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Lesson Info

Selective Lighting: Teeth and Eyes

Let us say that we did levels or curves, but the image still needed some areas that needed to be a little bit lighter a little bit darker, for example, here's our original image tells him in a little bit more, she can see there's our original image, so I added what I like to call an empty adjustment layer, meaning that I added an adjustment layer, but I didn't change any of that particular adjustment settings at all. What I did was change its blend mode to something in the lightened category, so lighten that part of the image or something in the dark and category two dark in that part of the image, and then using the included layer mask I can conceal or reveal that extra little bit of extra lightning or darkening wherever I wanted in the image. So as I turned these layers back on, you'll see which part of the photo I've affected. Ok, so watch her teeth area so we did a little bit of teeth lightning. I'll turn on the next layer, watch her eyes a little bit of I lightning, specifically o...

n the irises. I do this to every portrait and last, but not least a little bit of whites of the eye lightning can see the before and after there. So let's take a look at how to do that you can see over here my layers paint all these adjustment layers just keep stacking up they really don't add a whole lot of fat to the file size of your photo shop document because they're really not field with pick fools you could do the same technique by duplicating that image layer over and over and over and over and over but when you duplicate layers full of pixels you will add a lot of fat to your file size may not be a big deal for you if you've got a really big honking computer their new one thoughts of hard drive space so let's take a look at how to do this on the turn all these visibility eyeballs off and we're gonna go back down to our half black half white circle at the bottom of the layers pale and my goal here is to pick the first adjustment layer that's not really going to do anything to my image unless I mess with the settings inside the properties panel ok that used to be levels but brightness and contrast now the sliders air set to zero so that doesn't make a change on your image either so you can use either brightness contrast levels or curves one of those three does not matter which one you pick lets this go a brightness and contrast since it's the first one in the list immediately our properties panel is going to open and we're going to close it right back up because we don't care now we're going to talk up to the top of the layers panel and from the blend mode poppet menu, we're going to choose something in the latin category because our goal here is the light in her teeth and it's not so much that these air categories per se but the first blend mode in these different sections there's a little bitty line that davies among the first blend that in those in those two section gives you a clue as to what's going to happen to your overall image. If you pick a blend mood in the dark and category here, you're going to produce a darker image than you started out with. If you pick a blend mode from the latin category, you're going to produce a lighter image than you started out with so for select is lightning you're darkening it's really easy to remember where to go. So for this particular technique, screen mode works really well, so easy way to remember that your lightning go the lightened category go down one to screen immediately the whole image becomes a lot lighter, okay the layer mass that comes along with this brightness and contrast adjustment layer if we fill it with black, we're going to hide all that over lightning across the whole image, then we're going to come back with the regular old breast tools that to paint with white and we're going to reveal the lightning on lee on her teeth so let's, go ahead and fill that layer mask with black toe hide extra lightning we just applied to her image. You do that in a couple of different ways. You want to click to activate the layer mask and you know it's active because it has that extra bracket around it, and then we're going to choose at it phil from the eu's pop, it means you can choose black black will always be an option. There you cannot. You would have tried very hard to remove that option from that menu, said she's black and click ok now our lightning is completely hidden with the mask still active way. Have the breast full active if it's not active already, go ahead and press b for brush, take a peek at the color chips the bottom of your tools pale and you want to set white to your foreground color jim a couple different ways you do that you can click the little curved arrow to flip flop them if why happens to be your background color nor you compress the ex kate of flip flop them ok, so remember in the realm of the layer mask black conceals for high it's white reveals or shows, so I'll zoom way in my person command plus, I'll use my space bar to move around within the image while I'm zoomed in and we'll zoom in even more now we're going to come way down and brush size that pressing her left bracket key or if your brushes small already may not need to do this, you do want to make sure that you have a soft edge brush chosen so up up, up to the brush, preset picker and options bar and make sure that you've got one of these fuzzy guys active doesn't matter which one because we change size with keeper shortcut and there are a bunch of different keyboard shortcuts that you can use to change sides is that I'm a creature of habit, so I like the bracket keys okay, so we are set to go here now we're going tio mouse down to her teeth and we're just gonna paint across the teeth when I'm doing these kinds of techniques or working with a layer mascot all I always keep two fingers of my non mousing hand on those bracket keys so that I can quickly change burst size on the fly if I need tio and if you mess up and reveal too much of the lightning, do you have to start over techno let's say, for example I got distracted and I painted down here and revealed the lightning all you have to do to hide it again is changed a painting with black black conceals fight reveals so that I can come back across that area and fix it. And of course, if you're doing this for a client you would soon incredibly far in and you would use and incredibly small brush and you would get in between those teeth, especially if you're charging by the hour him again. Don't let your client seeing you do any of this because they'll