniques for fixing color
and exposure with photos.
| | 00:11 | Today, I'm going to using Adobe Photoshop CS6,
but these techniques will work with most
| | 00:16 | versions of Photoshop. Our emphasis is on speed and
really getting in there and quickly making changes.
| | 00:23 | Now, I want to point out that when it comes
to color correction, things are incredibly
| | 00:27 | subjective. So the techniques I show you are
useful, but you may decide that you want to
| | 00:32 | slightly tweak the image
to better match your needs.
| | 00:36 | Another thing to realize with color
correction is that you want to work nondestructively,
| | 00:40 | which is really the whole focus of our course
here. The emphasis with nondestructive color
| | 00:44 | correction is that it's easy to make changes
throughout the process. If you go to print
| | 00:49 | and that printer is a little bit different,
you can easily make a tweak. The goal here
| | 00:54 | is that things are not permanently baked in;
rather, with a click or two, we can jump in
| | 00:59 | and start to modify the exposure
adjustment or the color adjustment.
| | 01:03 | Again, it's all about speed, so the
techniques I show you today are going to be fast and
| | 01:08 | easy. Feel free to dig in deeper and take
your time, but I want to get the job done.
| | 01:14 | We're going to be using a bunch of photos
from several trips I've taken to zoos and
| | 01:17 | wildlife parks, and these techniques will
work great on these. We've got lots of vibrant
| | 01:21 | color, as well as contrast issues. And of course,
you could apply this to other types of images as well.
| | 01:30 |
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| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | If your lynda.com membership includes it,
you'll find a collection of exercise files
| | 00:04 | that you can download for today's lesson.
Now, these exercise files will help bring to
| | 00:09 | life the techniques that I'm going to show
you; however, these techniques will work with
| | 00:13 | any picture, so you can
use your own photos as well.
| | 00:16 | All I ask is that when you're done with this
lesson, please discard the exercise files.
| | 00:21 | These are my personal photos and I'm happy
to give them to you for purposes of learning
| | 00:25 | but ask that you don't use
them for any commercial use.
| | 00:28 | You can go ahead and download the files
right off the lynda.com website, and when you're
| | 00:32 | ready, continue with the lesson.
| | 00:37 |
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1. How to Approach Color Correction in PhotoshopSetting the environment| 00:00 | Once you start to fix color and exposure in
your photos, you're going to be subjected
| | 00:04 | to your workspace. What I mean by this is you
have to be careful about outside environmental
| | 00:09 | factors that could influence your brain.
You want to avoid overly bright light, like we
| | 00:14 | have here. You want to make sure that you don't have
anything distracting within Photoshop or your desktop.
| | 00:21 | My monitor here actually doesn't have any
sticky notes on it, nothing hanging off the
| | 00:24 | side or bright colors that might influence my
brain. Similarly, inside of Photoshop you'll
| | 00:31 | see that we've got everything set to a nice
neutral color. And if I access my Preferences,
| | 00:37 | you'll see that there are four different shades of
gray to choose from, just under the Interface category.
| | 00:42 | Previous versions of Photoshop used a much
lighter gray like this, and if you're still
| | 00:47 | getting used to the darker gray, you may find
yourself stepping up slowly over time. However,
| | 00:52 | the darker gray that is now the default is
actually a pretty good background color to
| | 00:57 | work with. It's not going to introduce any
color or tint that's going to influence you,
| | 01:01 | and it gives nice contrast
without being too stark over the photos.
| | 01:07 | I'll go ahead and click OK. I'll also find
that while working in my images, I'll frequently
| | 01:11 | press the Tab key to hide the panels.
This way I could evaluate just the image as I'm
| | 01:17 | working, and we'll explore this technique
now. I'm going to quickly open up a photo,
| | 01:25 | and you see that we have the ability to
press Tab to hide our windows or F to take the
| | 01:31 | image full screen.
| | 01:32 | Pressing it again allows you to truly
minimize everything around the image and just look
| | 01:37 | at the photo itself. In this sort of
environment, you're getting a nice background workflow.
| | 01:43 | If you're finding the dark black here a
little too bright, you can always right-click and
| | 01:48 | change this. I prefer to use a dark gray so
it's not shifting my influence and making me
| | 01:53 | think that my image is too underexposed.
| | 01:56 | This tends to be pretty good. I'll press F
to get out of full screen and the Tab key
| | 02:01 | to take it back out, and you see that we're
looking at the entire interface now. Taking
| | 02:06 | the time to set up Photoshop as well as your
physical workspace is going to be important.
| | 02:11 | Remember, try to have nice, even lighting,
avoid excessive sunlight or overly bright
| | 02:18 | available lighting, and make sure that you
keep your monitor and workspace free of any
| | 02:23 | bright or distracting colors.
| | 02:25 | Don't hang a large poster right next to your
monitor. Don't leave a bunch of extra documents
| | 02:30 | lying around. Just focus on the task at
hand, and that is fixing color and exposure.
| | 02:35 |
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| Performing triage| 00:00 | If you've ever been in the emergency room at
a hospital, there's a process called triage
| | 00:05 | where they sort out the patients. In this case,
they tackle the life-threatening emergencies,
| | 00:10 | followed by the serious injuries, and then
the not so serious. Well, the same general
| | 00:16 | approach can be applied to photos as well,
and it's important that you look at your image
| | 00:20 | and decide what's actually wrong.
| | 00:22 | In the case of this photo here, what you're
seeing is a complication of problems.
| | 00:27 | First off, there's an easy issue here, and that's
composition. I've flagged it with a sticky
| | 00:32 | note, and what you're seeing is that this
image isn't properly composed. I'm going to
| | 00:37 | apply the Rule of Thirds to it in a moment.
| | 00:40 | I also look for distracting elements here
and in this case the background is just a
| | 00:44 | little bit taking away from the photo itself.
There were some flowers behind the head of
| | 00:49 | the eagle, and the color here is just pulling
my eye up from my subject into the background.
| | 00:55 | So I'm going to go ahead and remove some of
those distracting elements, both through cropping
| | 01:00 | and desaturation. I'm going to go ahead and tweak the overall
exposure a bit, trying to pull up proper exposure
| | 01:07 | here to bring out the feather area in the
chest a bit, and then we'll put a little bit
| | 01:12 | of sharpening in the eye region to go ahead
and add some details. Let me show you the
| | 01:17 | after state, and I'll just walk you through
what was done. We'll start with the base image.
| | 01:23 | I went ahead and made a basic selection of
the tree and the flower, and that selection
| | 01:30 | was used on a Vibrance adjustment.
| | 01:33 | Notice that the adjustment is localized to
the image itself. We'll explore these specific
| | 01:38 | selection and adjustment layer techniques in
just a moment. I then did a Curves adjustment
| | 01:44 | just to the feathery region of the body,
and you see we're able lift out some of the details
| | 01:50 | in the feathers there. Remember,
these adjustments are nondestructive,
| | 01:54 | so, you can easily click and continue to
refine the adjustment. In this case I'll lift
| | 02:00 | those feathers up a little more, and you see
there are the before and after state. I then
| | 02:07 | did an overall Vibrance adjustment to bring
out all the color in the image, with no selection
| | 02:13 | applied. In this case we really brought out
the yellow of the beak and the red in the
| | 02:17 | mouth, and this is starting to draw the
viewer's eye up towards the head region here, because
| | 02:22 | we have a splash of color.
| | 02:25 | Let's go ahead and make a new layer, and I'll
choose the Sharpen tool. I'll use the Sample
| | 02:33 | All Layers and adjust its Strength, and this
allows me to sharpen in some of the details
| | 02:40 | around that. You see that can be turned off
and on, and it's a nice adjustment there,
| | 02:45 | in that it's working nondestructively.
| | 02:49 | To finish this image out and really draw the
focus towards the center, I then applied a
| | 02:54 | Gradient layer. Just using a simple black-
to-white gradient. There it is. Changed it
| | 03:02 | to Radial and adjusted the size. Now we put
that up on top here and by changing its mode
| | 03:13 | to Multiply, you'll see the whites drop out
and it draws your focus in. Now we can easily
| | 03:20 | adjust the opacity of that layer until we
achieve the desired effect of a darkening
| | 03:25 | of the edges with a clear
center spot of our subject.
| | 03:29 | Remember, you can go ahead and easily drag
that around because it's an adjustment layer,
| | 03:34 | giving you a very flexible engine for
creating nondestructive vignettes. There we go.
| | 03:41 | I'll just turn that one off and keep the original
one I made, and you see, if we toggle between
| | 03:46 | the two images, it's definitely an improvement.
| | 03:49 | We've cropped for better composition.
Notice here we actually have the Rule of Thirds turned
| | 03:54 | on, and so as I adjust my Crop tool it shows
me that good composition there. And I've placed
| | 04:01 | the subject at the intersection. All right
that is definitely an improvement. I'll put
| | 04:06 | those two images side by side.
| | 04:09 | We'll do a 2-up Horizontal, and we'll just
shrink that back. There we go. And you see
| | 04:20 | that we've improved the overall image.
Better composition, clearer center of our subject,
| | 04:26 | a little bit of sharpening, and all the nondistracting
elements have been removed. All of these techniques
| | 04:32 | are going to be explored
throughout the rest of our lessons.
| | 04:35 | The key here to remember is that you want
to look at the image and make a series of
| | 04:40 | adjustments. While our exercises today are
going to focus on individual commands, you're
| | 04:45 | often going to have to put several of these
commands together to achieve proper results.
| | 04:50 |
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| Getting a fresh opinion| 00:00 | I've said it once, but it bears repeating.
Color correction is highly subjective.
| | 00:05 | When you look at a photo, you might see that something
is wrong, but what you see could be very different
| | 00:10 | than what somebody else sees. In the case
of this photo here, what you'll notice is the
| | 00:15 | image is very blue. Well, I took this picture
at about 6:30 at night, and the sun was just
| | 00:21 | starting to set, and this is
actually accurate for the time of day.
| | 00:25 | This is the white balance that was measured
by the camera at that particular time of day,
| | 00:30 | matching the settings that I took.
However, we have the ability to tweak this.
| | 00:35 | You'll notice in this case here that we've got the
actual developed photo, and if I double-click
| | 00:41 | that there is the raw file embedded inside.
| | 00:45 | As shot, you'll see the original white balance.
