Lessons

Lesson Info

Separating Detail from Color and Linear Light Mode

I want to show you now how to separate the color in brightness of your image from the detail so we can manipulate one of them separate from the other. So in this particular case, it's not the best photograph, but it has a shiny spot on skin, and that's what I needed. And so let's see. How can I tone down this shiny spot on the skin without removing the texture of the Senate? Because if you were to go in here in trying many different techniques like here, I could use the spot healing brush and I could try to do it. It might work fine, but it's a crapshoot. Might not. Well, it doesn't look Greek, Okay, but then there's usually there are other things we can do that will make it work much better. Let's take a look at how we could do it. Here's what we do. We're gonna duplicate the layer twice. I'm gonna name the middle layer color slash tone, and it doesn't matter exactly what its name is. Just to remind me if I make a change to this layer, it's gonna affect the color of the image or the a...

tonality and to me, tonality means brightness or contrast. Then up here, I'm gonna double click on that one and call it detail, and I'm gonna make it. So whatever I do to that particular layer on Lee affects the detail in no matter what I do up there, it will not affect the color or the tonality. Now, the next thing I need to do is work on the layer that's in the middle, the one called color slash tone, and I need to blur it. So I'm gonna use Ghazi and Blur. And in Gazi Ambler, what I want to do is find the face in here. I want to blur this just enough so that the fine detail is gone. So when you see these little fine details when I say detail is gonna be on one layer in color and tone is going to be on the other, this is where I don't want to see the fine detail. So I'm gonna bring this out and tell that forehead starts looking smooth. But not so much that I can't recognize things. If I bring up this far. I can't even tell us ahead. But bring it down, bring it down looking for the lowest setting that makes all the detail go away right about there. Because if I go lower than this, you can start seeing like, little, you know, uh, things on her forehead on what you want to call it. Whereas when I get to about there, those won't go away. Click. OK, then I'm gonna go to the layer that's above the one called detail. And what I'm gonna dio is something unusual. I'm gonna go to the image menu where I'm gonna find a choice. It's rarely used. It's called apply image. I'm working on the top layer, the one called detail. All right, Now what I'm going to do is I'm gonna tell it to take this layer I'm currently working on, and I'm gonna tell it to interact with that layer that we've blurred. The layer we've blurred was called color tone. And right here it's asking me which later to work on. I'll set it to color tone. Then I'm gonna tell it to subtract what's in that layer. Well, what's in that layer is a smooth version of this image. If we subtract out the smooth stuff, what's left over from the layer we're working on is gonna be the detailed stuff, but in order Gator toe work, right, we need to make sure to other settings. Air correct in here. So it's all down in this area. I've said it to subtract, and we need to have the scale at two and the offset at 1 28 I know these numbers sound like they're overly like specific 1 28 but it's ah has to do with just a simple math that it's using to combine these layers together. It's literally going to subtract the brightness values between these two, and it's gonna add this much to it and all that. It does a bunch of math that you don't really need to know much about, but in order to get it to look right, this needs to be a to this needs to be at 1 28 you always use the same setting so you can just write him down, click OK, and then the final thing we need to do here, it's in order to get this toe look right. We take that top layer and to get it to combine with what's underneath, we change the blending mode to a trois called linear light. Now the image should look normal. But whatever changes I make on the top layer will only affect the detail. Whatever changes I make to the middle layer will only affect the color and or tone of the image, and the bottom layer is not even needed anymore. But we might wanna have it there just in case. Whatever we do to these top players, we want a limit, and we might want a mask it or something else and get back to the original. But I'll turn off that bottom eyeball. So you see, it's not really doing anything anymore. So now that seemed weird. What the heck, Why would I want to do that? Why would I want to go through apply image tracked about it all that well, First, you want to do it with clients looking because it looks complicated. It looks hard. It's not hard. All you have to do is remember the settings, but let's see what we can do now. I want to get this shiny spot to be toned down. I'm gonna work on the color in tone layer then, because I'm trying to change the tone ality of this area. Whenever I say tonality, I mean the brightness or the contrast. I'll grab the paint brush tool, and I'm simply going choose from an area in the surroundings that has the brightness in color, I think would look appropriate there. So I hold down the option key. Isn't that how you get a color out of your image? And I might click right over here then, because I don't want toe make a massive change to the image. Lower the opacity of my brush down to 20 or 30% Let's say 20% and watch what happens when I paint. If you saw that or not, I'll choose. Undo. Do you see how he just tone that down? And I could come in here, get even smaller brush, maybe bring my opacity down to 10% painting a little bit more now. It