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Lesson Info

Color & Editing Theory

we're sitting here and we've got Ah, What I've got is a collection of images I created on the break. I created a said a demo file. Somebody's gonna have that geeky get into the photo grid view. So we've got some images here, and we're gonna work through a couple of these toe. Look at the process for basically working in color will eventually come in a little bit about black and white, and we're gonna focus primarily initially on the global editing. So we look at the global editing tools and then we will move into the regional and local tools. We're gonna follow our basic workflow by first concentrating on the local the global edits. So we'll work on the global that it's for an image. And then I want to switch to another image and walk the global in its again so we won't necessarily finished the editing to its entirety. But by the time we're all done with the full editing, workflow will hit those images and you'll see how they're completed. So I think this is just in terms of getting th...

at workflow down. This is a little bit easier way toe to figure it out. So I'm gonna grab this image right here. I'm gonna go and go into my editing tools so I can see here. I've got the panels here and they expand if I click on the arrow and then they stay expanding. So now I've got effects and details and I would have to scroll if I expand all these out, have to scroll up and down to the panels in this little sub menu Flower right here with a three little dots are if I come down Oops, I come down here and choose single panel mode in classic CC. For those of you were transition now that it's called solo mood right to single panel mode and I open a panel. And then I opened another panel. It will collapse the panel that was open, so it saves my scrolling epidemic. And also, as I said, I have like crazy O C. D. S something's available. I want to click on it. So if I can close the panel and stay focused on the panel I'm supposed to be and I'm not like looking down another panel of like, who? What happens if I work on that a little. No fixation on target for that. Okay, Starting at the top, we have something called a profile. So the raw file more you in the JP because it comes up with raw file is a really interesting thing. That's it has no color. And it has no information there other than luminosity values that were captured until something has wrapped around that. Rafa. Once that's wrapped around a color space is created, color is defined. And all of a sudden the image shows up because it's just that luminously that we have a way of reinterpreting that over and over and over again so we can apply different looks and feels to that those air profiles on the back of your camera have a camera profiling will say like landscape portrait, vivid. Okay, and that's to actually interpret how to actually kind of process those raw file those raw pixels that come in So in C. C. We've got in my room, we've got profiles. They used to be called camera profile, but now it's just profiles. They used to be in a different spot. They moved up in this version is great because right at the top one of the first things you want to select. The reason for that is this is the base starting point for the image. So if you change, if you work on this and you work on all your other global edits and then you come back and change the profile, all of those edits are gonna have to be shifted again. Because this is literally the base foundation for how we're determining what we're making in a baking analogy. This would be like deciding on the flower you're going to use to make the bridge. Okay, so if you big bread and then you decide? Nope. I wanted a different bread. You got to go back and bake the whole loaf again. So it's That's my little bread analogy. Too much Netflix. Great British bake off. Okay in there. Here's the ones that Adobe is to find, so I change those. You can see the actual image changes in terms of what it actually does for the color response, and there's even a monochrome. They're ignored a black and white. If I go to browse all profiles, though, there's some other ones. So there's artistic versions. There's modern versions and So once I decide on a profile, likely, let's say, like who? I kind of like that muted palettes. It's in this particular one. Click on that. And then there's a strength here for how strong do I want? That profile applied into my actual image. So I got a little flexibility here on how much of that profile, though I want applied to the base. I compare and choose modern. I'm like, Ooh, that's a little strong Some things back that off a little bit or I can even make it more egregious. But look at how much sky detail I lose as it reprocesses kind of where the white point is. That's why this one needs to be set up first because this is really that base piece. Now. One of the great things about this to make profiles back in the day was like really a lot of work with one of the recent updates. Now we can build our own camera profiles based on ah file that's opening Kamerad so we can go into photo shop, build a file created look up for color and all that, and actually save that out as a profile that existed light room, classic CC, so we can then import that into our CC environment. So the reason that would be important for somebody is, let's say, like you've spent your life shooting film and you've got a certain look of film that you like, and you want your photos to start off with a color palette of film, Kodachrome, probie or whatever. You could build a profile that has that look that would allow you to come in and experience what your film would look like is your starting point. The scope of building those is outside of what we're going to talk about today. But if you come into your if we come into the profiles, appear the admin Additionally menu is in here. One of the options is to import profiles. So if I choose import profiles, camera so on a Mac, it's in your user folder. Library applications support adobe camera Raw settings. If you're on a PC, it's in user. Romy Local settings. Romaine AB data. Adobe camera settings. Easier way to do that. If you're in light room classic where you created these under your presets, there's Show me my light room preset folder So that's where you would easily get to that. So in here, I created one yesterday called Sepia. So I'm just gonna go ahead and import that camera profile. So it's imported my profile. And if all goes well, I come back in here, browse all profiles, and I should see my We'll pretend like it showed up. It would have to restart C C. That's what it is. Profiles are red when the application launches, or I just really, completely lied. And it's talking. Browse all profiles. Yeah, It would normally show if they're under user presets, so I'll check on the break figure what happened? It would be there. And then I could choose that profile, So just imports it, but it has to be in light room. Classic. First, the under favorites? Uh, no, it's not under favorites. It actually does come under the peace there. Um, so anyway, welcome back because you choose that preset and I'll come in. I'll get that sorted out. We'll fix that. So, once that set, yes, I know his camera profiles. This have the traditional canon and Nikon profiles. Yeah, that adobe is extrapolated India. That's where they would be and there's even the Fuji profiles air in there now. So which is kind of once you set that profile, the next area we come down to is in the light area for editing, so we have exposure. Exposure is kind of the mid tones of the photograph, so