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Five Step Tango Part 2

The last step ah lap last portion of this last step under white balance in crop auto exposure clarity shadow highlight whites and blacks vibrates and vignette now then yet I didn't used to have his part oven optimizing because obviously it's not a nop tim izing step vignette is a special effect originally it was put in to balance out the exposure across the entire image in other words we added a light vignette to make sure that was a consistent exposure. Nowadays people including myself are adding a darkened vignette to draw the eye into the center of the composition toe use it almost as a dodging and burning of the edge um and now they're since as I mentioned there's five different vignettes in light room it's actually a great way had to tell your story so in this case we've gone through our tango we've run out of all our different elements here here's our before after in terms of this and then yet has found in several places probably the most easiest place to get to especially if you...

've cropped her file is under the effects panel under grain and it's known as post crop in yet now there are three out of the five and yes I mentioned or here highlight color in paint overlay paint overlay used to be the only one in no became a raw and it was inherently evil bad yucky awful just gray paint opaque bad and rightfully so vignettes got a bad reputation these two runs highlight priority and color priority are actually quite good the color priority is the more subtle out of these two, so it is my default one not the highlight priority it's trying to maintain the integrity of either the highlight or the color I like color because it's more subtle when it relates to the colors and it still has what's known as a highlight slider, so you'll see this in the second I still have the ability to work with highlights even though I'm on color priority. How does this work you basically, if I'm going, I want to darken up the sky and when to draw the eye into the center of the scene, I want to take it down and we're going toe, I'll exaggerate it for teaching purposes I'm going to take it down your mid point if I take that up it's going to go to the corner if I take it down is going to come way into the file. So again, the default is right there in the center and that's actually we'll take that amount this amount down so you can see what we're doing here, so take this down and then I'll take this roundness now the roundness down, meaning it's going to become kind of frame will no longer be oval we'll follow the contours if I take this up, it will become mohr perfect circle not even following the parameters in terms of a noble um and you may already be seeing that this is how you could do some symbol framing effects when you're doing an antique effect it's actually nice because in the olden days a framing effect was actually done by putting a little teeny, you know holder around the paper as it was being developed so that the hand could touch it and they were these somewhat soft edge which takes us to our next parameter, which is feather so a slightly feathered edge can actually do a very nice little framing effect especially if you're imitating an antique either black or white because you can use either go up or down and so we go back to our dark one there so feather and let's go ahead to mohr normal ones who will set our mid point by the way double clicking on any slider within adobe camera automatically resets it back too his default setting so double clicking on any one of these settings will automatically reset it back to its default okay, and oftentimes what I would do in this case is I will bring in a little bit I will add the feather up to make it even more subtle and then the highlights slider is a protector slider, meaning the another negative side effect that vignettes have is if you have a highlight like a cloud or person shoulder coming off the edge of the scene that then yet can look unnatural in other words it's making muddy the clouds so by coming up here in moving this highlight slider it's not going to be affecting the highlights so if again let me take that down just for teaching purposes and you can see down here it's affecting the clouds as they move this up the clouds are not being affected it's a much more natural I've been yet in the sense that the dodging burning of the mid tones leaving the highlights protected so think of that as a protecting slider so there is a vignette and now the preview will just be for that one yet and you can see how it's kind of drawing the eye into the center of the composition also very useful in here because that shadow slider is so powerful we're going to use it poor even things like um we've got another couple will have to get another couple in here so well let's do the tango on this portrait here so coming back over here well do auto great overall again another jalan victoria smith shot from light workshops so again a beautiful shot well exposed obviously studio light it's a little bit contrast underneath the eyelids with that light and but it's just it's a beautiful contrast if I want to soften that a little bit hit auto you're going to notice what it does it brought those shadows up quite a bit it brought up the blacks a bit took my exposure up took my contrast down it's softening up the scene okay which I like the problem is with this here is as it brought in all this wonderful detail in the model's eyes and in her hair it also brought in the backdrop well the backdrop was not part of my story like the fact that it's a nice model you know purple backdrop but that's not part of the image so going to our little effects and a color priority