Lessons

Lesson Info

B&W Toning

There's also some times when I just want to push a color into the bright or the dark portion of my picture in this case I didn't necessarily like how the bright part of the picture is looking actually didn't want it to look so neutral there I wanted to look more like the lights in your house would look if you took a picture at night you know how they don't look warm so what I'm going to do here is for highlights I'm going to take the slider called hugh and I'm going to move it over to this is pointing out a yellowish orange now when I do that the picture won't change it all because what I'm doing is I'm choosing the color that I'm wanting to push into the bright part of the image but the slider below that tells it how much how strong should I push it in in that sliders at zero right now now if you want to see the color though there's a trick there's a hidden feature in here that lets you preview the court the color and that is if you hold down the option key and click it will act as if...

the slider below is set to one hundred meaning show me a lot of this color and I could move it around then and say well what color what I want in there not greenish not magenta oh there we go that's and we're in there that's the color, so holding down the option key when you move the huse slider is going to preview the color as if you had the saturation slaughter maxed out to one hundred, that could be useful, then we can dial in how much we want now, with the saturation slaughter, we already saw what it would look like if we max it out, so I'm just going to bring this up. Well, I look at the image and say, how much of that colored I want to push in the building, and oftentimes I just kind of moving back and forth, so I remind myself of what it looked like without oh so much, and I try to push it till it's too much and then back off because you never know if going further would improve the image unless you go too far. So I try to go too far, and then back off below that we have choices for shadows and that's, where I can force a color into the dark portion of the image. So in this case, the blue sky and the water, it would be the dark portion, the image and I don't always push colors into both, but let's just do it, see if it would help, so first I'd hold down the option, keen ultima windows and click on the huse ladder and say well I don't want read in there because that doesn't look natural to me this is pushing color into the dark part of the image who there the blue sky looks look somewhat interesting and there the water and stuff is looking into it remember this is what it would look like if he did it with a slider and one hundred we're not going to bring it up that high so it's not going to be this much so you don't have to go ooh I don't like it everywhere just look at the dark part of the picture I'm not looking at the opera house right and look at the sky in the water then below that we have saturation which is how strong do you want to push that color in there and so we can come up here and say, well how strong we want that I could bring it up to there don't know this image necessarily needs it but the problem with doing this is if we push color into the bright part of our image in the dark part of the image photo shop is not always thinking about this the way I would like to when it comes to the image because in this case we have a very specific object here that I'm thinking of as the bright parts and that's the opera house in the reflection of it in photo shop is thinking generically about bright ranges, so there is a slider right here called balance in balance determines where to the highlights stop and the shadows began when it's right in the middle and it's right in the middle of that brightness range. Where it's going to say, hey, this is where we're gonna stop applying some color and start applying it to the shadows. So if I take this in, slide it around, all slide it way to the left and then way to the right, I can control how far the color that's going into the highlights extends into the rest of the picture. So I'm gonna move that around and see if I can get the yellowish color toe, get into the opera house the most in the bluish color to be limited to the, uh, water. So you need to move balance around and just see what at what point is that we get a nice balance there, and once you have that, you might need to go in, find junior your other sliders because you might find you had way too much. Uh, in the end, we're not enough because you were being concerned about the opera house when you're moving this, and now you got it where it's not affecting the opera house, so you are now capable of fine tuning that so have hit this little button in the lower right of my preview to show you what it looks like the default settings this is with no split tony it all and then I'll hit that button again and this is what I just did to it I'm trying to make it so it's subtle uh you know it's it's not a massive change but can you guys see it and I like it more I don't know if you do or not everybody has a different idea of what a picture should look like but I like the opera house better when it has the warm feeling to it in my sky just has the tiniest bit of additional color in it makes sense split tony split town ing means shift the color of the bright portion of the image the dark portion the image or both and you don't always have to apply to both now if you combine that idea with the idea of converting to black and white you could get more interesting looking black and whites because instead of just being a neutral black and white where there's no hint of color whatsoever we can put a hint of color in the highlights and a hint of color in the shadows that is different in both of those two areas so this one has no color in it let's look at a few that do have color you see the warmth in this image it's, because of split tony, if you traversed the image