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The Non-Destructive Workflow in Photoshop

the other thing and fine art printing that is more critical. I think that if you're not printing is a truly nondestructive workflow light room, always nondestructive photo shop, not even close to not nondestructive. The things you can do to pixels and photo shop is just wrong. You could do strange things to them, but when we're thinking about printing, we need that to be is nondestructive as possible because every decision we're making on every layer, if we go to print and something's not right, we need to get back into that point and do the work again. And in some cases you may end up with 15 2030 layers in a file and imagine having to go back and spend hours recreating that if you even could recreate it. Most people, if they've got a destructive workflow, can never recreate the image they had before. There's just too much little tweaks and what they've done to a saturation layer, a cloning layer, a healing lee or whatever they've done. So the nondestructive workflow is pretty importa...

nt. The other thing about working with a print and this is workflow in general. We fixed luminosity first, then we fix color, which is Hugh. And then we deal with saturation. Luminosity will mask the actual color that's there. And when we're dealing with prints, whether they're a chromatic or full color, that is incredibly important that we understand what color is there before we start to correct it, change it or anything like that. So we start with luminosity first. Then we move on to color, which is Hugh, and then we just saturation. If you adjust saturation hue and then monkey with luminosity or vice versa. All bets are off on how many times you gonna come in and have to correct the loop on that. Because if you look at the print and you say the prince to saturated and you did saturation first and then you have fixed the saturation will, Now the luminosity is gonna be off limits up. So we're trying to get a workflow that's gonna let us move in a consistent way. The other piece we want to do from a nondestructive workflow is we do global at its first. We then do regional. So think about like a Grady. It would be an example of a regional, a significant part of the image and then we moved to a local adjustments. Local adjustments are done, like with a brush with smaller. If I have a portrait, I'm working on somebody's eyes and fixing blemishes, those air kind of local. And then finally, we have saw proofing or output specific adjustments. So one of the great parts of a nondestructive workflow is we talked about these papers, you're gonna have multiple papers. Well, as you'll see when we start to talk about soft proofing, each one of these images is gonna have a different look when we go to print on a different paper, a matte paper in a glossy people are gonna have to. Different things are gonna happen. We print. So because of that, if we do a nondestructive workflow, I will apply different adjustments at the end. There called the output adjustments that are specific to that paper in that printer. So that way I can have the exact same Master Photoshopped file or the exact same light room file, and I have a set of layers or a virtual copy for printing to one type of paper and one for a different type of paper. And I'm not having to rebuild the file and work with the stuff down below. In general, it's gonna be a much more effective workflow and allow you to have a lot more versatility than having to come back and tweak 40 layers trying to get the output right. So we're gonna have those pieces. So that's kind of what we're gonna quickly take a look at. We're gonna jump back into, ah, photo shop in light room and take a look at how we go about all of this kind of stuff. I'm gonna start with Photoshopped because it's the scariest of the tools because printing out a light room is awesome. Um, there's just a simplicity to it. They made things a lot easier in there. So it's one of things that oftentimes recommend people do is actually print out a light room. Luckily, thanks to the credit cloud subscription, we get in both. So even if all you did was print out a light room and re great, Okay, When we're thinking about printing and we're getting to the stage where we're ready to print, there's a couple of things we need to start to think about. Um, we need to start to think about output sharpening is one, and that's a critical one. And the reason for that is when ink hits paper, it starts to spread out, so it hits the starts to spread out. So output sharpening is solely about offsetting the amount of ink spread. That's gonna happen. So is it hits. The paper starts to spread out the sharpening that's being applied there. The lightening and darkening the edge of the pixel is all about offsetting that it's not to enhance anything. It's not to make things better. It's so that the level of sharpening that I have had on the screen after I did my capture and creative sharpening is reflected in the print. A glossy paper absorbs less ink than a matte paper does theirs materials that are applied to the glossy paper that has the flu higher on the surface and not absorb in. So Matt papers ink spreads out farther. Then a glossy papers does so. Matt Paper needs a different level of sharpening. The glossy paper does some other things that impact whether or not you need to sharpen the size of the print. So the size of the print dictates the level of sharpening, and eight by 10 print needs to be sharpened less than a larger print because of the viewing distance. That's another element we have to figure out how far