Lessons

Lesson Info

Post Production: Liquify and Selective Color Part 1

We're going to use liquefy multiple times today so just know that I'm going to go over this again all right? So get into liquefy you can either go up to filter liquefy or the shortcut is shift command x and that will open liquefy okay starting and cs six liquefy got a whole heck of a lot better okay and you can now use the control option keys to make your brush bigger and smaller and liquefy yeah, nice isn't it made liquefy move a heck of a lot faster. Okay here's a rule with liquefy use a brush that's the same size as the object you want to move bigger is usually better a small brush will drive you crazy. Okay, so I'm in the forward warp tool right now which is the basic tool within liquefy and ninety percent of the time what I use and liquefy ok, so I want to tuck in her back a little bit just straightener posture up a bit. This is one of the reasons I shoot on symbols paper guys because I can liquefy without having to worry about my background. So where do you start pushing julia? I...

can push across her face and make her look crazy. Okay? The way to do it is to put the center of your brush over the area you want to liquefy or slightly outside because what liquefy is doing is just pushing pixels so if you push the pixels that are behind the area, you want to go it's it's, more subtle oven effect it's not quite as obvious, and by using symbols paper, you can push those pixels around all you want because it won't really show up as well as as much. Okay, so I just straightened up her back a little bit. I'm going to reduce the size of my brush, bring this down a little bit. Liquefy is definitely an art, but basically, I just straightened her up a little bit in a matter of two brush strokes. Okay, I could do the same thing with baby start bringing in fabrics to make it look cuter. Looks pretty good to me. I'm gonna call it a day at that. Like I said, don't overdo liquefy it can really look bad. You don't want to make somebody something that they're not okay. So a heavier set woman she knows she's, heavyset. Okay, you don't have to if you make her look too skinny. She's going to be insulted. Okay, so you want to just make the best version of her? Not necessarily a skinny mom. Okay, so the next thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna focus on skin tone, baby, still a little red, my opinion okay yes just really quick before we get too far sure what was your pressure setting on your liquefy brush and do you ever adjust that at all? I'm like I don't know what it was it wasn't fif fifty I don't even really it's great auntie okay um yeah I don't even really pay attention to what I kind of used with the default is okay but you could use stylus pressure and that would probably allow you to feel it instead of having it set so you could the harder you press, the more brush pressure you're going tohave the lighter you press the less you're going tohave which is probably what I would do if I was worried about that but honestly I don't worry too much about rush pressure I usually use it at the default setting um get one of these get one of these they're magnificent yes if you could just tell us what exactly you are using working on a calm since teak it was my little present to me after the last crate of live I used to work on into us five they're fantastic you don't need a big one small one's fine matter fact I should be careful because heather michelle my painting instructor she's watching this right now she's cringing she loves the larger ones because when you're painting it allows you to be very large and free like an organic painter when I had my large one, I sent my tablet so that I only use this little area of the entire screen so and I used to drive her crazy. Get free, giulia, open yourself up! So now that she has taught me that more, I do like the larger tablet. But let me tell you, when photo shop you don't need it in painter yes, you do need a large tablet, but in photo shop it's not necessary. Like I said, I used to make my tablet even though I had a large one. I used to make my tablet only this big in the settings because I'm a small worker. I don't wanna have to go across the screen to do what I wanted to d'oh. Okay, so this is a sin, teke it when it's hooked up it's actually on monitor so I can go in here and actually I only have to look at my screen. I could do what I need to do right here should I want? Okay and also, when you unplug it it's an android tablet so it's pretty cool. It was my little happy me present to myself, but yeah, welcomes you always used at this angle and that's the nice advantage of the antique is that it does, it does go up like that the welcome into his five is a flat tablet. I'm not sure if they come with a little do they come with a little thing that pops up now it is, but, you know, that's on the ground, but it's just it's. Good. This is pressure sensitive guys. You'll see this when I use my spot healing brush tool how awesome that is. Um using a mouse is like anything with a potato. It really is. I can't I can't edit with mouths, but late last night I was doing that composite I think I was upto twelve thirty or one o'clock in the morning doing it, and the reason I was this is set up for creative life, so I plugged it in and it wasn't working like I wanted it to be like, well, shoot, I'm not gonna go in there and mess it all up because then steal b the tech guy here would be totally matter because we'll have to redo everything in the morning. So I had to edit that entire thing on my on my track pad, and I was seriously going crazy. Are you annoyed? So you get into habits once, and this is challenging at first to you that will confuse you at first, but give yourself a week. Okay just throw your mouths in the closet and force yourself not to use it and once bless you joan once you start using this you will just change you will change it'll change your work okay it allows you to be an artist with a pencil or a paintbrush rather than a potato okay imagine painting on a canvas with the potato you're painting a