Lessons

Lesson Info

Antique Color

There's a technique that I use commonly for just creating different look in a photo where sometimes I want to have kind of a nostalgic feeling in an image and there's two general techniques that I apply, uh, what I want that one is when I call auntie color and the in the other one gives me a just a soft contrast kind of look, and so I want to see if we can get some of those, uh, looks so I'm going to open an image and the first thing I'm going to do to get it anti color look is I'm going to pull all the color out, then we can put it back in in an interesting way. Ah, you can pull out all the color harvey had like a black and white adjustment layers should be just fine, and then in order to put the color back in, I'm going to take the original picture in duplicated, so I've clicked on the layer that's underneath. I'll type command j too duplicate that layer and I'm going to move that layer up so it's sitting above. So now it looks like the normal picture because that top layer obscures ...

your view of what's underneath, but if I want to, uh now get this color to be applied in a different way, I'm gonna use the bloody mode. And if you remember the blinding modes we were playing with when we had that kind of polaroid transfer, I think I was liking something like overlay and I think that usually works fine here now if you look at that the color looks different than the original but I wanted to look a bit like it was done in the old days and in the old days if you only have black and white photography and they're going to colorize it they when they applied the color it wasn't always done accurately it would like where the edge is somebody's faces the color might extend a little bit further have a soft it's almost like you're using a q tip and kind of paint it in and so to get that look I want to apply the blur filter just going do qazi and blur on it and with kasey and blur I'm going to bring it up until I can't see the fine details so on just back this up a bit but the higher I get this the softer the end results gonna be you can see it back there um and so I want to bring it up get rid of the fine detail so I get a slightly soft look click okay and then the problem is that the image is too dark in the dark parts so I need to figure out how to somehow get, uh the darke parts back well we know how to do that if you think about it we had some sliders that hides dark things we're going to use him hear all we need to do is make sure I'm working on whatever layer is causing the dark part of the image to get too dark if I turn off the eyeball in the top layer that's the culprit you see a much darker the image gets when I turned that on so with that layer active I'll go down to the bottom of my layers pound click on the letters f x remember that choice called blending options well we're going to use it here what I'm going to do is say get rid of the dark part of this layer so pull this in until I start seeing some of the shadows start to come back and to get a soft transitional hold option and I'll separate it like that's and now we're not getting quite as much of the shadows being all clogged up in dark then I'll click okay finally this is a technique that I often don't like applied at full strength I like to be able to control it like this with a slider toe to tone it down so what I'm going to do is take the two layers that make up the effect in my layers panel and I'm going to select them both so hold on the shift key and click here and I'm gonna put that into a group a group looks like a folder, and I can do that once I have those layers selected by typing command g and I might double click on the name and just call that now. Since it's one piece in my layers panel and that group hasn't opacity control up there, I can click on the word opacity and I dragged the left hole goes to zero and then I slowly bring it up to see exactly how much of this different color field would I like to have in the fish. So then I can turn off the eyeball to see before and after. And so that's, one of the effects that I end up applying now, sometimes that can have other consequences of doing that we show you what it looked like on a different picture where I wasn't actually thinking about color. I was just thinking about the consequences you get with that blurred layer. So on this image, you notice there's not that much color in it it's just an abandoned building. But after applying the antique color technique, watch what happens around this doorway where there's a really bright area? Do you see how I got this kind of almost glow and interesting feeling to it just feels much softer? Well, if I open up that image only show what it's made out of well, right here is auntie color it's just a black and white adjustment layer in that image that was blurred issues, they blurred this image a little more than usual to get the kind of glowy look. And then the only other thing that was done after that is the edges were darkened a little it's barely doing anything to it. But if I turn off the anti color, you see the difference. And so sometimes they want this kind of glowy, soft feel in and already get that what I'm going to be doing is making sure the blur sitting I use is quite high um and it can sometimes give me that feeling. So is the same technique just different image? All right, then, let's, try another technique that gives me a similar feel as faras a soft uh contrast I feel and what I'm going to do in this case is I'm gonna duplicate my layer twice it might layers little thumbnails got small again. I remember I made him larger for you guys before I'll do it again here I'm gonna move my mouse to the area below my layers we've been down here and I'll press the right mouse button so I can control how big those are sorry about that, I didn't realize they got smaller and then what I going to do in this case is duplicate this layer twice so we have a total of three of them I can duplicate it easily by typing command j so man j command j so you see what we got then what I'm gonna do is I'm going to click on the top layer and I'm going to set it to a mod called color and I'm going to click on the middle layer and set it toe overlay so why did I do that? Well let's see if I hide these two layers if I just to overlay mode it ends up making the color shift quite a bit to get a lot more saturated and things and so I had a copy of the original on top and it's in a mode called color which means used the color from this layer used the brightness from what's underneath so the color kind of mellows back out goes back to more how it wass and then this middle layer here if I turn it off and on it's the one that's