Lessons

Lesson Info

Edit 02

This next photo will be a bit more in depth with like some local adjustments. We'll definitely be using the adjustment brush with this and maybe some graduated filters and whatnot. Because as you see it and you look at this histogram you can see all the exposure values or at least most of them fall right in the middle. And that's, yeah, it makes it a more challenging at it, but I definitely know my way around it, and know what to do. So, let's just jump in and do it. The first thing I'll do is get a white balance that I like. I really enjoy having a blue. A little more warmer blue, a blue hour. So like right there is pretty solid. And you can see that made his skin tone actually quite a bit more normal, a bit better. Another thing too is this was shot at ISO 2000. So, it's gonna be a little more grainy. I'll go through how to fix that in a second but that's something to note, mess around with the tint just looking at his skin tone right now because that's gonna be probably the most imp...

ortant thing to focus on dialing in. And even with that like I'll just do it before and after, before after you're already seeing a difference significantly in the colors and the contrast in a way, not necessarily in the exposure values, but the confident in the color values, it's, it's already looking way better. So again, that's before everything's pretty blue, That's after now you have a little more warmth than his skin. You have these deep? Like it's a blue, but it's still kind of these like warmer tone blue clouds compared to that. So anyways, let's just keep going. I think I want to, with the overall exposure it might be kind of cool to keep it dark. So let's commit to that and see what happens. Bump up the shadows slightly touch on the black slider there and the highlights aren't affecting too much, as well as the whites. It kind of just affects the same thing. Cool. So, and that's what we're working with before after let's go into the lens correction panel. Actually first let's crop it. So it's a little bit better frame again hitting the R key command six to open up lens corrections. We'll enable the profile correction. You can really see, sorry, I'll turn that off real quick. You can really see that Vinet right there. So enable that and we'll take it down quite a ways to keep some of that. Cause I do like how it centers Eli into the frame. Cool. And then actually kind of like it without that distortion, it just frames it up a bit nicer. Come back to the crop center. Here just a bit more. And then from there gonna go command seven transform tab We'll go to the vertical and change that and what that's gonna do. Oh, come on. What that's gonna do is we'll just bring the crop down a bit and you can see what it does there If I over overdo it, I wanna just bring his, I want it to feel like his face is a little bit closer to the camera than everything else in the frame. So something like that. So negative 14 and then I wanna change this horizontal to probably like that. And the reason why is because if you look at these grass right here, it's going all the way through the frame. And then there's kind of just a gap right here. This is just very minute details that I for some reason notice. So if I wanna get that grass a little bit closer to the top of this frame to fill in that space, to just create a more pleasing composition, I'm just gonna do that. So it stretches it out. It fills that side a little bit. I'll do undo it, redo it. So you lose this gap right here, which I don't really want and boom, the gap's gone. So that is beautiful. His head looks a little stretched, but I do like how close it looks. So I'm gonna go to that aspect, and do and do that. So negative five, it's a little too much. So we'll put it at like we'll settle at negative three. Cool. So if I undo transform, that's what it looks like. Nice little before and after I like that a lot. I think that just got that composition a little bit more title. It's subtle, but it's effective. So I'll try going into the color grading first command four. I'm just gonna push some warmth in the shadows to contrast against that blue. Well, actually I'm not gonna do that. I think what I want to do for this image is his face. His skin tone is warm and everything else other than the grass in the image is going to be cool. So what I wanna do is edit. So his skin tone is the only warm thing other than the grass and the image. So what I'll do is make everything else more warm keep his skin tone the same. That should draw you into the subject center of frame that much more. So how are we gonna do that? Excuse me. I think the best place to start is going command alt shift L, and then using the luminance to brighten his face slightly his skin tone, as well as command alt shift S to saturate it, not a ton, just very subtle. So now I'll come into the color grading panel and I'm gonna target the shadows and make them just a little bit warm. There's a subtle green tint to the warmth which I think is nice. I don't want it to be completely warm like a hundred percent. Hold on. I'm just, let's see right about right there. It looks really nice. Just a touch of warmth in the shadows. And then from there we're gonna do, I mean, let's see if the highlights really do do much. Yeah. The highlights actually look really good there. We're adding a little blueish greenish to it which looks nice. And then let's try the mid tones to see what it's affecting. I