I can take that background and throw it back into the distance where it belongs okay? So I'm doing an instant little dodge and burn and if I want her shoulder to be light as it's coming off the scene then you'll see that this highlight shadow I can make it so that my vignette does not or does affect your shoulder I actually like it affecting the shoulder and so I'm going to leave that on and I can again take that midpoint bring it in as faras I want soft enough that feather and now the vignette is taking the background which was brought in to the tonal range at the same time that things like the eyes were is back where it was meant to be so the vignette could be useful for just taking that shadow detail that's being pulled out by the shadows slider and just throwing it back where it was meant to be around the parameters of your shot you probably didn't want the butch the bushes and the hedges and the cars and stuff you know and so here is this is a two step tango for this image here was hitting auto and then been yet just to soften it up and pull a detail with no dodging and burning no other work whatsoever if I wanted to do any of the other parameters which I you know, I do have still my disposal like a little vibe it's okay, I can add that as well so again here's our four after before after okay let's do a couple mohr ah images on the tango let's do that actually that's back tio this gentleman here whether I would want we've done our vibrance that last step again in terms of our color priority, I want to darken that in again at my feather back in I can even move it further in to the file and again here is that been yet it's up to you whether you want to make it so subtle that you don't see the effect or whether you actually don't mind it being seen as have been yet you know whether that is thie eaves of the building causing that shadow, or whether it's your bin yet that's up to you. Okay, again, this highlight here I'm going to take it off his shirt, so in this case, I can come up here and do have been yet, which has taken my background back, but you'll notice that the shirt is no longer receiving that been yet, so I can kind of get the best of both worlds very elaborate dodging, burn, protecting the shirt and yet drawing the eye in the center, the composition? Yes, if you know you're going to be doing some spot removal or some skin softening or highlighting eyes and stuff, we'll still do the vigna ting, or will you do some of that correction stuff and then vignette after that? I'll be, I'll tell the basic, very good question I'm going to do the basic storytelling, which will include the vignette to the to the file, because I just want to see where I'm going to. It just takes half a second to do it. That is, actually is one of the great things about working in adobe camera are light room because these air procedural adjustments not pick axel pushing as in photoshopped the order in which you do something in photo shop is infinitely important because each one builds upon each other. If you have darkened something here, the next adjustment is going to be, even if it's not a permanent adjustment, this adjustment on lee has access toe what is down here. It can't go down here, right? If you do, you're gonna have to knock it out with the master, do something. So the order in which you do something in photo shop is infinitely important to image quality, the order of what you do things and a doe became a raw is irrelevant. I mean, it's it's, very relevant in terms of you're going to be able to do it quickly and easily that's the reason for the tango so you don't have to constantly go back, but if you come up here and add this been yet, where maybe your dark in the area and now it's going to be a little bit harder for you to see something that you needed to retouch or something? Can you take it out or add it back in or we touch on top of the vignette and that worry about taking it out later? Now that retouching his devyn yet? And so that retouching now is messed up because you had been yet you know, if you do that in photo shop, if you do retouching, you do an image and you've been yet now you do another empty later on, you're going to retouch on it if you retouch on and then you want to change that been yet uh, now you're screwed up because you re touched based upon that been yet you should have done the vignette after, like you're saying, you do the vignette at the very tail end of it because you don't wantto have to retouch over again, you can't do anything in the wrong order and a doe became a raw in terms of how these adjustments are applied to each other, they are strictly a database of numbers. That database has got a whole set of numbers, and it just says that this is this is this is this and this was here, and this was here, and this was here, and it does not matter at all in which order you do it in, aside from what is the most elegant way of doing it. So again, like sharpening and noise reduction, we're going to get to that later on, but I'm just going to jump onto it because this is such a great shot here if we go back to our, you know, jack, would you mind if I jump in there just a quick second? Because that was great because that is so important, especially about camera on dh philly birdie also and I just wanted to reiterate so we have answered questions from the chat rooms same thing for cropping as well because that's one thing people feel like when they crop in adobe came around that that's gone but it's the same same exact thing correct every single thing in a doe became a raw is non destructive, it is impossible to change your original indo became a raw because it's not a pixel processor all it's doing is the slope location of sliders, the