giving me the contrast he looked that I was looking for and the only thing about this contrast he look is that I wanted to make it soft as well so we got the contrast but we just don't have the softness so what I'm going to do then is apply a filter that is called median the median filter is similar to blurring things except for it keeps crisp edges crisp like if you have a big object like a car blue car the edge of the car itself will remain crisp but the middle part where the finer details are often get blurred and it also rounds corners of things but if you look at this little preview up here you can kind of see what it's doing do you see how if I don't go too high with it you can still see the shapes that are there but it's really generalizing the detail compared to being all the way down so now I can control how much of the soft look I want I'm not looking at this preview I'm looking over here if it's all the way down everything looks relatively crisp and as I bring it up we get more of it soft and soft look click okay uh then it's usually too much at full strength and so I just take that middle layer that's there and I'll end up of lowering the opacity of it so I click on the word opacity drag it all the way down and then I can slowly drag it up to say how much additional contrast and glowy feel but I'd like to have so that's another way to get that kind of glowing us in on occasion there's an area that I just don't like it in I like it overall in the picture, but maybe where the dirt is or something, I don't like it, and so you could add a layer mask and just paint where you don't like it also what I'll typically do is take those two layers and just so I can remember why they're in my picture, I'll group them with command g and I'll name that for contrast in clothes, whatever. So when I open this image in the future, I have an idea of why the heck are these layers in there? Because of us? Look at them, they look like two duplicates, he'd have to drill down even more greedy. Why exactly do I have what's there? And then I can always had a mask to that. And then if I grab my paint, brush and paint with black, I could say I didn't like it down here are wherever it's being applied my opacity, though it needs to be a one hundred and make it to that part looks more normal. I'm not going to be precise there, though, but if you ever see any of the images that I have on my website that air from route sixty six or any of my gas station images the majority of them have had both of those effects applied anti color and the soft kind of contrast you look it's just that they've been applied at a lower setting so that they're a little more subtle than that lesson blatant and it often khun just give this kind of glowy feel that some people like although some people can't really tell it's been dunks it's uh if it's done suddenly enough all right any questions on those techniques yes sir so from raghu can we use this filter on people yeah you can use it on people just know that when it gets contrast e that the skin tones could get a little on the dark side so you might need thio adjust the brightness as well after you're done applying it but yeah cool and oh maha asks um why did the blend mode chains to pass through to pass through I didn't notice that it did but oh what that is is passed through is when you have a group if you look in here when what I have in my layers is this thing that looks like a folder what's known as a group then it has a bloody mode up here and it's called passed through pass through is one that you won't see when other layers are active in what passed through means is let's see like show you take me just a moment tio set something up I'm going tio put something down here not sure little figure out the best thing to put their on no notice, but I'm just gonna grab a color out of this it looks different than the color I chose because we have the effect on top of it all right? So if what passed through means is if I were to put an adjustment layer within in this folder, I'm going to put in an adjustment layer that's called black and white or maybe one called invert I'm not sure what's going on in this particular case change it the most, but what happens then is win that folder is set to pass through mode. This adjustment layer is going to affect every single thing that's underneath it, which is how an adjustment layer usually works and that's why this is the default setting this adjustment will pass right through the bottom of the folder and keep affecting the layers that are underneath. But if I set it too normal, you think normal would be the default but not in this case normal is going to cause whatever adjustments air inside this folder toe on ly effect the layers inside the folder in they will not pass through in effect any layers that are underneath okay on this image, I doubt you're going to be able to understand exactly what it's doing because we have some weird effects going on things uh but that's, why it's set to pass through it simply talks about adjustment layers and when it's set to pass through, they act normally, and when you said it to normal, they don't, it prevents them from passing through to the layers that are outside that folder. So it's kind of an odd, uh, way that they implemented that hopefully that answers the question not the best visual example of answering, but, uh that's what it does okay, sounds good. All right, then there are some filters that I use, uh, that I like to apply to open this guy I like to apply to create just a creative look on my images, and I get to them by going to the filter menu and there's this thing called filter gallery, and I want to show you a setting that affects the way the filter her gallery, uh, works most of time. When I apply filters to my image, I try to first convert them into smart objects, so I'll go up to the filter menu and I'll choose convert for smart filters that turned it into a smart object. Now, here's, what I don't like if I go back to the filter menu and I go to filter gallery to do things filter gallery is just a collection of filters that khun do various things, uh, let's see I typed its command zero to zoom out so you could actually see it I think we were viewing a tiny portion of the image but let's say I pick something like um I don't know under artistic maybe I choose dry brush and it simplifies my image and I click okay well instead of remembering that I applied the filter called dry brush when I click okay all it says in my layers is filter gallery doesn't tell me which of the filters within the filter gallery I used so the problem with that is if I return to the filter gallery members menu and I come back