However, we have the ability to auto white
| | 00:53 | balance or choose from several different
options, in this case such as Cloudy, to actually
| | 00:59 | match the time of days as well as the
weather conditions. I'm going to click Cancel for
| | 01:03 | a moment and just exit out.
| | 01:05 | You see here that the image looks pretty good;
however, here's a second opinion, done by
| | 01:11 | a second person. In this case the
saturation was toned down a bit, and the image still
| | 01:16 | retains some of that cloudy-day feeling,
as opposed to this image which looks particularly
| | 01:22 | bright and very well
saturated for a cloudy day.
| | 01:26 | The key here is you want to have a
conversation with your subject, or with the client.
| | 01:32 | As you adjust color, there's lots of ways of
doing it, and all three of these images were
| | 01:37 | within the same raw file. This is the art of
color correction, as well as exposure compensation,
| | 01:44 | and as you make these adjustments,
you're going to need to balance your opinions with
| | 01:48 | those of a client and,
potentially, your audience.
| | 01:53 |
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2. Nondestructive Workflows in PhotoshopWorking with a copy of the image| 00:00 | If you're not working with raw photos,
you're going to want to work nondestructively.
| | 00:05 | The ultimate nondestructive workflow is to
always keep a backup copy of your file. I'm going
| | 00:11 | to go ahead and navigate to an image here in
Mini Bridge and you'll notice I don't have
| | 00:16 | the ability to actually duplicate.
| | 00:18 | However, if I choose to reveal this in bridge,
the file-browsing application, it becomes
| | 00:24 | easy for me to choose Edit > Duplicate.
I'll go ahead and select that image, single-click
| | 00:31 | there, and I'll just rename this. I have added
the suffix Working to make it easy to understand
| | 00:40 | which image is my working copy.
| | 00:43 | I can now double-click and send that into
Photoshop. If I am done with Mini Bridge,
| | 00:48 | I can just double-click there to close it
and the image is opened up. I am now safely
| | 00:54 | working with a second copy of the image.
If you skip that step or you're looking for an
| | 00:59 | alternative workflow,
| | 01:00 | you can also choose File > Save As and in
the Save As dialog box, you have the ability
| | 01:07 | to save a copy and give it a new name.
Either we work just fine, but the key here is if
| | 01:14 | you're using a non-raw file where the changes are
going to actually modify the source file itself,
| | 01:20 | be sure to create a working copy.
| | 01:25 |
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| Converting layers to Smart Objects | 00:00 | One of the coolest features inside Adobe
Photoshop is the ability to work with Smart Objects.
| | 00:05 | A Smart Object essentially embeds the
original source layer or original photo inside the
| | 00:11 | layer. You could then nondestructively apply filters,
as well as transformations. Here is how it works.
| | 00:19 | In this case, I've already open update an image
and I want to go ahead and convert the layer
| | 00:23 | to a Smart Object. If this image was flattened,
you'd just simply double-click first to float
| | 00:30 | the layer or you can go ahead and just
choose Filter > Convert for Smart Filters. That's
| | 00:37 | going to go ahead and switch
this on over to a Smart Object.
| | 00:42 | Similarly--let's just quickly choose Undo--
you can right-click and say Convert to Smart
| | 00:48 | Object and achieve the exact same result.
The ability now is that many of your filters
| | 00:54 | are available nondestructively.
This allows you to start to apply adjustments.
| | 01:00 | In this case a heavy Gaussian Blur. Then I
could double-click on the blending arrow and
| | 01:06 | actually change its mode, as well as adjust
the opacity. And you'll see that all of those
| | 01:11 | adjustments are nondestructive, because
they can be turned off and on or even deleted.
| | 01:18 | If you want to make sure that when you bring
in a layer it's automatically a Smart Object,
| | 01:23 | you also have the ability to choose File > Place.
In this case, navigating to a photo and placing
| | 01:30 | it as a layer in your document will automatically
set it and then when you press Enter, it converts
| | 01:38 | to a Smart Object, as you see there.
| | 01:42 | I'll go and toss that away. And essentially,
multiple methods to the same path. The key
| | 01:49 | here is to take
advantage of those Smart Objects.
| | 01:51 | You'll find that the overall benefits of
nondestructive filters, as well as several other adjustments
| | 01:57 | and image transformations, are really going to
save you in the future and prevent accidental mistakes.
| | 02:07 |
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| Cloning to an empty layer| 00:00 | Several of Photoshop's tools can actually work
nondestructively, including all of the cloning
| | 00:06 | and healing tools. All you need to do is take
the advantage of some specialized modes and
| | 00:11 | an empty layer. I'm going to go ahead and
make a new layer here and I am going to name
| | 00:15 | this Clone. I can now zoom in and start to remove
some things that I don't want to leave in the image.
| | 00:27 | I want to hide and minimize this hook.
With my Clone Stamp tool I can Option+Click or Alt+Click
| | 00:34 | to set the source point. And then up here
make sure that I switch to All Layers.
| | 00:41 | This means that are its going to
sample all layers in the document.
| | 00:46 | We can now sample and brush and I'm able to
hide that eyelid. You'll notice it's on its
| | 00:56 | own layer, so it can easily be turned off
and on, and this makes it simple to touch
| | 01:01 | up or blend from multiple sources.
| | 01:05 | Let's zoom back out, and I'm going to do same
over here. With the Zoom tool, we'll zoom in
| | 01:12 | on that eyelid, ask for Clone Stamp, Alt+Click
or Option+Click. There we go! Same thing over
| | 01:24 | here, Option+Click or Alt+Click. And that's
on its own layer, so it's easy to turn off
| | 01:30 | and on and view my changes. We'll zoom on
out, and as we take a look at so over these
| | 01:37 | other tools here, you'll notice for example,
that the Healing Brush also has the Sample All Layers Option.
| | 01:45 | So it becomes very easy to touch up.
If I want to remove to blemish here, I'll switch
| | 01:51 | on over to the standard Healing Brush. I'll set
that to All Layers, Alt+Click or Option+Click
| | 01:57 | to set my source point, and I can remove blemishes
and have it blend in. Alt+Click or Option+Click,
| | 02:08 | and remove, and again, all nondestructive
to its own target layers, so you can minimize
| | 02:14 | distracting elements within the photo.
| | 02:17 | Using the All Layers Option gives you great
control and frees up several tools that normally
| | 02:22 | are destructive to behave in a new way.
By targeting an empty layer, you will have much
| | 02:27 | more flexibility, and it's a lot easier to
show your client what you did to fix the photo.
| | 02:32 |
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| Using adjustment layers| 00:00 | The star of our show today is adjustment
layers, and we're going to use these throughout the
| | 00:06 | rest of our exercises. I just want to
quickly introduce you to the concept of what they
| | 00:10 | do and why they are so useful. Now, if you've
been using Photoshop for a while, you're used
| | 00:16 | to choosing image adjustments, and
there are lots of choices here.
| | 00:20 | However, most of those choices also appear
over in the Adjustments panel. If you don't
| | 00:26 | have the Adjustments panel open, you'll
find it under the Window menu, and just be sure
| | 00:30 | to bring it up. These adjustments do the
same thing as their other counterparts. So if I
| | 00:37 | click the Curves Adjustment, it pops on up,
and I've got the ability to do a standard
| | 00:42 | curve, lifting the shadows,
pulling down the highlights a bit,
| | 00:47 | Beside Exposure, you'll also find color
adjustments such as Vibrance, and you'll notice here that
| | 00:52 | I can adjust the overall saturation for the
image, while pulling down the skin tone areas.
| | 01:02 | Or we could reverse that there and get
a slightly different mix of the colors.
| | 01:08 | Everything of course, nondestructive, with
the ability to turn off and on, adjust the
| | 01:13 | overall opacity for that adjustment layer, or even
throw it away or mask it at a later point in time.
| | 01:22 | Adjustment layers are very, very useful and
we are going to fully explore what they do
| | 01:26 | throughout the rest of our lessons.
| | 01:31 |
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| Creating a new document from the current state| 00:00 | As you work with an image, you might decide
you want to make a dramatic turn. Maybe it's
| | 00:04 | to do a spot color effect or a
desaturation or black-and-white conversion. It's often
| | 00:10 | a good idea to go ahead and keep a
before and after state opened. And because of RAM
| | 00:16 | in the History panel,
we can do this very quickly.
| | 00:20 | Simply choose Window > History and you'll see
the recent changes you've made to your image.
| | 00:26 | If I pull this down, in fact, I could see
everything that I've done this photo since
| | 00:30 | I've opened it. If you start to make a lot of
changes, you can actually run out of history states,
| | 00:37 | so under your Preferences menu you have the
ability to define how many states are available.
| | 00:45 | Notice in the Performance section the default
is 20 history states, but you can bump that
| | 00:50 | up if needed. The thing I really want to
point out here though is the little button at the
| | 00:54 | very bottom. Clicking this will go ahead and
create a new document from the current state.
| | 01:00 | So, once you've done that, it opens up the new
file with all your layers intact. This makes
| | 01:06 | it easy for me to do things
like a black-and-white conversion.
| | 01:11 | I can now start to adjust the image and make
all of my changes and if I want to see that
| | 01:16 | next to the original photo, both are still
available. Notice there we could toggle between
| | 01:23 | them and I've got both states opened.
If I decide I want to save this new state, it is just
| | 01:30 | a good idea to choose File > Save, and it will bring up
the standard dialog box, and I'll just rename this.
| | 01:37 | There we go, and now I've captured another
version of the image while still leaving my
| | 01:46 | original document open. This flexibility is
really useful because you don't have the
| | 01:50 | close out of the file, go up to the Finder
or Desktop, and start to duplicate files and
| | 01:55 | do anything really slow;
everything is currently loaded into RAM,
| | 01:59 | so creating a new state is as simple
as one button click and no waiting.
| | 02:04 |
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3. Working with Raw Files NondestructivelyExploring essential raw adjustments| 00:00 | If you're working with raw photos, Adobe Photoshop
becomes very flexible and completely nondestructive.
| | 00:07 | The original raw file is never actually modified;
rather, a sidecar file is created that contains
| | 00:12 | instructions for what should be done in the
Camera Raw dialog. I'll go and double-click
| | 00:18 | to open up a raw file here,
and the Camera Raw dialog opens.
| | 00:23 | I now have the ability to take it easy here,
and we'll start with just Auto. And it does
| | 00:28 | a good job of making some basic adjustments.
In this case, I had a mixed-exposure situation
| | 00:34 | where part of the animals were in shade and
part were in bright sunlight, and my camera
| | 00:39 | hadn't compensated correctly because I was
shooting manual. I'll go ahead and adjust
| | 00:44 | the exposure here--
| | 00:47 | that looks pretty good--and then play with
my Highlight recovery as well as some overall
| | 00:52 | Contrast to bring the subject out. I don't
want to get too much contrast or some of the
| | 00:57 | fine details in the hair go missing.
It's looking pretty good. We can play with
| | 01:02 | the white and black point, and if you ever
want to see the before and after, just toggle
| | 01:06 | Preview and you can quickly see what you're doing to
the image, and how much of a change you're making.
| | 01:13 | Other adjustments include Clarity, which is
selective contrast, and I tend to favor Clarity
| | 01:20 | over the standard contrast because it makes
it easier to bring out some of the finer details
| | 01:24 | like hair. The Vibrance slider is going to
boost the non-skin tones, and that will help
| | 01:30 | bring out the background a bit.
