From the course: Photo Tools Weekly
Smart Filters: Using Smart Filters for creative options
From the course: Photo Tools Weekly
Smart Filters: Using Smart Filters for creative options
- Hello and welcome to another episode of Photo Tools Weekly. This is the series where we cover all things photographic in regards to our post-production work. Well the topic for this week's episode comes to us by way of a suggestion from Brian in Chicago. Brian writes, "Hey Chris, what's the deal with smart filters, and how do they work?" Well, let's dig in and find out. In this first example, let's explore how we can use smart filters to change the look of this photograph. Now in order to work with smart filters the first thing we need to do is convert a layer to a smart object layer. And then next apply the smart filter. So here I'll be working with the background layer I'm just going to click into it and to convert it to a smart object layer you can either right-click or control click on the layer itself and then choose convert to smart object, or you can also just go to the filter pull-down menu here and choose convert for smart filters. Either way we'll do the same exact thing. You can see that it unlocked the layer it also added this little icon in the lower right-hand corner telling us the layer is now a smart object layer. So now when we add filters to it we're going to have more flexibility. And the filter that I'm going to apply is camera. So go to the filter pull-down menu and select camera as a filter. This will launch the camera plugin inside of Photoshop. Now this is different than the standalone plugin, which we've seen previously. This is camera as a filter, which will be applied to this specific layer. Now what I need to do for a client with this photograph let's say as I want to remove the color of the sand, and make the green a little bit more vibrant and alive. Camera is a great tool to work with color, so I go to my HSL/Grayscale panel and I'll start over here by going to saturation and I'm simply going to remove the color from most of the area of the image except for those greens. So I now have this nice green, which you can now see here. And I can increase or decrease the color saturation. Next we'll go back to the basic panel, and in the basic panel maybe we'll add a little contrast brighten things up here a little bit, and just change the overall characteristics of the way that this appears. And again we're making really simple adjustments yet what's great about this is we were able to harness the full power of camera as a filter without a ton of effort. After we've modified the settings next just click OK to apply those. Now here you can see we have our layer. Underneath it we have the smart filter being applied. In this case it's camera. As I click on the eye icon you can see the before and the after. Now let's say that we get to a point where we realize that we want to change those settings. Just double-click the filter name that will relaunch whatever filter you applied. In our case, it was camera, so it brings camera back up. And here I can then go through and make some changes to this. And perhaps change the look a little bit, customizing that or going back to those HSL controls and here we can fine tune the type of green that we have. Perhaps make it a little more like a... I don't know like a Saint Patrick's Day green, or something like that there. Then next just click OK in order to apply that to that part of the photograph. So as you're starting to see smart filters open up whole new realms of creative possibility. Sometimes for making an effect like this and other situations for working on exposure. Let me show you a situation like that. This is a photograph of my daughter Sophie, and one of her best friends in our backyard. We have this field behind our house, and in this area it's underexposed. I want to correct that and again I want to correct it with camera, but I want flexibility in case I make a mistake. So we go to the layer that we want to work with. We right-click or control click on that layer and choose convert to smart object, or we can also go to the filter pull-down menu and choose convert for smart filters. Either way it does the same thing. Next, we go to our filter pull down menu and you would choose the filter which we want to apply. Just to keep it simple let's go to that camera as a filter option. In this dialogue really what I need to do is open up the shadows and the reason why I'm reaching for camera here is it's just so intuitive so easy to use I don't really have to worry about other types of adjustments and I can work on my color, my contrast, my shadows really all at once. And I we zoom into the photograph a little bit into this area of the picture and press the P key there's before and press it again here's after. It's a pretty phenomenal adjustment without a lot of effort. So I'm ready to apply it so I click OK. When we click OK it applies the filter again with built-in flexibility. If we don't like it, double-click the filter name. That will reopen this and then we can further customize this to our heart's content. Next, click OK to reapply whatever the settings are. Now in this particular case I don't necessarily want this everywhere I feel like it's being applied to the sky up here, and it really doesn't need that so I want to do some masking. So I'll go to my mask and click on that. Not the image, but the mask. You'll see the little brackets show up around the mask. Next, double-click the mask to open up the properties panel, and here I'll click invert. That will hide whatever filter we applied, or filters for that matter. In this case, camera. Next I'll grab the brush tool and I'm going to paint with white there, so you'll want to choose white for your color picker. And for my brush size I'll use a pretty big brush with 0% hardness. And I'm just going to start to paint over these different areas where I want to paint in this effect. And as you can see you can kind of get pretty creative with this. I will lower the opacity down below 50% to add just a little bit more light up here, a little more transition. But really I'm just finding the best of both worlds. So I have a decent exposure for the background. It was a rainy day. And then I'm brightening up the girls here in the foreground. I'm just going to modify this a little bit more painting with black to kind of darken up a few of these areas and just fine tuning this. Combining masking into the occasion in order to create a nice look in the photograph. Now when we're ready to see what we have we can click on the eye icon. This was our original image. Click on the eye icon again and we can see the after. Let me zoom in 'cause their smiling faces and the jump in the field was so fun. And again you can see that before and after and how we're able to bring that in. Well now that we've been exposed to this whole concept of smart filters let's take this even a few steps further and we'll do that in the next movie.
