Lessons

Lesson Info

Photo Prep for Watercolor Painting

Here we are in the um develop module of light room it has these seven different modules to it the library is the same his bridge in the sense that conceptually that it's the organizing area of your images that develop is you're optimizing enhancing it has all the tools going top to bottom as opposed to a left to right in adobe camera it has the snapshots and presets over here like we had on the right hand side in adobe camera it also has this wonderful little preview window which you don't have in adobe camera and that's actually fantastic because it allows you if you do have either snapshots or presets and for those of you who have been in my light room five class and are waiting for my presets, you got one hundred of my level four presets, all the images, all that stuff but you still have yet to get from me my light room five presets they're not that many wasn't meant to be that big of a deal you got ten billion other things for me, but you're right you haven't gotten those those I'm...

going to do this weekend there's a little addendum asterix apology right there but in terms of the presets um the nice thing is with this a little preview and it is one of the benefits of light room over adobe camera as I just hover my cursor over if I've got a series of presets and these are the ones that I did give to everybody in my light room class, I can just simply hover over them and it's automatically going to show me even at my cross processing and all these things. So if I were to click, I would actually get you know, one of these, um, the effects so if I come over here and we'll just find, you know, little effect, you click on it and it applies although settings. So these air presets recipes much like the smart filter recipe that I created in photo shop. These are recipes that can be applied to images in lie room order became a raw these don't became were also has a preset stab where you can save your own presense or load in pre sets as well. So anyway, but let's, go ahead and let's actually get in that habit. This is our starting point, here's our snapshot tab and adobe camera raw. We used our little dog eared page icon in the lower right hand corner. In this case, if I want, I can click on the plus icon. We'll just give this a one meaning it's my first one that I've tweaked. I go yeah I wanted to save a copy of it before tweet and so I click on the reset button and click on it and this is exactly what I did in adobe camera I start off with a snapshot of the original image and then as I start to do variations on it now I can go toe my presets and let's say if I find a let's find you know kind of a high key maybe black and white see if I can find something else that I like so I'm gonna come up here I saw something that certainly is expressive here's muted and glowed and changed within an inch of its life I may come over here and, uh I had something like clarity and shadows are now in a get this funky color I'm really not crazy about that but we'll just say that I had been drinking heavily on uh and I liked it so I'm gonna come over here to my snapshots and I'll say click and here too and so now I've got this one and this version and you can keep doing this as much as you'd like so that's the power of both adobe camera has snapshots at their disposal light room also has the addition of this navigator preview window okay, but in this case it might just take my original file and we're gonna do a watercolor from this inn in for a shock, let's actually see if we can emphasize when we add that clarity actually, you know what I'm going to do? You can see what it's doing it's trying to find edges and exaggerate them. I mentioned this before and it's especially pertinent when we're talking about painting, I mentioned that there's this other way, this other engine not under effects but under our camera calibration area, the engine that you used that old two thousand ten used a different sort of clarity, and I'm going to use this clarity and you'll notice this clarity does a completely different effect than the new clarity ninety five percent of the time. The new clarity is way cooler with less artifacts, but in paintings where I want to do this edge and this extreme popping, I have found that I actually like the older clarity and sometimes even in skin softening, so sometimes newer isn't always better it's different? It does less artifact ing, but in this case, I like this look better than the other clarity it's giving me more pop, and since I'm going to do a watercolor, what I'm looking for is I want that edge to be sharp edge in watercolor is razor sharp, where that pigment starts and stops. And I'm a look at this and go, you know what? I want to emphasize that even mohr so I'm gonna go over to my graduated filter. I've already maxed out my clarity at hundred, and I go, I want two hundred I don't care what you say, I want two hundred and so well, what do you do? Well, you go over to the great graduated filter, which has the basic tango at its disposal, including clarity. I can say I want one hundred percent clarity here. You'll notice that this looks a little bit different than the graduated filter that you're used to in the new photo shop, because this is the old engine clarity. Remember, you can't combine engine, so this is how the clarity usedto work in light room three or a photo. Chelsea s five very, very cool that adobe is