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Adobe Camera Raw Auto Mask Feature

Hello internet and welcome back to creative live we're here with adobe camera raw optimizing retouching and enhancing with mr jack davis jack I'm psyched for portrait, so I'm gonna throw it over to you good, so s ome I but of course we won't start off with portrait's because of course the last minute always but you know, there was another thing they forgot to do on that last one and regards to targeted adjustments and retouching. So I'm going to do another little element associated with the adjustment brush because we didn't touch on auto masking and auto masking is a very cool feature actually has a incredible amount of capabilities built into it and a lot of people don't take advantage of it. It's actually some of the best masking in photo shop is not in photo shop it's actually here and it's known his auto mask and it is the one thing that sets apart they graduated filter on the radio filter from the adjustment brush is that if we look down here where we have feather in the radio fi...

lter, we jump over to the adjustment brush we have for the first time, of course all the things associated with a brush and that is right here size, feather flow and density and auto mask and so a couple things about this before we get started with it sizes kind of self explanatory one you can use your square bracket keys just like you can in photoshopped to change the brush size you could hold down. The shift key, which we found has all sorts of new uses, including automatically taking a snapshot force, but shift square bracket keys changes the feather of the brush, those air both nice, you have flow, which is how quickly it goes upto whatever your density is or in other words, the maximum intensity of the effect if you have it on flow is it starts at fifty and then we'll work up two hundred so starts at twenty works up to one hundred, so flow is a gradual buildup overtime kind like an airbrush setting density is not called opacity because it's not has given street density and opacity is the difference between a procedural editor and a pixel editor in photo shop. If you take a brush that's fifty percent and you paint with it one stroke, you paint within a second stroke that fifty percent now has been doubled and it's now one hundred percent. If you take that brush and you have except one hundred percent, you paint on it all day, you change it to fifty percent paint on top of where was fifty percent, it obviously is going to have no effect it's already one hundred percent density is different whateveryou paint you'll get if you haven't said two fifty percent you can paint on it and paint on it and paint on a paint on it all day it'll never get more than fifty percent because you're setting it two fifty percent it's a procedural adjustment, it says I'm going to remember you click down here and you hit this and it was fifty and that's what I'm going to give you I've set up to one hundred and paint with it it will be a hundred if you paint with it at one hundred, change it to fifty and then paint with it again it will take it from one hundred down to fifty. In other words, it will in effect erase that image in other words, whatever you said it too, it will do that's why it's not opacity it's called density and that's actually very nice I actually will leave typically feather flow in density at one hundred percent I like big sell adjustments as we already talked about that flow I'm going in adjust the subtleties of adjustment by using the sliders I want something a little bit less, I'll paint on it and I'll move the slider so I don't use it in a kind of an airbrush way most of the time sometimes I do density the same thing, um I will paint at one hundred percent and then if I want a feather an edge ican't take it down to fifty and then paint along the edge and now I've done a smooth transition of that area. Sometimes I will take the density at fifty and do all my adjustments at fifty now did it get the effect that I want? That means I'm going to take the intensity of the sliders, the amount of exposure or clarity or whatever, and I'll take it up a bit more because the brushes only applying fifty percent the reason why you may want to at times start at fifty is that means that the same set of adjustments can be used for either a stronger or a lighter version of it. In other words, by starting at fifty, if I want to make it a more intense, I can move it up to seventy five paint with it, and I'm getting amore intense version of the exact same settings I could take it down to twenty five and do up mohr subtle version of the exact same settings. If I started a density of one hundred, I have no way of making it one hundred ten percent, I can't go up, so by starting in the middle. I could go up or down in terms of this strength of the effect, so sometimes I do that and maybe, you know, I might even get in the habit of doing that I'm here, but I think I would leave it at one hundred percent so the fact that we've got a beautiful photograph here by sandy foster a san diego not san diego, a texas photographer portrait and yoga photographer and great shot if you know texas you know that this lasted for one day before it turned back into dessert is that actually this plenty of times where it's nice it's a beautiful shot as it is it