That's looking pretty solid. Let's just go ahead crop our
| | 01:37 | photo with the Crop tool
here. I'll choose a size.
| | 01:49 | I could choose the Overlay to help me with
composition, placing my subject there at one
| | 01:55 | of the intersection points. Enter will
apply the crop. Jump on over to the Effects tab
| | 02:03 | and I can add a post-crop vignette to darken
down the edges a bit. That's helping put the
| | 02:08 | focus on my subject. I'll go back to the
Basic tab and just lift the Exposure a little bit
| | 02:14 | to bring her back out. This image is just
about done. Let's just do some quick sharpening
| | 02:20 | in the Detail tab.
| | 02:22 | I'm going to pull up the Amount, zoom on in to
100% here. This photo is a tad soft, but it's
| | 02:28 | okay. It's a very low-light environment.
There we go. And bring down a little bit Noise Reduction.
| | 02:38 | And since I'm just using this image at web
resolution, that's going to the hold up pretty
| | 02:43 | well. I could toggle that off and on to see
the results of the sharpening--that's definitely
| | 02:48 | happening. That's looking pretty good,
and this image is ready to be stored or opened.
| | 02:53 | If I want to simply save the settings to use
later, I can click Done to close this dialog
| | 02:58 | box or we can bring this into
Photoshop at this time for further editing.
| | 03:03 |
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| Opening a raw file as a Smart Object| 00:00 | Once you begin working with raw files, you'll
quickly fall in love because of their flexibility.
| | 00:05 | So, why give that up? There's no reason that you have
to discard the raw data when opening into Photoshop.
| | 00:12 | At the bottom of the image, you'll see
hypertext, and clicking this brings up some workflow
| | 00:18 | options. We'd of course change the color
space. In this case I'll switch over to ProPhoto.
| | 00:25 | I could change the bit depth and use all 16
bits/channel that we're in the raw file, giving
| | 00:31 | me greater color fidelity and bit depth.
| | 00:35 | I can also adjust the size, going up or down
from the original photo. In this case I'm
| | 00:40 | publishing for use in web and presentation,
so I'm going to go ahead and drop that down
| | 00:44 | a bit. And I could assign my output resolution,
as well as how to sharpen, and I'll choose
| | 00:52 | for the screen.
We'll increase that a little bit more.
| | 00:58 | The bottom option though is the most
important one, and that is Open in Photoshop as Smart
| | 01:03 | Objects. I'll click OK to store that and
when I open this object, it's going to send it
| | 01:10 | on over to Photoshop as a layered document.
Let's just go ahead and minimize Mini Bridge
| | 01:15 | by double-clicking and I'll press
Ctrl+0 or Command+0 to fill the screen.
| | 01:21 | Notice that this is a raw file, RGB, 16 Bits/
Channel, and over here in the Layers panel is the Smart
| | 01:29 | Object icon. If I double-click, that will
open back up the Camera Raw dialog where we can
| | 01:35 | make tweaks. So if I decided I wanted to
take the Adjustment Brush and just brighten up
| | 01:41 | the image slightly, I could paint there, with
the exposure increased, and pull up the facial
| | 01:50 | details. Let's toggle that off and on. I like
that change. I'll click OK. And it goes ahead
| | 01:57 | and propagates to the document and updates.
By taking advantage of that command, you can
| | 02:03 | easily open up your raw files as
Smart Objects inside Adobe Photoshop.
| | 02:08 |
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| Recovering skies| 00:00 | A common problem with digital photography
is blown-out skies. Fortunately, shooting
| | 00:04 | raw makes it much easier to recover a
blown-out sky and bring some of the color back.
| | 00:10 | In this photo, here I'm going to go ahead and
click Auto inside the Camera Raw dialog box,
| | 00:16 | and that starts to pull the Exposure down.
| | 00:18 | Next, I'll take advantage of the Highlights
slider, and this allows me to adjust them separately.
| | 00:24 | You'll notice in the histogram there as
we're pulling that, the highlights are starting
| | 00:28 | to move more detail into the midtones.
I can continue to pull the overall exposure down
| | 00:35 | a bit and really bring back that sky.
| | 00:39 | The issue here of course is that while I've
recovered the sky, I've thrown the rest of
| | 00:43 | the subject pretty dark. This is where the
Shadows slider can come into play and you can
| | 00:48 | start to lift that out a bit. And notice by
combining Exposure, Highlights, and Shadows,
| | 00:55 | you could very quickly
achieve a proper exposure.
| | 00:59 | If necessary, you can always grab the
Adjustment Brush and using an option at the bottom here,
| | 01:05 | you could choose Auto Mask. This makes it
easier to start the brush and paint. And we'll
| | 01:11 | just adjust the size of that brush, as well
as pull a feather in a bit and you'll see
| | 01:16 | we can now boost the overall exposure and
put a little more saturation as we brush.
| | 01:23 | And this makes it easier to go after just
the part of the plant I want to recover.
| | 01:29 | There we go! Because the Auto Mask is
turned on, it's going to be a pretty good job of
| | 01:35 | detecting edges, and as you paint there,
you can always turn on the mask itself if you
| | 01:45 | want to see it. And that makes it easier
to tell what is and is not being affected.
| | 01:51 | Notice it does a nice job of automatically
detecting the edges for you. There we go.
| | 02:05 | And you could change the color as well as the
opacity of the mask to make it easier to see.
| | 02:11 | So perhaps using a blue mask here will
help it stand out a bit. That looks great! I am
| | 02:16 | just going to feather the edges so there's
not any wringing, and I can continue to refine
| | 02:21 | that adjustment there, bringing up
the overall exposure for the plant.
| | 02:26 | Let's put some selective clarity to really
pop the veins, and we'll bring up the overall
| | 02:31 | saturation, and that's looking pretty good.
I can now switch back to a standard tool and
| | 02:39 | adjust my overall Vibrance and Saturation
for the image itself. Remember, Vibrance will
| | 02:43 | boost the non-skin tones, so it
does a great job there on the sky.
| | 02:49 | And we can simply toggle between those two
tools as necessary to refine. There we go.
| | 02:59 | That's looking pretty good! There is our
before and our after, and you see we've definitely
| | 03:06 | brought back the cloud and sky details, as
well as properly exposed our foreground subject.
| | 03:11 |
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| Performing selective adjustments| 00:00 | One of the best things about raw is the ability
to make very, targeted selective adjustments.
| | 00:06 | Earlier, I showed you the Adjustment Brush.
I'd like you to take a closer look at it
| | 00:10 | so you really understand its true power.
| | 00:13 | In this photo here, I am going to just go
ahead and click Auto to get the base default
| | 00:17 | correction out of the way. I'll then
immediately switch on over to the Adjustment Brush, and
| | 00:23 | you'll see that we have the
ability to adjust the overall photo.
| | 00:26 | For example, I want to pull down the Exposure
of this back wall a bit, so I'm going to pull
| | 00:32 | that to the left, take Contrast down a bit,
and bring down the Shadows and Highlights.
| | 00:40 | Scrolling to the Bottom, you'll see I have Auto
Mask turned on, and I'll enable the Show Mask
| | 00:45 | Option. This makes it easier to see
what I'm painting as I go through,
| | 00:52 | and it does a nice job of detecting edge of
the fur there and not affecting it. So I'll
| | 00:58 | just brush over that back wall a bit.
That looks nicely. There we go. I'll turn off Show
| | 01:10 | Mask, and if we toggle Preview off and on,
you see how I have effectively toned down
| | 01:16 | the background a bit.
| | 01:17 | I'll pull the Saturation down a bit.
Remember that you have full control over the brush after
| | 01:23 | you've painted, so you can continue to refine
the Exposure, the Saturation as well as the
| | 01:29 | Highlights, and bring those down.
That's looking pretty good! There we go!
| | 01:39 | Let's go ahead and do another small adjustment.
With the Adjustment Brush I may choose to
| | 01:44 | make a new brush, and in this case I just
want to brighten up the face. I'll click the
| | 01:52 | plus button there to go back to the preset and just
paint over the facial details a little bit. It looks good!
| | 02:05 | Let's adjust the Highlights and put a
little extra Clarity in there, and I'll zoom in to
| | 02:12 | 100% so you could really see the facial detail.
There is the before and after. Let's back
| | 02:20 | off. Just a little too much Clarity, a
little Noise Reduction there to clean up some of the
| | 02:25 | noise, and we will zoom
back. Looking pretty good!
| | 02:33 | And we'll finish that out by using my
Graduated Filter. The Graduated Filter is very much
| | 02:39 | like the Adjustments Brush, except it's
going to create an actual linear adjustment.
| | 02:44 | So as I click and drag, I could set
a beginning and an end point.
| | 02:49 | So let's go ahead and pull the Exposure
down. And the green is the start point and the
| | 02:56 | red is the end point, and I could use that
to create a series of adjustments. I'll make
| | 03:02 | a new one from the top. There we go.
That works nicely. And let's switch on back to the basics
| | 03:13 | tab and put a little bit of post-crop vignette
in there, just to pull it towards our
| | 03:17 | subject. That looks great!
I am satisfied with the results.
| | 03:23 | I'll go ahead and click to double check my
Workflow Options. Let's open that at 16-Bit.
| | 03:26 | I am going to go ahead and bring that to a 3,000
pixel size. I'll sharpen for output to matte
| | 03:35 | paper, with a standard amount, click OK, and
we'll open that object into Photoshop as
| | 03:43 | a Smart Object with all of those
nondestructive adjustments applied.
| | 03:48 | We can minimize Mini Bridge, and let's view
that at full screen. That looks really good!
| | 03:53 | I've selectively darkened the image
and really put the focus on my subject.
| | 03:58 |
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| Re-editing a raw file| 00:00 | As you work with raw you'll often tweak as
you go. Perhaps it's when you print or as
| | 00:06 | you save for a website versus saving for a
presentation. There's going to be lots of
| | 00:11 | reasons that variation will occur.
| | 00:13 | Fortunately, you could store those different
presets pretty easily. I've got a raw file
| | 00:19 | open here, and if I just want to store the
settings, I can click Done and it will go
| | 00:25 | ahead and save it.
| | 00:27 | You'll notice next to the raw file here in
Bridge or Mini Bridge is a little adjustment
| | 00:31 | showing you that a raw file has been modified.
If you double-click, that'll open back up
| | 00:37 | and you can now tweak. I could of course pull
up the Vibrance and down the overall Saturation
| | 00:43 | a bit, and if I choose Done,
it will update and store that.
| | 00:49 | However, you may want multiple versions.