painting so seriously okay, so yeah so does that answer your question about our sitting about yes. All right. Okay so the next thing I'm gonna want to dio is ah just skin tone okay, so her skin tone is pretty good don't mess with it okay but the baby I do want to mess with now I know from working in in hue saturation in adobe camera there's not a lot of red in that little baby's still a girl skin is there but there isn't a baby here's where photoshopped beats light room by ten fold okay in my humble opinion there's something called the selective color adjustment tool and steal just showed me this really cool technique the selective color adjustment tool which is right here is going to be your best friend when it comes to skin correction okay, I need to figure out how to get out of my am my uh what did I just do here let's go my history go backwards master opacity change that's what I did okay, so the selective color adjustment tool over here is going to be your best friend when it comes to skin tone. Okay, you can go up to image adjustment selective color to slow down a little bit of scribbling frantically or if you have, if you go to a window and just click on adjustments, it'll open that panel and you can have all your adjustments as icons right here, you'll learn them very quickly once you start using them. Okay, so I'm gonna click a selective color and here's what happens? It puts a new layer, a selective color adjustment layer on top of my background layer. Okay, and what I want you to note what I did in adobe camera was a global change to the red, to the reds in the image I reduced the reds over the entire image. Now, because the reds were on ly in the newborn skin it on ly affected things, they're correct. Okay, I am still doing someone of a global change to the image, but this time what I'm doing is going into the red and adjusting science, magenta, yellow and black within the reds only does that make sense, so I'm about to go into the red channel and start fussing with the colors that make up those reds. So what that means is I can go into proper the properties panel opens immediately I can go into any of these color tones that exist in my image and start fussing with the colors that air within those channels does that make sense so I can go to my rent and start reducing my magenta and it's going to take the magenta out of all the red sea how baby just turned like a little green or I can increase it now there is some red and the little girl skin do you see that but not nearly as much as there is in the baby so I can what I typically do is reduce my magenta and then add or take away the white add black or increase white remember changing my value to lighten the reds does that make sense but with magenta removed from the wreck yes are you following me to repeat that? Yes. So I'm gonna start over because I know going over things more than once it's how you learn it okay, so again starting over with that said in a c r I started removing all red okay? So little analogy all the reds with red bowl gives you wings red ok in a cr now what I'm doing selective color adjustment I'm going into the red boo there's magenta, cyan and yellow and black in here let's start taking some of this out that's what I'm doing okay that makes sense I get analogy for you guys so I'm gonna go take some magenta and start removing it from my reds who take the gent out there's an ice cube let's get out of there okay take the read out take the magenta out of the red you laugh but I think because it's making sense now you go oh okay I get it I can also play with the value so I can lighten or darken the reds that I've played with here so as you can see just a lightning the baby skin tone a little bit is going to help reduce those reds even more okay now some babies this is really hard to totally do okay but what you'll discover is there is all kind of want to spill anywhere I would be travesty there's all kinds of other little channels including magenta now there's not always magenta in the skin okay sometimes there is usually it's in the lips ok but sometimes some babies will come in that are purple used to have a purple baby before there will be magenta in their skin okay so how I test that is I usually go into the magenta channel and start going like this and go is there any I don't see any change happening my image that tells me there's not a lot of magenta to that skin so I'm not going to have much impact here okay, but it's a good way to go in and check it out you can also go into the yellows and start playing with the reds inside the yellow channel toe repair the hair that you may have fuck ste with too much okay and fix it actually think it's pretty good there so that's basically how you start doing skin tone adjustments there will be times when you have to go even further and actually select just the baby so that nobody else's skin tone would be affected or start painting it off of using the brush to on a layer mask painting it off of other subjects so that they aren't affected but the baby is okay makes sense bring that little pink because you want some pink in the skin you know what the baby to look like death warmed over. Okay, so be congressman of that but that's basically skin correction. Okay, so then I was smashed those layers destruction central. Okay, if I'm happy I'm done, I smash him. Okay, now we have to start looking at the background here. So the easiest way to do this is tio duplicate your layer I use a shortcut command j or what you can do is a right click over here where is it? I don't do it this way so I'm like ours it duplicate your layer right click duplicate your layer now keep in mind different things will happen based on what your right click on so if you right click on the thumbnail different things they're going to come up than if you right click on the actual layer so don't think photo shops broken if you right click and go but it was there I know she's done it with married. Damn it! Okay, duplicate your layer it's two extra steps where I could just go command j im at my command j find okay, now I go into the brush tool all