actually needs no work whatsoever but it's a nice sample for me because what it allows me to do is do masking with something like soft hair okay? And that's actually what we all know that's the most difficult thing to select and specifically what I want to do here in terms of the story of this image is I want to make it seem like there's cloud cover coming over this field here the little girl is in the light the background is not on ly wonderfully thrown out of focus because of sandy's lens selection, but I'm also going to darken it up but I obviously don't want her darkened so I can't use the graduated filter that's the one thing we've been using that graduated indy effective sweep in I'm dodging and burning in a sense, I'm going to do that same effect, but I'm gonna do it with a big soft brush taking advantage of auto mask, which is actually really cool tips I want to give you aside from the brush settings on this. Well, go ahead. We'll set my exposure down is one. If you are going to go for something with a smooth transition, then you may want to start with a big brush. But you want to make sure that your first brush strokes are completely within the area that you want to a mask. In other words, I don't want to get anywhere close to the little girl because it's, trying to analyze whatever's inside the brush to figure out what is it going to mask? In other words, it's goingto select this not this it will select this not this this is out of focus. This is in focus so it's automatically doing a detection, which is actually very cool. There is no auto mask in the same way in photo shop put a shops masking even quick mask and other things work differently. Not better or worse. Some of them are better, and certainly you can after the fact fine tune it after the fact better in photo shop. But there is nothing just like this and actually this would be a very nice feature in photoshopped oh yes it's a photo shop now because adobe cameras and photo shop isn't that need so anyway so I'm gonna start out here and I'm going to not touch the little girl a nice little point is if you do get some overspill which we probably will if there are some tones in here that are similar to the young lady I will get some spill into her if you erase that where you got too much of the mask um it actually becomes more intelligent the masses okay, I get it you didn't want this you did want this. So even if there is a little bit of overspill, it actually is a feature not a bug in the sense that the brush becomes more intelligent. Okay, um let's see whatever else the last thing is that you want to make sure that this show mask is turned on and the show mask is important because any time you're doing mask work whether in photoshopped or dobie camera you want to see what you're working on because especially if you're doing subtleties you may not notice it on screen here but as I mentioned before yesterday when you get to print because sometimes subtleties are lost in print there's a smaller range of colors it can reproduce what subtle on screen becomes dramatic on a print so you definitely want to see what you're doing I also mention that sometimes I'm going to exaggerate my adjustment so I can see what I'm doing, and then I'll find tune it later again. Another great thing about working on destructively um, one thing that I will mention in terms of this mask is that you can set it to whatever color you like, so since I'm working on a green background, that mask color doesn't help me being, you know, lime green, so changing that mask to whatever color that you'd like is important, you can tap the y key, which is what I was just doing here, and you'll notice that is the keyboard shortcut to hide and show the mask, okay, also really good. Why happens to be why? Because we like you, you're not old enough to know that, uh why is also great, because in photoshopped, that is your soft, soft proofing preview key case you've never done soft proofing and photo shop. We'll do that tomorrow when we spend more time in photo shop because you don't know how to solve proof they're always going to have challenges with printing, so remind me tomorrow, self proofing and photoshopped, okay, we've got everything said, I'm going to come up here, start up here and do my mask, and you'll notice that even as I come up here you'll see that those red those yellow flowers aren't being selected because I started with a little darker so I'm going to go over them maybe a couple times and it's going to figure out what I'm going for and I'm going in a trying to stay away from the little girl it is doing a mask will zoom up in a second but I don't want to lift up my brush I want to do this in one fell swoop if I can't I'm going for a nice soft transition between what selected and what's not this transition you know seeing this kind of spotted area where it's going this is selected and that's not okay we could maybe even make it red let's go make it two blue so we can see those areas so the thing with auto mask is it's doing a hard edge selection it's not a soft selection the nice thing is when the couple things is we haven't seen what the mass the results of the mask are yet but we will in a second this too I can't take advantage of that density down here and I can take that density down to say fifty percent now if I paint in this area here it's going