Building Lookup Tables
Blake Rudis
Lessons
Bootcamp Introduction
16:22 2The Bridge Interface
13:33 3Setting up Bridge
06:55 4Overview of Bridge
11:29 5Practical Application of Bridge
27:56 6Introduction to Raw Editing
11:00 7Setting up ACR Preferences & Interface
07:39 8Global Tools Part 1
16:44Global Tools Part 2
20:01 10Local Tools
22:56 11Introduction to the Photoshop Interface
07:13 12Toolbars, Menus and Windows
25:07 13Setup and Interface
11:48 14Adobe Libraries
05:57 15Saving Files
07:39 16Introduction to Cropping
12:10 17Cropping for Composition in ACR
04:44 18Cropping for Composition in Photoshop
12:40 19Cropping for the Subject in Post
03:25 20Cropping for Print
07:34 21Perspective Cropping in Photoshop
07:11 22Introduction to Layers
08:42 23Vector & Raster Layers Basics
05:05 24Adjustment Layers in Photoshop
27:35 25Organizing and Managing Layers
15:35 26Introduction to Layer Tools and Blend Modes
21:34 27Screen and Multiply and Overlay
09:15 28Soft Light Blend Mode
07:34 29Color and Luminosity Blend Modes
12:47 30Color Burn and Color Dodge Blend Modes
07:43 31Introduction to Layer Styles
11:43 32Practical Application: Layer Tools
13:06 33Introduction to Masks and Brushes
04:43 34Brush Basics
09:22 35Custom Brushes
04:01 36Brush Mask: Vignettes
06:58 37Brush Mask: Curves Dodge & Burn
06:53 38Brush Mask: Hue & Saturation
07:52 39Mask Groups
05:52 40Clipping Masks
04:11 41Masking in Adobe Camera Raw
07:06 42Practical Applications: Masks
14:03 43Introduction to Selections
05:42 44Basic Selection Tools
17:41 45The Pen Tool
11:56 46Masks from Selections
04:22 47Selecting Subjects and Masking
07:11 48Color Range Mask
17:35 49Luminosity Masks Basics
12:00 50Introduction to Cleanup Tools
07:02 51Adobe Camera Raw
10:16 52Healing and Spot Healing Brush
14:56 53The Clone Stamp Tool
10:20 54The Patch Tool
06:38 55Content Aware Move Tool
04:56 56Content Aware Fill
06:46 57Custom Cleanup Selections
15:42 58Introduction to Shapes and Text
13:46 59Text Basics
15:57 60Shape Basics
07:00 61Adding Text to Pictures
09:46 62Custom Water Marks
14:05 63Introduction to Smart Objects
04:37 64Smart Object Basics
09:13 65Smart Objects and Filters
09:05 66Smart Objects and Image Transformation
10:57 67Smart Objects and Album Layouts
11:40 68Smart Objects and Composites
10:47 69Introduction to Image Transforming
04:34 70ACR and Lens Correction
09:45 71Photoshop and Lens Correction
14:26 72The Warp Tool
11:16 73Perspective Transformations
20:33 74Introduction to Actions in Photoshop
09:27 75Introduction to the Actions Panel Interface
05:06 76Making Your First Action
03:49 77Modifying Actions After You Record Them
11:38 78Adding Stops to Actions
04:01 79Conditional Actions
07:36 80Actions that Communicate
25:26 81Introduction to Filters
04:38 82ACR as a Filter
09:20 83Helpful Artistic Filters
17:08 84Helpful Practical Filters
07:08 85Sharpening with Filters
07:32 86Rendering Trees
08:20 87The Oil Paint and Add Noise Filters
15:08 88Introduction to Editing Video
06:20 89Timeline for Video
08:15 90Cropping Video
03:34 91Adjustment Layers and Video
05:25 92Building Lookup Tables
07:00 93Layers, Masking Video & Working with Type
15:11 94ACR to Edit Video
06:10 95Animated Gifs
11:39 96Introduction to Creative Effects
06:08 97Black, White, and Monochrome
18:05 98Matte and Cinematic Effects
08:23 99Gradient Maps and Solid Color Grades
12:20 100Gradients
04:21 101Glow and Haze
10:23 102Introduction to Natural Retouching
05:33 103Brightening Teeth
10:25 104Clean Up with the Clone Stamp Tool
08:07 105Cleaning and Brightening Eyes
16:58 106Advanced Clean Up Techniques
24:47 107Introduction to Portrait Workflow & Bridge Organization
14:47 108ACR for Portraits Pre-Edits
21:27 109Portrait Workflow Techniques
18:46 110Introduction to Landscape Workflow & Bridge Organization
12:17 111Landscape Workflow Techniques
37:36 112Introduction to Compositing & Bridge
06:59 113Composite Workflow Techniques
34:01 114Landscape Composite Projects
24:14 115Bonus: Rothko and Workspace
05:15 116Bonus: Adding Textures to Photos
07:05 117Bonus: The Mask (Extras)
05:18 118Bonus: The Color Range Mask in ACR
04:54Lesson Info
Building Lookup Tables
One of the things that I wanna show here specifically is what we call a Color Lookup Table. A color lookup table is a very special type of adjustment layer in Photoshop that allows you to access things that have happened through multiple adjustment layers that have been clumped into one adjustment layer. Hard to wrap your head around. You'll see where I'm going with this in a second. I'm gonna go ahead and grab a new adjustment layer down here and right here it's called Color Lookup. You may have clicked on this before but I did nothing; I'm not going anywhere with this. I got nothing. Well, there's color look-up tables that are already preloaded with Photoshop and you can access them through here. If I click on this one right here that says load 3D LUT. If I click on this one it's gonna give me a look and feel to the image and change and alter that look and feel. You look at these 3D LUTs and you're like, man that's cool. Look at how it's altering, you know, the feel of this photograp...
