Transcripts
1. Intro - 5 tips to improve your photo editing: Hey, guys, My name is Daniel Flash aka will come to my brand new skill share class. We'll show you five simple ways to improve your own photo editing for your landscape and nature images. Sometimes there's just a little thing which is missing on image to make it perfect. And it doesn't have to be a complicated step, like a said the little thing. And that's what you will learn here in this class. Like already mentioned ever, show you five ways what I like to use on all my landscape images to improve them and make them more professional. So this class is for the beginner to advanced landscape, Ah, nature photographer who wants to learn simple steps to improve his own or her own images. So now I can't wait to show you guys my steps. I like to use all the sample images already. I'm already here in my desk, so I think it's time to start and let's jump into the editing. So you there guys, thanks a lot for watching. And if you have any questions, feel free to contact me in the community section here sculpture and, of course, always show me your results. I want to see what you achieve. My simple steps. Always there. So I already set guys, it's just stop with clothing and see you there, so
2. Tip No. 1 - Adding a point of interest: All right, guys, welcome to the first chapter off my course rival Show you five steps in Adobe Photo Shop, which you can use to improve your own for editing game. And as I already mentioned in the intro, I will work on many sample images to show you one quick step. So it's easy to learn for you only. It probably takes only a couple minutes to understand, and you will see that it improves your own image editing in Yeah, a really fast way. And that's what we will do here. And the first chapter is about adding a light spot to a certain part, often image, to create an area of interest and to guide your eye because the human eye works like this, that you automatically look at the brightest spot first. And when we work with this in our photos, you make it easier for people to look at it. And maybe it's even more pleasant to look at, and it looks also more professional, and that's what we will do. So let's just jump right into it. You okay, so we have three example images where I will show you were three different ways how to add a bright spot and it's not complicated. You will see it's really easy. So what we will do here is it's an image I took in Iceland. It's I can't really pronounce this location, but it's in the south, close to the highlands. There's a really nice camp spot there, so easy to. It's a funny road to drive, but once you're there, it's really, really cool. And yeah, I really loved this peak and the water in front, so really cool landscape. And you see, it was a moody late afternoon and there was some light shining through the clouds, and I actually just want to further enhance that. And I will go quite extreme because, like a said, I want to create an area of interest where your eye years looking at. So that's what we will do here in the first image. So when I assume in like I said, every work with this part and to do that I have, um, two different ways. First, I always start with a blank layer and then I click on my color here to get the eyedropper, and I will click inside the field where I want toe, add the light, spot the bright spot to get a sample color off it, and I will make it a bit brighter and then press be for brush and we will make it a bit smaller but really smooth with, like zero hotness and 33% capacities. Fine. And then we will just click on it. And if it's too strong, we can always redo it. Something like that. And it's fine when the docks around there are bit brightened as well, because this looks like that light is shining through the gap there. And that's what I'm aiming for. So, yeah, I really like that. And it's so simple. Yep. And you, we will do it with her second step. That's the second step I mentioned. We will use this another layer, and now we will use soft light. Soft light is a contrast. Blend moat and we will make it a bit bigger and use it again and maybe even bigger and use it none of us too much. Something like that, all right. And that's not a little bit too strong. So we will go down if you pass ITI to something like, Yeah, maybe 45 All right? And when we group that and we will call it breads but And now we turn it on and off And you see, now we mimicked some sunlight poking through the clouds. Really simple. But I think it makes a difference. So that's the first way to use it. And the next one is We will work on this image here, uh, at Crater Lake in Oregon. Amazing place. And the morning was really cool. So calm, you see the reflections And it was late October, so we had snow already, but the roads were still open. So really nice to get there. And it was a blank sky, which I usually don't like. But in this case with the moon and the stars, Yeah, I really liked it. And what I like to do is when I have not a full moon, then it's mostly too bright in the sky. But when I have, like 1/2 moon, or just like a little part off it, then I like to add a bright spot there as well. So it looks like it's shining through some Mr So and it's it makes a little extra kick to your image, so we will do the same thing. We will add this blank layer and we will pick again. A color in the moon. You know, some reddish tone here, things like that. And let's zoom in. And now again around the moon. Something like that. And that's too strong now, in my opinion. So we will go down with the capacity you see. Nice little cool way to do that. And you can also work with soft light if you want. But then it's not a strong. It's mostly brightening with a normal blend world. You add the color you selected with the eyedropper. You're basically since we selected a you see, we selected a bright reddish color. When we paint on it, we're painting bright reddish color. Okay, so that's what I like you pretty simple, but always personal. Personal taste, of course. And the other image Here we have one from Canada. Emerald Lake. Really popular. Lock your location. I loved it. There, you see, It was a nice, calm blue, our really cold really cold on. But I really like the warm contrast I get from the light here on the at the hut compared to the the ice snow when so, so on. And I want to further emphasize this, but only