say that only took you five minutes yes, but they need to pay for the expertise in all the years it took you to learn all this stuff, right? Ok, so let's, call this one pretty much done seeing back out now, in my opinion, these teeth are a little alien bright, you know, with all the teeth whitening stuff when you see models in magazine as and photos like this it's like, oh, my gosh, fluorescent white teeth and that's all you see teeth. So what I like to do is lower the capacity to where the retouch looks riel okay, so maybe down around thirty five percent in my opinion, this will differ depending upon the teeth that you're working with so here's our before and here's our after cain so now let's do the exact same technique, but on the viruses of her eyes, and you're gonna want toe do a different adjustment layer separate adjustment layer for each piece of the photo that you're correcting, because while thirty five percent capacity for my teeth, lightning may look good thirty five percent capacity for my iris lightning or the white of the eye lightning may not work, so if you do each piece on separate layers and it gives you the ability to find team that so that the re touches look riel or if you give the photo to the client and they say, I want my teeth brighter and whiter than that, then you can pop this document back open because you've saved it is a photo shot file with all of your layers intact, and then you can go in and you can up the capacity of just that one layer without having to start over. I'm not a fan of starting over. I hate that. Ok, so let's, do that again. Let's, grab an adjustment layer that will not immediately make a change to our image so you could use brightness and contrast, you could use levels, you could use curves, so we'll go for brightness and contrast since its first go ahead and close up that panel that opens let's change the blend mode. To something in the light and category screen works really well for this selective lightning that we're doing so well to screen. Now we're going to fill that layer mass with black, and this time let's, do it with a keyboard shortcut, so take a peek at the color chips at the bottom of your layers can and make sure that black is on top and then the keyboard shortcut to fill it is option delete on the mag are all too back space on a pc, so now we're going to come in with a white brush, so take a peek in your tools panel. The brush tool is already active, and we're using the regular old brush tool. There are several tools in the brush tool set, but where he is in the regular old brush tool, and then we're going to take a peek at the color chips at the bottom of our layers pale and make sure that white is on top because black conceals and white reveal saw press x zoom way into your image by person command plus or command equal use your space bar t move around in the image once you're super faras aimed in again with a soft edge brush, this technique requires a little bit of patience because you want to make darn sure not to lighten the rim of the iris. It's really, really important with this technique in other words, you don't want a light in that part because see now that's creepy so I can press x so that I'm painting with black to reveal that part okay, I only wanna lighten the colored part of the irish staying away from the rim then you don't really want to lighten any of the eyelashes either, okay? So we'll come over to the other eye, go up a little bit and brush size don't paint over the people that would be creepy to their ego now to me, that's a little too strong all right may look good it to some other people but to me it's a little bit over during but again, since you've had the wherewithal to do all this on separate layers just drop the opacity so down somewhere around fifty percent here's our before and here's our after this is a great thing to do on people with brown eyes don't you feel like you are going farther into her eyes now then here doesn't it feel like you get a hard stop? You know you can't you can't see into those eyes not that they're not beautiful, they are, but if we light in just the iris just a touch, then we feel like we can get a little bit deeper into the into the photo least in my opinion so let's, do it one more time and let's, lighten the whites of the eyes. Ok, so we're going to make another empty adjustment layer, which simply means that we're not going to adjust the sliders for that particular adjustment. Change the blend mode to screen set your foreground colored shipped to black option, the leader all back space on a pc to fill the massive black, which effectively hides the lightning that you just did come in with the brush tool seem in your space part and maneuver position the image, white said, white, is your foreground color, nice, soft, fluffy brush and paint across the whites of the eyes. This is really great for somebody who has a lot of red in their eyes. Maybe they didn't get a lot of sleep last night or what have you? And you're really just giving them a few hours of extra sleep with this technique there? Maybe they had him a little too many frosty beverages the night before the photo shoots, and they've got a lot of red in their eyes. This is a great technique for seniors, because as we age, you know our eyes, eight are the rim of our irises becomes lighter, so you could do a little selective darkening on the irish rim, the irises themselves can become light. So you could do a little darkening. The whites of the eyes start shifting color a little bit as we age. So on senior portrait's, I always do this, but again, way too strong of a defect so let's drop that opacity way down. So even down around forty percent here's our before and here's our after so they're very, very subtle retouch is, but I hope you can see that they make a huge difference. So a question from june is, is there a way to lock the original background layer so that no changes are made to it? Often times what I'm making, it changes to an adjustment layer? I notice it actually, that it jumped accidentally to the original background layer that was selected and changes made to that one. Yeah, well, first values need to be cognizant of what layer is currently active in your layers panel. I mean, just keep glancing back over there, you can lock a layer, the background layer is already locked if you've not double clinched that layer, like if you've just opened the photo and you've not double clicked it to make it editable, then it's got a padlock on in any way, aiken diskette over god given there it is, you can see it right there. If you're dealing with another