right? And make my brush nice and big. I select a background color by pressing option and then clicking. Okay, that just set my foreground color to the same color as the background and then in about thirty percent capacity so I can either go up here and drag the slider down or I could just hit the three key that automatically put my capacity at thirty percent. Okay? And literally I just start painting over everything. Yeah, it's a little slow. You see how it's delayed it's going? All right, now, come on. Yeah, and you're sitting here going, but ways second, you're painting over that child yep, I am okay doesn't bother me I fix my background, all I'm gonna do is mask it and bring it back okay because I duplicate my layer I can't apply what's called a layer mask okay if I see how my thumbnails here let's try the function thing again I'm nervous to do this now wrong one there we go it's it's the one key function not escape see this little how I'm highlighted around here this is a new skill that I just learned so I'm like oh uh little footballs you guys see that movie ace ventura pet detective he goes toe the mother's house of the football player and she made like football cookies he goes a little football thing in my house kind of like awesome anyway so when I make sure that your highlighted on your layer mask see how I have this like little square all right if I click over here you'll see that now my images selected now my larra mascot selected see that so just make sure you're on your layer mask when you do this okay so when I do that my brush to immediately get selected and my colors go to default black and white so since the layer mask is white if I start painting and black okay I'm gonna increase my capacity to one hundred percent and start painting away the child you can use the erase tool if you want but there's a little bit and basically bringing her back and I just fixed my background for the most part a little bit a little bit about here, and you'll find yourself kind of going back and forth. All I'm doing is going back between black and white by pressing the ex key so I can paint in and paint out. The nice thing about layer masks is that they are non destructive so you can go back and force. If you raise too much, you could just go at it back in by clicking on your brush tool and, um, and going backto white and painting back in where you were, you missed. So there we go. Okay. So history before after cleanup image. Okay, now I do often go in and look a baby's face, okay. And make sure there's no major mark's going on. He did shoot this at two thousand s o if you remember correctly, so we do have some noise going on here which disappoints me a little bit, but so be it. Okay, what I do often dio is going here with the spot healing bushel on fixed blemishes and things like that. This child is absolutely stunning. She does have some dark circles. So we're gonna go ahead and address that. I'm going to do way more to this image that I normally would for client just so that you guys can see what I d'oh now to to fix baby I will sometimes you know how they are you can see it right here on me go ahead and get my patch too will go in here you can see the shadows in here that makes the baby look a little frowny I will sometimes take those out or I will reduce them so to do that command j replicate my layer I just go in and with my patch tool highlight this usually in normal mode I switch back and forth between content aware and normal normal tends to smooth skin out really nicely content aware is great for background fixing okay? So I'll just kind of start getting rid of the shadows make it not look like baby so squished okay and then if I like it I'll leave it but if I think it's too much all kind of bring the opacity back down so that the frown doesn't look quite as intense, I've had parents reject images because the baby's going with me I'm like no talks talks never do that may be but I'm kidding but you get my drift so if you kind of calm down the the frown lines sometimes their forehead you know they for their heads get a little distorted when they go through that little tiny space so it can affect their forehead a little bit and so you'll butterfly like them then you'll get this weird shadow right here so you could fix that and sometimes they're in mama's arms are kind of half asleep they're not fully asleep in a room like that and you're like okay, I need to get rid of that so patch tool works great for that if you do it on the second layer you khun bring it back so it doesn't look so fake and plastic okay? And I just same thing for under eye circles so let's, go ahead and smash that down and start working on the daughter as well same thing she's got these little dark circles so I'm going to reduce them command j to placate my layer patch tool in normal mode I'm just dragging I'm just taking the area that I want to change and dragging it to a new area that has the same tone of skin ok and it's gonna look a little nasty it first it will be your you'll be like, oh, that doesn't look right that's okay, you're going to reduce the capacity you don't want to annihilate the circles because that's part of who they are I mean I have dark circles and you can annihilate line all you want, but on a child you don't want to annihilate it completely, so I usually bring the capacity back to about fifty percent or so just to reduce it but not eliminated completely okay other thing that I love to do is I's simple little dodge tool trick take the dodge tool in the mid tones setting around thirty percent and just pop that little highlight in her eyes and then at ten percent or even twenty percent you can reduce the size and create a counter catch light right here brush back and forth and then make it a little stronger right in the middle and that will start making her eyes just go boom glow okay it's pretty the other thing is I knew she actually has pretty good lines here is you can go into the burn too I'm totally gonna overdo it in her eyes here but that's okay at about ten percent and just paint in here to really accentuate this area you can