So if I want to go ahead and store this as an
| | 00:55 | alternate, I'll make my tweaks and I could
choose Save Image. This allows me to put out
| | 01:01 | a new version with the name. I can add a
version number or the date. Perhaps I just want to
| | 01:08 | store it with today's date.
And I'll save it as a digital negative.
| | 01:14 | This will actually give me the option to
embed the original raw file, and remember, a DNG
| | 01:19 | is a Digital Negative Format that gives you
all the flexibility of raw. I can click Save
| | 01:25 | and store that out. Now I can make changes
and start to modify the overall image a bit.
| | 01:32 | Let's pull the blacks down. And I'll choose
Done, and if we look, you'll see that you
| | 01:39 | have both versions available.
| | 01:42 | Let's have you modify this one here, and I'll
really change the color temperature so it's
| | 01:47 | more visible, and put in a post-crop vignette,
click Done, and you'll see that those versions
| | 01:57 | are now independent of each other.
So that works very nicely to have variation and not
| | 02:03 | give up on the flexibility of RAW.
| | 02:08 |
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|
|
4. Performing Primary Image AdjustmentsFixing exposure with a Levels adjustment layer| 00:00 | One of the easiest adjustments to make
for fixing exposure is a levels adjustment.
| | 00:05 | You essentially have three points of control:
one for the shadows, one for the midtones
| | 00:10 | and one for highlights. With this photo open,
I'll just go ahead and click the Levels Adjustment
| | 00:16 | button and it tosses it on.
| | 00:18 | Notice we've got the histogram here, and what
I essentially want to do is pull the black
| | 00:23 | point in to where the rise begins to occur.
That's going to properly set this little bump
| | 00:29 | here as the blackest point.
| | 00:32 | I can then pull the White slider in here to
adjust my input level and that puts proper
| | 00:39 | contrast back into the image. Let's just
expand this so there's a little bit more room and
| | 00:45 | then balance out the midtones. Notice as you pull
that left or right how it affects the overall image.
| | 00:51 | I'm going to favor that a little bit to
the right there to put a little more contrast
| | 00:56 | into the midtones. That's looking pretty good.
And then we can take advantage of the output
| | 01:02 | levels here for White and lower the
overall brightest value a bit, to about 235.
| | 01:09 | In this case, when it prints on paper, there will
be a little bit of gray in the brightest white
| | 01:13 | areas, so we have some coverage.
| | 01:17 | If I click the button here, the histogram
will redraw, and it will show me with greater
| | 01:21 | accuracy what's happening. Let's make a
small adjustment there. It looks pretty good. And I
| | 01:28 | can go ahead and close that. And remember,
because it's an adjustment layer, you could
| | 01:32 | toggle it off and on to see just how much
of a change you made, and I really like the
| | 01:37 | change in exposure and
contrast; it works quite well.
| | 01:42 |
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| Speeding up with an Auto Levels adjustment| 00:00 | One thing I like about Levels is that the
auto button often works, and I'm not afraid
| | 00:05 | to admit that I like the
Auto button, it saves time.
| | 00:09 | If I invoke our Levels dialog here, you'll
see that we have the option to choose Auto
| | 00:15 | and when I click that, it does a pretty
good job of fixing the image automatically.
| | 00:20 | You could of course go back and tweak and I
could put a little bit more contrast into
| | 00:24 | the blacks. I can lower the output levels.
But it did a nice job of jumping in.
| | 00:30 | And remember, right within the adjustment here,
you have the ability to see the before and after state.
| | 00:37 | So if you click that button there, you could
temporarily turn off the adjustment, so you
| | 00:41 | can gauge how well it worked.
I really like what that did. It worked well.
| | 00:46 | I'll go ahead and close that and just finish
this off with a very quick Vibrance adjustment,
| | 00:52 | to bring up the overall saturation of the
image. Let's just pull that down a bit for
| | 00:57 | the overall Vibrance and bring up Saturation.
Quick toggle off and on. I like that. I've
| | 01:03 | gone ahead and toned down the green in
the background a bit and it works well.
| | 01:08 |
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| Saving time with Auto Tone and Auto Contrast| 00:00 | I'm about to slightly contradict myself.
I'm going to use an auto mode and take manual
| | 00:05 | control of which auto mode I use.
| | 00:09 | You see, auto just isn't auto. Inside of
the Levels dialog, you have several options
| | 00:14 | to choose from that will
improve the accuracy of the effect.
| | 00:17 | I'm going to go ahead and apply an
adjustment layer for levels and then click the submenu
| | 00:23 | to bring it up. Under Auto Options,
you'll see the ability here to change which method
| | 00:29 | is used. For example, we can achieve an overall
brightness and contrast adjustment and that's fine.;
| | 00:36 | however, I'm a bigger fan of using the
Monochromatic or Per Channel. Monochromatic applies an overall
| | 00:43 | adjustment to all channels at once, and you
have the ability to snap neutral midtones
| | 00:48 | to remove a bit of color cast.
| | 00:50 | On the other hand, the Enhance Per Channel
Contrast does a nicer job, especially if you
| | 00:56 | have white balance issues.
| | 00:58 | This is going to go through and analyze the
channels independently. In this case it did
| | 01:03 | a nice job of removing some
of that warm color spill.
| | 01:06 | Notice here we have a definitive red tint to
the image, but doing up per-channel contrast
| | 01:11 | adjustment, or auto toning, remove the unwanted
color cast and forced our midtones to go back
| | 01:18 | to proper neutral.
| | 01:20 | This works great! I'll click OK and you see
it did a nice job of fixing that image.
| | 01:26 | We could toggle that on and off. And I really
like what the Auto Levels did there--removed
| | 01:31 | the color cast and achieved proper
contrast in one simple adjustment.
| | 01:36 |
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| Reading the Histogram panel| 00:00 | Photoshop offers a useful
panel to help you gauge the color.
| | 00:05 | If you learn to properly read the Histogram
panel, you can actually color correct with
| | 00:09 | an improperly calibrated monitor. What you
are working with are absolute values and the
| | 00:14 | histogram can really come in handy
once you understand what it's telling you.
| | 00:19 | I'll go ahead and choose Window > Histogram
to bring it up. I like to go ahead and detach
| | 00:25 | this, so I'll just tear it
right off so it's a floating panel.
| | 00:29 | I'll then choose to expand it so it shows
me more information, and I can go ahead and
| | 00:37 | show all channels. This makes it easier as I
adjust, because I could see the red, green
| | 00:44 | and blue details, and obviously
with this photo there is a lot of red.
| | 00:50 | If I want to reposition this image, I'll
press F for full screen, and now, using the Hand
| | 00:55 | tool, I can move it around. This makes it
a little bit easier if you need to reframe
| | 01:01 | within the canvas.
| | 01:03 | Let's add a levels adjustment, and we are going
to make our adjustments one channel at a time.
| | 01:09 | I'll start with the red channel here, and
notice as we move how we are changing the
| | 01:16 | midpoint of the red and the histogram
panel updates to show you the change.
| | 01:21 | What I'm looking to do here is to achieve
an overall balance. That's looking pretty
| | 01:28 | good. The green and the blue channels aren't
so balanced, so I am going to switch over and
| | 01:36 | pull the slider in and adjust where the midpoint of
the green hits and let's do the blue channel last.
| | 01:49 | And notice how the histogram updates.
Now the red is a little off, so I'll jump back
| | 01:53 | there and make that tweak. Looking pretty
good. And in the Overall view, we could pull
| | 02:01 | down the output levels and adjust the
overall contrast. And what I've done there is I've
| | 02:07 | shifted the color temperature. Now this is
very subjective, but I've made this feel like
| | 02:11 | it's later in the evening. If I toggle that
off and on, it goes from morning sun to a
| | 02:17 | late afternoon, and that's an effective of
adjustment to the effect I was trying to achieve.
| | 02:22 | Notice how my Histogram data helps show me
this information, and I can go ahead and read
| | 02:27 | what's actually happening in the photo.
By being able to see the red, green, and blue
| | 02:33 | channels independently, it's easier to make
adjustments to them one channel at a time.
| | 02:38 |
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| Removing a color cast with a Levels adjustment layer| 00:00 | Color cast is a common occurrence when your
white balance is off or if you are dealing
| | 00:05 | with mixed-lighting situations.
Sometimes the camera gets confused in what should be
| | 00:09 | white or black isn't exactly the same.
| | 00:13 | Let's go ahead and quickly fix this using
the levels adjustment and some eyedroppers.
| | 00:17 | I am going to go ahead and apply the levels
adjustment and you will see within it that
| | 00:22 | we have three eyedroppers: one for shadows,
one for midtones, and one for highlights.
| | 00:30 | I will go ahead and start with the white
point and find something in the scene that should
| | 00:35 | be white. I will click here on the sand and
that sand definitely went white, but a little
| | 00:41 | too far, so let's just reset that adjustment
and we will try again. This little bright
| | 00:46 | spot on the edge of the shell looks good.
And that fixed it pretty nicely, removing some
| | 00:51 | of the color cast. I will go ahead and take
the black eyedropper and find something that
| | 00:56 | should be pure black and click, and that
goes ahead and fixes the black point. Remember,
| | 01:02 | if it is too strong, you could always back it off
just a little bit by tweaking the output levels.
| | 01:08 | And then the last one is the midtones, and
this always gets tricky if you do not actually
| | 01:12 | have a gray point. But I will go ahead and
try in the sand and you see it went too far.
| | 01:18 | So I just do Ctrl+Z or
Command+Z for Undo and reset that.
| | 01:23 | Very often you will not be able to able to
use that midpoint levels adjustment because
| | 01:27 | you won't have a neutral gray to choose from.
But now you can make your standard adjustments.
| | 01:31 | I will open up the midtones a little bit.
And let's toggle the before and after and you
| | 01:36 | see, we definitely have removed the unwanted
color cast and have tweaked our exposure at
| | 01:41 | the same time.
| | 01:46 |
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| Fixing exposure with a Curves adjustment layer| 00:00 | While I am big fan of levels, it is hard to
argue about curves. Curves give you more control
| | 00:05 | points. Levels have 3; Curves can have up to
16. The ability with curves can also be more
| | 00:12 | gently applied to the image. So, some
people love curves; other the people hate them.
| | 00:17 | I want to show you how to get it
done quickly using the Basic tool.
| | 00:22 | Let's go ahead and apply a Curves adjustment,
and essentially what is happening is you could
| | 00:26 | see the black and white values. The bottom
edge here reads the image from left to right,
| | 00:33 | from darkest to lightest, and as we go up,
we can adjust its output value. So if I pull
| | 00:38 | the Shadows up, you will see that what used
to be a 0, pure black, is now remapped to a
| | 00:44 | value of 35 on the Brightness from 0 to 255.
| | 00:48 | Similarly, I could pull down the whites and
you see that we have lost some contrast in
| | 00:55 | this case. Probably not what is desired.
