Lessons

Lesson Info

Using Mextures for Color Tone & Textures

Excellent so I would like to talk about another plugin. Okay are you ready for this. This is also one of my all time favorite plugins. It's called Particle Shop. It's a painter product. Now this is gonna start some sausage factory again but I'm not afraid of the sausage factory. And what that is is I'm gonna tell you this plugin available through painter, it's a little pricey. For a plugin, it's worth it's weight in gold for me personally, is a little buggy. And so this was the original image. And what we did is we wanted to create something that was a little more ethereal so we whited out, we just removed her costume with some white paint, and we painted this fabric in about five minutes with particle shop, five minutes. Magic. Total magic, now with that magic comes some pain it's like love, sometimes love is not perfect. You don't say. No I wouldn't say anything like that. And you go with the pain so what I mean by that is this item on a Mac often crashes. Don't panic, do not...

panic we're not panicking here. So what that means is I tend to build very carefully, before I start this I make sure I save. Alright I save and then I'm gonna merge this all into one layer command option shift E and I'm gonna do it for particle shop. I'm just gonna call it part for short. And I'm gonna go under filter and plugin, go to painter, to particle shop and if I'm not mistaken you cannot have a trial of this you have to kinda commit to it. It's gonna talk to you, it's gonna say some things, gonna say hey we recommend you keep a copy, yeah no kidding. Again I don't want to disparage this I love this, I love love love this product and it's buggy. So on this particular one I'm picking the brush, these are brushes. It's a plugin but they're a brush and I'm gonna pick billowing and I'm gonna go here to my color and well that's a nice color right. Pink so pink pink is nice. And I'm a say okay to that and I'm gonna click and drag and holy guacamole look at that. Not there's this revert button up here. I'm gonna undo, I'm gonna hit command plus so I can get a little closer. And I'm gonna click and drag, click and drag, click and drag, click and drag. I'm gonna make a suggestion. Don't do a ton. Isn't it awesome I'm telling ya this thing's awesome it's worth it's weight in gold. Now I'm gonna say okay I'm not gonna do the whole figure I'm gonna do parts of it. And I'm gonna hit save. Now when you hit the save button it's gonna say oh I'm gonna recommend that you save it as a brush stroke only ie. on it's own layer. This doesn't always work. Holy Jesus it worked, thank god, alright. So instead of painting right on the image you have it on a floating layer and you can effect it independently of the other. However I did paint on a layer, I merged the layer and I started it remember and then I went and did it, it got rid of that layer I had made and replaced it with this part. Let me repeat that, this is a really good point. So I'm gonna make a new layer. Remember and I called it part, part. I'm gonna go to my filter, I'm gonna hit particle shop. It's gonna talk to you, you can say don't show that message again but I just leave it. And I'm not gonna repick the color and I'm gonna paint. Now this brush, look at this, this brush is a little gnarly, I'm gonna literally go from the top to the bottom in a straight line. It did not go in a straight line did you see that. It's got it's own wacky wave and I love it. I'm going from bottom. So it starts scrunchy and then-- Yeah and then again don't put too many. And then I'm gonna hit save hit okay. (singing) Then you get only the fabric. Right it's amazing I love this thing. Right on. Now when I say sometimes it doesn't work sometimes what will happen is it does not save it onto a layer on its own, it's merged. And you make that face and you don't worry about it and what you do in that case is you make a new blank layer you can call it a bad word if that makes you feel better you go back to painter and particle shop. You don't panic, alright that is the key, do not panic. And now at this point you can't see what you're painting on, but you're not panicking. And you're clicking and dragging. And you say okay. Yes please I said a layer. Keep it a layer. And now you can command T and transform that and put it where you want. Okay. So I'm trying to show you a work around. It's lovingly working for me right now but it doesn't always and you know what I don't care I don't care if it does it flat I don't care I'll work with it if it's buggy because what I'll end up doing is I'll paint it on her layer, I'll see kinda the brush strokes I want and then I'll delete that layer, I'll do it on a blank one and I'll get close enough. Now the other thing I like to do with this and I'm gonna show you the actual file I made. Is as I said I don't do it all in one spot. I like to do it in different