Lessons

Lesson Info

Introduction and Overview Part 1

I want to welcome jack davis back to the studio we're here with adobe camera raw optimizing, enhancing and retouching now jack is a best selling author his brand is wow and he has just done some amazing things over the years he's, a leading expert on photo shop as well as adobe camera adobe camera raw and he is an award winning designer and photographer so without further ado jack, I'm going to pass it over to you adobe camera or right now I need you to say they don't roll off the time say that ten times fast, but no thank you. Fortunately, I don't um yes, I am very, very as I said, excited to be here, this is a very, very cool topic and in terms of something that has the potential of really changing well, if you're creative professional, if you're doing this or if you're just ridiculously passionate about your creativity and specifically your photography, then anything that you're going to do that significantly going to change the way you work with your files, especially if it's going...

to dio the three things that I hope we're going to come away with after this class is over, which is increase the quality of your image is actually be able to make them more beautiful than they were by hand doing them one time in flower shop be able to work much more flexible in other words, you'll be able to change anything or experiment with different variations different solutions to our creative challenges that come about with our images and photographs and then speed if you could do something with two steps rather than ten steps, why not? And I'm afraid that if you look at how a lot of people work with their photography, they are still doing way too many steps and way too many steps and ending up with something that's actually not as good equality is they could have gotten and they couldn't have the flexibility to experiment so quality, flexibility and speed if you've been with me over the years or you're familiar with that that's my kind of my my mantra is what I go for with every single technique I thought it would start off with the kind of a slide show showing some ba fours and after so some of the things that we're gonna be doing in class here just kind of wet your appetite for what we're going to be able to do and why I think it o b camera raw is such a fantastic place to spend your time um learning what's possible that these programs and uh so speaking of which first off we're in the bridge when you buy a photo shop property, get the bridge, adobe camera and porter shop um adobe cameras actually built into the bridge you won't actually find it anywhere that's why a lot of people are kind of confused about it they come in here and maybe they opened up a raw file and it goes to a job became iran, they do a few sliders and they go right into photo shop and do all the heavy lifting that's how they've done it for the last twenty years and that's it was good enough for grandpa it's good enough for me on they just kind of skipped through a dopey camera all they know some stuff, but they go well, there's no way that you could actually, you know, do between this and this in adobe camera, which of course you can. So this is an adult became a raw before and after shot beautiful brooke crystal photograph of a beautiful bride and should you be doing this in adobe came a raw that's up to you what I'll be doing is teaching you how to do it in adobe camera then you can choose at what point do you go into photoshopped versus doing it? Adobe camera but let's yeah let's go back and we'll look at some images I'm on the bridge there's a couple things I'll give you your first tip for the day is tapping the space bar while you're in bridge gets you into full screen mode well, you're in full screen mode. If you click again, it gets you into one hundred percent so you can actually go and check focus. You can actually, um, use your plus and minus keys, will you er in that mode to zoom up and continue to zoom up until your ridiculously close to your images. So space bar is a toggle in and out of full screen mode. You can click once it'll go to whatever you last war. In terms of magnification, you can use your plus and minus, and that will get you to other magnification one hundred percent and also in terms of reviewing your images, you can do a commander control l and that gets you into a slide show mode. If you tap the elke, you get all the options associate it with a slide show mode again. Slide shows have been built into things like adobe like adobe light room, but there's actually some basic slideshow capabilities right here into the bridge, so as an example, I'm going to repeat the slide show show it for two five seconds. We can have the captions. In other words, the naming for the file, another metadata scaled a fit, dissolve, etcetera, etcetera, so this would be a slide show, a self running slide show that you could do for your images I'm going to hit the escape key get out of that and I'm just going to go into that tapping the space bar so now I'm in control of it. It's not a self running slideshow. Okay, so, um, this is the grand tetons is what I was talking about the other just a few moments ago and what we're going to be doing with our working the dough became a raws oftentimes we've got a great shot, another this is a great shot, but it's a beautiful sunrise in the grand tetons they're in jackson, wyoming, and but that's not the feeling that I had we've got these beautiful um, decision trees down here that are just starting to show the fall colors. We've got the sunrise on the snow capped mountains, there was a lot more color there's a lot of moisture in the air this morning and so it's kind of a general muted look to it. This is what it felt like when I was there, and this is tweaked in adobe camera where I've pulled out some more detail out of these trees because that's definitely part of the story, and I've also obviously enhanced the color on the snow capped hills and did a little bit more of the purple that I felt