h really quickly with one adjustment layer. What's happening there is a lookup table is a predefined set of actions that happen whether through luminance or contrast, color, blend if. All those things play into a lookup table. It's all these things that would happen in an adjustment layer but you just clump them into one and put them into something called a Color Lookup Table. This can be a really quick and fast way to color grade images. I have three places in my office that I shoot when I shoot my my videos in my office, if you ever see any my sales' videos, as I call them, or my couch videos where I'm sitting on my couch trying to tell you about a new course that I've created. What I do is I record the whole thing with the same camera with all the same settings. I come over to my computer, I have all the same lighting, all the time, it's a very stable light, come over to my computer, plug it in, drag and drop that video into Photoshop, I edit my own videos in Photoshop, and I add a color lookup table that I call "couch videos". That way I know that that's the one that I use to get the look that I have for my videos and it's always gonna be the same across the board. How do you make those though? Well, a Color Lookup Table best practices don't use masks. Don't use any masks. Don't do anything painted with a mask. You see these three files right here, I need to put them into their own group. They're basically a series of adjustment layers that need to go into their own group to be called a Lookup Table. What I'm gonna do for this because it's very difficult to do it on a video, I'm gonna show you how to do this by going on to just a regular photograph. So let's just pull in. We're gonna use this photo anyway. Let's pull this photo in. I'll go back over to here. I'm gonna take these three layers, I'm gonna press and hold Shift on these layers. Grab all of them, and when I grab all of them, I'm gonna press and hold Shift and move them over to this stagnant image. It's not a video, it's a stagnant image. That essentially is gonna be the color lookup table that we build for this video from the adjustment layers that we used. If I press Command + Control + G to put them into a group, that's gonna make sure that this becomes the color lookup table that I want and then I'll go up to File, I'll go to Export and right at the bottom of the Export you're gonna see right here, Color Lookup Tables, just go ahead and click on that. It's gonna ask you a series of questions, what do you want to call this? Let's just call it Test Lookup. Make sure you highlight all of that, just press Control + A, highlight all of that and press Control + C to copy it, this will come into play in a second here. If I wanted to copyright this I could put my name on it and copyright it to Blake Rudis. The quality is based on the grid points and basically how high of a quality you want this color lookup table to be. I usually just set it to high quality. You don't necessarily have to have all four of these checked. You can just make it just an ICC profile if you'd like, and press OK. It's gonna ask me, where do I want to save this to. Well, I'm gonna save it right here into the folder that I already have where all of this video information is. If I go ahead and just press Control + V, right there, I'm gonna call that Test Lookup because I'm not quite sure which one it is but one of these actually dictates what its gonna be called in Photoshop, and I'm not sure if it's what we called it or what we title it. So, I just make sure whatever I title it and whatever I put as .LUT and whatever I put as my description, they're both the same thing, OK. Press save. It's gonna do this weird thing where you don't see exactly what's happening. If I go ahead and delete this and go down here to color lookup and go to load from device link, if I click on this, it's gonna ask me where do I want to load this from. I'm gonna go over into our folder that contains our videos and we'll see inside the layered video this test lookup table? after I found it, I can double click it and now I've got that lookup table loaded. So, you might be wondering why you're gonna have to find it every single time. Not necessarily, you don't have to find it every single time. There is a place on your computer that's different whether you're using a Mac or Windows PC that is going to house all of your color lookup tables. These color lookup tables are not just things that get used in Photoshop, these get used all over your computer actually. So, what I do to find that, is I go to whatever my master area is on my PC, so that'd be the C Drive and I just do a search for something that I see inside here. I know for a fact that nothing else on my computer is gonna be titled, 2Strip.look. All we're gonna search for 2Strip.look, 'cause it's pulling this from somewhere right, and that's where I'll put those lookup tables. It ends up being like windows32/color/profiles/spool/ who knows if you can even find this place/ glad you made it here/ put this thing here. It's really, you know you just gotta kinda find these things but if you do a search for it whether you're on a Mac or a PC search for something that's a color lookup table somewhere else in here and then when you drag and drop that new color lookup table that you made it will show up under device link after you reload Photoshop. So right now you see it loaded right here under device link that's because I found it. If I were to turn this color lookup table off, it's not all three layers it's all the information that happened within those three layers. Can you use color lookup tables on other things, other than other than video? Absolutely, you can use color lookup tables on a regular still photograph. I do it all the time. I tend to use them a lot in my video process that's why I'm showing them you here in this portion of boot camp.