it's the middle part. Contrast addressed. How flat or punchy should the overall image be? Highlights are the brightest, brighter parts of the photograph shadows or the deeper parts of the photograph in white and black to this area. Down here, these are the extremes of the image. So the way to easily note that is to look at a hist a gram. So if you hit command zero on a Mac or control zero on a PC, you can get the hissed a gram up and kind of show you. So the shadows air right in here. The mid the exposure slider mostly effects here, whites and blacks with the very edges. So that's kind of up the piece you're watching for. There's a little triangle here in the history ram, and this will show you what's called a clipping warning. So if you clip click on that and the exposure gets too bright, you'll see what turns red there in the sky. That means we've lost data, so there's too much brightness there, and we've lost tone and texture in the photograph. In general, we want to avoid clipping of possible if it's speculator and just like little highlights, like on the water reflection. Some like that. It's not that big a deal. But if I go to print this or export this, there's nothing there but paper. There's no ink that would ever get put on the page. So in generally we would try to edit. Not to that point, but artistically, you may want to completely blown out white sky. But for the most part, we tried as a general kind of rule of thumb. We say that we change the exposure to not do that so exposure's gonna move. Mostly, The mid tones contrast will make it flatter or more punching, and you'll notice it is contrast changes we could clip, so each tools gonna push the data that's in the file that may result in a change we have highlights, which is just kind of bright parts you can see. I can actually get my sky in her out. The white part also affects the sky. But just the absolute brightest parts of the highlight. And then the blacks is just the deepest parts you can see. I can make photo. How black Now again, If I hold down the altar option key, I mentioned you can get some alternative looks. So if I hold down the highlight key and move it for the highlight, you see where that just starts to turn blue up there at the top. That's telling me that it's starting to lose data, the blue channels being lost. Then when science comes in, there's two of the three channels or lost. And so holding that that object, he might let me get to the very edge or something is going to start to disappear based on the math behind the program. So there you could see it says I've clipped, but I am able to see Really, What is that? Because it is just speculator might not be that big a deal. Same thing with the blacks if I click on the black slider as I drag with right, If you look in the right lower right corner of that photograph. You see, black just start to appear in some yellow. So that's the point where black is first appear. Black is first starting to appear in the photograph. So if I set from a workflow standpoint, if I'm just getting started and I just wanna find a foundation to get my feet under me I usually recommend people come in and set a white point in a black point for set with that white in that black first appear is a starting point that gives you the contrast range in the image that tells you where black first appears in White first appears and then go work, exposure, shadow and highlight. And that's going to set the overall kind of experience for the photograph. So if I was going to do that, I'm just gonna grab the Black Point slider where Black first appears. I'll grab the white and dragged that up until just that little bit of blue appears him. And then I'm gonna go open, adjust my exposure for the kind of overall brightness. And so you see, now I move the exposure up. I have lost a little more than my sky detail, even though I set that point, the exposure slider is pushed the exposure a little brighter. So I've lost in detail up in there. So but now I've kind of got the luminosity in the middle of the photograph, kind of where I want. And even though that sky's blown out, I've got the main part of the photograph, which is that foreground taking care of. I'm going to use a regional adjustment later to fix the sky. But for now, I've kind of got that overall brightness there and now from Ah, highlight standpoint, this is bright, so that's a highlight. I can use the highlight slider and start to recover back some of that data, and then I might need to move the white slider to make that go away again. So I can use these tools was not a set and done. That's the other thing that people do in the workflow is they move. The slider may believe that once that sliders moved and they move to the next slider that that slider stuck. It's in the mud, and it's not moving. This is a balance, and it's a dance, not a crazy eighties dance for your shoulders. Move This is Lily. Just a normal dancing. I move this slider, I got this effect. Now I'm correcting for this, and I'm moving a little bit of this. So we worked this light area to get those individual pieces for that overall brightness exposure. If I grab a different image, see, like I come in and I grabbed this image here of a pinball table, same kind of thing. I'm gonna come in and decide. OK, I kind of like, say, I just like the landscape. Look, this is the one I want to start with again. I could come in and start with that option. Kings. He can't. Okay, I've got my black point. Kind of. Where's my white point? I can click on it. Here you go. They got kind of a highlight there, and now I can set my overall exposure. Now, I could cite kind of how bright don't want us. How much do I want to see into that pinball when I say I kind of like that. But now I've lost some of my highlight details. So bring my highlights back down a little bit. Just my white point a little bit. And then I decide artistically, I'm like, Wow, but what I want I want a real rich black like this stuff for this kind of reflecting back in here like I want that to just be jet black. I think that'd be a cool effect. In that case, I'm just gonna drag that black slider to the left and dark in that up and create that black. So you know it's not that stuff. It's in blue now. Is the shadow being clip? It's gone, like when it prints or wheat export. This bit's black is could be. Whatever the printer can create is the maximum black. That's what it's gonna give me in no detail. But artistically, I might be OK with that. And that's one of my issues with a lot of work flow pieces is it's working to this ascribe belief that I have to have all of my tones. They have to be in the right spot, but photographs or felt as much as they're seeing their felt. And so if I want this feeling of this rich, deep kind of I'm in a dark pinball hall and the reflections coming off of there and I want that deep black to come through there. I should edit to the experience in the feeling. And I do that by dropping that slider down to get that effect. So that's what that little light section areas for. The point curve down here is if you're familiar with light room ah, light room tone curve or you're familiar with Photoshopped curves. This is allowing you to come in and actually make a curve to build contrast. So if your below the line the midpoint of the Lancaster, you're gonna dark in something and it is above the line, you're gonna brighten it. So if I come in here and I bring this down, you could say I'm actually darkening the image or if I bring it up, I can brighten the image. This is the shadow area down here. This is the highlight area up here, and this is the mid tones down here