movement of a brush from here to here it records all that information that's part of the metadata but it since it doesn't work with pixels it's impossible to hurt your file and because all it is is numeric values and sliders that's why it's so easy to copy and paste the settings from one image to another image of fifty other images? It says I could do numbers really easy it's really fast it doesn't matter whether you're working on a million mega pixel file or three megapixel file it's just sliders so it's quick it's, easy it's, flexible and it's always nondestructive including the crop even if you change the resolution if we go into our workflow and we changed this down to three megapixel or whatever and we're doing all their work on it next week would come back and say I didn't mean that I want it full resolution it just re does everything it for resolution including all the retouching and everything wow yeah that's that's fantastic and I'm sort of having a lightbulb moment here because that's where snapshots come in because I could go to a certain place with my and say okay, this is good for my client make a snapshot and then go crazy with it absolutely that creative flexibility that you have and since those snapshots stay with that image for life with all your different options associated with it again when we get into snapshots and presets yes that will be huge great thank you but here is an example that that noise at what point do you sharpen can you sharpen the beginning of the end this case I will want to sharpen a soon as I pull out that shadow detail what you're gonna be able to see there's a lot of noise again this is a jpeg file so there's one that's ridiculous that we're getting there much out of there but I'm obviously getting artifacts as well so coming over here this is where I may very quickly come in and start doing some noise reduction to see what I can do in terms of maintaining image quality okay so that's a two hundred percent so there is a hundred percent can I get it and use we'll get into detail and a bit because if you understand these sliders you got a lot that you can do so the fact that I can pull out that much information and hide that noise is fantastic but I'll do that on a file like this pretty darn quick because if I can't handle that noise then I don't have a usable file so at what point you do what portion of it is really up to you but which is great oh that's why I start with the tango this starting with the tango was going allow me tio see if the images great as I'm hoping that it is then I'll start fine tuning it but that brings up the tango is thie optimizing stage it's not the fine tuning it's not the enhancing it's not the elaborating and it's not that final output um for things like sharpening okay but speaking of shortcuts uh I mean snapshots if I like this image here this is where I'm going to do that thing going back to this very last tab click it I like my first one b one I may instantly go right to camera defaults reset the image back to the way it was click make another snapshot call it zero they always come up in alphanumeric order they're not um sequential in terms of the order there made they're always alfa numeric in terms of what they are so there's my before and after okay if I want to come up here and now do they you know black and white conversion of the file now I've got a black and white version of the file and now I can say that it's a black and white version of the file but you know what I really want to come over here and dark in that back ground and lighten the skin tone okay what am I doing cheating and teasing you because I'm using targeted adjustment tool in the hse l panel and I'm lightening up the reds and oranges but darkening up the yellow's okay and then making another snapshots and now I've got a black and white version of the file and now I come over here to see peotone and I come up here and I'm going to add a little c p a tone to it and we'll make that but I want it just in the richest shadows leaving a nice crisp highlight to it and then I go over to snap shot and I click another one because now I want three and then now maybe I've got priest that's what I'm going to come over here and see if I've got a cross processing one in here without that black and white and maybe I want to play around with you know, kind of a cross processing effect. Okay, little muted special effect so then I can come up here and do for intel I already don't want to do it with that file, but um so that is the power of quickly getting an optimizing of the file as fast as possible and then from there you can see how what it's worth in terms of policy it that's just too ah, a couple more here, so great cowboy shot auto mid tone great did a good job overall it is a cowboy, which means I can get away with murder the exposure I'm looking at skin tone usually so the mid tone value is looking good come over here to, um my clarity gonna add a little pop he's a cowboy and get away with it as opposed to a cowgirl which I'd probably be a little bit more careful with. So and again looking at what is able to do with that auto you can see the shadow slider took that way up to plus fifty the fact that I can maintain that highlight detail and right next to it take both blacks and middle tones and do that is just should be illegal it should just cop should come and take us all away and you guys would say that you didn't know me but I would say you guys made me do it s o clarity and then highlights and shadows shadows that actually pulled out the shadows I could actually pull out if I was greedy I could pull out more but I don't need to it's as if I would had a reflector and was bouncing up like you know in front of him