Let's go ahead and click Auto for a second and you
| | 01:01 | see that did a nicer job. I could pull down the
blacks a little bit and lift up the highlights,
| | 01:08 | just to get brighter highlights, and that is
quite nice. There is the before and after.
| | 01:13 | Now what you see there is a nice adjustment. I am
going to tone down the overall output levels
| | 01:19 | of whites--there we go--just to get them a
little lower, and pull that down so it doesn't clip.
| | 01:28 | And that looks pretty good.
| | 01:29 | Remember, click the Visibility icon there to
see the before and after state, and that is
| | 01:34 | a solid adjustment, with a very gentle application,
in this case using five separate points of control
| | 01:41 | as opposed to the three offered by Levels.
| | 01:46 |
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| Refining a Curves adjustment layer using the On-Image tool| 00:00 | The Curves adjustment has a great option called
the On Image tool. Instead of having to guess
| | 00:05 | where you click and drag on the Curves line
to making the adjustment, the On Image tool
| | 00:10 | will precisely place a control point.
| | 00:13 | You access it by just jumping in and adding a
standard Curves adjustment layer. You will
| | 00:18 | when see this little finger pointer, and this
is basically the On Image tool. Turning it
| | 00:24 | on means that when you click it will
automatically add a control point for that value. So I could
| | 00:30 | lift those bright areas. If I want to pull
the shadows down, I can come on over here
| | 00:35 | into the shadowy region and click and then
drag down and that area is affected, and notice
| | 00:42 | how becomes it very easy to go
through and begin to modify the image.
| | 00:48 | You know exactly where to click, and then of
course you can always come in and refine it
| | 00:52 | yourself. If this is little too hot here,
I can click and pull down. And it does a nice
| | 00:59 | job of quickly fixing that. Notice the before
and after states. If you are satisfied with
| | 01:06 | that adjustment, it's pretty easy to reuse
as well. You could choose to go ahead and
| | 01:11 | save a preset and then reload it from
one layer to another and that will store it
| | 01:17 | in your system. So if you have a frequently used
setting that you like, just save it as a preset.
| | 01:24 | You can also go ahead and drag the image
from one to the other. Under the Window menu, I
| | 01:28 | am just going to go ahead and arrange these
so they are side by side, and I can now drag
| | 01:34 | and drop to pull that over. Slight differences
with this image. Remember, it is easy to simply
| | 01:40 | click on it and you can pull that down a bit
if it is too high. There we go. It looks good.
| | 01:50 | And I easily reuse that
adjustment between the two images.
| | 01:55 |
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| Adjusting hue and saturation| 00:00 | The Hue/Saturation adjustment layer is very
flexible and it allows you to change both
| | 00:04 | the color and its intensity. Let's see how it
works. I'll go ahead and apply a Hue/Saturation
| | 00:10 | adjustment and with the On Image tool, I could
actually click and drag, and notice it's affecting
| | 00:18 | those areas. If I want to change the hue,
I could roll the overall hue of the image
| | 00:25 | and it affects all details in the image.
| | 00:28 | So, while I push this to a nice green tint,
it might be a little too much. Later you'll
| | 00:34 | learn how to actually mask in adjustment layer,
but for now let's just make a subtle adjustment
| | 00:39 | rolling the hue a bit to an orangeish tint
and increasing the saturation. I'll also take
| | 00:46 | advantage of the Lightness option to raise
it a bit so it's not so dark. Toggling the
| | 00:53 | before and after, you see that we've made
a subtle adjustment to the image, but one
| | 00:58 | that is still quite effective.
| | 01:02 | If you want, you can go ahead and turn that
off and back on. I'm going to go ahead and
| | 01:09 | apply a second adjustment on top of this
with an overall saturation adjustment and I'll
| | 01:14 | bring up the overall color and darken the
image back down a bit. If I want to, I could
| | 01:21 | choose Colorize to apply a global tint,
and this allows me to start to move things.
| | 01:28 | Now, I'm going to roll the overall hue, set
that to a nice purplish red, and then change
| | 01:35 | this to Hue. Notice in doing so, it maps the
color to all of the colors down below, giving
| | 01:44 | me essentially a duo-tone effect. As I roll
that, I now have flexibility, and essentially
| | 01:50 | I'm getting a spot-color effect where it's
colorizing the image but only applying it
| | 01:56 | most intensely to the
previously colored areas.
| | 02:00 | So, a lot of flexibility as you work, and if
you decide you want to, you can always select
| | 02:07 | the mask, grab a Paintbrush tool, and just
paint with black on the mask to mask the image.
| | 02:16 | In this case right here, we'll just adjust
the size of the brush and paint out the eyeball
| | 02:26 | and you see it limited the effect to
where it was applied within the photo.
| | 02:31 |
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| Boosting color with a Vibrance adjustment layer| 00:00 | Well, the Hue/Saturation effect is useful,
it's very easy to posterize your colors, essentially
| | 00:05 | losing detail in the areas that you boost.
Let's compare Hue/Saturation with Vibrance.
| | 00:12 | The standard Hue/Saturation adjustment layer
lets you bring up the colors, but notice as
| | 00:17 | you do, how quickly they posterize, and you
start to get unwanted simplification of the
| | 00:23 | image. We start to see a breakdown in detail as
well as an unwanted color cast being introduced.
| | 00:29 | I'll just throw that away.
| | 00:32 | Instead, the Vibrance adjustment offers two
choices: Vibrance and Saturation. This saturation
| | 00:39 | is different than the saturation in the
Hue/Saturation adjustment. Think of this as Saturation 2.0.
| | 00:47 | This lets you improve the overall saturation
of the entire image and notice as you drag,
| | 00:53 | it doesn't posterize as much. Now that's a
little too much for this image, so I'll back
| | 00:58 | that down a bit. That works out nicely.
| | 01:03 | If you want to control the non-skin tone
areas of the image, such as the blues and greens,
| | 01:08 | the Vibrance adjustment will go after those.
So I could bring up the intensity of the water
| | 01:13 | or for that matter, knock it down quite a bit
and just put more focus on the bird itself.
| | 01:21 | There is the before and after, and you see
that they did a nice job of simplifying the
| | 01:25 | background while improving the
overall saturation of the bird.
| | 01:30 | Plus, if you want, you can always duplicate
that layer to combine the effect and really
| | 01:38 | start to pop things. Notice there are two
instances of the effect being combined to
| | 01:44 | create a new version where the bird is very
dramatic. I am happy with that. I'm just going
| | 01:50 | to toss on a gradient. We'll do the black-to-
white gradient, set it to Radial, and adjust
| | 01:59 | the size. There we go, just give it a little bit of
a vignette and then change that to Multiply
| | 02:09 | to drop out the brighter areas and
give us our power-window vignette.
| | 02:14 | Remember, you can always drag that around
within the dialog to reposition it as needed.
| | 02:19 |
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| Using adjustment presets| 00:00 | To help you continue to explore adjustment
layers, you'll find several presets they give
| | 00:05 | you a good idea of what each adjustment is
capable of. For example, I'm going to apply
| | 00:10 | a Hue/Saturation adjustment, and under
the preset list are several options.
| | 00:17 | In this case, it's colorizing the image and
adding a cyan tint. Similar is a sepia tone,
| | 00:24 | and you see the Colorize option. If you
don't like that particular sepia tone, it's very
| | 00:28 | easy to adjust saturation as well as the
lightness for it to get the result that you like.
| | 00:34 | The preset is simply a starting point.
| | 00:37 | If you modify a preset and you want to save
it, you could just click the dropdown menu
| | 00:41 | and choose Save Preset, and I can call this
Sepia2. It'll automatically put it in the
| | 00:49 | correct presets folder and you'll see that
both are now available: the standard one included
| | 00:55 | with Photoshop as well as my own preset
below the line. Let's try one of the other ones
| | 01:02 | here. I'll just do an increase saturation.
That's a nice quick preset. We see the before
| | 01:07 | and after. Very subtle. I'll try the Increase
Saturation More option and that's boosting by 30% there.
| | 01:16 | Definitely a change in the image, a nice quick
preset. Let's go ahead and apply another adjustment
| | 01:22 | here. I'm going to do a Curves adjustment and
you'll see presets for things like Increase
| | 01:28 | Contrast, or go ahead and do a lighter adjustment.
I'll click before and after and you see the change applied.
| | 01:39 | So, those presets, very useful. Remember,
you can just click the Preset list to choose from
| | 01:44 | them, or the submenu to go ahead and
save your own adjustment as a new preset.
| | 01:49 |
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5. Controlling Adjustment LayersUsing the Color Range command| 00:00 | Adjustment layers are awesome, and hopefully
by now you share the same opinion. What I
| | 00:05 | am going to show you is how to make them
even more useful by making a selection first.
| | 00:10 | If you apply a selection, then the adjustment
layer, it will be isolated to just the selected
| | 00:15 | area. I am going to having choose Select >
Color Range, which is sort of an extension of the
| | 00:23 | Magic Wand tool. This allows you to click
within the image to set a sample point, and
| | 00:28 | then hold down the Shift key and
you can continue to drag through.
| | 00:33 | This makes it very easy to make a selection
based on color. If you get things you don't
| | 00:39 | want, just choose the Localized Color option
and it will isolate. Holding down the Alt or Option
| | 00:44 | key lets you subtract from an image.
| | 00:48 | So, there we go: Shift to add, Alt to subtract.
I'll pull the range in a bit so it's not
| | 00:53 | as wide. And that makes it easier to
control what is or is not selected. Here we go.
| | 01:02 | I have got the bird pretty well selected,
fuzz that out a bit, hold down the Alt or Option
| | 01:09 | key to subtract away some of the background,
and that works pretty well. And I'll click
| | 01:15 | OK to generate a selection.
| | 01:19 | Now that I have a selection, it's easy to
choose one of the marquee options and use
| | 01:24 | Refine Edge. This gives you the edge and
shows you what's happening, and you could turn on
| | 01:29 | things like Smart Radius if you want
better control, as well as the ability to smooth
| | 01:35 | things out and feather to
create a gradual transition.
| | 01:39 | That's done a pretty good job. With my
brush I could just paint over any areas I don't
| | 01:46 | want, and notice they're removed. There we
go. Improves that transition a bit. It looks
| | 02:01 | pretty good. I will generate that as a selection,
and now we can add an adjustment, such as Vibrance.
| | 02:10 | I'll pop the colors a bit in the bird.
Popping them up. That looks nice, intensifying the
| | 02:17 | overall amount of color in just the bird.