layer, I'll just go ahead and deeply duplicate that layer if you click to activate a layer than you can use thes layer locks appear at the top of your layers panel and you can lock everything so if I click this padlock I can't move the layer around that's what that I can't means I can't paint on it and I can't do anything with any pixels that might be transparent okay, so you could click that and that keeps you for making any changes to that later the question was from david lo hall which was when would you use the blend modes versus the actual adjustment so again I know there's lots of ways you can do a number of different things that's a great question I would always do I would try to get as close as I can to perfect with other levels of curves first or the color correction method of your choice again if you're shooting in rock don't do this stuff here doing kamerad it light round in after bringing in then you want to do the selective retouching and if you're like you're insane you can think of that as you know just what you didn't light room you know you make your exposure changes right and then with ease with the adjustments brush or even in camera rotti you could come back in and start doing localized changes so do you global changes first with levels curves? What have you and then come in later and do your selective adjustments or your local changes, so I'm working with image number be inside the folder number six selective lighten and darken we haven't had any darkening yet, but we will, so we're going to zoom in so we can see the first area that we're going to work with, which is teeth here and we're going to go ahead and click the half black, half white circle with bottom of your layers panel, and we're just going to choose one of the adjustment layers that doesn't automatically make change to our image in this case, brightness and contrast. So now we're going to change the blend mode layer blend mode, which simply controls how color on one layer interacts, cancels out blends with color on other layers, so if we choose a blend mood in the light and category, we will lighten their overall image just great for teeth and eyes so let's, go ahead and choose screen from that menu the whole image gets lighter, so let's go ahead and fill that automatic layer mask that tagged along with the adjustment layer let's fill it with black so that we hide that lightning from the whole image you need to set your four round colored ship to black the bottom of your tools panel a quick peek at the bottom of my tools panel reveals that black is the background color chips, so I can simply press the ex key to flip flop for them so now let's fill that mask with black by choosing or pressing rather optionally on a mac are all back space on a pc now with the mask active, we're going to press bead activate the regular old breast tool we're going to take a peek at our color ships and we need white for our four grand chip because in the realm of the layer mask, black conceals and white reveals, so we need to be painting with white trying to the options bar to the brush preset picker make sure that you've got one of the soft edge brushes active it doesn't matter which one of these three they're just different in size that's all we're going to change size with a keyboard shortcut, which is the right bracket key increases size in the left bracket key decreases size so let's go ahead and put a coat of white paint across her teeth and again, if you were doing this for real money, you would zane really far in be incredibly careful try not to hit the gums, though, because we don't anybody don't want anybody to have super light pink gums or white gums, and if you happen to reveal a little too much of the lightning say for example, I brush across her lips and I don't mean to you then you can simply press specs to flip flop your color chips so that black is on top and you can hide that extra lightning again. So when I'm working with layer masks like this, if I don't have my fingers on the left and right bracket case to adjust breast size tonight I've got a finger on the ex key because when you're working with a layer mask, you'll do a lot of flip flopping your color tips. Now that retouch is a little too strong, so let's drop the capacity of that layer and let us do practice good layer naming habits so let's, go ahead and double click quickly on that layer name, which is brightness and contrast in this payment teeth lightning that way you know what is happening on those layers now let's, go ahead and add another empty adjustment layer will use brighton and contrast, we'll do the same thing again. Close a property's panels at the blend mode to screen fill that mask with black and now let's have a go on the irish of her eyes again painting with a brush set toe white be very careful not to touch the rims of the iris or the people's for that matter use the space bar to move over in your image once you're zoomed in and we're just going to reveal a little bit more color and like I said earlier I do this technique on every pair of brown eyes that I encounter sometimes it's really nice to do on other colors of eyes as well but sometimes brown eyes can be so dark that is just seems impossible to see into them a little bit not that there's anything wrong with brown eyes I love brand as my husband has brown eyes now that's a little bit overdone so we're going to drop the opacity way back on that so quick before and after peak we're at forty percent of the opacity of that layer so there's the before and there's the after it's subtle but it does make a difference so we'll double click that layer name and name it iris lightning now let's create another adjustment layer same thing blend mode said to screen fill the mass black to hide it all set your four grand colored ships will flight and now let's reveal some lightning on the whites of her eyes arguably she doesn't need it but just for the sake of repetition it's good to cover it again so when we get into senior portrait it's you're going to see me darkening that rim of the iris and when it does it'll take about five to ten years of age off of your subject okay so that's way over dance let's drop the opacity way down maybe somewhere around twenty percent so here's our before there's are after so now we can see what we started out with and yesterday we added the nice plumeria bloom to her hair and then today we have then a little selective lightning on her face pretty straightforward really useful technique now these lightning techniques you don't have to restrict them toe on ly portrait this technique is good for