a little bit with another breath. So to do that, we will again picked the color we have around there. Some reddish yellowish tone not to read is something like that, maybe more color. So this side here is too saturated side. Here we have the less saturated side and up there is the bright side down there's a dark side and now again for low opacity, smooth brush, they will 0.0, uh, that we will draw bright spot, but with low opacity again, something like that. Really simple. But it adds up and there I probably want to add another one with soft light and like a really low opacity and a bit bigger. So it looks like it's shining here. Something like that. Very a bit more passivity. You something like this. And now we will group this again and we will call it right spot and what we can do when we add a level slayer and we connected to the group by creating a clipping mask, we can further work with the bright spot and when it got a bit, too. Brides. We can add some mid tone contrast to reduce it a little bit, as you see here, but still really nice to look at. And we can, of course, also always group it again and mask it out in certain areas. When we paint black on this group that say, we don't want it that strong in the snow so we can paint it out there. All right, so three simple ways. How you can use a bright spot with a blank layer and soft light blend mode or normal blend mode. I mostly use it as I showed you on artificial lights or the moon, Or maybe some part where some little light it's poking through. I especially like it in the dark scene to create a point of interest. So, yeah, that's it with the first chapter. And, yeah, I hope I see you in the next one So
3. Tip No. 2 - Local Warping - Fixing Horizon lines: All right, guys, welcome to the second chapter. Ah, he I will show you a powerful method I like to use to work with perspective on my images. So it's called local warping, and I like to use two different tools for that, and that's what I will show you here. So let's get started. All right, So first of all, we have an image here from Iceland's at the beautiful coast, off stocks nous and yeah, you see, it's a powerful image. I really like it. It's almost done, but what I want to do here is I want to further work with the foreground perspective. And that's of course, personal taste. If you don't want to do that, that's fine. But sometimes you can't change the perspective in the field too much because let's say you don't want to destroy beautiful sand patterns or you can't go any closer because the focus is already on the limit and you don't want to manually focus or whatever. You can't go around the stone or don't want to step on plants and what's so on then? Sometimes you simply can't change the perspective anymore. Then I like to do the bidding for shops. So, yeah, I write a do it in post, then destroying something nature. In this case. Well, it's nothing like I would have only destroyed to send patterns with the mixed mixture off the snow. So that's nothing like it's not Ah, big deal. But it was so beautiful to look at, so I didn't want to step into it. So yeah, that's the reason why I decided to leave it how it is. And of course, I wanted to photograph it, so yeah, so in this case, I want to further get this part here a bit to the left. So it's a bit more centered, and that's actually it. But I don't want to walk the whole image. That would be bad. So I will show you a simple way. So, first of all, we have to press control Jato, create a copy of our background. We don't warp the background. First of all, it doesn't work. And second of all, second, the background is our base layer. So nothing changes there. So we can always go back if you don't like it. All right, So now we could go to filter out No, not to feel Dosari control t. And then we click on this walk icon up there and now we could simply walk the image. But you see a change, everything. And I don't want that. I only want to foreground. So we will you need it. And now I will use the rectangular marquee tool, and I will simply mark the part where I want it. And the never press controlled tea again. And now I have only this part. And when I click on the warp icon again and now have two ways to use it If I drag in this part or in this part, I'm actually dragging out some parts off the image so you don't see it anymore as you see, And then I'm also changing the line up here because I'm when I'm dragging out. Something doesn't match up there anymore. And I like to do it, of course as well. And the other option I have is when I drag inside here, I simply changed a size and yeah form factor off this sent pattern without losing information on this side and not dragging anything out off the frame. I'm simply changing the size of this, and that's what I want to do here. So I will drag it a bit to the side. May I have ever make it a bit more extreme now, Just so you see, the difference never also triggered a bit here. And then I pressed into that's actually it. And now, when assuming you see, since I only dragged inside, I'm not creating any weird edges up here and I changed the size off. This sent pattern quite a bit. I didn't want to do it that much. I actually wanted to keep this line here, but I just want to show you hear the difference. So that's the first way I like to use local warping the second. It's actually really simple way. Imagine you're at the coast like we are here in Oregon and you have a coastline straight line and you'll have a wide angle lens and you're pointing your camera down a little bit. Then you're creating some distortion on the horizon line. But it depends on the lens, of course, how strong it is. And sometimes you can't fix it with the lens correction tool in light room, and you can, of course, straighten and yeah, what moving around and so on and some. But sometimes it doesn't work because when we assume in here, you see, there's a simple distortion here in the background from the lens. And if we would straight in the image, everything would be, Yeah, kind of reared on the left side. Maybe it's the then it's maybe right on the right side, but it would be reared on the left side. So I actually like to use local warping for this as well. And in this case, I like to use the liquefy filter. So again I will make a copy off the background. And then we go to filter, uh, liquefy. And now we can move certain parts