always looks weird when you look at before and after, because your eye gets used to the really bright thing and when you see the after, suddenly it looks too dark or something. But if you never saw the before, if you never did the undue thing to see before and after. It just looks normal on the image itself. So I come in here, I just grab a surrounding color, and then I can start painting it in there. But notice that all the detail stays, so I'll choose undo a few times to see if I can get back to what it looked like before I had painted in there. And then I'll choose undo. But when I do undo, it's gonna look too dark to your eye because you're used to looking at the bright thing a second ago. But I can tone it down, but I'm maintaining the detail. Let me show you what this looks like. Another images because first off, you don't remember the process yet, and secondly, it's not just used to get rid of shiny spots on skin. All right, so what we did is we duplicated the layer twice, so that's Command J twice. We name the middle layer color tone, and it doesn't matter what it's named. It's just to remind you what it's for. The top layer we call detail, then the middle layer. We wanted to only show the color and tone we don't want it to have any detail. So to get rid of the detail, we went over here and chose Ghazi and Blur. And we tried to find the setting that would get rid of any fine details. But we're looking for is the lowest setting that will get rid of the fine details because we want to still be able to recognize what's in here. So right now, I can still see the creases on richest forehead here, So I'm gonna bring up the radius further, further. I can still see the creases keep. Okay there. I can't see him anymore. All right. I'm gonna lower to see if I can get away with lower setting. Mm. But right about maybe there in that area Now all I see in there's color and I see the general tone ality or brightness range that's in there. But I can't see the fine details, so I click. OK, I go to the layer that's above. And that's when I have to do the weird thing. What I'm trying to do is have it compare this detailed layer to that one that only has the color and tone and say what's really the difference If I subtract the color and tone out of here, the details should be left. So I go to the image menu. I choose apply image, which is actually rather technical feature. And in here I'm going to use subtract. Don't wait a minute. Well, no second Cullerton. Yep, apply image. I need to tell it the layer I want to use. So up here where it says merge. That means that we used emerged image. I need to use the one called the color tone. I've come in here and I choose subtract two and 1 20 In fact, it remembered the settings. So the next time I uses that will remember, I just mainly have to tell it what Layer Teoh subtract, which is the color tone one. Then I changed the blending mode for this particular lot layer to a choice called linear Light. That's when the picture looks normal again. It'll look identical to the original. The original is underneath, and the originals not actually needed is the end result. It's just there in case we want to mask these two things to reveal the original once we're done making changes. But if I hide the bottom layer, you'll see that it's not contributing to the image, or if I hide the layers that are on top, you'll see that it looks identical. You can't see the difference, but now I can work on these two layers and work on the detail separate from the color and tone. So let's see what we can do first. Laura here has got a slightly shining spot on her skin. I just want to tone it down a tiny amount, so I'm working on the layer that's called color and tone. I grab my paintbrush tool with a soft edged brush. I grab a color from just outside. This bright spot just outside of it may be great there. I use a very low opacity in this case. I'm using 10% and I just painted in there, and it's slowly should tone down that each time I paint over it, tone it down a little more. If you want to see before and after all, simply hide the two layers that are on top and reveal the layer that is at the very bottom. That's the original picture. There's a shortcut for doing that in my layers panel if I put my mouse on top of the eyeball for the one layer I want you to view, I can hold down the option key and click on it, and that will hide everything else. So watching the layers panel, when I do it, you see the other eyeballs turn off. All I'm doing is option clicking on that eyeball that the all clicking and windows. But can you see that I've toned down that slight bright spot there? Maybe I don't like the fact that the tip of her nose or I didn't hear is looking a bit red. Maybe down here on here on her chin, it's looking a little bit red as well. So what I'm gonna do is choose a color just outside of words read like, right up here. I don't think she looks red. So option click there. Then I might up my opacity about 30% because I think I need to make you know, an ok amount of a change and that I paint over here. The detail was not gonna change, but the color and the tone will I can do it up here by your nose. Grab an area just outside of its readiness. That's here. Use a low opacity, totally painted in to make it a little less red on Richie Over here. He's got a really red forehead, but right through here, it doesn't look quite as read or write down here. It doesn't look quite as red, so I option click on that area to grab it. And then here, in about 20% opacity painted in here, I might have to paint twice. I'm gonna brighten up that area a little bit and get it away from the readiness here I might grab from in here where it doesn't look quite as read. It looks a little bit brighter or maybe right about