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Contents
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Workflow strategy when shooting Raw + JPG3m 54s
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Quicker processing with review and camera calibration4m 15s
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Creating a concept layout with Lightroom and Photoshop8m 56s
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Fun layer project in Photoshop and Lightroom7m 43s
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Brush away unwanted objects in Lightroom CC5m 11s
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Using blur and type, part 14m 26s
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Using blur and type, part 26m 16s
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Better black and white workflow, part 19m 28s
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Better black and white workflow, part 24m 4s
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Action sports retouching, part 18m 57s
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Action sports retouching, part 26m 14s
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Face-Aware Liquify6m 59s
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Fixing teeth in a fashion photograph7m 51s
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Replace the sky in a drone photograph9m 6s
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Creating a great exposure from a single frame, part 15m 30s
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Creating a great exposure from a single frame, part 29m 29s
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Creating a luminous black-and-white portrait, part 14m 13s
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Creating a luminous black-and-white portrait, part 28m 8s
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Fixing overexposure with Camera Raw, part 15m 10s
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Fixing overexposure with Camera Raw, part 28m 52s
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Creative layer blending with Adobe Mix9m 58s
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Making a composite with Adobe Mix9m 35s
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Bring out detail in a landscape photograph, part 16m 20s
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Bring out detail in a landscape photograph, part 27m 51s
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Export a image from video footage9m 9s
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Finishing an iPhone photo11m 38s
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Combining the best expressions from two images5m 30s
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Celebrity portrait workflow in Lightroom: Part 15m 51s
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Celebrity portrait workflow in Lightroom: Part 26m 22s
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Creative layer blending project9m 14s
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Replacing a background and creating vivid colors6m 7s
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Jump for joy: Finishing a beach photo in Lightroom and Photoshop8m 57s
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Becoming an expert with masking in Photoshop6m 12s
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Advanced masking speed tips8m 29s
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Preparing a portrait for Instagram with Lightroom5m 25s
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Finishing a portrait with Photoshop7m 59s
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Using Lightroom to creating a stylized look that prints well5m 22s
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Cleaning up a creative portrait6m 37s
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Hacking Lightroom to create layouts for other projects6m 17s
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Using Content Aware Scale to add to the composition4m 25s
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Extending and filling in the background projects7m 27s
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How to create Gradient Tone Mapping color effects9m
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Creating more precise Gradient Map effects6m 47s
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Natural wrinkle reduction7m 10s
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Advanced wrinkle reduction12m 50s
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Tips for viewing and organizing your layers in Photoshop8m 11s
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Becoming an expert in layers in Photoshop5m 17s
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Using VSCO in Lightroom7m 27s
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Syncing adjustments in Lightroom7m 18s
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High-impact color with Camera Raw and Photoshop6m 57s
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Using Lightroom and Photoshop to create vivid color6m 1s
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Intro to better B&W with the Silver Effex Pro plugin5m 47s
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Taking a deeper dive into Silver Effex Pro10m 10s
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Creating a Panoramic Photo in Lightroom4m 47s
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Advanced Lightroom and Photoshop Pano Workflow6m 55s
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Opening raw files into Photoshop4m 13s
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Three ways to work with Camera Raw and Photoshop8m 14s
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Smart Filters: Using Smart Filters for creative options6m 53s
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Stacking up Smart Filter effects6m 2s
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Cleaning up and removing the background of an image8m 8s
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Two ways to add a new background8m
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Covering up problems in the frame7m 36s
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Removing a person and finishing a photograph9m 20s
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Photoshop Fix to Photoshop CC workflow11m 22s
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Add light to photos with Lightroom10m 56s
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Use Lightroom Collections to process color and black-and-white images6m 39s
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Skin smoothing with the Imogenic plugin Portraiture7m 27s
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Advanced Skin Smoothing Control with Portraiture9m 7s
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Accurate sharpening with Lightroom6m 4s
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Create Collections in Lightroom8m 12s
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Craft creative looks with the Alien Skin Exposure plugin in Lightroom10m 25s
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Use the Alien Skin Exposure plugin in Photoshop11m 32s
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Quick mobile retouching with Photoshop Fix7m 47s
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Add Lens Flare with more precise control9m 50s
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Two ways to crop in Photoshop and extend the canvas6m 9s
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A few methods for working with canvas size7m 45s
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Use plugins in Photoshop for special effects: Analog Efex Pro6m 57s
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Use plugins in Photoshop for special effects: Analog Efex Pro Advanced5m 41s
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Lightroom cropping shortcuts7m 59s
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Remove unwanted objects in Photoshop4m 30s
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Remove unwanted objects in Photoshop: Advanced5m 56s
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Use plugins in Photoshop for better results: Color Efex Pro11m 10s
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Preserve tones with the help of Lightroom clipping indicators6m 3s
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