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Color Grading Tips

Lesson 8 from: Color Correcting and Creating a Cinematic Look in Photoshop CC

Jesús Ramirez

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Lesson Info

8. Color Grading Tips

Lesson Info

Color Grading Tips

There's only just a couple other small tricks that I want to show you and tips that have to do with the ways that you can use blend modes and thes different adjustment layers to create again similar submit cinematic effects. I guess that for this one, maybe we can use this image here. And, um, let me see. I think we have a better one. Yeah, I think I'm actually gonna go with the original one because it's got a better background. So we've been talking about creating this cinematic effect and against save a little bit of time. I'm just gonna run that action that it's free for people to download. And I'm gonna run it on just this layer here. There it is. And a lot of times when you're working on images like this, especially in daylight images, the background, it's not as dark as you would like it to be. And you need to stand out more. Um, again, if you look at some of the examples on my website with the actual Hollywood movies, you'll notice the background tends to be much darker than wha...

t we see here. And that is because they want the actor stand out even further. So what you can do is take advantage of a layer mask, Teoh, create that darker contrast. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna click in drag our honor actor and make sure that I'm on the actual layer even though I have all sample sample there, select that I always like to work on the layer that ah, I like to sample from the layer that I'm working on. I think it's a good habit to have been just gonna make a quick selection around here. Hold option to subtract from this election, Click and drag and make sure I don't get the building some holding option again to subtract from this election. And then I'm gonna click on the layer mask icon here. But actually, what I'll do instead is just create a new layer. Excuse me. New adjustment layer and goto curbs. I want to make sure that the curves adjustment layer is not gonna select anything that I accidentally that's not gonna affect anything that I accidentally selected. So I'm just gonna make an extreme adjustment here just so I could see in this case, maybe you just make it really bright. And it looks like I missed a little bit of the jacket and part of the hair there. So what I'll do is I'm just gonna invert the selection first command I to invert and make that extreme adjustment again and just zoom in and make sure that it's not too bad. So I'm just gonna quickly kind of fix that they're ex on the keyboard or D on the keyboard to get your the fold color. So notice that right now I don't have black in here on my foreground and background color. But if I press the d key on the keyboard and impress X, I could make black my foreground color and then I can paint with it. And there it is. And I think that, at least for this example, this is gonna be good enough. Maybe the only thing I want to do is just refine it a little bit more by activating the smart radius. Always like to use a smart radius, because without it, um, see, when I, uh, check the image, how much better the selection gets, and especially if I start adjusting this lighter, so Smart Radius works pretty good. So Smart Radius. And then, um, let me fits the screen so we can see the entire thing even right there. That looks like a different style of a cinematic effect. But anyway, so we can come in, click and drag this down, and now we can adjust the background independently from the foreground, and we can also keep creating more adjustment layers in case we wanted to make it even more blue. So in this case, I'm gonna use the selective color adjustment layer even though I already am using ah curves adjustment layer. There's no harm in using multiple adjustment layers that are not the same type. So I'm going to duplicate the layer mask option, click and drag. Drop it on their have replaced layer mask. Yes, I do want to do that. And then Aiken add even mawr, um, blue to the shadows to the black, so I'm gonna subtract yellow. That's probably a little too much. And this earlier I said that I wasn't gonna use a blend mode for the selective color adjustment layer, But in this case, I do want to use the blend mode, so I'm gonna just change it to color so I can add us much blues. I want to without adjusting the luminous values of the image. And then I can darken it up even more. And, of course, all this is just a bunch of fine tuning. And, um, we can spend all day clicking and dragging these points up or down. But essentially, that's how you would separate the back room for the background, further foreground and how you would have just the luminous values and colors of each of them individually.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

PTC Color Grade.atn
Cinematic Color Grading - Before.cube

Ratings and Reviews

Hstrymkrs
 

I watched this class live, and I thought he gave great examples as he explained techniques. I have been wanting to learn how to color grade images, and I am very happy with the three approaches he shared. I feel I have a great handle on this look now. Thanks so much CL for bringing him to teach us.

Alissa Rosenberg
 

I am only onto lesson 6 but already I have learned so many new things that I really needed to learn about color! Especially how to use the curves layer adjustment with blend modes! Wow!! Such a great investment!

Student Work

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