away am I gonna be? The print, the standard viewing distances twice the diagonal. So if I want an eight by 10 it's about two feet. If I'm on a 20 by 30 I'm about six feet away. Unless you're a photographer and then you're viewing distance isas faras your nose and then you're like, I think it's a little blurry. Okay, so photographers, they don't count. But everybody else is about twice the diagonal. So if we take a look at this image and I turn on a sharpening layer, that's a 25%. I'll zoom into 50%. All zoom into 75. So I 100% would you say that looks a little over sharpened. Okay, it's sharp incidents of billboard, so it's sharp insulin. When you're driving down the highway at 75 miles an hour, that'll look relatively sharp, so it's not under sharpened because of the size the prints gonna be done and what it's uses. Is it over, sharpened for pretty much anything we would ever come out of a printer. A standard printer, absolutely. But that viewing distance, the size of the print all become important to that. That's one of the reasons why it's extremely difficult to get set up for your actual workflow if you're working and trying to figure this out from a sharpening standpoint, talk about some tools we can use. I had written a number of actions. I tried a number of things that sharpening. But I have relinquished all control of my output, sharpening to some third party tools because I need to know the resolution of file the viewing distance. The size is a bunch of things that happened in there, and then they're all done differently. So because of the different types of sharpening, they get applied. I really sticks. I don't come in and apply just a unsure mask or a smart shopping like I used to. And then I would print and I'd be like, That's not quite right. Futz with it. It's not quite right. Futz with it. It's not quite right. There's actually some third party tools, employees that do that for you so when it comes to output sharpening, which is, I think, one of the most challenging parts of the actual file preparation. We're gonna go ahead and relinquish that to some third party tools, and I'm gonna demonstrate those. It's also why I love light room. And I'll explain that little connection in the second is that kind of makes sense from the output sharpening all those variables come into play. We have to think about those. It's also one of the last things you do. I talked about it earlier in the process, but it is the last thing we're gonna do after we re size to the final size and photo shop is gonna be applied. That sharpening. Okay, I haven't Amy cheer. And I have got a quick little action I'm gonna run just so you can see an example of this isn't the complete workflow, but from a nondestructive workflow. Uh, I just want to show you kind of a potential work for a lot of this could be done now in camera raw. So I had to do a lot of the adjustments here in camera raw, but I end up with a layer stack. I'll make this a little bit bigger here. And you can see this. It would do you just edit this photo? Just the basic level. What I've got down here is major image corrections. Um, de spots. I don't ever need to see a despot again. I mean, sure, I could probably sell the one with dust spots for more money and some gallery somewhere some avant garde new photography. But I don't I'm gonna do input sharpening if necessary. I'm gonna set a white point of black Point. Was that the maximum contrast range? Now, what's important in there is you can see that white points in black points, the blend mode set for luminosity. I'm going to adjust a mid tone contrast also set for luminosity. I'm gonna make my hue adjustment. Remember, we do luminosity, color saturation. My hue adjustment curve is on Lee adjusting. Hugh, my saturation is only Justin saturation now come into regional adjustments. I make my local adjustments, and then we get to the top where the output adjustments are. So the output adjustments are specific outputs for the paper and the printer. And if I'm in this case, I'll turn off leave on my upward adjustments. What? I'm pointing to a glossy paper. I'm gonna go ahead and just turn on my glossy folder. I'm gonna have those two adjustments get made and I'm good to go. If I'm gonna print on my mat paper, I could turn that off. I could turn on my mat paper adjustments and make the change in general when we switch from the screen and we're gonna soft proof, which we're going to turn on here in seconds. We can kind of see what this is gonna look like when we go to print to paper. Two things normally drift, saturation, drifts and contrast. So this is kind of the two. Big change is the other big changes sometimes see is a your shadows, they're gonna block up, they're gonna lose detail. And that's a contrast element. We're gonna talk about what causes that here in a second. So that's why when you look at these adjustment layers were really looking at just the two kind of independent elements there, it's usually saturation and contrast. I don't want to come back down here and start adjusting all the stuff down here because this is the master file this is what set as if the file was great. So the adjustments I'm making now are solely about paper. If I come down and try to fix it down here and then I output for the web by output somewhere else, I send it to a different printer. I've got to come back and tweet the lower level. So that's why that nondestructive peace, and we're gonna make these adjustments at the top. Okay, so that's just it up. Kind of a high level little workflow piece. Okay, let me come over here and find the relief fund photograph to demonstrate this with the library. So