goingto let you combine these different, you know, processes in the same work, if not the same image, the same workflow course. The reason why they did that is that you brought toby going to be opening up images that you did, you know, five years ago and you want it don't want it to change when you open it up. So there's a very practical using reason you've made some money with an image the client says I want another picture of that you opened up five years ago you don't want to start over so it looks exactly the same and you can continue to tweak it so there's a very practical reason but in this case I've got my clarity up and I want to make it pop mohr I typically when you're using the graduated filter you come up here and drag down right like yesterday I did a little graduated neutral density to darken the sky so I started dark I went light halfway and I brought the effect in well this is my image and I want the entire image to be one hundred percent of whatever I'm doing instead of dragging down if I drag up wherever you start is one hundred percent wherever you end zero if I started a hundred percent and move up well then obviously the entire document is a hundred percent so all I need to do to double my clarity is drag up okay off my canvas now everything that's below which is everything is a hundred percent if I want more clarity because I'm greedy click click and I can add as many clarity effects as I want now that that last one island do because I don't need that but that shows you how I can come up here and add a dramatic amount of edge detail into a photograph in this case using multiple clarity's using what's known as the two thousand ten process okay you now know that nobody else in the world knows that don't tell anybody it's very cool in prepping well I'm here I'm also going to take that that saturation up because I'm just that kind of guy okay actually I'm pretty much maxed out on that and I think that's good I'm gonna leave thes little tones in here I like that this is going to be the start of my painting before I leave here I'm going to go ahead and create another snapshot so I can always get back to that here's my before and here's my after different there's nothing wrong actually like the ghostie original and I think I'd probably tweet that before this little thing this is bugging me right here don't like that okay again if I was in photo shop and it was retouching and I'd already done all these diffuse clothes and all this stuff on here and I wanted to we touch that out even though this has all the glows and stuff I'd have to do a kind of a unique retouching cause all these glows or interacting with each other if I come up here with the um knew not this's another this is a very nice feature I'm using the old engine two thousand ten I have the new two thousand and thirteen healing brush at my disposal so adobe has the processing engine that does all its wonderful color and tone work but it still gave me the radio filter and the new healing brush it didn't need to do that right they did that out of the generosity of their heart to say that I'm going to give you all the new technology and you choose what color engine use that's sweet I'm going to do the same thing there's this even though that's organic I think when I'm actually getting into the painting that's gonna kind of annoy me a little bit so um that's just going to going to annoy me so let's come up here with this tool and bring down our healing brush the green is what I use for teaching it's not part of the actual tool so that one right there and we'll get rid of that and again the h key allows me to hide and show so I can just find tune that so there is what we want now we're ready the film strip is down here I also just as a aside I mentioned the use of film strips and snapshots you have all my different versions over here here's my image down in the filmstrip if I wanted to actually output or maybe open up multiple versions of the photo shop there's nothing me at this at this point to say well, I actually you know what? I like all of these I'd like all of these to bring into photoshopped or do a test print or send email to somebody as a test I've got four different versions here I'm going to make four virtual copies I can either right click and create virtual copy or I can use the shortcut, which is command or control apostrophe two four and I can go to each one this was your question before and I'm just going to turn on there's my original turn on this one all of them have all my snapshots in it and this one will do that kind of muted. So now I have all of these different versions of the file and I can treat them exactly as if they were real files even though they're not taking up any memory, they don't really exist anywhere on my hard drive, ok, so and if I wanted teo, if I wanted to combine these, which brings up another great thing related to enhancing your image and people do this with tone all the time is they'll actually process one image multiple ways and you don't have layers and photoshopped you have your targeted adjustments, but sometimes you go well, I want this and this and I wantto do a good old fashioned layer mass just between two layers it's the way I've always done it please just let me take all these things and opened up in photo shop and do what I've always done youse later mass to combine the best of all the images and all you need to do is simply right. Click down in your film