to black and white first with that one little check box that was under the tab called hs sell, all the color goes away and then right after that, go to the tab that's called split toning, and now you could say let's, put a hint the color back in, and we can tone that black and white here's a cool toned black and white more of a green kind of tone, and this one has ah, warm highlights, I think like yellowish highlights in bluish shadows. If I remember greider from what I'm perceiving here and let's open each one of those and see what it would look like if we didn't use that tony. So I'll go here to split toning, and then I'll click on that little icon the lower right after the preview to say, what would it look like with all these zeroed out? And then I'll turn it back on that little icon down here to see you know that guy if you hover over it, I'll tell you it's gonna toggle between the current settings and the default settings, it says. For the visible panel, only what that means is on lee turn off the settings for the tab I'm working on don't turn off the ones I did over in this tab. Just this one and so clicking that toggles between zeroing out the settings that are there and having what you had a moment ago. And so here is just a black and white and there's a tone to black and white, and you can see it looks like the color that was put in there is kind of an orangish color in the highlights in a slightly more yellow color, but only a little bit more yellow in the shadows and it's a little stronger in the highlights than it is in the shadows. So this is a very similar tone in the highlight and shadow next one, but turn that off there's, just the black and white and there's the tone black and white. And if you look at the two colors that are being used, we have more of a yellowish in the highlights because you see what that thing is pointing to. And we have more of a scion ish in the shadows, and it has more color in the highlights than it does the shadows. Now I confined to knit, of course, wherever I want to move these around, and I could get completely different looks in this image it's sometimes useful, though, when you're moving them around toehold on the option key. So you can see it a full strength you really get a sense for what color in my pushing in there and you might say, well, I want a bluish looking image, so I'm going to go for this, you let go and then you're going to move saturation around to say how much blue looks right in this particular picture movement tells too much and then back off, then I'll go up to the highlights and say, ok, hold on option what color I'm trying to remember the blue I saw earlier and I would think what would go with that blew that khun somewhere in there and then bring this up again to say how strong should I get more on there and then balance? How far should it extend into those other areas? It takes some practice if you're not used to doing this, what I'd suggest you do is do a search on the internet for black and white photo or whatever, and you know how you could do an image search. We get hundreds or thousands of images scroll through until you see a toned black and white that you like, you just have it sitting there in your web browser, you know, smaller window off to the side and then move these sliders until your picture looks similar to the one you see online. Because oftentimes it's really hard to gauge if not used to it how colorful should this thing? Because you're too connected to the photo and your to thinking about the color where's when you're browsing online your brains a little bit more open and it's comparing it to other images that you're seeing that you're like, this one looks overdone this one looks just right and it's harder to see what's over done and what's just right when you're just staring at one image it's nice to see it in comparison to others so that's uh come useful? Then there was one final one let's just look at the colors that were applied so this looks like a yellowish in the highlights a blue and the shadows and if I didn't have it on there, it would look like that and I had to mess with the balance just a little bit tio get the control so we have black and white, which is just a check box found under the hs tell tab pulls all the color on your picture and then we have split toning, which pushes color back in. You don't have to put it in both the highlights and the shadows I happen to and all these examples, but it doesn't mean you have to when it comes to the opera house image, it might just be some yellowish in the highlights that kind of thing. Yeah. It's I find most people primarily use it for black and white, but I find it equally is useful in color. Just any found the dark party or pictured the color their bugs. You split, tony, uh, we'll allow you. Teo. Teo, get in there. Questions. We've done a lot here. Yes, we have. Ah, couple questions, actually, for about light room. And why? Ben's not easy in light room or when been uses light room. This is a photo shop one one class. So we're going to stay in photo shop. Adobe camera bridge. But when? When would you use light room? I guess in your own words defy outside. Yeah, if I own light room and that's. How? I organized my pictures. Anything you see me do in bridge or in camera, I would do in my room. Okay, but what's cool is light room has the same adjustment slaughters as camera so that anything I show you to do here. Any concept I show you equally applies the light room you just gotta figure out where is this feature in light room in light room. When it comes to the h s l sliders would say in the split toning sliders, they're in the developed module. Where you find all the other sliders for adjusting your picture and on the right side of your screen. Instead of presenting you with a series of tabs that we have to click through like we haven't camera it's just the long list have to scroll through, and in that scroll herbal list, you'll find