Lessons

Lesson Info

Additional Creative Techniques

All right, so I'm going to do something with black and white processing, so if anybody's had any black and white processing questions, I'm going to touch on that. All right? I'm going to take an image that I'm going to take two images first, one that isn't focus and one that's not okay on and show you a couple of changes that I would make when I process in black and white um, I play with if you don't have cia six I play with the tone curve for adjusting my contrast, I could get a lot more of the detail and tonality that I want out of the photo in a tone curve, then just playing with fill light in recovery, so if you have, I want that, so I'm not going to do my processing and cia six like here I'm going to do over in my tone curve, which is the same, whether you have light room and if you have like one three there's a tone curve if you have c s five cs for you have a tone curve alright, it will give you much, much better quality black and white, so I'm going to switch over tio it's the ...

squiggles of is the huge saturation ruminants grayscale and I'm going to convert to black and white so I look at this instantly and it's very flat you know, I know that this is a flat image and then I have to pull some detail out of it if I go back to my original like I had before, and I just pumped the contrast mean, it helps a little bit it doesn't prove the image, but I want more control so that's, why I can't mess with the reds and yellows and oranges, and it looks like to me, for most part, he has too much reading is his lips for me to actually be able to drag the red because watch if I try to lighten up the skin, his lips go white and that's that'll happen, too, for a lot of people. So that's, why I say the oranges of the yellow, you'll be better off. I'm going to flip over to my tone curve and here's, where I could really make my pictures thing I tend to pull the lights up, uh, that's, not the highlights, it's, because if you pump up contrast right, it makes the highlights brighter and the shadows darker, but I could go into my tone curve instead of just popping highlights works, which notice it makes the lights in his eyes brighter and like the true whites in the picture. But I can grab the light switches to light the lighter tones in the skin, and so when I drag that up, what it's fundamentally doing for the way of what this picture is it's actually bringing out his cheekbones? Because those air lights not highlights look in his eyes, and so I brighten those up a bit, and so the same thing I can go down and dark and down the shadows a little bit, so I'm bringing out the jawline. And so it's made a drastic difference with the contrast there versus if you just drag contrast, it just makes the dark starker and the highlight it just pulled everything out from the center. Um, if I needed a true black point, ifyou're looking, I don't have a true true black point, I could drag my black point of on the other screen could drug my shadows, make it a little bit darker, and it shows me when it clips I wouldn't do something there, and I know that I want to pop a little bit of clarity. Um, because I kind of like that detail when you're looking at a color image. Often, you tend to be more forgiving of less detail because you have so much other information have color information there's like a lot of other things going around along but when you're looking at a black and white image, if it's out of focus, if there's not enough detail there you are kind of searching for because you just basically have black and white could to convey your photo. So wanna pump clarity a little bit? All right, looks good when have open image. One of the things that we talked about before is using shadows and highlights for eyes, and I said it works for light blue eyes will you absolutely can do this in black and white photos, and I look at his eyes and I know that it's going to look beautiful so select both eyes command j payments, adjustments, shadows highlights. Let me do your before and after you can see that it pulls out its hunt of detail in his eyes so I can go back in. Adam, ask and I can paint where I didn't want that letter effect. Sure painting black and you will see that his eyes well now really pop out of the frame, and I do like that. I can keep kind of around the iris and in the pupil still keep those dark so back up, and it makes its eyes really pop and maybe there's a little bit too much on the side for this picture. Um, I would want to add a little bit of sharpness back in I was shooting with a one point four lens so it's a very, very narrow depth of field, and I probably would use I might use a little bit of frequency separation so I could smooth out these textures in his skin there. If I wanted to use portraiture, you have to do the same thing as before, where I make sure that I turn off that color sampler because if I try to sample a color, it won't know what to do. So if I have a color sampled on it's not really going to work, I have to turn it off and I could zoom in, and I can also smooth through black and white, and I can kind of back off. So if you look it's over smooth, but it was out of focus because the narrow down the field so it's ok? And so I just cleaned up the blotchy nissen the skin so I could hit okay there and then selectively applied the portraiture. But the next example I'm going to give you is a photo that's just plain old out of focus to see I could kind of smooth out there whether it's not truly in focus and not is noticeable, something like that another thing though I know it do as well just as a heads up I would use clone stamp on light and to clean up it's it's so dark around his nose it feels like it's a little swollen and that tends to make people look like they're a little more tired so I would do one nice person here I would do clone stamp clone stamp on light end and just lighting up my slice it on concept on light and and just try to make it a little less heavy of too hard of a brush smooth it out there so the next tool that I'm going to talk about and I clamp this highlight uh the next thing I'm going to talk about is a plug in for sharpening so it kind of makes us noah's look less wide makes him look a little less tired you know back off looks better. Okay? So let's take a look at a photo that I did not get into it and focus and I love shooting when I shoot constant lines I love shooting really really narrowed up the field um this photo that you just I hear that I converted to