areas and that way I can move and add density. Like it was too thin here so I just added more that's all. Worth it's weight in gold. Now let's talk about money versus cost. Yeah I could get some fabric and pull a channel and do that, I might with the new Kyle bushes be able to get close but what did that take, three minutes, totally worth it. The other thing you could do. I'm just gonna for ease merge these real quickly. Command E. If you click on the lock button you can select a new color and do a fill option delete and fill it if you like. So you can change the color as well. Cool, excellent alright. So we took the same idea and used it on this. I know you guys have see the look it's kinda a ubiquitous look where folks have a wedding dress or pregnancy images and there I'm gonna show you something here, give me a second, they have flowing fabric and I have to tell you I used to be a photographer and it is not easy-- You're still a photographer. I am but I don't do it quite in the same genre. So thank you. So particle shop again I want to show you it's powered by painter. So on this shot I want to break this down and show you how we did it. I would rather paint the fabric then try to shoot it. Okay so what we did in this image here is we have a background image we have a standard stock shot we have painted with particle shop fabric render and then we used the lens flare which we've already discussed and then we're adding something here which is mextures and mextures is another plugin little helpy helpy that you can use to give yourself some tone so let's go ahead and deconstruct this for a second alright so we have a mountain shot and I do believe that's Mount Lassen thank you for that lovely trip it was great. Alright and this is particle shop, again I don't think I need to redo the render it's the exact same billow, I think this is my absolute favorite. Even if you did shoot this how would you mask that out. A channel pull. I mean it's doable, yeah it's doable, it's not easy and it would cost way more than they would want to pay hands down, right, who's gonna pay for this. And then we have the bride, there she is isn't she oh my train oh the water. And the crown, the crown I kinda like the crown, the crown is literally just the particle copied and shrunk down and masked in. It's the exact same one from below cause I'm lazy and I don't like to repeat myself. Well once you've got perfect just continue on. Continue on so there's the bride's dress, there's the fabric as we love it. The lens flare render we've already done this, comes in handy. Blurred or not blurred. There it is. I love this. Mextures our new favourite right. Oh we're mextures fan. Let's talk about mextures. Mextures is this tone so we made it a smart object, mextures you found mextures on some trip, I don't remember what the trip was. When I was back yeah well you got me into taking photographs on a phone and there all the third party shot folks would make your pictures look better. So Lisa got me into a couple of the start up ones and I had my favorites and my pictures all kinda looked the same so I did a search found a couple of everyone else's and I think they're like two bucks, three dollars some are free and just started playing and I was sending these shots back to Los Angeles from New York and she was like how are you doing all this stuff and I was like there's this one I'm really digging called mextures and she was like okay so I introduced Lisa to mextures but it was phone only. And she was like what stops me up is that these things are awesome and you had a fella at work job and they did a phone filter and then got it approved all the way through the studios. On a theatrical poster. Oh how'd that turn out was it fun. no. Was there much crying. Yes. There was crying. Yeah so basically what Simon's telling you is that you may find these phone apps which are awesome and beautiful, everyone's got them, my mum can do it in fact but that's not gonna work for a high res job well mextures they are clever folks and we're gonna show you some stuff later on with them. They actually have a free standing action and free standing files you can purchase and use them in your files and it does this lovely light texture. They're beautiful you can layer em there's light leagues there's grunge it's a little bit. They're good. They're a little bit pricey but hopefully your client's paying for it so yeah time and money right. And they're big enough I could finish with these. If it came down to it and I was given this and they said make a big billboard out of it, they're big enough to wear a little bit of sharpening mate for the huge huge stuff but like for movie poster size these things are fine they did a good job on them. Yeah let's go ahead and take a look at some of these. Okay so when you purchase mextures they have all these files so we have the complete set all of these. And I'm just gonna show