the hs l slider sitting there, and you'll also find the choice called split tony, and they'll have the same general options. The one thing I should mention, though, when it comes to adjusting color, is that, um when I went up to the top of my screen and went to this icon here light room, you won't find the icon there instead. Let's say these we're the light room sliders, delicious salmon light room instead over here is going to be something that looks similar to a doughnut. It's, just a little like comet looks like a doughnut, and if you click on it, it's the equivalent to using this tool right here. If the donor is turned on, it means if you move your mouse on top your picture and you click and drag, it will grab one of the hs cell sliders and move it for you, just like that tool looks like a little donut. And it's right over by your adjustment sliders themselves if you ever see it, it means that if you turn it on and then you move your mouse on top your picture and click it's going to do something related to this adjustment and it's found not on ly in hs al but in other areas as well in life uh, so yeah, it doesn't matter if I'm in if somebody teaches me something and light room and I just happen to be working in a c r that's, it still applies a cr means adobe camera so light room is pretty much replaces bridge and replaces camera so anything I do in those two areas doing light room instead and that's a great thing to do that's what I would do day to day it's just this is not a light room seminar can you quickly targeted adjustment and then do whatever you want to do? How do you then turn off the target? How do you get out of that tool? Just switched to a different tool meaning usually click on the hand tool. The hand tool is the most neutral tool up there where if you click on it you can't damage your picture with the hand tool, so anytime I'm done using any of these tools, I just switched to the hand and that gets you out of it uh what other questions that we have an online how can you toggle on and off all the adjustments that you've made rather than those in just the current pain? Okay, what's coming here uh, it depends on what version of photo shop you you have because they've made changes to this recently and in some versions you're going to find a preview track box that's near the top it's up up for my mouse's moving around right now and that preview checkbox is like the icon I've been using that only turns off the settings for the tab you're working on, you can always go to the menu that's on the side and that's where you'll find a choice called camera defaults. You could choose that to get you to your default settings, and then you could type the keyboard shortcut for undo which commands he controls and windows type it a second time and it brings you back to the defaults and you could use that for before and after that's for old versions where you don't have the features I'm about to show you, huh? So camera defaults and undo. Then in the newest versions of photo shop, they added these icons and I'm not a huge fan of icons unless the icons are overly obvious and in photoshopped they have way too many icons that you're like what the heck does that thing d'oh especially if you look up here it's like what the heck is that supposed to represent? Well, it's supposed to represent represent a target? It's the targeted adjustment tool s o in a little cross hair usually means somewhere you click so in the arrow means there's a menu here so it's like a cluttered icon that doesn't really help s so that's why you hover over it to see what you have now. Having said that, it's kind of picking on the interface designers there's a good reason to do icons if you do tex you have to come up with a short word to fit in an area and photo shop isn't just available in english you have to make sure there's an appropriate word and all the other languages that it's available in in all that so icon's air just a good compromise in some cases case that one of the interface designers is listening like he has no idea. So anyway, we have these other icons let's see what they do first off notice that one of the icons has well, it might not might look like a tea but it's supposed to be a triangle in the corner it's just we have so few icons tio we're so few pixels to use to make it up that is a triangle and any time you see a tiny triangle it means that if I click and hold there's going to be more there right? So with that one, if I click and hold you'll see a pop up men you appear right now we're in single view, which means we could only see the after or the before and we can switch between these other views and weaken do it by either choosing these individually or just clicking the icon over and over because it cycles through those choices each time I click it it changes so let's take a look if I click their clique now we have a before and after side by side and the icon changes to reflect that it shows two things side by side if I click it again we haven't now we're supposed to be showing this side by side split down the middle click it again we have above and below again it's supposed to be splitting it down the middle and so on but there are ways that we can control what it considers to be the before and the after when we're in these and that's why this can sometimes look a little odd because right now it's not showing before and after because the before would look lousier than this let's say wanted to experiment at this point if I now have two versions of my image the one on the right is the after which means it reflects the sliders that I have here if I come in and do something like convert this to gray scale on ly the after side is changing, but here's what's cool if I want to experiment, I can take this little arrow that's here and do you see what it says says copy current settings to before that means take the settings that are currently on here hit this little arrow and consider that to