strip edit in now, you'll notice that these are working today because I have a catalog that's here and open this layers and photoshopped it automatically bring all your images in in registration in one document ready for you to do whatever you like in this case, I don't need to do that. I'm only interested in this one here, but that's how you would do it so I'm going to come up here and, uh, this is the one I'm interested in. Yes, there was question, I'm seeing different colors and, uh, little white balls on the film ship under your photos is black room keeping track of your different organizations that you've done in bridge? Yes, he's right here you these colors that you're seeing purple, green and all that those are the same colored labels that you saw me applying in bridge so the exact same things. When you get over to the library module, you have the ability to sort or apply different labels exactly the same, and you do the same if you'd fill to them and say only show me this color or this star ratings or whatever so exactly the same that's what you're seeing here in the library module rather than doing a little one there's a little teeny dot here and then the overall background is also colored that so very good you'll also notice he have the same little icons as we had in bridge that is saying that this has been tweaked and this one hasn't been tweaked and you know, so the icons are always going to give you information very, very good okay? And actually one I'm gonna open up that one and I'm going to open it up is a spartan object, but while I'm here we're going to do the more we can do more I wanted to do actually combining images you know, doing a collage in photo shop like again you've got you're beautiful foreground for your painting but you want to swap out the sky right? You want different clouds you got muddy overcast day or something like that if you want a nice, beautiful sky for your painting put it in before you started, he said. We're cloning, you know a real painter would painted in afterward just what they want, yeah, what we're not doing that, okay, we're cloning so you better know how to swap out of sky to do that and also if you've got a photograph that is you know really great there's beautiful this is the front of my house ever you go that's the that's the moment if I had a painting of that'd be great oh, you know the space in my house it's a tall vertical I want that exact shot with the thiss in this area the people here I want the exact scene but could you make it into a tall vertical with no distortion? What have you been smoking? Yes you can because a lot of people don't know about content, aware scale and for painting or any kind of photography with a special painting where you go this needs to go here and I've got the story remember, I've got the story it's either compromised on whatever you can do amazing things with content where technology and photoshopped that a lot of people don't know but I think well, let's continue on with our water color here and then we'll save that for after the break something's in photoshopped that ninety nine point nine percent of the people on the planet don't know that will allow you to do amazing stuff with both your painting and your photography okay, so back to right click in the filmstrip edit in here all your options and in photo shop you can set a default one this is the last one I used auto painter that's one of those mobile aps you should get that for your iphone or your android auto painter awesome cool, they have auto painter one, two and three I'll show it to you after lunch um dynamic like these are all little aps, including snap seed. If you're really tricky, you can look google, snap seed and see if you can get the download for your desktop version. Google stopped selling it as an option, but there are certain ways that you might be able to still get it open. A smart object in photo show that's what we want to do we like the smart objects we've been using that if we had more than one image selected, you'd have the emerged to panorama and put a shop merged hdr open his layers when I had all of those tulips selected, we had open his layers is an option I'm not just going to do excuse me smart objects ok, so this is going to be a little refresher for our watercolor technique and then I'm gonna extend it with another. We're going to combine two different techniques before the end of lunch before we break for lunch, okay, so we've got our original here we're now not dealing with the mixer brush we're now going to go backto our pattern stamp tool for me it's the best one for water color you got a beautiful one. Subtle. My image is all set, I've optimized it, it's. Great. Um, how do I get this photograph into this brush so I can paint with it? Define to find pattern. Very good. It's. Exactly right. The pattern stamp tool, by definition, uses patterns. The only patterns and built into photo shop are bubbles and tie dye. So you're gonna have to come up here and go edit defined pattern. I don't even bother naming it because it's got a big, old honking picture. So you just come up here and then with that tool active, you come up here to its options bar and right up here at the top, one of the options is it's asking you, what pattern would you like to use? So here are other paintings that I've used. You gonna come down to the bottom and very bottom and there's our tulip. And now we have it loaded into that brush.