to paint a fifty percent version of that mask again I still have auto mass turned on but now that transition between this exposure that I'm doing is now going to be fifty percent in this transition? It's still using the auto mask and it's still going in and out of those flowers? So we're going to see in a second when I tapped that why ki what the result is and whether I like it or not so here is that auto mask transitioning between before after before after it is popping around individual flowers, which I'm really not crazy about and we're going to look at the little girl in a second you going to see how great that masked actually did, which it did two really great I'm going to come up here and, well, I've got this fifty percent density I'm going to take off that auto mask and now I won't even show that mass going to come up here and now I'm coming up in painting, I'm going to stay very far away from the little girl and now there is a smooth transition that's not doing any auto masking around there, and if I want with that fifty percent, I can actually come up closer to the girl and do a little bit closer without auto mask turned on, so here is what we're able to do with that auto mask now we want to take a look at it and see if we need to clean up that mask specifically, we're going to come up here and lie look at the little girl's hair, which has a default setting is pretty freaking awesome the fact that it did that mask that well let's turn on that show that mask and take a look and we can see that there are some real subtleties to the hair again that are coming up so maybe what now I'm gonna do is I'm going to do that a race that I mentioned before they erase option for the adjustment brush create thing is is that since you're going to be usually painting and erasing this mass to fine tune, it would be nice if there was a shortcut for getting to that a racer option and that's holding down the option key on the mac or the old key on the pc so I'm holding down the option kion the mac that's what that little symbol is option kingdom aka walkin the pc you'll notice that it's changing the brush size and also the feather when I do that so that is nice to know you'll notice that I've got less of a feather on the eraser and the size of the brush in this case they race there is actually bigger because I reduced the size of the brush when I find tune it fine tuned it, but now I'm going to hold down that option key and I can see there's a little bit of spill on the little girl's face and I'm gonna come up here and little bit around the hair I don't mind I'd rather have a little bit of a light halo around her hair than a dark halo but I'm going through and I'm gonna look for this kind of purple color but that ej let's see if we can find you know what's gonna make the darkest but that edge is really pretty freaking amazing good you'll notice that there is some spill actually inside of her dress you can see that little yellow my brush was so big it actually got inside of her so again holding down that option are all key I'm gonna come through here and get rid of that I'm looking down here again overall oh yes he did a little bit but that's why it's so nice to have a nice big soft brush is that even if you do have some spill it's not noticeable because that's why we work with big soft brushes and I think we are set let's tap that waikiki and there is our transition to the young girl wow exactly hence the term well that I was waiting for that normally throwing money up on stage is bitchen works money's better but bitch and works that's actually is is pretty darn cool the fact that you could do that not that it needed not that the photograph needed it but in terms of telling that story that is pretty darn cool and if I wanted to while I'm at it, we've got a very shallow depth of field and if you know how depth of field works in terms of this situation, this is pretty much and focus much more in focus in the background, okay in terms of how deep the field works, but if I wanted to there's nothing stopping me, especially since I have no aesthetic morals whatsoever in terms of the integrity of the image I can come over here and, well, that pin is active and remember have a brush here, not a grady int there's nothing stopping me from taking this exact same adjustment actually, I'm going to do new because you're going to see him wanna add something else to it? I'm gonna take this big soft adjustment and I'm just going to go through my foreground and I'm gonna find two in that and in this case, I can also, you know, take my highlights down and see here taking that that exposure down as if the cloud was also doing my foreground and like I said, having no morals whatsoever, I could take my sharpness down and that sharpness let's take a look at this here I'm saying that's a pretty subtle sharpening I started off here, you can't move that in don't know why I started so far off, but um, that sharpness that preview it's getting a little soft I would expect it to be a little oh you know what my density is down I mentioned to you a second ago that when you are using this anti sharpness it really doesn't kick in until fifty percent by definition I'm telling it you don't have permission to do fifty percent remember used that for this transition here so taking my brush up to one hundred I have to repaint it our paint on