here in Seattle, we have one of the most amazing libraries. And to say that they used a little bit of red color on one of the floors would be an understatement. This is the least read part of the floor. Um, but a wonderful, really amazing space settled tonalities and things like that. So I select the same is because this is gonna be I hopefully an easy way for you to see a little bit about soft proofing before we jump into an actual emergency. How we applied Because there's a couple of things to get your head around with this in photo shop. If we're going to go to soft proofing under the View menu is a proof set up on a proof set up. It's always set to, uh, custom by default, and it starts off to see him like a seem like a has a very small color gamut compared to our printer output space. So it's always a little weird. If you don't make the adjustment, you're gonna come in and select custom, and then you're gonna get up here. The information about soft proofing soft proofing is not 100% accurate, but it is pretty darn accurate to help us understand what's gonna happen when the print when it goes out to paper. What it attempts to do is because of those profiles we talked about. Photo Shop is aware of the printer profile. It's aware of the screen profile, and what it's able to do is say simulate and show me what's gonna happen if I send it to the paper again. Not 100% accurate. But if you saw proof every time, you're gonna waste a lot less paper without soft proofing I'm just gonna say, Let's plan on printing 50 sheets of paper with soft proofing. Let's plan on printing about six. If you have money to burn 44 sheets of paper, I will give you my address at the end of the show. You send me the 44 sheets and I will do a stock before you give the one back work great for both of us because I get a lot to free paper. Okay, under approving conditions device to simulate in here all my profiles. This is one of the annoying parts about photo shop is. I can't select and just show a limited number ones in light room. I can, But in this case, let's say like I want to print on Let's pick a nice people. It's pick a the new ah, it's typical hot press break. So Epson's hot press bright for a 79 100 printer. So this profile is specific for UNEP since 7 999 100 printers of the ultra Kaing set and they're hot press bright paper preserve RGB numbers. I don't want to do that because that's gonna not allow the translation toe happen. Then down here is my rendering intent. Like I said, the only ones we worry about is relative and perceptual saturation and absolute or used mawr for design work. And when specific colors are called for, Black Point compensation needs to be checked. And the reason for that is the black point for my screen and the black point for the paper different. And what this does, is it says read to me. The value that you can create is your deepest de Max black on the paper and simulate what that looks like because, let's say my screen shows me a black value of four, and the papers, means anything between four and 14 is gonna be compressed and lost with detail. So in order for me to see that I need to see the compression on screen and then this is the part everybody hates because right now you know there's a little shift there, but then we simulate the paper color. Oh, no, it's not. You see in the background we have even done the exciting part. Yet you could see it starting to flatten out the contrast. Simulate paper color. Remember one of things we talked about with paper was the color of the paper is that a neutral paper is at all bright paper is they got more warm tones, more cool tones in it. So the I c C. Profile the paper has that. So it's gonna use that information to help us with display here. Now move that out of here. The two different rendering intense do two different things. What they're dealing with is colors that are out of gamut. That's really what the question is, colors that are out of the gamut. What am I going to do with them? Relatives says, bring him to the nearest reproducible color and leave kind of everything inside pretty much intact. So the in game it colors hold their truest color value. The at a gamut. Colors come to their closest point that is produced Volendam. It Perceptual says. Let's bring everything in and just kind of compress everything to get everything in the game. It's so in gamut. Colors may also shift a little bit more. So. Which ones do you pick was like? Well, those both sound like they might be good. Images that are highly saturated usually do better with perceptual images with ah lot of more neutral and gamma colors usually do better with relative parametric. It also depends on the relative size. This image has a lot of at a gamut, so it's probably going to do better from perceptual. But I don't know that. So one of the beauties off having this technology where I can actually see it on screen is what I want you to watch. Is this area down and here on the floor? Because this stuff on the edges, they're pretty saturated, pretty even. But what that's actually interesting in this image is that subtle set that subtle shift from picking up some pinks in the highlights there. If I change that to perceptual, you look at the floorboards relative. Okay, you don't see a big change out here on these walls, but in that floor, you see a little shift. So what I'm looking for is, which one do I like better and which one does not appear to create an artifact? There are times if you have highly saturated colors and smooth gradations in your in relative and it drops in and clips out at the next level. You end up with these banding elements across