even do lashes thirty percent and paint everything in to make it look a little bit more poppy when you blow that up it looks stunning. Okay? Child's eyes looks amazing obviously you don't want to paint it in where you can't see it now I would go with the dodge tool here and just highlight this a little bit but that's why this pressure sensitivity is so fantastic it responds to how much you're a pressure pushing down, the harder you push down, the more it applies the effect okay, so I can do it on that I to just to help them both punch a little bit but you can see the difference all of a sudden these little girl's eyes are like oh, you're drawn into her a lot more okay, so be it. This is probably too much for me to show you a client you should be like well, like it guys, but I definitely punched that up so that it looks like the light is just falling perfectly in their eyes. Okay? Especially on the final family image the art piece that they're ordering all this stuff gets done heavily to those images to standard at it's that my clients just getting on walking out the door no, I don't do this kind of thing, but if we're blowing it up to thirty by forty heck, yes, we do all of this. Okay. Okay. The other thing that I do is I take that dodge tool based on the dodge tool ten percent and just highlight that little lip right there. Okay. It's not as evident here on this image on some babies you highlight that little natural highlight that showing up on the lips you just increase it and all of a sudden their lips just looked like they're wet and glowing and it's beautiful. Okay, little tiny things that just make that add up to make the image go pop okay, okay, yes, fire away he's sharpening whatsoever occasionally sometimes depends on my mood. I know that sounds really bad. If the image needs it, yes. But if james doesn't eat it, then why there's? If it's sharp out of camera, then there's no need thio apply sharpening. If I do, I have a little clarity action that runs a high pass filter and all this stuff on it. And that tends to work really nicely. But on sharp mask works great, too. So, no, like most of my images that you guys see on the web and stuff, I don't even like you sharpening for web and all that stuff I don't even bother to dio. Yeah, similar question from phil birdie. Phyllis, who says you ever use the reduce noise settings in production? You know, I mean, I could in this image, I at home, I have a filter. In fact, I was just telling you earlier that I forgot the loaded. I mean, this is not my normal editing computer. I forgot to load the image on export your noise. We're on here I use those for for both mom and baby she's mean for mom and noise. Where should I need it in a situation like this were accidentally shot at two thousand years, so okay, so but noise where to me how does a better job than the actual noise filter in photo shop and you'll find this to be the case as you go on and tools to see new tools and plug ins come out the whole point of a plug in is teo for a company develop a product that does the job better than photoshopped does it I mean really that's what they're doing when they do plug ins so noise where to me does do a better job it's just personal opinions so you will find certain tools and techniques that you love honestly I think portraiture is worth its weight in gold it's so easy and fast I'm kind of bummed I didn't download it so I apologize for not doing that but it just smooth skin out unbelievably it's really you have to be very very very very careful not to overdo it less is more and always like when you think it's right reduce it by twenty percent seriously when you think it's right reduce it by twenty percent because it's already even twenty five or thirty percent it's always you think it's more than you always put it on more than you think you should okay so skin gets plastic and a baby I'm sorry it is not for sure don't proportional babies just they don't need it there little skin is best natural now having said that there is occasionally baby who comes in with dry, flaky miss on their faith on their body everywhere how do I combat that? I shoot it extremely shallow depth of field f one for two in a long line so I will shoot on a beanbag with an eighty five millimeter lens too especially if the body's really full of that flaky, wider skin if you blow all that out of focus it's gonna be a heck of a lot easier in post to deal with it, okay? Because they don't already be soft and purposely soft then you're only going to have to dealing with it on the face and maybe a little bit on the shoulders and that's it I will use portraiture on that baby that's the only time I will use it the key with portraiture is do all your patch tool in healing brush stuff first a portrait you should be the last thing that you apply okay? Because it fixes the final stuff and will smooth out like you know how you use the brush tore the passion and it kind of makes like we just did here it kind of makes it a little bit off portraiture will smooth all that out so use it at the very last thing you d'oh okay doc question yeah, I find a struggle with baby skin tone you know, if they have a bit of john does a lot of times the you know the force of their bodies are a little bit more yellow, then you deal with the reds and such to so how do you I mean, obviously it's with the sliders and such, but to make that even or how do you know I'm gonna show you? I don't have a baby that's totally like that, but I know exactly what you're talking about. The face will be yellow, the body's red in the hands of purple. Yeah, you're like, yes, and you just look at the baby comes walking in the door and you didn't wanna be bagging. You're like, oh my god, let's, wrap it up, let's, wrap him up tight so I don't have to deal with that internally. I know exactly what you mean and moms like but wait dio ours to deal with. I totally know where you're at, so I will one of the images that I want to come work on, which is a mommy image all I'll show you how to do it. I don't think the baby needs it, but I'll show you how to do it that's not good.