top of it it doesn't it's not a post thing I can't change the density after the fact which is actually a good thing that's why I could paint it one hundred painted fifty and it didn't automatically change this to fifty so now when I come up here now we can see why that was such an excessive amount of exposure down but now we're getting a nice reduction in the file and I can also take my a racer if I'm getting it a little bit too extreme and again I confined tune where that area is going so now I'm getting my foreground little darker also little bit more out of focus I can even if I wanted to in that same area which is still selected I could take my clarity which is that little softening down to it thank you t maybe even take my saturation down just a touch so it's not so bright so the focus is definitely on the young lady one last thing. I'm still in the adjustment brush. I can come over here and say, knew tap my exposure up, take my brush down actually, let's do a really nice little trick here. I want to tap the little girl's face just a little bit like lights coming up, hitting off the flowers and bringing her up a little bit again. Just exaggerate the story. Um, that's the size of that brush right there it is now with the feather twice as big as her head, right? The inside, is it? Um, I now want to just do her face. I want everything to be inside of her face. Watch what happens when I zoom up and you've seen me. I didn't talk about zooming up, but obviously the space bar gives you the grab her hand space bar in command or control gives you the zoom up space bar, and options are all gives you zoom out. So if I didn't emphasize that that's what those are okay, so I'm zooming up on her face remember with the size of the brush a second ago, but I didn't change the size of the brush. That is just a beautiful piece of interface design, where obviously, when you zoom up on something, you're doing detailed work, somebody I said, hey, you know what? Let's not have the brush absolute let's make it relative to the zoom in size. Excuse me. In other words, we keep it the same size when they zoom in, so by definition it becomes smaller, brilliant piece of work. So now I've got the exact same brush that was twice the big the size of her head it's now a single size of her head and I now just to a single tap on her face, making sure that I don't have the auto mass turned on. Okay, maybe I'll do her chest, you know, and a little bit right there. And I think I like that like that right there. She's so young, I may be able to even get away with using little plus clarity to draw the attention and a little bit of contrast in here were just punching it up just a little bit. And because there's so much yellow in there, I may even warm up the face a little bit. But again, that's what I love about these adjustments in photoshopped, you'd be doing one of these at a time. If you want to make it a little bit brighter, you do one adjustment. If you go, I want to make a little bit warmer, you'd have to do another adjustment and then link it to that first one by sharing a mask or by making a laywer said you'd have to do multiple things at one time this case I can just as the muse hit me let's tap that, vicky, I can find to mine adjustments, okay? Auto mask feature and don't be camera questions. Okay, one quick one. If you were to, um, sort of compare this to the refined mask, would you feel like you would go to this first and then maybe finish it up in photo shop? Or I mean, this seems pretty powerful and it's also non destructive, it's, powerful it's, quick, it's, non destructive and again, if it works, depend upon what the concept is that you're trying to do. The fact is that with auto mask were isolating one area from another to do in color and tone photo shop a lot times you're doing masking because you're actually separating one item from another on therefore you going to manipulate that item, you're going to transform it, you're going to filter it you into something else. So the reasons why you'd mask and photoshopped different than typically what you'd mask in in dough became a roar like room, um if I knew that I was going to do some heavy lifting in photo shop and I knew the tools that were available like the refined edge under the the properties panel um I would probably not do it here if the point of doing as much as you can and then became a raw so you don't have to go into photoshopped right and the fact that I have that tool at my disposal just meant that that saved me a huge amount of time if I had done the exact same thing with the different adjustments, which I also did blurring remember I'm not only did tone but I did the transition I did hair I did darkening and in the foreground I did darkening I did saturation and I also did blurring three different layers and photoshopped three different things that I do than I did in one step here so um if I can do it next year I'm going to do it there I'm only had to go into photo shopped for some heavy lifting the selecting there is great if you're going to be selecting and photo shopped for compositing bringing the little girl with hair and taking her out of the flower field and putting her into the forest by definition I'm having to use photo shop can't combine images in adobe camera so this masking is strictly if you can use it for doing color or tone work