that highlights I made take down because look at the sky I'm able to maintain and pull back that sky again another thing going back to that idea of the order in which you do things in photo shop if I did an auto or some sort of auto contrast that brightened up that sky I would not then do another adjustment trying to darken what I'd already lightened because I would have removed it with the lightning one and I would been forcing it back with this dark anyone you don't do that in poor shop you have to take this out with like a layer mask okay? Because if I took away and made it too bright this one to reduce it down I'm I've already thrown away most of the information now I have only a little bit left in a doe became a raw when I go back to that highlight slider it goes back to the raw file when I press the shutter it has access to the entire dynamic range of the image it's awesome that does not have photoshopped works this is much, much better so we'll take those highlights down I got that so there was we did auto exposure wasn't necessary clarity did a little pop on that highlight brought down yet didn't need to play with shadow whites and blacks looking at my history graham here okay, I've got little teeny going on and that shirt if I want to take that whites down or even take the highlights dental bit more boom if I'm that anal retentive that I needed the shirt perfect, then I've got that so now I've got my whites and blacks last one is going to be vibrance it's a beautiful spring day in this's up in aspen, colorado she was an icon so I like that I am fluorescent and radioactive so there you go there last thing that vignette going to go back up to my color priority take that down take my feather up make it more subtle you can see even this is how much information is that pulling in to the cloud detail? Okay huge amount would that vignette right there and I could take that highlights if I don't want it toe affected I can take that up just a little bit, okay? And I can see I don't quite need that much vibrance so here is r before after before after in that tango with no targeted work whatsoever there's no dodging and burning that's all done with global sliders okay after we're going to take another break in a bit we're going to start getting into target adjustments and especially tomorrow but for me that's pretty cool in the old version of adobe camera which was known as the two thousand ten process that clarity would have brought in halo artifacts that's where one of the main changes in the new version of adobe camera where that clarity no longer doesn't artifact which is again the fact that it khun d'oh that much shadow change without a halo between the transitions is just ridiculously cool so jack if you're out in the field taking this picture you didn't have the reflector he didn't have a stroke and you just had to take that shot of that college boy would you then expose for the sky knowing that you're going to recover the face in post or would you rather expose for the face properly and try to recover the sky or well you can't that's a very good question you have to um you're going to expose for the highlights um what you because you can't get them back your ability if something's pure white you're gonna have to recreate it again after we touch it back in which is possible so if it is it's actually a very good question if if this was you know whoever is a famous person in that that thing really is him and wanted the the quality of the person I could say no matter what I need to make sure nail the exposure for the face more than anything, even if I lose clouds and sky because I could put in new skies clouds that wouldn't be my priority in general, though you want to expose for your highlights because you can't pull out that shadow detail as you saw with this gentleman here that's just, you know, ridiculous how much you can get and maintain it even with a high s o with again this right here was probably also with a d to h you know, an old camera that did not do hi, I sl you can scare me, you can get away with murder, not that you shouldn't. The one thing that you want to do in terms of exposure, um is not under exposed every single one of your image is what some people do is they see demonstrations like this and go well, why don't I never want to clip a highlight? So I'm just going to set my camera to a third of a stop under exposure for every single thing and that's how I'll shoot for the rest of my life? Yeah, you can do that. The problem is, is that's not a correct exposure? You're actually are darkening it and most of the information in your files is up here in this upper core drin of your file there's actually very little information in shadows in other words, the sensor cannot pick up blacks in a file shadows and file it is very sensitive toe lights, so for you to purposely under expose everything and make everything in this area go even darker like you'll notice these eyes went pure black that's just wrong that's degrading your image what you do want to do is set it as actually as light as you can without blowing out your highlights. Since most of the information is up here, what the term is is lean to the right, but all things being equal, you're not clipping make it a little bit brighter rather than a little bit darker because most of the information is in the highlights. That doesn't mean that you, you know, set your exposure to plus a third of a stop, but immediate exposure is usually good. This brings up that one topic that I mentioned before that you want to keep in mind is setting having one of the options within your camera set to a totally flat contrast curve you're working with one of your dslr and it has the ability for having contrast