Lessons

Lesson Info

Selective Color and Curves

So I would live to touch on now a little bit of tone work with this image and then I'd love to jump onto the next image and approach the same kind of techniques but for a different look a swell so again, if you have any questions especially from you guys, the audience as I'm going because I don't take sometimes I'm like retouching his bar so I would love to not talk about adjustment cubs and adjustment selective color to create different times and looks on your photographs so I'm looking at this image now and no at this point I would say okay skin's good that has good and obviously have anything a little bit to it so if you can kind of visualize this done from the things I've shown you, um I would say that this there's a few things I would love to kind of work with with it and fast devil I would love to work with some of the color um I would love to add a tone to it to kind of enhance the area we were going for we're going for that fifties kind of sixties era first thing I would do and...

again it doesn't matter that what you do all of these things in is I would go to adjustment layer at the bottom here andi I'm gonna click on selective color this box up this window usually opens on the good thing about selective color, it allows you to individually select the color and then change each color within that. So the red, the sign and the reds, the magenta in the red, the yellow in the reds, it's, a really great tall for enhancing things like tonal color adjustments on what I like to do with this is I like to work with these bottom three again, whites, neutrals and blacks clicking on the neutral to start with and again, just talk going free the buttons kind of figuring out what will work for this picture. You can see that just adding a little tone either way works best no over to here, so just little tones, and I can start to see that what compliments so start to think about how colors complement each other is where things like when you were a young child and like primary colors, that kind of mixing paints together kind of know in a kind of how greenwood worked with blue and so forth and what compliments and it's just about visual idea. When I first started doing color processing on my work, I didn't want to do it right. It took time to kind of know exactly what I want out of my images and it's definitely something experimental. Two. So I'm gonna go ahead and start tumbling free these buttons and kind of seen what works for me and what doesn't and the good thing about on the neutral in this blacks at the bottom, you can pull out can add a dark background. And this is what I mentioned about the gray seamless that day. Is that it's great as an option if you only have, like, an apartment like freight. Instant. I have my roll over my balcony window right now, and I used one light on it and my apartment six hundred fifteen square feet were like crumpton that chute on. I can only have, like a certain amount of rose because there's just no room for everything. So the gray roll enable with me, too, go into it, put the light on it and have a lighter background pull the model off that and light from the side. I can get that grady and I can play around with the radiant and again thinking about that before I come in to be touching afterwards. So thinking about the ways that I could individually select, you could also use this. And do the math and then mask out her. So you just individually selecting the background just gonna give you a quickie sound clip that? Well, I'm gonna press, all right? So if I was to use the mass care and I just wanted to keep it on the background just to show you an example of what I'm talking about the mast always great, because it enables you to have the control over if you raised something it's just gonna be lost for ever. This enables you to add it back or, you know, remove again figure things we got the mask is the white thing here. So you've got your your tone on here, but she double clicking it opens then this is your mask that controls what's viewable. So in order to bring out, um, the tone off her and keep her background, we're going to go into the paintbrush tool here. And we're gonna have this selected on the black at the bottom here and in the opposite. Just remember that the black is the opposite toe wife. So whatever you were raising, one color works for one, and then you bring him back as well, so I'm gonna go in. And use that and just kind of show you guys how that all comes together so it's just little changes but I'm just going in and using that black to raise the tone and it's not that a parent until we kind of go in and worked with it but all it has changed right now is the background okay if you wanted to erase that and bring back the color you do the opposite he would click on white and then over again and bring that back okay that's just a little introduction to lay a mask but you could do that with he's saturation you could do that with maybe doing a curves thing for the skin and just to raise in the background so you just have it on the skin so this is a great tool to use overall all around to workflow we're back into selective color because I just wanted to introduce you to that bit you're making new layer because we just affected the background with the lame ass with that one again on selective color but this time I want to go in and deem or a tonal color or attempt to the blacks so I'm going to go in again and I won't know straight away what works but I'm just kind of figuring out as I go through I just wanted a just and kind of see what kind of time to be one and what I'm trying to do when I'm looking at is how is it relevant to the subject? How is it going to the era or what I was going for with the shoot so fifty sixties? You can't really define with the shoot because it's such a mixture of different kind of clothes and everything, but it has that retro era. So that's what I'm trying to replicate in photo shop, so by tintin the blacks will replicate in the old style photography that old retro tell me something a little bit age, but something cross process is the word I'm looking for. So if you want to go for this cross let's, look, cubs and selective color will get you to that point, so I'm happy with this being kind of a blue tint in the hair and the have bean a blue tone doesn't bother me, but again, if it did work in with you later mask removing it from the hair and leaving it wherever all she wanted and the same for the whites as well. I'm just going into the whites here and slightly off tintin the whites again to replicate that look before and after before and after that, he can start to see how that's kind of coming together now. If I wanted to further enhance my color and you can't even do this with curves or selectively, you can use one or the other. You can even do a different you can use color balance, definitely there's no one way suits all with retouch and I think that's very important to say, because I think when many people watch someone style, they try to replicate it, thinking that's, the way to go and it's not is all about finding your own style through photography, finding your own self for your technique for the way that you see models for the way you cast models for the way you process said and looks for a photo shop, it all comes together to make the final image, and