Lessons

Lesson Info

Radial Filter Retouching

First off, another for krystal shot, as you can tell by now, I do not do weddings will never do weddings. I have not the constitution, pacenti, patients or personality to do weddings, but god bless those people who do you and brooke crystal is one of those people who has that ability to not only shoot people in, tell magnificent stories with her wedding photography, but also put up with the personalities of brides and bride, maids and mothers and fathers and everything else. So we've got a great shot. This is straight out of the can in terms of how she shot it, and we want to do some work on it. And this one of things that I thought that I would do is show that radio filter and some of the things that you can do with it as a variation on, um, other techniques for doing it, and basically, this is where we're going, and this is where we're going to end up. So again, what the latitude we have in terms of our work because she shot raw that's, allowing us to do a huge amount of work in term...

s of tone, you can see how much of that background color is still there, but this is what we're doing here, we're actually taking advantage of these little areas, especially since I night, like, nice, soft selections if you're working with big, soft and subtle, you do have a big, soft, subtle brush and airbrush but you also now have these, you know well, radials that you can use to work on images as well. So that's it when I thought that I would do on this particular shot here okay, so we're getting carried away with what can be done with our radio filter so here's our before and after every single thing that you're seeing there is being done with the radio filter so let's do that let's, go back to our snapshots and start off with our original image and first off there's no reason to not start off with the tango, so remember, you're always going to do global optimizing before you do targeted enhancing always global optimizing before targeted enhancing it's always better to fix the main part portions of your image then you know what? You have to work with it's usually going to just be much, much quicker because by the time you fix majority of work in your file, you may have a lot more targeted work to do, especially since you now know how much we ridiculous work you can do globally between the basic panel and things like hs l okay, so we're going to do white balancing crop looks good, that horizon line looks a little bit off again we've got our straitened tools were going to come over here if anything that does a little bit what I used to get out of that tool and back into our more basic way I like using that h g it's just a way of setting you know anything that you're working on so there is the hp why balance like I said looks fine for now, sometimes the white balance if it's a subtle shift, you're going to fix the image and get all your color tone right? And then you'll find two in the white balance, so really I only had white balance is that first step if it's a significant shift, you know you're shooting an artificial light and you obviously have a color cast we'll hit auto auto in this case it's trying to pull in a lot more detail in terms of my shadows than I need, so I'm actually gonna undo it or hit default and continue on remember if otto doesn't float your boat no reason why you can't do it manually go it from their next step is exposure exposure is my middle tone values I'm looking at the skin tone there looks good don't need to do it go to the next step next step wass the ass you're being tested clarity that was four steps the first step was white balance crop second step is auto undo smiley face if you need to the third step is the four steps of exposure clarity, shadowing highlight so we'll come up here the mid tones exposure looks good so that clarity again we're far enough away you might be able to get away with clarity, but typically if anything you're going to add a little anti clarity in this case, I would probably do that in a targeted fashion I don't need to soften it up, we've got the groom in the picture and I don't need to to make it pop or sharpen it, so I'm not gonna use any clarity I'm not going to use any clarity can you believe it moved right on to shadow and highlight now it's shattering highlight I'm seeing, you know pretty much the good range on this file. Basically, uh brooke did a job of nailing it, especially under challenging light you can see the light on his shoulder, which will fix later on so obviously there they found a little bit of shadow on what was a very bright day, but that highlight that ability to come up here and add some highlights back down to bring in some of the blue of the sky and the ocean, maybe flatten out some of the contrast in the portrait I am getting some deep shadows in the eyes, so maybe I will come up here and do a little bit of shadow resuscitation if I do pull up shadows, I'm basically kind of flattening out the light you're shooting under extreme slight outside you're getting these harsh extremes lightening up the shadows darkening down the highlights is going to flatten that out of it what you want you're not trying to you know, cut the person in half with light it could be that you will for the first time um as you flatten that out take advantage of contrast you'll notice the contrast is not part of the tango interesting usually otto, if I am using auto auto will set the contrast for me and contrast is actually a very tricky adjustment to do because we all like added contrast but we you know what numeric value do you want for that in this case I may want to add a little bit more contrast to it to give it a little more pop okay or again I can use that also to flatten down the image if I flatten that down a little bit I'm actually gonna flatten down the contrast a little