Class Materials
Ratings and Reviews
Robert Andrews
Blake Rudis is the absolute best in teaching photoshop. His knowledge and how he presents the instruction is clear and concise - there is NO ONE BETTER. Yes, his classes require some basic skills, and maybe I'd organize the order of (or group) the classes in a different order, but, let me be clear - if anyone is to be successful or famous in the Photoshop world, it should be Blake Rudis. I strongly recommend his teaching. I started photography and post processing in 2018, and because of this class, I'm know what Im doing. The energy you get when you create something beautiful is profound, it makes you bounce out of bed (at 4AM) like a 5 year old, to go create. It's a great ride! Thanks Blake, & Thanks Creative live.
a Creativelive Student
Amazing course, but don't be fooled into thinking this is a beginner's course for photographers. The problem isn't Blake's explanations; they're top. The problem is the vast scope of this course and the order in which the topics are presented. Take layers for example. When I was first learning Photoshop (back when we learned from books), I found I learned little or nothing from, for example, books that covered layers before they covered how to improve/process photographs. These books taught me how to organize, move, and link layers before they showed me what a layer was actually for. Those books tended to teach me everything there is to know about layers (types of layers, how to organize them, how to move them, how to move them two at a time, how to move them two at a time even if there are other layers between the two you're interested in, useful troubleshooting tips, etc. ) all before I even know (from a photographer's point of view) what it is the things actually do. The examples of organizing, linking, and moving mean everything for graphic designers from Day One, but for photographers not so much. Blake does the same thing as those books. Topics he covers extremely early demand a lot of theoretical imagination for a photographer who doesn't already know quite a bit about what he is talking about. Learning about abstract things first and concrete things later only makes PS that much harder to understand. If you AREN'T a beginner, however, this course is amazing. I thought it would be like an Army Bootcamp, taking you from zero and building you into a fit, competent Photoshop grunt. Now I think it's more like Army Bootcamp for high school varsity jocks. It isn't going to take you from the beginning, but the amount you'll get out of it is nonetheless more than your brain can imagine. I've been using PS for years to improve my photographs, and even to create the odd artistic composite or two. The amount I've learned in the first week is amazing, and every day I learn something -- more like many things -- which I immediately implement to improve my productivity and/or widen the horizons of what I can achieve. If you ARE a photographer who's a Photoshop beginner, I'd take very seriously the advice Blake gives in the introduction: Watch one lesson, and practice the skills and principles you learn in that one lesson for two weeks. THEN watch the next lesson. You can't do that of course without buying the course, so it's up to you to decide whether you'd like to learn Photoshop and master Photoshop all from the same course. Learning it first and mastering it later will cost more money, but I think you'll understand everything better and have a much more enjoyable ride in the process. As for me? I'm going to have to find the money to buy this course. There is simply way too much content in each lesson for me to try to take on all at once, but on the other hand I don't want to miss anything at all that he has to share.
Esther Gambrell
WOW!!! I've been purchasing CL classes for several years now and have watched HOURS of "How-To Photoshop" classes, but this is the first one I've actually purchased because of the AWESOME BONUS content!!! SERIOUSLY??!!?!? A PLUG-IN??? But not only that, Blake is SO easy to understand, and he breaks down concepts in different ways to connect with different people's learning styles. I REALLY appreciated this approach because I am a LEFT-BRAINED creative that has an engineering background, so I really connected to what Blake was saying. THANK YOU FOR THAT! There are TONS of Photoshop courses out there, but I found this one to be the most helpful in they way Blake teaches concepts so that you know WHY you're doing what your doing. I feel like he taught me how to fish with Photoshop to feed me for a lifetime instead of just giving me a fish to feed me for one day. This is the BEST overall PS course out there!!! Thank you!!!!
Student Work
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