be the before image so that before doesn't have to be the original, then I can continue to experiment maybe I come over here and I do split tony and I say on this image I'm going to come in hold on option and I see it only on that one side here she was a color that I like decide how much of it I want in there, and I'm comparing it now too the before that I want to look at and it doesn't before it doesn't have to mean default, and so I go in there and then maybe I say, well, I like that, but I don't know maybe I want a cool version instead, but I'm not sure so why not push those settings over to the before side with that little arrow and then experiment with a cool version to compare it to? Maybe I wanted to say I like the yellow highlights just not very much let's do blue shadows and then only bring a little in ten, and now I can compare them side by side. They're the reason why the before didn't show the default settings is it was showing whatever was applied to the image when I opened it, and when I opened it, we weren't that default setting, so therefore it was showing what I've done in this session of editing compared to what I had when I started this session of entity uh then if you decide after experimenting like this with these side by side that, well, the version that says after right now, I actually don't like that. I wish I didn't experiment and go with a cool image. I prefer the one that's over there that's called before, so what you can do is down here there's something with double arrows, and that means switch was considered before and after, and if I do that now, the two images swap, and if I get out of this view where I'm no longer looking at before and after us, which means go to single view that's the version I have because whatever is on the right side in this case or whatever's labeled after is considered to be your current settings, and so when I told it to swap them, I really said, I prefer what I had earlier move the sliders over to those settings right now. So that's, what we truly have. So what do we have here? We have a letter why that if we click on will split your view before and after, and so I could come here and get it to split down the middle, split this way, split down the middle again or show me just the one view, and if I want to control what's over on the other side in this case, let's say, I want to get the default settings over there. Well, what? I might want to do it since I don't want to lose this, I'm going to switch the two sides, so and then I'll take the side I'm working on, I'm always working on the after side, and I'll say go to default settings, and then I'll switch the two sides again, so now I just shoved the defaults over to that side. Usually the defaults will be over there. If this is the first time we've adjusted the raw file, if it's the second time you open it, then what it says before, it means whatever it looked like it the moment you opened it in camera off for this editing session, so here's before an afternoon and when I want to get out of it, come over here and she's a choice called single view, which you can get to either by clicking on this like on a whole bunch of times, or just by clicking and holding and choosing single view. So, anyway, that's kind of interesting it's a little more complex than a simple preview button, but it's a heck of a lot more useful if you learn how to use it. So this gives you your general view that you have, and then this icon means if I'm seeing two versions of before and after, take the after version and shove it over to the before side. So that's considered the before version because I want to continue experimenting. And then if you continue experimenting, you're like, oh, man, I really screwed this up back when I shoved the settings I wanted over to the before side. I liked it better. Well, that's, when you take this little thing and say, swap the two, take what's over on the before side, push it over to the after side, and then you just get out of that double preview view and you have whatever is labeled after that's always what the sliders air. Are showing so anyway that's kind of a weird icons velocity to do all sorts of weird stuff, but hopefully it gives you some idea just know that when you go in there the before is whatever it looked like when you open that file, and if that was not default settings like this being black and white that's going to be the poor all right, but I'm glad that that came up because I really needed it to get into it. It was a really good explanation. Somebody asked, is it more accurate to shoot in black and white in that? Or can you just adjusting it the same accuracy? Once you're in for the shopper, I would shoot in color, okay? Yeah, because then you have the information, right? Well, because otherwise, if I should have black and white, you're choosing your black and color to black and white conversion settings in your camera before you press the shutter and it's impossible to judge the best settings for an image before you actually take it. Well, I wouldn't say it's impossible, but you would have to go in there and adjust the setting that aaron the menu system for your camera before you took every single picture in order to make it look ideal, you say this one's got a blue sky, therefore I'm going to do different settings than this one, which is an overcast and doesn't have any blue in it and therefore doesn't need the blue to be emphasized. It's. Much better to adjust it afterwards. Uh, the only thing that might do is you could when you sent it to black and white. It shouldn't, in general effect, a raw file. Because the raw file is taking the raw data off your camera sensor, you could shoot rob, plus j peg, you'd get black and white j pegs, and the raw file should still have color. Uh, and therefore on the back, your camera, you could preview it a little bit. And maybe that would be useful for visualization, but otherwise, I always shoot in color.