you some of the files you can get with mextures. And again they are 100% layerable. And my bridge is layerable also. Come on my sugar pie. It's being coy. It's being coy, sometimes we like to be coy. Alright, let's try plan B here. Cause it's fun. Mextures complete, I love bridge. Now they do come in action, I don't like the action. Big surprise you probably like the action. I'm not an action girl. What I like about the files is I just literally want to open these up and look at them. I want to look at the colors, I want to see ah what is that. What is the dirt dust, ah the dirt dust I love the dirt dust. So these all go over your already photograph. And it will add color, most of them come in on overlay blending mode so where it's a darker color it will make the image darker where it's lighter it will screen the image up affect the color. There's a bunch of dust and scratches and you'll get all that little grungey noisey scratchy looking stuff. Let's put some noisey scratchy-- And there's a boat load of them too. Now here's the thing on the actions they will change the layer modes. Let me say this again when you use the actions, the layer modes will be the way you want them, I.e. screen or soft light so it will come in the way you want it. I don't like to use that I just want to pick them so that mean's I have to change the layer mode. So I'm going to turn this to screen and then hopefully on your screen you can see that. Now that way it's a little light but you may like that texture, maybe you want to darken it up you can go ahead and add a levels move to that now this level move if I work on it now it's going to change the entire document. I don't want to change the entire document. I'm going to go ahead and slide it but then I'm a do something here pay attention folks I'm gonna group this I'm going to hold the option key and click on the line in between the layer and the adjustment layer and that means that adjustment layer's only gonna affect that one layer. So now what I have is I've just darkened the blacks and as you guys hopefully know on the mode called screen black will disappear and lights will show. And there's some texture. And again so we've got two mixtures on here. And it's cool. I just think it's really cool. It's ready made and it works just like your phone. So I know that what he started, he started using his phone, and then on the phone you can actually save the layers and then you can repeat that on your computer exactly how you did it on your phone. So if you are a mobile editor, and mobile editing is really popular now, I'm a little old school I like the computer but mobile editing's very popular, you can repeat what they've done on the computer and it's all available for you. And you can load these up you can do more than one. Oh my god you could do 25. Yeah. have some self control. What I'm gonna suggest also if you were to do this is grab your files. I tend to like to take all of my lighting effects or global corrections, grab them, hold the shift key select each layer and put them in a layer set. You can either do that by selecting them and dragging down or just selecting them and click on the add a layer set icon and then I usually call them cc or global corrections. So let's recap here what we have here for a second. When you open up mexters from bridge did it automatically name that layer. Yes sir it did. did it really. It did because we love the smart object. And we're gonna talk more about the smart objects and how they work. I grabbed from bridge and dragged it right onto my file, dragging and dropping that's how I like to work on this. You're a drag and drop kinda girl. I am a drag and drop kinda girl. And I do wanna show you one thing. Do you remember we talked about this with particle shop, well you can also do this with flame render. And let me just open this other file real quickly. I'm a say that again a little slower. You can also do this with flame render. Now I'm gonna be honest I prefer the particle shop I think it looks much better. But you can do this kind of fabric with the flame render. I won't go through it again because it's the exact same thing as the fairy and the hair. But there you go. Play with both of them. Yeah. You were doing one where you did the particle shop but then to add body to the fabric you were doing the flames the flames on path. Yeah right underneath. That was a nice effect. 100% so what Simon is talking about is there's the original render we did with particle shop and then I can stick the flame render version underneath. Can you guys see that. And it just adds a little body. Now the flame render is fantastic if you don't want to spend any extra cash. It's free it's in photoshop right now. The particle shop is a little pricey. I'm sorry I can't recall the price right off the top of my head but y'all can look it up and the particle shop I do want to reiterate does not have a free trial.