I could then choose Select > Reselect to
| | 02:25 | load my previous selection and now I
can inverse it to select the background.
| | 02:31 | A simple Curves adjustment will let me
improve the overall contrast of the background, and
| | 02:40 | I could pull things down just a bit. And notice
the adjustment is isolated to the non parts
| | 02:48 | of the bird, just the background.
| | 02:53 | So, a lot of power and flexibility there.
Just be sure to take advantage of some of the great
| | 02:57 | selection tools that you have inside of Photoshop.
If you're new to selections, you'll actually
| | 03:02 | find another class we produced all about
making great selections in Photoshop, as
| | 03:06 | part of the lynda.com online training library.
| | 03:11 |
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| Controlling adjustment layers with masks| 00:00 | As you saw in the previous exercise,
making a selection before you apply an adjustment
| | 00:05 | layer will automatically mask layer.
What I want to show you though is how easy it is
| | 00:10 | to improve the mask after the fact.
| | 00:13 | In this particular photo, we've made two
isolated adjustments. Here is the original image, and
| | 00:19 | I've selected the area outside of the bird.
I've gone ahead and done an exposure adjustment,
| | 00:25 | as well as a separate Vibrance
adjustment to simplify things down.
| | 00:29 | Remember, everything is live, so you have
the ability to further refine it if you wanted,
| | 00:34 | pulling more color out of the background,
and bringing down the overall exposure a bit,
| | 00:41 | as well as adjusting the gamma for the
background to darken it. That looks pretty good.
| | 00:46 | And if I needed to, in this case I
have a slight ringing on the edge.
| | 00:51 | Because the mask is selected, you'll see the
mask is available right there. Clicking on
| | 00:56 | the adjustment shows you the properties;
clicking on the mask shows you the mask. You can now
| | 01:02 | refine the mask with a little bit of a feather,
and that adds softness. In this case it's
| | 01:08 | creating a glow so I will tighten that up.
| | 01:10 | But you can adjust the overall density of
the mask, essentially fading it back a bit
| | 01:15 | with the image. And you see there that what
used to be black is now a partial gray, mixing
| | 01:21 | the results of the adjustment. So it's partially
applying to the overall bird and not just the background.
| | 01:28 | You also have the ability here to quickly
invert the mask with one click, if you've
| | 01:34 | got it facing the wrong direction.
And of course, click Color Range to go right back
| | 01:39 | in to the Selection dialog, or better yet,
the Mask Edge, which shows you interactively
| | 01:45 | what's happening.
| | 01:46 | I will take advantage of the Smart Radius here
and adjust it so it analyzes those feathers.
| | 01:53 | And then I can simply smooth that out and
contract it just a bit so we don't get any
| | 02:00 | unwanted spilling at the edge. There we go.
Pull that in just a little. It looks pretty good.
| | 02:10 | I'll back the feather off actually. There we
go. Smooth that out. Click OK and the mask
| | 02:18 | will update and it improves.
| | 02:20 | So, total control over the mask after the
fact. Just switch from having the Adjustment
| | 02:26 | property selected to the Mask, and you'll
have much greater flexibility as you take
| | 02:31 | total control.
| | 02:36 |
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| Clipping adjustment layers| 00:00 | If you're working with a multilayered image,
you can isolate the effects of an adjustment
| | 00:04 | layer by changing stacking order or by clipping.
In this case I'm going to adjust the image
| | 00:10 | by adding a Curves adjustment
and start to affect the bear.
| | 00:17 | Notice in this case that the adjustment
itself is actually going after the text as well,
| | 00:23 | so to change this, I'm going to lower it in
the stacking order so it appears below the
| | 00:28 | text. In this case, the adjustment only
applies to the layer below it in the Layers panel.
| | 00:35 | Now, I want to use another adjustment for
this text, I'm going to apply a Hue/Saturation
| | 00:40 | adjustment layer and click Colorize. In doing
so, I am able to assign any color I want to
| | 00:46 | the text. However, it's
currently colorizing all of the images.
| | 00:52 | If you look closely, you have the ability in
the Adjustments panel to go ahead and indent
| | 00:57 | this. Clicking here will clip it to only the
layer below. You notice that it now appears
| | 01:03 | indented and it's clipped so it only applies
to the opaque areas below and doesn't affect
| | 01:09 | other layers within the image. By taking
advantage of features like stacking order as well as
| | 01:15 | clipping, you could further define how an
adjustment layer will affect an image.
| | 01:20 |
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| Blending adjustment layers| 00:00 | There is one additional way to control how an
adjustment layer behaves, and that is blending.
| | 00:06 | You could choose to change the overall blend
mode or use the more advanced Blend If command.
| | 00:11 | In this image here, I've applied three adjustments.
Let's go ahead and start with the first.
| | 00:18 | This particular adjustment is being applied as a
gradient map, and we will explore this adjustment
| | 00:24 | more in later lessons.
| | 00:27 | Normally, if set to the Normal mode, the effect
is pretty heavy, and it's mapping a new color
| | 00:34 | to the image. However, by changing its blending
mode to something like Soft Light, the results
| | 00:41 | are subtle but work nicely. An easy
shortcut is to select the layer and choose the Move
| | 00:47 | tool. You could then use the keyboard shortcut
of Shift+Minus or Shift+Plus to step
| | 00:53 | through the blending modes. Shift+Minus
we'll step backwards and Shift+Plus will step
| | 00:59 | forward. And you see that that gives you nice
control. There is an example of using it in
| | 01:05 | Hue mode, so it's a little more subtle, or
even combining both effects using both Soft
| | 01:11 | Light and Hue to give
this a very gentle tone map.
| | 01:15 | Now, there is another adjustment and that is
Vibrance, and I'm going to turn that on on
| | 01:20 | its own, and notice there's an icon here next
to the name. These two squares indicate that
| | 01:26 | the advance blending options have been turned
on. If I double-click, you'll see the layer
| | 01:31 | here, and let's put it back to normal.
By default, you have the ability to adjust how a layer
| | 01:38 | blends. So here, I've turned on the Vibrance
very, very high and it's a bit strong. I can
| | 01:45 | choose to blend based on an individual
color channel or I can go ahead and base it on
| | 01:50 | the luminance, or the gray channel.
| | 01:53 | Notice as I drag this in, it starts to
affect where it's being applied, and you see that
| | 01:59 | I'm limiting it a bit there. Notice how the
Vibrance is pulled back. I'll go ahead and
| | 02:05 | do the same thing here for the underlying
layer to knock out a bit more. Now, that's
| | 02:11 | working pretty well except its very splotchy.
If you hold down the Alt or Option key, you
| | 02:18 | can pull those apart and in
doing so, you'll get a soft blend.
| | 02:26 | Notice there that it is indeed blending, but
it is doing it more gently, so it's applying
| | 02:31 | its subtly to these areas and more intense
to others. I'll click OK. I could turn that
| | 02:38 | off and on and what you see there is a much
nicer result. Let's just go ahead and duplicate
| | 02:44 | that layer. And on this one I'll turn off the
blending, and you'll see a very heavy effect
| | 03:00 | or a much nicer, gently blended
effect that looks more photo-natural.
| | 03:05 | Remember, to access the Blend If, simply double-
click on the layer and you can then adjust the Blend
| | 03:11 | If properties. Holding down the Option or Alt
key lets you split this keyframe apart to
| | 03:17 | get gentle transitions and smoother blends.
| | 03:22 |
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6. Using the Shadow/Highlights CommandApplying the Shadow/Highlights command to a Smart Object| 00:00 | And adjustment I really like is the Shadow/
Highlight command to tackle exposure problems. It combines
| | 00:05 | both an exposure and a color correction
adjustment in one effect, and it is very easy to use.
| | 00:12 | Normally, when you apply Shadow/Highlights,
it is going to be a destructive adjustment.
| | 00:17 | So after you apply it to the image, there is no
ability to modify. Let's go ahead and choose
| | 00:22 | Undo for a second. However, I can right-click
on a layer and convert it to a Smart Object.
| | 00:29 | You will notice that the icon now changes.
In doing so, I could choose Image > Adjustments >
| | 00:34 | Shadow Highlights and this makes the effect
nondestructive. Notice it comes up, and I
| | 00:40 | have the ability to tweak. Now, these are the
default values. If I click Show More Options,
| | 00:47 | I get additional controls.
| | 00:48 | I am going to go ahead and define the
shadows as the darkest 35%, and then lift those up
| | 00:56 | more. I also want to go ahead and define the
highlights as the brightest 25% or so. And
| | 01:02 | I am going to knock those down. Notice there
I could adjust the width until the highlight
| | 01:11 | areas become selected. I will then put a
little bit of color correction in to even that out,
| | 01:17 | because as you brighten up the areas, they
tend to washout. Put a little contrast in,
| | 01:22 | and that's looks great. I will click
OK and it applies the adjustment.
| | 01:28 | Notice it is nondestructive, in that you
can quickly toggle it off and on. I will then
| | 01:33 | finesse this with a Curves adjustment and
do a nice auto adjustment to really bring
| | 01:37 | that out, and then apply a selective adjustment
to the sky. I will select the layer and choose
| | 01:45 | Select > Color Range, and this allows me to
click to define. I could then hold down the
| | 01:50 | Shift key and drag through the image to
increase the selection. There we go. And I have added
| | 02:00 | to that selection as needed, that looks pretty good.
I will go ahead and click OK to generate a new selection.
| | 02:06 | And now we will add a Vibrance adjustment
to adjust the sky. This allows me to boost
| | 02:12 | the Saturation and the Vibrance, and that's
really helping. I could also move that up
| | 02:18 | or down in the stack. That looks pretty good
to me. And with that active selection, I am
| | 02:24 | going to go ahead and reselect it one more
time and add a Hue/Saturation Adjustment and
| | 02:29 | could Colorize option. Dial in the blue I
want and the Saturation, lower the Lightness
| | 02:36 | down just a little bit, and
that is looking pretty good.
| | 02:40 | It looks like I do have a few sun spots on the
lens there that really are becoming evident
| | 02:44 | as we push this, but that's a great use for
the Spot Healing Brush. I will make a new
| | 02:50 | empty layer, choose the Sample All Layers
option, and quickly brush over any splotches
| | 02:57 | or sun spots that I want to remove, and that
gets rid of some of those spots on the lens.
| | 03:04 | There is that nondestructive adjustment
technique being used, makes it nice and easy. All those
| | 03:09 | adjustments are on their own layer because
we have taken advantage of the Sample All
| | 03:13 | Layers option and I will just name that Heal.
