From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

878 Adjusting your poster art dynamically

From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

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878 Adjusting your poster art dynamically

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- [Instructor] In this movie, I'll show you how to make a few dynamic adjustments to your non destructive poster art. And so for starters here, notice this colors layer, you may recall that it's a gradient map adjustment layer. So if I were to double click on this thumbnail, I would open the Properties panel, which contains a gradient. And so even though we've got some radical colors inside this gradient, we do have some very smooth transitions, which may make you wonder why we have such sharp edges, in our final full color composition. And the reason for that, is that we're posterizing the artwork, using a combination of these poster and channel layers. So as you may recall, the posterize layer right here, is reducing the number of luminance levels, on a channel by channel basis. And then this channel mixer layer, is mixing a monochrome version of the image, that contains the red channel only, and nothing more, which is why the Gradient Map layer is constrained, to just eight colors. However, because we're working with dynamic adjustment layers, we can modify this artwork in any way we like, in order to create much smoother transitions, as we're seeing in this version of the artwork here. Alright, so let me show you how that might work. The first thing I'm going to do, is double click and a thumbnail for this channel layer in order to bring up my channel mixer options, here inside the Properties panel. And you can change the amount of color that you're mixing, here from each one of the color channels red, green, and blue, and that's going to give you a different effect on the fly. You also have the option of choosing from a preset so for example, I could select black and white with yellow filter in order to produce this effect here. Or I could switch to black and white with green filter, which is going to reduce both the red and blue values to zero, and crank the green value up to 100%. All right, I'll press Control Zero or Command Zero in the Mac in order zoom out. And notice, by the way, the difference between just seeing the red channel like so, and just seeing the green channel, because this is a human being, the skin of a human being that is, the image is much brighter in the red channel than it is in the green channel. And as a result, we lose the colors that are mapped to the bright colors, which are the violets, if you wonna address that, then you can just increase the red and blue values. So for example, notice if I take the red value, up to plus 20, I'm restoring a lot of brightness, where this image is concerned, and therefore I'm bringing back some of the violets. If I want even more violets, I could increase the blue value up to 20% like so. Now normally, when you're working with this particular adjustment layer, it's not a great idea to blast the total brightness beyond 100%. So notice that these values are now adding up to 140%. But because we're assigning false colors to the various limit levels, we don't care about this total, it just doesn't matter at all. Alright now we're still getting very harsh transitions. Even though we've got some cool detail, such as these veins inside the eyes, we have sharp transitions between the neighboring pixels. So in other words, we have some jagged artwork. Now we are bringing out some additional colors that we weren't seeing before, and that's because we now have transitional colors, that we didn't have by virtue of the fact that the total is now 140% instead of 100, we have more than eight luminance levels in the underlying image. So notice if I turn the colors layer off, we have a bunch of additional luminance levels, a bunch of additional grace that is to say. Alright, I'm going to turn this guy back on, what wonna you do, if you want smoother transitions? Well, in that case, you modify the poster layer right here. Now you don't wonna modify the numerical value, You can if you want to, I could take that value up, if I wanted to, or down but notice, regardless of what that value is, we still get some jagged transitions. And that's a function of the fact that this adjustment layer even exists, if I were to turn it off, then we'll end up with very smooth transitions, as we're seeing right here. Or you can split the difference, by turning the layer back on and reducing the opacity value, say to 50%, and because my Rectangular Marquee tool is selected, up here, at the top of the toolbox, all I have to do is tap the five key, in order to take that opacity level down to 50%, like so. And we now have a kind of happy medium between jagged and smooth transitions. Alright, I'm going to go ahead and press Control Zero or Command Zero on the Mac, so that we can see the entire artwork on screen. Now, one of the problems here, is that I'm ending up with dingy or yellows, and that's because I've lost my absolute blacks, that were mapping to these yellows, and so what I need to do if I wonna bring those back, is switch back to this gradient map layer right here, the layer called Colors, near the top of the stack, and then I would click on a gradient ramp, inside the Properties panel to bring up the Gradient Editor dialog box, and I would select that shade of yellow right there, and I would increase the location value. Now this is selected, so now I just have to press the up arrow key in order to take that value up. And as I do, those dark edges grow brighter. And so watch up people right there, this is what it looks like with location value of zero, it's quite dingy, and this is what it looks like, if I take the location value up to just 5%, we get some much brighter yellows, at which point I'll click OK to accept that change. Alright, so I'm going to go ahead and press Shift + F in order to fill the screen with my artwork. And I'll zoom in as well, just so that we can see what a difference we've been able to make. This is the very jagged version of the artwork, that we saw at the outset of the movie. And this is the more detail artwork with softer transitions, thanks to our ability to modify each in every one of our three adjustment layers. Absolutely dynamically and penalty free here inside Photoshop.

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