there in the shadow areas where the sun hadn't hit the mountains yet same sort of thing this is now a little bit further down in the tetons again, we've got quite a bit of mist we've got a good tunnel range on the image overall, we're getting that now the sidelight of the trees down here, but it doesn't have the impact that I wanted, and this is now tweaked in adobe camera raw. Why I've done done some targeted dodging and burning for the trees down below have enhanced the contrast in the mountains to kind of compensate for this atmospheric perspective, the distance that looking through to see all the details in the file, also doing some sharpening to the file, and you can not have too much drama when it comes to clouds, so that was another one. A lot of what we're going to be doing, especially tomorrow, is going to be working with portrait, because we most of us work with people in some way. If you're going to make money at your photography, you're definitely shooting a picture of somebody who's got a checkbook on theirs. Very few people who are making a significant living with their landscape photography, just because mountains typically don't pay to have their picture taken, we're as couples, especially the proverbial weddings and beauty shots and head shots and things like that do another beautiful brooke krystal shot, this is the shot it's got everything that you would need in there it's nicely exposed it's challenging light you can see the sun on the groom's shoulder so pulling it into some shade here is our work in adobe camera raw and in this case we can zoom up here again using the old trick I just taught you and here's our before after before after so you see not only we bring in color were actually bringing in detail it's actually at the ocean now you can see the horizon line and tell that it's at the ocean also doing some really quick dodge again burning on things like the eyes to pull out information I even did a little re touching up here in the gentleman's um hair not that he's needs it but you know in terms of the parting of the hair so we did a little retouching old dodging burn the dodging burn is taking advantage of the new radio filter that's built into adobe camera raw which is a wonderful little way of doing targeted dodging and burn with a quick little radio soft edge radio filter and uh anyway you get the idea zooming back out just hitting tapping on the screen now the great shot friends of mine I actually normally if you see people in this class I did not take the picture because I just tend not to do people they're so messy with all that whole emotional stuff uh, but then when I got really good friends, this is their engagement photo on, so we went and I photographed them great shot backlit using probably a little bit of a phil flash in here, but not a lot going on. I didn't have any assistance, I didn't have any ability user reflector anything else, which normally I would do on such a dramatically backlit image. Um, but here is the shot and became a raw, the ability to pull out, doing some exaggerated tone on the faces, some softening of the faces and, of course, pulling out that color and detail in the skies on the ocean scene. So a lot of these images you're going to see, jack, you're just a crappy photographer and you're using the camera to fix all your mistakes. Hopefully that's, not the case, but I do shoot under challenging conditions, and I do a lot of impromptu photographs. Well, I'm not I don't have that luxury of like I said, having a reflector or setting up multiple strobes, so I do take what I'm able to do. My emphasis is on the story this the emphasis is on the couple that's what I wanted to get, so I'll take advantage of the tools that are inherent in things like adobe camera to take this beautiful story and polish it not only optimize it but enhance it and I'll even embellish it now is one of the interesting things when I was teaching in the tetons is a large part of the week is a competition and a lot of that is sponsored by the national geographic nikon is he also the one of the main sponsors that advances well it's adobe um and with national geographic there they were really emphasizing on the photograph and very minimal tweaking of the image and here I am teaching everybody you know make the silk purse out of the proverbial sow's ear so it was a fun class to dio and but I'm going to be showing you how far you can push it um but please understand that I'm not expecting everybody to push it as far as I d'oh my background is actually is in graphic design and painting and I have a very expressive a very interpretive a way of looking at images I'm always embellishing that story to make it as potent as possible but for a lot of people they're not going to need to do anything nearly as significant is what I do uh shot that I took up at uh light workshops up in morro bay, california they excellent classes they've actually got the california photo festival going on right now and also known as click up there morro bay this is a shot that I did a beautiful model and again we've got our studio lights but wanted to do some polishing of the image I wanted to do some softening of the skin tone I also wanted teo make it look as if I was shooting with a faster piece of glass I was shooting with a wide angle I didn't have this ability to open up my f stop to where I'd like it maybe even like a one eight very shallow depth of field so here is the image tweaked in adobe camera raw where I've actually been able to do just that change the focus even on the background without going into photo shop and that is because you can actually anti sharpen an image hence blur in um adobe kamerad same model beautiful, beautiful, beautiful young lady and this case not only am I enhancing it in terms of softening up things like skin tone and things like that but I'm also putting a cross processing special effect on it we're going to be getting into that as well not only can you optimize your images but you can interpret them as I mentioned before