to it and applied a second time in this time when I apply it maybe I come down to the brushstrokes area and I choose a different choice that's here and I maybe try some sprayed strokes or whatever it is I would like to use well, the problem is if I click okay again look at how it's recorded doesn't really tell me which filters I used which makes it harder to reproduce this or learn from it. Let me show you a different way to get the filter gallery to work instead of going to the filter menu and choosing filter gallery and finally long list of filters let's go to the to the photo shop menu choose preferences and I believe it's going to be in a area called plug ins so this is in preferences and then plug ins if I was in windows, the preferences choice will be under the edit menu instead of being under the a photo shop menu because there is no photo shop menu and windows anyway in plug ins there's a check box I believe it's in here yeah it's called show all filter gallery groups and names from that on the hex that going to do well now let's see what happens when I apply something by going to the filter menu and if I went to filter gallery and shows something like splatter and clicked okay, I'm not looking at the settings it still is recorded here is just filter gallery where it's hard to figure out but you will also find it in other areas when I come in here if I actually this list just got longer eso if I were to go to filter gallery and just remember the name of one of the filters remembered spatter here's how you can find it from this menu what I find us there's way too many choices in here for various things and to find it it happens to be right here if it takes too long for me so let me first apply and show you the way it will show up in the layers panel then I'll show you how to find any filter you ever need to get teo without searching especially when you're reading an article and it says go apply the spatter filter and you're like looking at every single menu to try to find it. So first I'm gonna apply it and know that it's still bringing me to this same dialog box, but when I click okay, look at how it's applied in the layers panel I can finally tell what I actually have in there, so if I turn off the eyeball, I know which of the filters I'm turning off instead of getting a generic makes sense why he'd want to change that preference, then now, how can I find any filter I want without having to search through? The menu will go to the help menu, the very top of the help menu notice that it's a search in fact that's what is selected by default? If I just click search, I can just click help, I can start typing and I'm going to type s p a t e r and it tells me where in various menus you would find that, and if I choose it, it will actually show me where it is and that cool and if I choose it from here, uh then is trying to educate me as to where the heck would I find it? And so I find that a nice way if you ever remember a filter you wanted to apply that you can't remember where the heck it's stored, uh, to go in there and just type it in? So let me show you the difference on what this would look like and show you what kind of a result you might people get if you actually spent time experimenting with the filters that are usually found in the filter gallery, so if we don't change that preference, I showed you and I go to filter gallery over and over and over again. This is what it looks like in my layers panel and it's really hard to figure out which one of those things, but I want to change settings on or turn off their eyeballs on. If I change that preference, though, and I don't use the filter gallery instead, I used the individual filters that are listed within it. This is how it would look instead. So what happens is when you change that preference, the filter menu actually gets more choices in it, it becomes longer and you can choose those filters individually. You're not forced to use the filter gallery, but in this case, let's, see what this picture looks like if I actually experiment in the filter gallery filters to create an effect, I think that looks kind of cool if you want to know how to do that right down this order of of choices that's the order of filters that I end up applying it to but what's really cool is if I do this by converting it to a smart object first where it has all these things sitting right like this? What I think cool is I only have to know how to do it once because here's what I can do, I can go to the layer men you know got to make sure that layers that go to the layer menu, choose smart object and say, hey let's, replace the contents of that layer what that means is let's replace the picture that's in that layer you know arlin it replaces the picture that's in that layer it should remember all the effects that were applied and so it's going to apply now to a different picture so I'm going to choose replace contents and I'm going to go find a picture I could apply this to and I think I have one right here looks like this to begin with and I will hit place and now it's a raw files that opens camera on kids I want to adjust it I'm just going to make it colorful and I'll click okay and it should might take a little while it should end up replacing the image and then right now it's trying to apply all those filters and some of those filters take awhile to apply, and so this is taking awhile to progress, but it should, in a moment have a different picture with the same effect applied some out, not like it as much in this picture is it's, not a simple image, like the simplicity, the other one, but if you look at the effect, we got it, so if you work on a smart object before you go to the filter menu and you start experimenting, then if you want to use the same effect on a different image, you just make sure that the layer that contains the smart object is active. You go to the layer menu, choose smart objects and then choose, replace contents, and only thing has tried to find another image that's, approximately the same size, you know, don't go and grab a low resolution tiny picture, because it's going to have the same settings that were applied on this really big picture and the settings might not be appropriate, so get a picture doesn't have exactly the same size, but approximately same resolution, how detailed of this, and we can get that same look, so what I'm going to do? Ah, for those of you that purchase the class, I'll give you this file, although it will be cropped, because with all these filter's on and things I think the file size is big if the file size is not ridiculous I don't give you just the whole image but it will be where you can just click on that