in there setting one of your sets in a lot of the good sl ours we'll have banks of pre sets of options is going to your settings take your contrast all the way down to zero or whatever they happen to call it, some of them have different settings, but the contrast all the way down zero say that is a preset because that's, the only way you're going to see an accurate history, graham, because that his diagram if your cameras set to auto contrast, which all cameras are, means it's purposely lightning the lights and darkening the darks, because we like nice punch punchy contrast images, which means every single image on the back of your camera is inaccurate, and the history graham associated with every single image is inaccurate because they're to contrast it because it's set to auto contrast. So the only way that you're going to get an accurate history graham and alleviate your tendency to say underexposed, a third of a stop because you're shooting a wedding with a bright white gown and the bright white day, and getting flashing highlights, those flashing highlights are not accurate. If you take the contrast sitting your camera all the way down, you may show the exact same shot, the exact same exposure, and get no blinking highlights, because there's, now no contrast, the image will be a little flatter, a little muddier, but it will be accurate it's, actually, what you're shooting when you shoot raw, there is no contrast curve applied to the image permanently, so that's what I would rather have people do is take your contrast curve in your camera all the way down to flat that way you get an accurate history, graham that if you do get blinking hi let you know you have to reshoot it. You're not guessing. Well, I think because right now, when you shouldn't get ugly highlight you go well, I've recovered that before in the past. So now the bling highlights are actually useless because now you don't know because you know, you've been able to recover bleeding highlights in the past. So now you're gonna going well, that that's great! Now I'm still guessing so the only way you're gonna get accurate instagram, the other thing that I'll do that relates to that is make sure that your dslr set to adobe rgb, not rgb his s rgb is also a more saturated color space, then adobe rgb. So what you see on the back of your camera is amore saturated image also not accurate because saturation is also part of that metadata. So by setting your color space to adobe rgb it's a more accurate representation of what's actually being graft it's a broader color space you're grabbing in raw? Theoretically, you can also take that saturation down because sometimes you're seeing clipping, taking place in your image because your images too saturated I hope I like saturated I turn it on the landscape mode because I like it yes, but you're shooting wrong it doesn't matter remember your contrast, white balance saturation sharpening and color space for all parts of meta data you can change those all after the fact so even if you shoot in adobe rgb or s r g b, you can change that after the fact is we're doing here does not affect how you captured the image. None of those things affect what's actually being recorded to the sensor on ly that metadata those settings are recorded with that information, so if you want it it's flattened is neutral in this accurate reducing down that contrast primarily maybe your saturation and also making sure you're in a flatter color space like adobe our gp will get you a more accurate one so that's a long answer for your question but it helps a lot because the alternative is everybody shooting under exposed images thinking they're going to save in photo shop and that's not what you should be doing that actually is degrading the image because exposure your shutter speed in f stop and I also those are permanent that is determining what's being recorded to the sensor the other stuff isn't anything your menu doesn't affect what's recorded the sensor exposure shutter speed have stopped, eh? So all those things are permanent great quinn okay and last but not least we'll do our saint pete's cathedral auto you can see because I had already has the dynamic range to it is doing very little so let's come up here will take our exposure I'm looking at my overall mid tone value come up here to my clarity when it's architectures I want that too, pop now I can do shadow on a pull out a lot of information in there I have highlights in terms of the beams of light and the detail in there so I'm gonna take my highlights down and all of a sudden I can see all that detail up here in the top that clarity is going to make that beam of light pop out from in there um whites and blacks I can turn on that, but I can already you know that there's nothing in the significance if I want I can take that white down just a little bit to make sure I'm looking right there there's a little bit of clipping in there um vibrance because this is orange I don't want a nonlinear so this would be another example we're rather than using vibrance which is going to take the blues up, leaving the oranges below I'm going to take saturation and get both of them at the same time that's gold leaf it should be last step of the tango effects color this one, I'm going to take it down, probably push it up into the corners so as not to come too far in, so you can see. I'm just attacking those corners. So the eye isn't going off the edge of my composition and maybe take it down even more. And then here is my before, after before, after that's, just ridiculous, especially with an old, you know, whatever this is d to a c to x. The two x was the high speed old nikon, which meant this is like a four megapixel twelve megapixel.