bit I'm now getting really smooth skin tones is opposed to this, but the overall image is looking flat and I just told it contrast down so what can I do if I want to bring back up the inherent contrast in the file I've used exposure for my mid tones have reduced contrast and minimized the extremes of dogs and lights I've taken my highlights down to pull in my highlight detail I've taken some shadows up because I am getting some things like the eye's getting a little greedy to be honest I don't you know since I'm going to go do targeted adjustments there's really no reason for me to use shadow that's just being greedy that's being so lazy that I'm going to retouch the eyes and now we have to compensate for the but the thing so let's we'll take that out of the equation that shadow but what else can I do to kind of add some contrast clarity will do contrast that's edge contrast that's very very specific in terms of their story telling what really is contrast contrast is our our whites and blacks it's really the extremes of our lights and darks in the file what's the next step of the tango the fourth step of the tango you go well of course it's black and white because we're going to find tune it so it could be able to come up here and peg down the blacks to get a nice extreme black mohr pig up the whites if I need that to go down or even darkening it down if I wanted to but that blacks to set and the the extremes of my tonal range looking at my history ram up here is where why I have whites and blacks as a last debt because you do you are massaging all these different quadrants of your history graham up here and make sure that you've got that ability to find tune that final black and white is what we're talking about here okay so I like that overall I did bring in my highlights here I still have got a nice rich image to it the last step of the tango is going to be excuse me that vibrance and had been yet vibrance the nice thing about vibrant as I mentioned before because it's a little judicious for skin tones I can take that up I'm now getting that bright green grass in the background of getting the flowers I'm getting her red lips but the skin tone is not going radioactive again if we used saturation saturation will make the skin glow and it will sleep well after it does so where as vibrant as I mentioned cares piper and so let you add a lot of pop without getting too carried away even though her lips are getting a little carried away okay so we've got that that's our global adjustment let's come up here and again we'll come up and do a little adjustment so here's our before after then yet actually is a really good point we have not done the vignette the very last step I mentioned it but I didn't do it and that's going to also help with this um area of pulling in some detail in the sky I mentioned I like color priority more than highlight priority, so when I take that down, we will soften up like doing a feather to it maybe make it more toward the corners and again, we're going to do that. They're actually you know why I didn't do the vignette? Why didn't I do the vignette? Reset it. The reason why I didn't do the vignette is this whole project is based upon that radio filter. What is one of the cool things about the new radio filter? The radio filter? We've done our tango, we've saved it, I'm not going to do that been yet using the regular vignette and let me just go ahead and do it just so you can see even a color priority ok, we'll take that down will exaggerate it. This vignette is not a true dodge and burn it is it's a darkening of the file it's in color priority so it's going to maintain the color as much as possible. But remember, our original is pure white sky it's that probably wasn't overcast day, so I've got very little color teo to deal with them they're so when it darkens this down, it takes a gray sky and makes it a grey sky um it's not doing a true I'm dodging burn this finn, yet part of the manual setting over here when I come up here, this vignette is actually you'll notice that that's bluer I don't know if you can see that well, we're bringing a little bit more this is a true dungeon burn it's actually finding the actual colors that are darkening it so that len's been yet ing, even though it can't follow a post crop and yet is true dodging burn it's really the only been yet that's the truth, and yet both lightning and darkening to it and again that's its purpose is to really dodging burn that's get a consistent exposure so it's working with exposure, so but we're not going to use that as well, because it's not going to give me the control this is been cropped, obviously this aspect ratio shows that this file has been cropped and when we come up here actually is pretty close to the original, so weii technically could do that, but we're not. We're going to take advantage of where we're going with this project right now, and that is the radio filter because that not only can I do a true dodging and burning to that edge, but of course I have everything else at my disposal a swell so I'm gonna come up here let's go into this radio filter I am going to do outside that's going to give me my vignette I'm going to reset everything excited from exposure so I'm gonna tap of minus key with exposure will use that shortcut because we haven't done much cropping which is shift double click with that tv is going to show us our radio adjustment and it automatically sets its besides of my document we did see that once you cropped the file this little shortcut gets a little wigged out so and that just do it thing that we learned up about from adobe which they have they're just too it paige where you can let them know what you please just do it in other words just make it so this little shortcut of double clicking with your radio filter follows the contours of your cropped space