black and white I took during my last creative life so if you want to see how it's lit it's done with four constant fluorescent tubes so it's uh really really beautiful for portrait's and so when I have um, celebrities wither to reality tv celebrities or in athletes. I try to get a shot of them like this. I feel like it's a very intimate portrait, and I feel like you feel kind of close in physical proximity to that person. It feels more emotional, so I often do this portrait for guys, but I shoot with my eighty five millimeter, one point four and it's kind of owe it looks more for focus of they're not too bad. It's it's, not it's, not in focus on this computer. This this computers has less contrast in that computer. Um, but it's also hazy overall as well. So I'm going to show you my plug in for sharpening its the knicks sharpener pro and it's really, really nice program. So I'm going to convert this to black and white to the same thing as we did before pump up the lights, drag down the darks and our shadows, and I maybe we'll go a little extreme on this photo say him out a little more contrast in track, my blacks, I'm going for a really dramatic portrait, so when I back up seem foreign after, you know, a dramatic black, and like I said him open this guy was very nice, very agreeable model now photograph men too often, so a little harsher if they're difficult work lindsay a couple of quick questions. Yeah, m walton is asking if you could just explain the process reason of merging down again um for this that was teaching but, uh that just I was trying to make things go quicker I try not to merge down if ever I think I might need to access that information again. So for example, any place where I didn't retouch on the cheek here and then maybe a different than a portraiture on the layer above? Well, since they're both things I did to the cheek if emerged and I can't step back and so I try to keep each change on its own level but maybe if I did the eyes and there's a bunch of letters above it it's not multiple changes the eyes it's okay to merge uh thie times using merge our when there's a lot of extra layers hanging around and when I need to liquefy because when I when I want to liquefy I want to do command option shift e it merges all layers and puts it on to a top level there so I can liquefy on everything all together it's going to be faster if I have sam changing the size of the eyes if I did contrasts in an adjustment layer on the iris of the eye and I change the size it won't line up anymore, so I'd merge it down and put it into new top layer. But I still kept every single thing below it. A couple questions I had yesterday were about facial hair, and this was the closest thing I could find out of mind. Nobody sent me any major facial hair problem problems for sample photos. So so is the closest thing I could find. Um, for what I would need to dio and for kind of hairs like this. If it's bigger hairs, I would just have to spot the clone it, uh, spot healing brush it problem that I run into often. Okay, um, uh, happens so, you know, not too big of a problem when people have, um, when people have kind of stubble is a couple of different ways, you could handle it, but often if I do clone on light and it does fill in that stubble so let's say I do a little bit higher and I could have clone in this kind of lightens it up a bit, and there are other ways to do it, but this is kind of the example I had here. I won most of it, I would have to just spot hell it out, clone it out, it's kind of a pain, all right, so for this guy, if I wanted to go ahead and try some sharpening techniques going to duplicate my background and I'm going to go to nick's sharpener pro and see no do you have it made me crazy chef from tell me when it pops out of you, check it here. No. So we're gonna have to get that in the break so I'm gonna just do another sharpening things so that we can get that in the break so just tell them any sharper from which is in the next suite so I should just really get it. Um the other tool that I talked about the other day as kind of my refresher is if you look at where the blur tool is underneath it's the sharp into him, you have to have predicted protective detail selected and then you could just paint your detail back in. Um what nick's sharpener does that's kind of cool is that you have the abilities to kind of pull out more detail or less detail while sharpening, seeking to sharpen it so that your increasing contrasts along the edges. But you can also sharpen and pull out detail, which is great if you want kind of a grunge effect. Um for the shot that we did of mike, the thing that I saw that maybe I would have changed something as a consideration to make a composite look more realistic is that entire background around him is very much grungy and has a lot of detail, and, you know, the light and him looks good, but I'm thinking if he's, wearing a leather jacket, has some detail if it was shot at the same time, I'd see more of that grunge and so using sharpener pro or thie hdr plug in, you are able to pull out that detail, so I want to show you structure real quick on him, it's going to duplicate this up, I'm gonna duplicate his background real quick, and I believe we'll have the visa, my check? All right, so let me human, right? And if you look over here on the right, you have all these different options, but you have something called structure and structure is the way to pull some of that detail, and so I'm going to zoom into his jacket to snc when I come into his jacket, if I pump up structure, watch what it does, you see what pulls out detail it's kind of like clarity on steroids, so when you pump up clarity, it looks like you're increasing sharpness, but you're not technically sharpening your pulling out detail, it's, just sharpening as we know it, and if you learn more advanced sharpening techniques, is your increasing contrast? A long edges that's what sharpening is that's why it looks sharper to you so when I added sharpening or when I add structure it pulls out detail and if I want I can use a control point and just pull up detail in one place or another so I could add control point here and right here says s t where's the structure I could just pull up my structure. All right, so we'll take a look at sharpener pro later for howie's a structure and also sharpening. So I'm gonna back out of these two and jump over to another example. All right, let's, go back, tio my folder. Ok, this was another question that people asked that