Combining Adjustments into a LUT
Lesson 12 from: Advanced Adjustment Tips & Tricks in Adobe PhotoshopBen Willmore
Combining Adjustments into a LUT
Lesson 12 from: Advanced Adjustment Tips & Tricks in Adobe PhotoshopBen Willmore
Lesson Info
12. Combining Adjustments into a LUT
Lessons
Limit Brightness Range of Adjustments
13:24 2Change Black Objects to Color Using Curves
07:47 3Change Color of Object using Hue and Saturation
10:20 4Changing Color of Highlights or Shadows Using Curves
07:22 5Matching Colors of Objects
16:10 6Saturation Maps
04:32 7Using Equalize to Extract Detail
04:08 8Automated Color Correction and Matching
07:15Lesson Info
Combining Adjustments into a LUT
Now let's take a look at how you can take multiple adjustments and combine them into a single adjustment layer. This can be used for all sorts of reasons but one of the main ones is when you need to share something with a client that you did using let's say curves and human saturation and a bunch of other adjustment layers. And you don't want them to see your secret sauce that tells them exactly how to make the same kind of adjustment instead you want to hide it. They asked for it as layers, you're gonna give it to them as layers but they're not gonna be able to figure out anything about how you actually created the effect. You can do this anytime you use adjustment layers, you can also use the blending sliders, you can use blending mode, you can lower the opacity of those layers but it has to be something that could be created using adjustment layers and no layer masks. So let's take a look Here, I have an example effect. I just made one up, I'll turn off these adjustment layers, let'...
s see what it does here. I have a gradient map adjustment layer. If I turn it on, it replaces the colours in the image with a variety of other colors. Its opacity has been turned down to 20% and it's in darkened mode. I was just playing around. I didn't know I was going to get this result when I was playing but I just made it so it looked visually different. Then above that I have a black and white adjustment layer that is making the image turned black and white. But you see these two little squares overlapping. If you double click on them, I'm only letting it apply to a certain brightness range within my image and therefore it can affect the whole image. The main thing is I did something fancy there, I used more settings. Then up here is something called a channel mixer adjustment layer which is moving information from one channel in the image to a different channel and image. It's not really important how I made this. Look. I wasn't looking to make this, I'm just showing you something that is a complex uh effect that it takes more than one adjustment layer. Let's say a client asked for the layered version of this file that I made for them and I don't want them to know that it was these three versions, these three kinds of adjustments. I don't want them to be able to come into each one of these in a just how it's made ink over to this one and it just exactly how it's done. I don't want them to see any of that. How can I do this? Well, what I need to do is first the original image that's at the bottom. I need to make sure it's in a layer called background. This one is not, it's in a layer called layer one. So I'll click on the image that contains the original image. I'll go to the layer menu and I'll choose new background from. Layer. You don't need to do that. If the bottom most layer contains your original picture and it's already called background then above that, I need to make sure I've only used adjustment layers and that these masks don't contain anything, there's no black in them at all. And as long as I have that, then I can do the following. I'm going to go to the file menu. I'll come down here to export and there's a choice in here but I can find it called color. Look up tables and if I choose that, then I can give it a description. This description isn't important. Uh You can include a copyright if you're like but I'm gonna skip that And grid points. The higher this is the more accurate more similar will be to this adjustment. But the larger the file size we're about to create will be 32 should be fine. Uh and then down here we need to just choose one of these. I'm going to use the one called Cube. Otherwise, if you turn on the others, you're gonna get more than one file out of this. We only need one. Now I'm going to click OK? It asked me where to save it. I'm gonna put it on my desktop and I'm going to call it. Ben's lut let means look up table and I'll hit safe. All I have to do is remember what the name is and where it was safe because we're gonna need to access it in just a moment. Now if I want to use that, let's take these adjustment layers and turn them off and I'm going to do a different kind of adjustment layer. The kind I want to use is one called a look up table, it says color look up right there when I choose color look up it will give me a bunch of choices up here and one of them is to use a three D light file. Well we just made a three D lut file so I click on this choice and I just choose that top most choice called load it'll ask me for a file and remember I saved on my desktop, it's right there I had opened and now we have the same look within our picture but it uses just one adjustment layer. And if you click on that adjustment layer and you look up here for how is it made you have nothing. The only thing you know is where is that file located on your hard drive And what was the file called now, the reason they originally came up with lutz is that there are certain devices designed for video, like monitors, like a little miniature monitor that might go on a camera and if you made an effect like this, that maybe it's going to be applied for a movie. Their color grading of the movie. So it has a certain stylistic feeling. You could load that three D lut file into that monitor if it's supported lutz and it could apply that in real time in 30 frames per second or whatever on that screen to give the camera operator a preview of what it might look like when you're done. And you actually apply that later on. It was really designed for video, but now it's used where anybody wants to sell a preset to somebody and they don't want to reveal how it was made. They turn it into a lot and then they'll start saying oh a lot will fix that. Well that means nothing. It just means adjustment layers would fix it and they don't want to tell you which adjustment layers were used. But now you know how to make your own, let's
Ratings and Reviews
Alicia Orth
I've been using Photoshop for years and still learned lots of great tips from this class. Would love to see more classes like this.
Eric Johnson
Terrific - lots of great information. Way to go Ben!
Marco Basile
Really enjoyed how succinct and sharp the presentation was. Great information I hadn't seen elsewhere. Thank you Ben.