not the uncrossed space right now it doesn't do when you crop it it doesn't follow either the crop or the un crop it it does some nebulous little so we've got our file here let's take down that exposure I mentioned that I often will do an extreme first that shows me the feather and where it is on the file so right now I can tell that I probably want to take this up and also it could be that the feather which is down I actually wanted to come up a little bit so in this case I'm going to find tune it and that way I can kind of see its sphere of influence as it were if I need to I consume out to kind of see where I want it so there is the sphere of influence way heavy handed but at least now I know what I'm dealing with or I could bring this up if I want the bottom again another thing that you cannot do with any of the other vignettes you obviously can't move and reposition them so it's great now let's zero fulfilled a screen and fine tune that exposure to what we want and tap what was the key to hide and show these little vector shapes the dots the anchor points the okay so now I can see what I'm working on so now I'm doing a little darkening of it and I can also if I wanted to um had a little saturation which I may have to be careful because that it's doing the entire file but now I've got a little bit of blue you can see the sky that's brought in and why that is a really nice thing yet it also came up here and did a little knock on his shoulder as well so that took what is a pure white sky and again we can go over to our snapshots here let's make another snapshot where we're going and um here is our that's what we have to work with we have a pure white sky this is as it was shut and it was exposed here we are bringing back in the blue even got a little puffy cloud up here as well as our couple okay, so continuing on with our radio the idea of using the radio for a way of retouching now come up here, come on new already I'm going to come up here and add plus to that exposure and I've got my default let's say that fifty poor nice feather and I'm gonna click and drag it on the outside not the inside probably not what I want so let's switch that to the inside and here is what it's doing to the eyes so click and drag out, click and drag out maybe reposition that one I can see that one right there where is it it is but andi, even on here we can come up here and maybe add a little bit of clarity maybe a little bit of pop to the eyes here, especially ones underneath glasses where we're losing a little bit of contrast and shadow so it's just once you come up with one it's going to keep those same settings so the fact that you can just drag around in the file with these nice little ovals if I wanted dark in the highlights here I can say new highlights down click and drag maybe add some clarity and now I am doing this little pop to the okay so they're actually because they're nice big software maybe even do his shoulder will come up here say new take the exposure down okay? And we just got rid of the highlight on his shadow um they're just nice big, soft and im going im tapping the wiki so are hiding those little adjustments here we are getting a refresh problem you know that there is a pin there but you're not seeing it and only until I click off it so here's that adjustment you can rotate it that's probably better to fit into it so you can see in that patch that's really cool if I was to do that with a brush, then I'd have to figure out ok what I'm going to do and now I'm just taking advantage of the fact I got this big fluffy oval and I'm taking advantage of it come up here and say new let's do a little bit of exposure he is getting mohr light because of the angle of his face in the light coming from the left she's a little darker let's hide that and let's do maybe a little global light on her that's just taking up a little bit of the exposure so again click and drag in your set if this is something that you can use, we just go you know and maybe you do you could do half a dozen setting, so maybe for the eyes like I did here with clarity, you do kind like what we did yesterday with that glamour work we did, we did things with the with the eyes where we added the clarity where we were taking it away from the skin um nothing stopping you from making those presets, so if you have a general eye popping preset nowthis is talking about a real fast workflow thes those you people who are doing senior portrait and stuff, you got to go through a hundred senior portrait and go to sleep at night, so having a little oval will you go drag drag? I'm next one not tango don't they're all shot under the same studio lights, you're going to sink ninety percent of those fixes, you know, the white balance, you know, the overall exposure you're going to fix one, select them all in our film strip on the left hand side, I think all of those now you're going to find tune for the individual ones where you couldn't do that before, and that may be the eyes, maybe whatever. So anyway, the idea of using a radio filter for expediting a very fast work flow with these big soft dajun burned color adjustments, maybe something that would work out well for you, okay, okay back, I think that was pretty much let's. See what else I did to this file in terms of those snapshots, that's, where we're anti exaggerated, that there there is even exaggerating a little bit more. So there is what we did, and here are the radio. So this when I did a fume or that is the face, we did the eyes, I did a little darkening. You're seeing aiming a little cleavage here, we went into the rose, probably added clarity there, there's our shoulder, you know, probably dark and a little bit of the tuxedo, so you can take that as far as you want in terms of pushing the radio. But that is, as I mentioned, all this is being done with the radio filter.