so something like across processing where we're going to be going into the individual color channels using the curves built into adobe camera is going to give us some very expressive ways of working with color and with the advent of everybody in the world doing instagram and hips dramatic and every other cool, trendy, groovy retro esque analog film technique it's very fun to be able to do that especially if you can do it with incredible quality as you can and it became a rock the portrait uh this one is in addition to skin softening and things like that you're going to notice another thing that we did here we've got some stray hairs but addition to the stray hairs I want wanted to open up the pupils of the model because again nobody likes the beady eyes and if you get a lot of bright light outside or strobes in a in a studio you may have these small pupils and I also for fun's sake I wanted to go in there and change the color of her eyes and that's again something that a lot of people don't knows not only can you enhance color but you can alter color radically inside of adobe camera there's another that broke krystal shot we probably won't do ah this entire project will see how well you guys have behaved how much you laugh laugh at my jokes that was good that was actually um before I was able to do that but again just to show you how far you can push it again I'm opening up the eyes leaving the catch lights intact, fixing the makeup on the models lips doing some dodging it burning techniques, softening skin tone and even slightly reducing the size of different body parts, and I'll explain that in a second with what you can do in terms of what you can see, we're actually, um, slim if eyeing the bride, never so slightly another shot. I've been using this for years and years just because it's so great when another shot taken this by hal in victoria's smith, who own the light workshops there in morro bay, but here's our before and after here we're doing mork lammer retouching in terms of our skin softening, but also, if you look at the eyes we're doing, are iris retouching as well as our skin and make up were actually adding some blush to the models, cheeks and things like that. They get it flyaway hair again, some radical changing of the light and the word crystal shot and another little instagram technique, including the little frame, a little soft edge frame. This is also done right within adobe camera well, the things that will be talking about this once you do come up with what I call a recipe in adobe camera, of course, you can share it between multiple images by sinking in effect between multiple shots, but you can also create a preset that you'll name and then use over and over again that will be one of the things about buying this class is that we get to distribute those pre sets that I've created for dough became raw, like cross processing and little hips. Dramatic effects taste more black and white basically what I'm going to be doing in this class if you've been using photo shop for black and white conversion levels curves, color correction cp atoning uh, the special color effects like cross processing um, your basic skin softening basic retouching if you're using photo shopped for any of those things, stop all of those things should be done and it all became a wrong. You can also do them in photo shop, but if you first line of defense is adobe camera, I think you're gonna find yourself using photo shop much, much less, and with that, you will find your speed and amount of throughput that you're able to get done much, much greater, okay, and black and white is one of those things where you should never be doing black and white in photo shop ever again, as an example, adobe camera mention one other thing, a cz well, right now, dobi cameras thie engine that it uses is the exact same as the develop montreuil and light room so that's one of things that will be talking about maurine this class, if you've been wondering, do I go into a light room and my second class citizen? If I'm not using light room, I hear all my cooling groupie friends use light room I feel so dejected that I've only used the same engine going to get the exact same results in adobe cameras you can in like like who has a sexier interface like room now khun work on video as well a still images that's one of the main benefits that it has, but in terms of what you can do with the programme for optimizing, enhancing retouching your images it's exactly the same light room and adobe camera exact same engine black and white. Because adobe camera has what's known as hugh saturation and luminant, a panel that is missing from the shop photoshopped does not even have that capability. It's called you saturation and lightness and photo shop, and that lightness is inherently evil it's an awful little slider. If you've ever used the hs l tab and touched on the el, you'll know how limited its uses will call it. But the fact that you have access to hugh saturation and lou eminence in adobe camera actually is going to give you a huge boost in terms of what you could do with a black white conversion also, I'll mention right now that's, one of the great things about the latest doe, became a raw and photoshopped cc creative cloud. That it comes with is that now adobe has put adobe camera into photo shop as a filter, which is mind bendingly, freakishly cool or bitchin as the technical term is the fact now that you condemn you, adobe camera on any image, including layered files within photo shop is awesome and amazing and fantastic. So we'll be definitely taking advantage of adobe camera not only inside of the bridge as it were, but also once we get into photoshopped. Okay, so black and white conversion also special effects. We're gonna be doing a lot of special effects just because we can. In this case, we've got a high key image, the original file and the high key version, including some targeted re color, which is something we'll do with a slider. This sort of effect literally takes about half a second.