think with the mid tones, if I'm gonna do anything with them, it'll be on this upper left side where in between the warm and the cool. So they're kind of in this green zone. No, I think I'm gonna I think I'm gonna leave those mid tones alone, and then Yeah, let's get into a few local adjustments real quick. So I'm gonna hit K to open up the adjustment brush, and I'm gonna zoom in here and I'm this little hand you can hit space and drag I'm gonna get in on his face. Sounded weird. I'm gonna zoom in on his face here, and just brush that area that will be affected. So auto mask is on. I'm just gonna do that real quick. Cool. So, if you look here, his whole face is targeted. And one thing I'll mention too, and don't think I mentioned this earlier is if you paint off and it's like not where you want it, if you hold alt, you can erase it. So very handy gonna click O off, and then I might click O to turn off that green. And I'm gonna come into the exposure here and just notch it up. Boom. That's perfect. I do not wanna do much more than that. Maybe just slightly higher. So I'll turn that on and off and you can see how much of a difference that makes in bringing your focus to the subject. He is just has a warmer skin tone compared to everything else that's cooler in the image, and you just are drawn right to them. That is nice. It worked out perfect. We can come in here and mess with the temperature, the tint, see if there's a nice color cast. We can get on it to make it all that more. We don't wanna overdo it too. It's really easy to overdo it. So don't do that. Keep it subtle. Amazing. And then, like I said, let's fix some of this noise. So in the detail panel, I'll be honest I rarely get into this panel. I probably should more often because you have sharpening noise reduction all this stuff that probably helps your image look a lot better quality, but I just never get into it. However, I will reduce some of this noise. Let's just try 10. I think that looks better. And while we're in here, let's just sharpen it, since we're here. Cool. Yeah, that actually does help quite a bit with that noise reduction. The sharpening makes it look a little too fake or like too perfect. I guess. So if you look right here, turn that detail tab off. Wow. That makes a huge difference. I should definitely use this tab more often. So you see all this purple and stuff in his skin tone And I turn it on and you do not see that nasty purple in his skin tone. That is amazing. I'm wondering right alongside you all. This is amazing. So I'm gonna come here to the curves, and I wanna just make it a little flatter. It's already pretty flat, but I just taking some of this detail out of the clouds, and see if that might help it at all. Just make, give it a soft look. Yeah. Actually I do like that. I'm gonna make it a little more subtle, and maybe bring this midpoint down slightly. Don't wanna overdo it, but yeah, so that's, without it that's with it just softens everything quite a bit in the brighter areas. There's really not much bright area, but does the job so that's before that's after pretty solid difference. The only thing I notice is it feels a little on the green side. So I'm going to come to the tint, push it up to magenta before, after looking good. Come back into the color grading where the shadows are, and take it a little further away from the green. So before, after. Looking nice and the last thing I do, is I'll come into the HSL panel command three and I'm gonna command alt shift H for the hue. Now it feels a little too magenta, even though I just added magenta in to take out some of the greens but this blue just feels a little more, little too purple to me. So I'm gonna go command alt shift H target that blue click on it, and just drag it down very slightly to make it a bit more blue. So that's without it, that's with it. That's a good, subtle change. And yeah, I'm really digging how this is out. I'm really digging how this is coming out. And the very last thing we'll do with this is come into these graduated filters. I'm just gonna create a small subtle exposure of just plus 10. I'm gonna drag it right there, mess with it subtly. Maybe let's do like plus 14, and then let's create a darker one running from the bottom. So that's without it, and that's with it. That's actually a nice little touch, very subtle but it guides our eye from brightest to darkest. Even though, there's not a huge difference between the bright to dark. It definitely helps a ton. I don't really see much more want to do with this, if anything. So I will export that one and go to the next one. Here's the before here's the after, and there they are side by side. Oh, not yet one second. Oh Man. They changed some of the controls here. There's the, before There's the, after quite the difference. And there it is side by side. I just clicked the back slash key to do before and after. And then the Y key. And you can do shift Y to do all these different comparison modes, but that is quite the difference you can see on this left side, it was pretty much all blue. And now we have a great complimentary color against his skin tone with the blue background. And even the grass is actually a really nice warm touch to it. So very pleased with that edit, and that went from such a neutral exposure almost everything's the same to something where you can actually differentiate your subject from the background through the exposure values, and complimentary colors. Brilliant.