I wanted. Teo, I had a couple facebook messages about this um, about using freeze mask and and how you would use it. How youth freeze mask in the picture before was that the girl that was photographing when I tried to move her arm in it? All our moves are wasting. Also moved her arm. I want to show you an example here. I'm just gonna back off of this retouch ok? We know leyton this up so you guys can see it a little bit better, all right, so you see the line in the door if I want to pull in her waist, that line will now be an angular line and that's not what we want someone to duplicate this and I'm gonna merge us down just so you guys will see a brighter picture because I'm not sure how well you can see it says go to filter liquefy so if I were going to use my liquefy tool and the freeze mask if I go ahead and try to just liquefy her it moves that line so if I had okay if you have a keen eye you will see the mistake that I made so that's why you want to have a freeze mask all right what I just did over here on the right if you don't see your freeze mask you might need to have the advanced mode click if you just have the basics you won't see your freeze mask so if you like oh hey I've never seen that tool before because you don't have advanced clicked so I need what looks like erica what looks like a mask with a brush and you're familiar with it and I only want to freeze the pixels that I don't want to move because of promise if you freeze something let's say right here and then you're trying to liquefy over it has no pixels to work with because it still needs to move the pixels somehow and so maybe you only give it out or no ten pixels so it will smear those ten pixels you told it could move and so you'll still see the liquefied so you on ly want to try to freeze exactly what you need and try not to have it exactly where you need to liquefy from if that makes any sense so I'm going to just draw a line where I needed to be frozen here too same thing if I want to bring in her waist over here uh we're trying to clean this up it might move the arm so I can kind of frees her arm in place and so now when I flip back over to my liquefied but I moved this in it's not grabbing onto the arm same thing when I pull in here and move the shape of her body it's c that's line it's completely straight still so that is the more practical reason and so if I have her up against you know, a brick wall I can freeze those brake lines in place for example grab here she doesn't need her shoulder lowered, but if I did, the giveaway would be kind of that line moving. So now that it freezed it, I can lower down and that line doesn't move so that's the more practical use of phrase mass a couple people are asking about I just have a question all the stuff that we've learned all the editing and retouching in regards to shooting weddings and when you shot weddings there's so many pictures to edit and I find myself like the use of the bride's where this strapless yes pieces air waste you want to take in is working through hundreds of images and doing all that because if I do it on son then I feel like I gotta do it on all of them and then balancing that out and the time to make it feasible to edit the images but not spin forever on a wedding so it all depends on how you deliver your images but what I considered for how is going to retouch them is what their india's wass um the pictures that the bride and groom so this is how I did it um they came in and had an image viewing session and so they're projected up on the screen they were online I don't meet personally this might this works totally different for other people. I never made a lot of money off of wedding sales from putting stuff online anyway, so I just didn't go that route wasn't selling is interested in often uh I had another company that works with the did a photo booth so that would kind of take care of all those people who wanted their photos so what I would do is I would do just might really rough batch adjustments my heart, my contrast in my white balance and then show them those pictures then based on what they chose we would narrow down roughly what was in the album and I would build the album with by placing images and so I would have the images um in tiff files and I know as amusing might be placing them so it could be re sizing them changing them and moving them around and I wasn't ruining anything uh and then as they were approving the images that's when I would go back to his original tiffs and retouch them more on dh then I could always you know anything that they wanted to get big I would re touch but that's how it would save time is knowing okay is this gonna be a little picture in the corner or is going to be big and I'm pretty much still always tried to clean up the overhanging skin of the bride because she is the most important one and she sees a shot where she's like oh my god you know I look fat in that picture then she's going toe kick it out even if was a good picture so that was one of the time consuming things and I would do that with warp a lot of times instead of liquefy because I could move it over and then blend it it depends on how bad it was you have a question from bonnie h from canada sometimes when I try to edit their adjustments above that layer if they're adjustments above that layer uh the edit is not accurate that is, if I wantto use the healing brush and has a strange density it's lighter than the skin tone is this because the curves adjustment right on dh if you have adjustments above that layer, then you're not actually seeing truly what's there and so if you're having problems with that that's when you do the command option shift ae if you're having a problem will kind of make it more accurate when you're cloning or patch trolling and sometimes as well if she watched yesterday if it's a skin skin retouching the frequency separation, we'll make it much easier to not have those issues because it put the color and the texture on two separate layers so she might be better off when you have that to go ahead and separate them and retouch on that top layer instead of on the color. All right, we have about twenty minutes to goto lunch ok? And just to know it is if we can take lunch early if you want to so that we can if you need those uh plug ins before well, I don't want to get those I probably only would need an extra like five minutes so you and I would assume initial thiss before after real quick, you know um I lend it out but notice nothing moved no keep the line straight