the final image is the thing that matters the most. Okay, so the same thing can be said for the neutrals as well. So just going in and working with the neutrals again. So again, remember this that we've got white blacks and neutrals the only way I would use these reds, yellows, that kind of thing is if I saw, for example, if there was a yellow tent in the skin. There was a red tin in the skin I would go in and the same thing with the lay a mask I would adjust it and then remove it from the rest of the parts or remove it from the details of the eyes, the hair, the background so I'm just affecting the skin so it's all about selective control on your layers and how you work with adjustment layers it's all about control if you gave this to a client and they would see a ll this control here, they would appreciate them that more than you giving them in fact much file the adjustments that you you made so then if you do another images that you want having the syrians feel yeah, exactly what for example, if the shoot if I was to do a whole shoot on this background, the lighting's very controlled there's not much going on with the change, but I have done a lot to change the color so I would write down already making action, for example, so in action would be a good idea or you could even just write down because it's not something we're doing this like you can't really do actions for these things it's really hard to do anything like that this is what I said about manual retouch inaction is not going to give you this and actually is gonna give you color and tone and changes like that, but it's not going to give you affecting things. So when people say they're a filter for skin, is there a filter for that kind of highlight? That probably is to some degree, but it's not going to give you the kind of detail in professionalism that this is a short you could make a action teo get to like the gray extra layer called makeup, but they have to do it. Yeah, exactly. So if you want to do these making this action, what I sometimes do is if I have more to port image is open from a shoot, I work onto a time that I know I'm gonna use side by side. I'll bring them together and I'll drag this selective color action and just drag that tone over to the other one. The thing to remember is don't drag you mask over if you've worked on it, because it's gonna affect that for just drag this thing over and by doing that, just select this thing here. When you're doing that, you have two images opens select this thing here going to your image. Use the mouse to pull that over onto the next one so that's another way of doing that so there's so many different kind of work clothes you can do and I've only found out about a few of these in the last few years so I'm always improving my technique I think forty shots a huge thing that there's so many undiscovered things and it's exciting when I'm working for and I find new techniques to use in my photography so definitely something experiment with it take on board things that you learn from people online on workshops things like today and put them into your own work flow okay all right so now I'm just going to go and do a curves adjustment to affect color so I would be pretty happy with where it is right now if this was me, I would not go into curves with this image because I feel that selective college did its job but what I want to do is show you just to show you exactly how I would process it and we're going to be doing another image later on as well. So again, adjustment layer nothing up here because we wanted to control by they just met layer is gonna do that again remember what I said earlier about this g p what we're going to do now is go into the selective separate rgb layers so first I'm going to go into red and again, there's, no one way suits or here it's all about tumbling with that, moving the cub, figuring out what you want and if you don't move in the cup back into place on that line, so I'm gonna go in and just start moving this around and kind of figuring out. And I would say curves has the most control over cover because this sort of color, because there's, so many ways you can move this within our g and b that you can go in, and I mean, selective color is great for a quick thing if you want tonal range, but this gives you far, much more control. This is why, when people do photo shop actions, they mostly do things like curves, or they sell curves, because this gives you so much into your picture that this, like, millions and millions of ways, you can process images. Hey, it's, gonna go in and start affecting me, so I'm looking at the shadows and maybe a way, I content them start to see when I'm doing that, I'm tintin down here, the shadows have done and then on the green, I'm going in and figuring out how I would like the green toe look, and I'm starting to see a nice mid tone, maybe on the green, but not too much appear and then bringing that daniel sight see how that pulls the highlights out again so there's so much you could do with this tour that it blows my mind sometimes actually so yeah, just moving this around kind of figuring out and this image could go a number of different ways if you were going for another lot you could want a more colder time to the skin we want a more warmer time to skin you want a more warmer tone to the shadows? Kodai you know it's it's it's like so many possibilities with it? Yeah, when imagine you're like oh my god let me do it differently did you did you did you just stick to it once and move on? I try and be straight with myself because sometimes all I did one image and I think the first image we speaks for itself if you added a first image very well anything spied by that you're going that's gonna go for the course of everything else and you're gonna be successful from that point you start an image badly, you know that the rest of the set is gonna look bad so that first image he used make sure it's maybe one of your favorite images and that you know that the tone you add to that he's gonna work overall everything after that to go through this process for color grading and tony for most of your stuff yeah most of myself a lesson doing a black and white if I'm doing a black and white which I'm going to show you um a little bit lady maybe on the next one I'm gonna go in and do like a black and white but I'm still gonna use selective color because of the tonal range I use or I'm gonna use curves for the tonal range so it's working in between all these different things and all these different tours to develop your technique question if you're shooting for like magazines do they always end the same way or is that their problem that the color matches what you gave them that's a good question because I've actually had an issue with some magazines where it comes out a lot more dull I'm brighter and I would say maybe it's best to do a test print or get them to do a test print and just say you had issues with that or you would like to know and this again comes with calibration of your screen we have a calibrated screen it's gonna be a lot more true to what it looks like a print and true to what you're looking at um everyone screens different everyone's print is different and it all depends on how good they are keeping print is and screens and that kind of thing calibrated but yeah, that was a really good question actually