there and let's see if we can get some of the readiness out right up a little bit. His ear is overly red. You can grab from a key, see where I am right about here, where it's not so read. The only thing is this is also going to bring the tone ality or the brightness near there so we could tone it down a bit by painting a little bit there and we could make the side of his head where it's rather dark. More similar to this side that's bright. Just grab your brush 20 or 30% opacity. Brighten it up a little bit. Here, I'll grab that color from the side of his nose, which is gonna grab that color and brightness. Bring this up a little bit, but what's nice about it is we're not messing with the detail. We're just blatantly painting with solid colors here, and we're able Teoh make those kind of changes. If I don't like that, this is in the shade as much. I could bring it a little bit more similar to what's just outside. The neck would usually be more careful that I am here with my painting, but you can see that I can quickly do that with painting. The detail will stay Alright, what questions do we have? All right, So, um, Jurassic Ruth says, Would this work with dark circles under the eyes? Dark circles under the eyes. This would lighten up the dark circles. OK, but if the dark circles also contains some kind of begging us to them, sometimes there's like a big pocket that's kind of hanging down. It's not gonna get rid of the detail. It's there. So you could work on the other layer, the layer called detail and, uh, and try to get that dealt with us well, but it can work with dark circles. Here. We have kind of a tan line. And so I'm gonna grab from out here where it's tan, and then I'm gonna come in here and paint, and they're gonna paint again because my opacity is down at 20%. So it might take me a while to build this up. I could grab from this area over here and want to use a larger brush that's got a softer edge, or what's over here, I think might look better. You see how it's lesson? It's not completely gone. I could get it completely gone. That would usually use something like curves over here. She's got a little bit more of a tan line I can grab from just outside the tan line. I would have to use a very small brush, and I can come up here and start building this up so that it's lessened. Or I could grab from the sunny side over here and say, I don't like the bluish shadows that are there anyway, kind of start brighten her up overall, but it's pretty cool that I can paint with just solid colors here and not have the detail gets screwed up. Might not always just sometimes have to lower the opacity a bit more than I have been in a few of these areas you want to see before and after and remember option. Click the bottom layer. The bottom layer on its eyeball is the original picture, and so you see how much have evened out the brightness on riches or head. I've gotten some of the red out of his cheeks, and I've even got a little bit of the tan line and warmed up some areas, huh? But it separates the color tone from the detail, which is kinda cool. Option Click eyeball the background layer. Yeah, option. Whenever you option, click any eyeball in the layers palette. It means hide everything but this. When you do it a second time, it means show the stuff that I hid last eso. It remembers which layers were visible, so if he had an overly complex document, were like 40 layers in it, and half the layers were on and half of them were off at the time you did that, it would remember which ones were visible and just toggle the ones that were hidden by doing that. And you could use this on all different sorts of photography, like landscapes are. This isn't just for people, but people was so common where it's the most helpful. But, yes, we can use this any time. We have detail that we don't want to mess with, but we need to change. The color in the tone faces air so common, though, where this is useful. But what you do is duplicate the layer twice. You take the middle layer and blur it. So DVD A has a question is what is the purpose of creating the blur? The What's the Blur is telling you? How much detail are we gonna push into that other layer? If I left detail on this layer, if I could still see the wrinkles, we wouldn't have as much detail on the other layer that the top most layer okay, and so this I'm saying, whatever I blur out of this is gonna be moved to the other layer. So if I blur out all those little wrinkles and things like that. That detail that I just blurt out is gonna end up on the layer above when I click on the layer above in, do this apply image, I say Grab the middle layer, which in my case, I didn't rename. But it's called later one, and I tell it to subtract that smooth stuff from this normal image. So what's left over is that detail right there. But see, this detail doesn't contain the useful color information. I need to have somehow have it combined this with what's underneath, and I do that by changing this toe linear light. So now I got it separated color and tone on the slayer detail in the layer above. You can also retouch the detail layer, and it's not gonna shift the colors around, not going to shift the brightness around, but most the time. You find it useful to be on the color tone layer, and I can come in here and just tone down various things when things are overly bright on foreheads and other things, and it's really nice because I can do it with painting just by grabbing colors in the surroundings and the detail stays. And it's not like I'm just blatantly painting there. It's that I'm being able to change all that stuff. But it's not just faces. Cool. Thank you. Remember option. Click the bottom Ivo seeing see the difference. You see the different center cheek, but faces so commonly needed.