There we go, a really good adjustment. Let's
| | 03:21 | just call up the History panel, and I can
click to see the before and after state. We will
| | 03:28 | take a snapshot, and now we could toggle
between where it started and where I took it, a very
| | 03:35 | dramatic fix, and all of it
being done nondestructively.
| | 03:40 |
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| Adjusting shadows and highlights in a raw image| 00:00 | While the Shadow/Highlights command doesn't
exist inside the Raw dialog box, you will
| | 00:04 | find sliders for Shadows and Highlights, as
well as White and Black values. I want to
| | 00:10 | show you how it is really effective
to let's start with the raw photo.
| | 00:14 | On this first image, I want to lift out the
area in the shadows. Clicking Auto will do
| | 00:20 | a pretty good job in evening out the exposure
and then notice we can lift the shadowy areas
| | 00:25 | up independently. So even though they are
sitting in the shade, we could properly expose.
| | 00:31 | Using the Blacks slider, I can restore
contrast to the blacks so they don't get too washed
| | 00:36 | out as I increase the Shadows slider. But it's
important to use that Blacks slider to balance it out.
| | 00:44 | Highlights will let you recover any
blown-out areas, so you can pull those down for
| | 00:48 | the areas that are in brighter sun, such as
the top there of the egg, and that brings back
| | 00:54 | some of the lost detail. I could then make
a global adjustment to exposure until I am
| | 01:00 | satisfied with the effect, and clicking the
Preview box there shows you the before and
| | 01:06 | after. We had both used the highlights recovery
for the top of the eggs and a shadow recovery
| | 01:12 | for inside. I will go ahead and crop that.
Let's do a 4x5 crop and better position our
| | 01:21 | subjects. Press Enter.
That is looking pretty good.
| | 01:25 | I want to show you little bit more with
these two commands. Here is an image that looks
| | 01:29 | properly exposed and everything seems about
right. A quick auto analysis will detect, though,
| | 01:35 | that there is room to expand the
Contrast, Shadows, and Highlights.
| | 01:39 | Taking the Contrast down is actually helping,
because notice if we take it too high, we start
| | 01:44 | to lose detail in the face. So I am going
to actually take that down a little bit and
| | 01:49 | play with the shadow adjustment, lifting it
to bring back some of the facial details and
| | 01:56 | then restoring the crispness
of the blacks by dragging down.
| | 02:02 | As you play with shadows and blacks, it is
going be a little bit of back-and-forth pulling
| | 02:06 | there. That is looking pretty good. I will
lift the overall exposure just a bit more,
| | 02:12 | put some Vibrance back in as well as Clarity,
some selective contrast--that is really helping
| | 02:17 | the fur--and then with the Adjustment Brush
I can go ahead back and brush in a little
| | 02:24 | bit more in the face. Left bracket for a
smaller brush, and I will just paint over the eyes
| | 02:30 | there, and use that to bring the eyes back
and the bridge of the nose. It looks pretty good.
| | 02:37 | Put the Saturation back in with some Clarity,
paint a little bit more on the eye, toggle
| | 02:46 | that off and on, and you see it is subtle,
but it is doing a nice job. I will uncheck
| | 02:52 | the pin there, and I can
really see the image nicely.
| | 02:56 | Let's crop that in. I will use a square crop
here because we have lots of symmetry in the image.
| | 03:01 | I like that. Rotate it just a little bit to match
the angle of the surface. There we go, and Apply.
| | 03:15 | Let's finish this out with one more image
to really drill this home for Raw, and you see
| | 03:21 | that in the shadowy regions, using the Shadow
slider really lifts things up. You can always
| | 03:28 | restore the blackness by pulling back down the
Blacks slider, but those two works hand in hand
| | 03:34 | to really rescue the details. I will put a
little Clarity in to put selective contrast
| | 03:39 | back in to the fur and we will crop in on
our subject here so it is a more interesting
| | 03:45 | photo, focusing on our subject. There we go.
Enter to apply, and finish that out with some
| | 03:55 | post-crop vignette to guide the viewer's eye
and you see that the vignette helps, as well
| | 04:02 | as over in the basics tab here, what a dramatic
difference we are making in those shadowy regions,
| | 04:10 | taking advantage of the Shadows and
Highlights slider, as well as bouncing it out with the
| | 04:14 | whites and blacks to maintain proper contrast.
| | 04:19 |
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| Refining the Shadow/Highlights command| 00:00 | If you get the Shadow/Highlights adjustment
as you want it, it's easy to reuse from one
| | 00:05 | layer to another. Here's how.
| | 00:08 | I'll go ahead in convert this to a Smart Filter
and then apply my Shadows/Highlights adjustment.
| | 00:18 | By default, it may look like this, and the
auto values are actually working pretty well.
| | 00:24 | But clicking Show More Options just gives
you more control over things like the color
| | 00:29 | and the ability to adjust what is being
treated as a shadow. That look pretty good. And I'm
| | 00:40 | going to go ahead and save that.
Clicking Save lets me give it a name.
| | 00:47 | In this case, it shows Hue and Saturation
because there's not a default category for
| | 00:52 | Shadow/Highlights. You can either make your
own or leave it in the default mapping.
| | 00:56 | I'll click Save and choose OK, and there's the
before and after on the effect. It's just
| | 01:02 | helping bring the bird out a bit.
| | 01:05 | Switching over to the next image, I can go
ahead and apply that. We will convert it for Smart
| | 01:09 | Filters. I'll go ahead and choose Image >
Adjustments > Shadows/Highlights, and then I could choose
| | 01:15 | Load. This allows me to navigate to the preset
I made and click Load and those values will
| | 01:22 | be stored. Then it becomes easy to make any small
tweaks such as the Radius to create a little
| | 01:28 | more feathering. Click OK and it's applied and you
could see that those images have been more unified.
| | 01:37 | I'm happy with that. I'll just toss on a
Curves adjustment here and pull down the
| | 01:41 | blacks in that shadow background.
That looks pretty good. So, combining two adjustments
| | 01:48 | as well as reusing some of my
work from one image to another.
| | 01:53 |
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7. Special Case AdjustmentsUsing the Equalize command to fix exposure and contrast| 00:00 | Equalize command is normally a destructive
command that properly balances out the contrast
| | 00:06 | in both the light and dark areas of an image;
| | 00:09 | however, you can use it nondestructively by
duplicating the image first. I'll go ahead
| | 00:15 | and right-click and duplicate the layer.
Let's just name it Equalize and then I'll choose
| | 00:24 | the command, Image > Adjustments > Equalize.
| | 00:28 | By default, it does a nice job of pushing
the two values and we get bright whites and
| | 00:33 | dark blacks, and you see the before and
after is pretty dramatic. It becomes very simple
| | 00:40 | to then back off with Opacity between the two
until you find the look that you're going for.
| | 00:46 | I often find that a 50% to 60% blend between
the equalized image and the original image
| | 00:53 | does a nice job of boosting
color and restoring contrast.
| | 00:58 | Here's that technique again. I will simply
duplicate the background layer, invoke Image >
| | 01:08 | Adjustments > Equalize, and you see it did a
nice job there. If it is a little bit strong,
| | 01:16 | you might want to try
changing the blending mode.
| | 01:19 | In this case, I'll go with Multiply to drop
out the brighter values, and it does a nice
| | 01:24 | job of combining and boosting the color.
That's looking pretty good. A quick Curves adjustment
| | 01:32 | with the On Image tool will let
us lift that up a bit. There we go.
| | 01:41 | And we now have a properly balanced image
with a nice boost of color and overall contrast.
| | 01:48 |
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| Using Match Color with two photos| 00:00 | The Match Color command lets you take a
reference photo and use that to adjust another image.
| | 00:05 | This is useful if you have several photos
from the same subject. So for example here,
| | 00:10 | I have two different pictures of a
flamingo, and they are close but not exact.
| | 00:16 | Let's go ahead and arrange those windows
so we could see the two side by side. In the
| | 00:21 | right-hand image here, I'm going to make a
selection with the Quick Selection tool, just
| | 00:26 | to select part of the orange that I want to
use for reference there. And this is going
| | 00:30 | to be this nice orangeish-pink value
we associate with the flamingo.
| | 00:35 | In the other image, I am going to go ahead
and make a similar selection in a similar
| | 00:39 | area. With that selected, I can now choose
to run an adjustment. Now this is going to
| | 00:46 | be a destructive adjustment, so it's not a
bad idea to duplicate that layer first, and we will
| | 00:51 | call this Matched.
| | 00:54 | You can now choose Image > Adjustments > Match
Color, and what you do is you specify the source.
| | 01:03 | In this case on using Match1 as my source,
and I am going to use the selection to calculate
| | 01:09 | a color as well as a tone adjustment. I will
then use the selection in my target to match
| | 01:16 | the two areas together; however, I'll tell it to
ignore the selection and apply the adjustment
| | 01:22 | everywhere. In doing that, you see the two
values are doing a nice job of matching.
| | 01:27 | We could refine that by clicking Neutralize. If it
is too strong, back that off, but then adjust
| | 01:34 | the overall luminance and intensity of color
to further refine. And Fade will let you blend it
| | 01:41 | back if it's overdone.
| | 01:44 | That's looking pretty good. I will Click OK
and I've now matched the pink value across
| | 01:49 | both photos. To show you the before and after,
I could toggle that and you can see that using the same
| | 01:55 | color area in both images provided us a
reference that Photoshop can use to calculate the correct adjustment.
| | 02:06 |
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| Adjusting color and exposure with the Photo Filter command| 00:00 | Another adjustment that tries to simulate
traditional photography equipment is Photo
| | 00:05 | Filters. Now, the Photo Filters category
applies several different presets to simulate what
| | 00:11 | a traditional lens filter would do.
| | 00:14 | For example, if I click the camera icon to
apply it, you'll see that the default is a
| | 00:19 | warming filter, and this allows you to adjust
how much the image is warmed. You could choose
| | 00:25 | to preserve luminosity, which keeps the blacks
and whites similar, or uncheck that and you
| | 00:31 | get a heavier tint.
| | 00:32 | I generally find that the Preserve Luminosity
option is best. You will find three different
| | 00:38 | presets for warming. Each of them have
different strengths. And remember, you can always click
| | 00:44 | the eyeball icon here to see a before and
after. That's doing a nice job of warming
| | 00:49 | up the background there. Or similarly, you
can cool the background using one of the
| | 00:54 | cooling presets, and adjust the density.
| | 00:58 | Notice that this changes the apparent time
of day to later in the afternoon. There are
| | 01:04 | other filters to simulate things such as a
tint or to go ahead and compensate for
| | 01:09 | shooting underwater or with different color
masking options to go ahead and reduce the
| | 01:14 | overall impact of blue, for example.
| | 01:17 | But I find that the warming and cooling
options tend to work the best and are a really quick
| | 01:23 | way to adjust the apparent time of day,
warming the shot or cooling the shot.
| | 01:28 |
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| Tinting with the Gradient Map adjustment| 00:00 | One my favorite adjustments inside Adobe
Photoshop is the Gradient Map. It essentially takes
| | 00:05 | the darkest and lightest values and maps a
new color to them. This got even more useful
| | 00:10 | with Photoshop CS, because there was the introduction
of several very cool presets to simulate photographic
| | 00:16 | stocks. Here is how it works.
| | 00:19 | I've applied a gradient map here and you see
that it's mapping new colors to the image,
| | 00:23 | in this case a very stylized approach.