though and choose replace contents and put whatever picture you want in there you have those effects yes question um now it replaced both images because it's a copy of the smart what happens is what he just noticed is in the layers panel it didn't just replace the contents that was in this layer it did it up here too and what happens is any time you have a smart object if it's a smart object and you duplicate it it thinks the duplicate is just another instance of the first smart object it thinks they're all kind of linked together where if you make a change to one the actual content sits within it it will update all the duplicates if you've never seen that before and you just don't know the concept I can quickly show you let's say that I create a new layer and I just put something in it that and then I go over here and convert to a smart one and I'll use the move tool I don't know if you remember but if you had on the option key you could move a duplicate and I'm duplicating that smart object I can even grab all of them and duplicate the more it thinks all of those point back to the same original contents. When you convert something into a smart object it's like taking whatever's in the layers that are active and put them in a little protective bubble that's called a smart object. If you want to edit the original contents of the smart object, you find the layer in your layers panel and you double click on let's thumb now it shows up as a separate document now I could select on delete in maybe in here I decide to put in something fancy, I'll go to the custom shape and find a a little light bulb, I could come up here then and see if I could make that little light bomb do that. Now I'm going to save and close this when I type command as it saves it back into where it came from, where it came from was the other document, so command ask, and then I'll close it. You see how just updated all of them now if you want to make a duplicate of one of these smart objects, but you wanted to be independent of the others, then I'll choose undo, so we didn't update them, we didn't change them in. I'll make sure I have one of these smart optics active. This one right here. What I want to do is instead of duplicate it, go up to the layer menu, choose smart objects in choose new smart object via copy the key word there is new many not the same smart object just duplicated, but a brand new smart object independent of the others. So I just did that and it made a copy. I'll throw away the original it's right underneath it, and now I try to update one of the others double clicking on it, and I'll put that shape in it saving clothes. And now you see all but one changed because that was a new smart object that meaning it was something independent of the others. So that is a good distinction, because if you get smart objects a little too integrated into your image on, then you need to make a change to it. It can really mess you up a fall from changing it. I want him to. So you could say new smart object v a copy from that layer to, uh, get that fixed. All right. Now, let's get a little bit of a painterly field in our image, so I'm gonna open a picture and a of course I'm going to turn it into a smart object before I do anything, and then I'm going to go to the filter menu and there's a filter in the newer versions of photoshopped gotta have a pretty new version to get this it's called oil paint and with oil paint, you probably want to zoom up on your image because it creates very subtle textures. I'm just hitting command a plus to zoom in and it's automatically creating this look. And if you look, there is some sliders on the right side, you know, have a slider called scale, which will make it so the it's wider strokes you could say, or I could make it really low to change that, and I can do things like cleanliness, which is just going to simplify what's going on or if I bring it down, it'll look more detailed and I could find tune this to try to find who I like, a really detailed stuff like that or, like, really stylized or whatever. But the problem that I find with this is it's rare that I find a sighting at like everywhere. Instead, I find that these flowers right here and not detailed enough, I do like the look of the wood dough so here's, what I end up doing, click okay, and I simply duplicate the slayer with command jay on the duplicate layer I come down here to see what's his oil paint that's what's already applied to it I double click on it to get into the settings for oil paint and now I'm going to pay attention only one part of my picture which is those flowers and I'm going to say, what do I need to do to get the fars looking the way I want? Teo well, maybe it's I need to bring down the stylization a little bit to get a little more detail in it maybe I need to bring down the cleanliness or he excelled and soap blurring the edge a little bit maybe I experiment with what I have here to see exactly what's going to give me the look that I like unjust the flowers, the patriots right there but a little more shine in it shine looks bad everywhere else where the flowers are I might feel to get away with mohr click okay, then all I'm gonna do is I'm going to add a layer mask to this and when I add the latter mascot, hold the option key. I don't know if you remember with option key it gives you a black mask, which means hide this layer because I only want to use that in a very small place, which is where the flowers are, so I grab my brush tool if I can speak here and with a soft brush, come down here in pain right where the flowers are, so that I only use those settings right here where I need them, and I will usually be a little bit more careful than I am here, but you get the concept like I'd get a smaller brush here, and I'd only paint right where they are, but for speed sake, I'm going to use a bigger brush and just be fast about it. So over here, hopefully the same settings would look good here, uh, not with wallace, though, okay? And then I would simply repeat that process again for other areas, and so I'm probably going to end up in this image with one setting for the sky, because this guy's pretty simple one setting for the stucco ah, different setting for the wood, different setting for the flowers. So how many is that? I mean that's, probably the number I'd need before, when I would be done, I'd be satisfied with it, where it doesn't feel like it's a generic application of this across everything. But that was the oil paint filter it's just fine on under the filter menu, and it only comes with newer versions of photoshopped like photoshopped see, see if you have an older version, you're not going teo find that in there