selectively lightning anything no matter what it is you know we could even go a step further and do a little lightning under her eyes right here in case we could create another empty adjustment layer screen mode fill the mass with black set your four grand color cipto white and with a much larger brush we could come in here and do a little bit of lightning on her cheek now it's going to be too much lightning that you'll know that I'm going to drop the opacity here in a second so I'm not that worried about it when we can come down here and drop that capacity way back and so before and after so it doesn't matter what part of the image needs a little bit of lightning and like I say have a go with levels and curves and all that good stuff color, correction and camera raw are light rumor aperture and you can come in here and do these little fine teeny things so if you can't get it in just right with those adjustments you can do some selective adjustments here all right so now let's put it all together on this photo okay, so what have we done so far today? Here's our original image first thing we're going to do is go ahead and try to fix the lighting in this image so we will use the levels adjustment layer I'm gonna take a spin through my channels to see if they very enough that it warrants suggesting them individually. In my opinion this image does and if you don't find that you have gaps on either side of your individual channels that that air quite a bit different than it's not going to do you any good to adjust these channels individually you would be better off just adjusting the composite case on lee if there's quite a bit of a difference in the gaps on your history um I still know will come in here at a little bit of contrast okay so that's looking better now let's lighten her eyes so well dio empty adjustment layer set to screen mode fill the mask with black semen you could do a little bit of teeth lightning here keeps must use a white brush to reveal on a black mask in my opinion teeth lightning in this way is a heck of a lot easier than trying to select the debt again things and then you say a huge saturation adjustment layer two d saturate the teeth or lighten the teeth or trying to drop out the yellow that's all well and fine that's definitely another way to do it but teethers usually so small that it just doesn't take you any time at all to paint across them like this whereas you might struggle with getting a perfect selection of teeth for fifteen minutes you know you could have done this technique on twenty pictures by the time you get your selection just right so let's name that one teeth lightning I'll go ahead and delete these other layers and not so distracting now let's do another one in this light in the irs of her eyes and if you do this a lot you could record part of this as an action and so with a single key you could trigger the empty adjustment layer in the changing of its blend mode to screen and the filling of the layer mask with black so you could save yourself quite a bit of time doing it that way. Case and alice come in here teo lighten her irises she's got really big people so her eyes were dilated so we're not going to get a whole lot of color shift here and I painted across the room so I can reverse my color chips or flip flop then and you could do a little eye lightning are whites of I lining if you like we'll call this iris lightning yes question in the audience with all this I stuff we've been doing assuming that it's not a client that you're you know you're a quick way to change their eye color if you wantto that is a quick way to change their eye color yeah I was thinking like the asian girl would have potentially been stunning with green eyes who would have been just interesting so changing the color brown eyes is difficult if the eyes were lighter in color like changing you know blue or hazel to green or something like that is very easy but when there's a heavy saturation of color to really hard to back off of that you have to lighten and then what you could do is add a little bit of green paint say on another layer and change that layers blend mode to something like color are overlay case so you could have a go with that we're going to do a little bit of color changing later on this afternoon with the huge saturation adjustment layer as well as a selective color adjustment layer but for what you're talking about changing the color of eyes I would lay down pain on another layer change that blend mood yes it was an option and click on the layer to to show the mask but it's just a black and white is their way to reveal the half red over lame ass absolutely you'll never guess what key it is forward slash four slash toggles the red are really a quick mask on impressive again to turn it off great question ok, so we've got our levels adjustment here correcting the color we've got a little bit of teeth lightning a little bit of iris lightning so she's looking she's looking pretty awesome will drop the opacity of that so here's before and after see what a difference that makes tiny little retouch makes a huge difference so now let's go ahead and add are dark and edgy vignette okay, so make sure that you've got black as your foreground color ship and then trot over here tio the same menu of fabulous adjustment layers that we've been using all day today she's grady it from the grady and pre set menu you want to choose that second one it sure whatever your foreground color is to transparency and then you want to change the style the radio then you want to turn on the reverse checkbox apps and this is another great action that you could record just this dark edge vignette part that we're doing right here if you do it a lot on portrait change the scale when when I was a little girl in for texas, I got trotted toe all in mill studios for portrait ce every year and this dark edge vignette in my mind, when I do it, I always think, well, that's, the only mills, if it because that's, what they did, right target. So now we're going to click within the mask of that layer, and we're going to press b to grab the brush tool away up in brush size, because we just want to make sure that vignette is not covering up any bit of are pretty snorkel lady, and why she's in the bathtub with snorkel gear is beyond me, but it makes for a slightly and using photo. So we came a long way with that particular photo from where we started, all with non destructive, incredibly flexible adjustment layers that we can tweak the opacity. Uh, we can throw them away. We can use their included layer masks, so very, very flexible editing.