your sky because it wasn't able to compress the tones. It just brought it to the nearest one. And gradations are not as smooth as we think they are. So you may end up with, like, gradation in a little line. Where's out a gamut. More duration little line. In that case, perceptual may make more sense. So you gotta look for no artifact being introduced. And then which one has the more pleasing result? In this case, I love the additional separation I see down here on the floor ads element of sophistication to the color palette that's in there. And this is, ah, hyper image. Anyway. So any amount of sophistication and subtle separation I give to the photograph will give it a little bit more interest in the long term viewing because I'm asking a lot of the viewer to stare at this print because of the papa color. Okay, so I come in here and I select that perceptual. Okay, Then I can come in here and I've got proof colors. So, command, Why control wife? You're on a PC. I hate command. Why? So there's before and this is with a soft proof when I do that, turn that on and off. You see how it has the absent hot press up there? So when soft proofing is enabled, it's actually showing me the profile there. Now you can see I've actually kind of lost some saturation, and I've lost some contrast. Okay, So what I'm gonna then do with my output adjustments over here is I want to attempt to help fix that a little bit When I try to make sure I get some of that contrast back some of that saturation back so I can come in on my contrast this case, I just have a level adjustment to make it fast and easy. And I'm just gonna bring that down a little bit, okay? And then I do command why? And I'm like, Wait a minute, why don't I do command? Why now that adjustments still in the image And I can't figure out if that's closer or farther. So this is the nice thing Jay John, Paul Kappa Nigro said to do so. John Paul Cabernet grow is a brilliant printer. Do a file duplicate are sorry and Amy's duplicate doesn't matter what it's called. This is a reference image at this point, and then I want to take those two. I hope I can do this. I want a tile that's Tello vertically. I'm gonna bring this web, detach it, reattach it. I'm showing you how you actually can not successfully use the pallets in the shop I'm touches. Okay, here's my original. And now I have two images I can look as when I make the adjustments in my file. Now I have the original look at to determine how close to mine the adjustment. So if I come back into the Seattle library now, don't dog come over there. Well, I'm in the wrong image. Come into this one. Now, I can come in and start to make some of my adjustments and try to get these two to match as close as possible on the screen. So that starts a little bit closer. I would futz with this I foot with saturation little bit, but the interested time I'm not gonna fix all of that. But my goal is to get this image with that adjustment layer. And those adjustment layers as close to the original is possible. The reason for that is that way. When it goes to print, what's on screen should come out of the printer and b What I was expecting out of the original image and that's the key with saw proofing is I'm The adjustments for soft proofing are going to make the image look wrong. So these adjustments that I dismayed you know that image? Where are they? They're there somewhere. I turned later, on and off. It's gonna not look correct, because I have made adjustments specific to the paper. So I turn those off because Miami's look okay, I turn on the soft proof adjustments I made. The image is gonna look more saturated. More contrast than I expect. But thats OK, because I'm fixing that specifically for the print. Okay, a couple other things with that, I'm gonna go back, grab this image. One of the other things that people use when they're doing this work, grab the original image. Photo shop has a gamut warning. So if I come in and actually turn on under the view menu, I've got this game at warning command shift. Why? Control shift way? What's in gray at this point is out of gamut, so these are the things that are gonna be significantly altered by what's in and out of game it. So if I turn that on and off now, here's the problem with a gamma warning. No, I'm not a huge fan of the gamut warning. If it's 0.1% out of gamete or it's a 1,000,000, points out of gamut, it's great. There's no difference there. So it's extremely difficult to understand how a amount of compression am I dealing with by using the gamut warning. So again, no trick on this is Ah, you're back. If I take back this image we had here, if I turn on that gamut warning, you can see I've got some great gamut there. So I'm gonna zoom in on this area over here, Okay? If I turn that gamut warning off, one of the things I can do This is the other thing that, uh, JP mentioned. If I take the saturation now, remember that what's basically in the Reds is out of gamut, the greens or not. If I had apply a hue saturation adjustment layer and I start to move it, you see how the Reds are not impacted at all. But the green start to change. Take colors that are out of gamut will not there already beyond the saturation point of what it could be rendered. So it's not going to affect those at all. So if I want our start to understand how far out of game it's something potentially is, I can move that slider back and forth and see. At what point does it start to have an adjustment happen? And when does it not have an adjustment happened? I can start to see how far out of Gammon is it gonna be. So that's another kind of technique to play with that that element.