Let's add a new adjustment layer for gradient map.
| | 00:29 | It's right at the bottom. And when you do that,
there is a list of several default options.
| | 00:35 | You can go ahead and apply those. Some are
quite obnoxious. But you see that it's mapping
| | 00:41 | the values. For example, in this simplified
version, it's mapping red to the darkest area
| | 00:47 | and green to the brightest areas.
You can modify that by clicking and simply adjust
| | 00:53 | the stops, or even change their colors, such
as go from a dark red to a very light red,
| | 01:05 | and we'll take that to a darker value. And you see
how we are getting a very nice simplified toning.
| | 01:12 | It can of course be reversed if necessary
to create a solarized image. But what I really
| | 01:18 | like are some of the useful presets.
Clicking here and then clicking the gear icon, you'll
| | 01:24 | see a list of several options, and new to
CS6 is the Photographic Toning category. These
| | 01:31 | are really cool. And you'll see several black
and white presets, as well as ones that introduce
| | 01:37 | some warm tones for some very
natural-looking sepia-tone effects.
| | 01:44 | You can simply click through these to see
the effect, and as you scroll down the list,
| | 01:50 | there's lots of choices. If you want to back
it off, you could change its blending mode
| | 01:57 | to something like Hue, or more gentle to a
Soft light, and you see that that does a nice
| | 02:04 | job of aging the photo.
| | 02:06 | However, the standard Normal or subtle Hue or
Color option will do the heaviest tint and
| | 02:12 | really lets you take
advantage of this photographic tint.
| | 02:15 | I really like that for a black and white
conversion, a little subtle brown tone that matches the
| | 02:21 | mood of the photo, and it's
super fast and easy to use.
| | 02:26 |
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| Blending Smart Filters| 00:00 | Smart filters are very useful. We have
already explored them briefly in today's lesson.
| | 00:04 | I would like to show you how quick they are,
whether you're working with a raw or a standard
| | 00:09 | image. For a rasterized layer, simply choose
Convert for Smart Filters. You can now take
| | 00:16 | advantage of most of the other filters that
you'll find in the categories. In this case,
| | 00:20 | I will try to Find Edges filter--on its own a
bit strong, but double-clicking the Blending
| | 00:26 | Options lets me change its mode.
| | 00:29 | So there, setting it to multiply dropped out
the white and essentially did a cool trace
| | 00:34 | effect. Let's toggle that off and on, and you see
it did a good job of emphasizing the details.
| | 00:43 | Find Edges blended back really is quite effective.
Let's go ahead and put a quick blur on there.
| | 00:50 | I'll do a Radial Blur, set the zoom, and
adjust where it's coming from, click OK, and then
| | 01:02 | adjust its blending. Just click
the blending option and change it.
| | 01:08 | I like the Overlay mode there. It does a nice
job of creating a central focus point and
| | 01:16 | popping the colors.
| | 01:18 | Remember, if you've opened up a raw file as
a Smart Object, using the opening options,
| | 01:26 | or by using the Place command,
it automatically comes in as a Smart Object. This means that
| | 01:31 | you can run the same filters nondestructively and
save a step, with the same ability to double-click
| | 01:37 | the blending options and change them.
| | 01:42 |
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| Using color lookup tables to process images| 00:00 | A new addition to Photoshop CS6 is the
ability to apply a Lookup Table. A Lookup Table, or
| | 00:06 | a LUT, is often generated on set,
particularly in a professional video or cinematography
| | 00:12 | workflow. However, new tools are emerging that are
allowing people to do this in photography as well.
| | 00:19 | Photoshop lets you take a LUT file that was
generated, perhaps by a colorist or an on-set
| | 00:24 | technician, and apply it to a photo or a
video clip during the post-production process.
| | 00:31 | To apply a LUT, simply click the Color Lookup
Table button. You then have several presets
| | 00:37 | to choose from. From the pop-down list, you'll
find different looks, and these often simulate
| | 00:45 | traditional film stocks or color grades.
| | 00:50 | You'll also find the ability to use abstracts--
I'll just choose from the preset list here--
| | 01:01 | or particular ones tied to a
particular camera or device.
| | 01:06 | Now, the lookups are very fast and they
quickly map to an image. You can of course adjust
| | 01:13 | the opacity as well as the blending mode, but
you can only load Lookup Tables, not create
| | 01:18 | them within Photoshop.
| | 01:20 | If you want to save time, just go ahead and
arrange those two side by side. I used this
| | 01:27 | Smokey Device Profile, and I could just apply
that, and choose, and you see we get a very
| | 01:35 | close match between the two images.
| | 01:38 | And that's one of the advantages of Lookup
Tables: they let you redefine how colors behave
| | 01:43 | within a series of images.
| | 01:48 |
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8. The Black-and-White AdjustmentsCreating black-and-white images| 00:00 | The Black & White Adjustment effect in
Photoshop is so much more efficient than just stripping
| | 00:04 | away the color; it lets you give weight to
the original color values that emphasize how
| | 00:09 | the black-and-white
conversion is going to occur.
| | 00:12 | Let's go ahead and apply it, and you'll see
here that we have several presets, such as
| | 00:18 | a green filter--that's going to give more
emphasis to the green--maximum black, et cetera, and
| | 00:25 | these presets lets you quickly
jump in and apply a different look.
| | 00:30 | However, what I find most useful is the On-Image tool.
This allows you to click within the photo and drag.
| | 00:36 | For example, the beak of the bird here was
red, and using the bridge of its nose, I can
| | 00:43 | emphasize that I want that red a bit darker.
Coming over here to the cheek was a yellow
| | 00:49 | area, and I could bring that up or down
independent of the greens, which are affecting the bulk
| | 00:55 | of the rest of feathers.
| | 00:57 | So notice how we can get some separation
there between the red, yellow, and green, which
| | 01:04 | is letting us preserve some
of those original details.
| | 01:08 | I could then of course grab any slider I want
and I just want to remove that magenta spot
| | 01:14 | in the background to sort of neutralize it
so it blends into the background more simply.
| | 01:20 | And you could take advantage of either the
On-Image tool or the individual slider to
| | 01:25 | affect how the image converts. And I'm very
happy with the different weighting there to
| | 01:30 | the red bridge of the nose, yellow cheek,
and green feathers, while deemphasizing the
| | 01:36 | cyan, blue, and magenta in
the background to simplify it.
| | 01:41 |
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| Combining Black & White adjustment layers with blend modes| 00:00 | Taking advantage of blending modes with the
Black & White Adjustment opens up a whole
| | 00:04 | new world of color-grading and exposure
opportunities. Once we apply it, we can go ahead and take
| | 00:11 | advantage of the standard On-Image tool to
get a strong conversion that we're happy with.
| | 00:18 | Using the different sliders here, I'm just
going to go ahead and create an overall look.
| | 00:22 | Once I'm done with that, I'll leave the
layer selected and choose the Move tool. You can
| | 00:29 | of course go through one layer at a time,
trying out different modes, but what I find
| | 00:33 | to be more useful is with the Move tool selected,
use the shortcut of Shift+Plus. That lets
| | 00:39 | you select the layer and
then step through your modes.
| | 00:45 | Notice that different blend modes create
different results. I really like Overlay there, which
| | 00:52 | is popping the background area, recessing
it a bit, while putting higher contrast into
| | 00:57 | some of the color in the foreground.
| | 01:00 | Let's see that over here on another image.
I'll just apply a Black & White adjustment
| | 01:05 | and we'll do an auto value. And using the keyboard
shortcut of Shift+Plus, I could step through
| | 01:11 | the blending modes. I really like how
Multiply creates sort of a dirty image or a bleach-
| | 01:16 | bypass look, and some of the other choices
start to do some very cool spot-color effects.
| | 01:23 | Using blending modes really opens up some
cool opportunities to create selective or
| | 01:28 | very unique black-and-white effects.
| | 01:33 |
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| Hand-tinting a photo| 00:00 | One of my favorite effects with the Black &
White adjustment layer is to use it to hand-
| | 00:05 | tint the photo, choosing which
colors stay and which disappear.
| | 00:10 | I'll go ahead and apply the Black & White
adjustment, and using the On-Image tool, I'll
| | 00:14 | get a nice strong adjustment on
the blue there so it really pops.
| | 00:19 | Changing the blending mode of the layer to
Lighten lets me decide which colors to leave
| | 00:23 | behind. So as I drag to the left, those
colors stay; as I drag to the right, those colors
| | 00:31 | disappear. And you see how quick it is to
go ahead and selectively convert the photo,
| | 00:37 | leaving a spot-color effect.
That works quite nice!
| | 00:42 | If you decide you don't want to apply it to
certain parts of the image, just click on
| | 00:45 | the mask, and with your paintbrush, you can
go ahead and zoom in and paint. By painting
| | 00:52 | on the mask itself, I can essentially brush
back the original color into selected areas.
| | 01:00 | So here we've left the blue but painted back
in the eye detail and beak detail. Using the
| | 01:09 | default brush of black and white, I can even
paint that in at full opacity, or use a lighter
| | 01:15 | gray to paint it back with the partial opacity.
But that makes it really simple. Left Bracket,
| | 01:22 | smaller brush, and you could paint in
what you want to keep and get rid of what
| | 01:29 | you don't want, allowing for very
specialized hand-tinted photos, where some color stays
| | 01:37 | and others disappear.
| | 01:39 | Let's zoom that out. Looks pretty good!
I might paint a little bit of the feet in there.
| | 01:47 | And that's the advantage of the hand-tint is
that you can use the Black & White Adjustment
| | 01:53 | while painting on its mask to
precisely control what stays and what goes.
| | 01:58 |
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ConclusionGoodbye| 00:00 | Thanks again for joining us! My name is Rich
Harrington. I would like to remind you, again,
| | 00:05 | color correction is incredibly subjective, so
be sure to take the techniques you've learned
| | 00:10 | here and try applying them on your photos.
Also, be prepared that your clients or your
| | 00:16 | audience might want something different.
| | 00:18 | All of these techniques you've learned today
are focused on flexibility, easy ability to
| | 00:23 | make a change and a tweak. Because you've
worked nondestructively, it's no big deal
| | 00:29 | when you have to make a tweak for printing or a slight
shift in color to put into a presentation or a slideshow.
| | 00:35 | Taking the time to work nondestructively will
save you time and give you greater flexibility
| | 00:41 | throughout the entire imaging cycle.
| | 00:46 |
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