often. Image. First of all, I was Su Ming. No, not that much. Something like that. And then we will pick this tool forward warp tool up here. That's the only one I use inside here. And I will go up if the size, the density a leave it 50. That's fine. And pressure is 100 and then we can work with the horizon line. So I have two options. I could now ah, go down with this part, so it fits the auto line. Or I could simply go down with the size and only used very right site and dragon up something like that. And of course, you have to be a bit more careful when you do it on your own image year for demonstration purposes. It's fine how I'm doing it. And that looks good. No, I press OK. And when I assume in, you see, that made a big difference. And when you do it too strong than you lose some sharpness. So watch out what you're doing. But in this case, I don't care much since Yeah, it's the ocean. It can be on shop anyways. All right, so that's the second way how I like to use local warping. And there's actually another way how I like to use the liquefy filter. And I will show you that in the next image. So this one here from Canada, it was one off the coldest mornings I ever experienced, but it wasn't a really amazing place. And here I show you two ways. I like to use local warping the first way. Well, first of all, click on control J to get a copy, and sometimes when you include a foreground in your wide angle composition. And let's say you have, like 15 millimeters 6 16 millimeters on full frame and you simply can't fit the whole scene inside there, which you would, how you would like it and you don't want to make a panel or something, then it can be sometimes helpful to use a simple trick in photo shop later on. Because this case I couldn't get the whole ice in the foreground and at the same time get enough space up site on the upper part here. So the mountain has some room to brief here in the sky. So what we can do to overcome this later on and to still have all the foreground information we can now use to rectangular marquee tool? Grab our ice here. Press control T. When we now shift, click and move it up a little bit, only a little bit. Then we made our four run a little bit smaller. Doesn't matter much, but we still have all the information there. And now you see, when I assume in, we have a little gap here. So when we press V you can move the image down and now we have to skip up there and with blue skies, it's actually really simple. So what we can do now is either wait, We can, um, at a white mask and paint with black to get our sky back from before. But we have to be careful. It can happen that we hit the mountain, as you can see, so sometimes it doesn't work that good. But when we make a harder brush, it should actually work because they would be make it harder, a harder brush. Then we don't fellow it out too much. Don't feather it out too much into the mountain so we could use this method method. Yeah, when we delete this layer mask. But we can also do, ah, use direct, angular marquee tool again. And I dragged down here right to the top off the mountain press control T and drag it up. And you, of course, don't want to do it that strong, usually because then otherwise you will have, like, reared whopping artifacts up there. So I mostly like to use the mask and paint black. But sometimes it's not possible. And then I like to use this method, and I only use that when I don't get everything right in front of the landscape. I mean in the field. When I don't get everything in camera, then I like to use it that way. But it's really powerful and another quick weight. I like to use the liquefy filter. Let's say the mountain is a bit smaller and we wanted to be bigger only a little bit, because sometimes you have some distortion, and then the mountain looks smaller when you use a wide angle lens than it actually is. That happens when you're close to a foreground and you're emphasizing the whole foreground and you get like, really timing mountains in the background. So then I like to use the liquefy filter before a bigger size. And then I dragged up the mountain a little bit. Only this Mitch, something like that. But that's something to be really careful about because, like I said, you can get some weird artefacts fast. So that's the reason why I only do it when I have, like a tiny cap. I have to feel like a few pixels, only to make it a bit more yet so that the mountain has a bit more room to breathe in the sky. But liquefy filters something. I like to use the mountains quite a lot to overcome this distortion effect from the lens. So, yeah, that's a nice way to do it. Okay, so that's the second chapter about local warping. And, yeah, let's see us in the next one. So you there.
4. Tip No. 3 - How to use the radial filter: All right, Welcome to the third chapter here. I will show you my favorite tool and the camera raw filter. And that's the radio filter. I use it all the time. It's so simple and really powerful. And when you use it in your some special ways, you might even see results which you couldn't think off. So, yeah, let's get started. Okay, so here's a night image and it's in northern Norway, some amazing a rover going on. I love it, especially if the ice in the foreground and I want to work locally there. And of course, I could use complicated masks, which also like like luminosity masks and so on. But sometimes it has to go a bit quicker, or it's maybe even easier to use the radio filter, and that's what he will do here. So, first of all, the repressed Control J to create a copy again, we will called it chemical role, and now we will go to filter camera raw filter, and I will go to this circle here. That's the radio filter. I'm sure you guys know it, and then I, first of all, click on inside some. My effects are happening inside off the circle and I will further it 100%. And now I want to work on this icy in the foreground. So first of all, I want to brighten it a bit. And also I want to add clarity and maybe some white. So it's a bit more punchy. And now I could use it Onley in this part if I want. And that's fine, as you see. But sometimes I want to add it to a bigger part of the image, and then I could drag it like this. But the problem is, um, it's happening only here in the middle, since we have it feather to 100% and not that much on the edges. Of course, I could overcome this by reducing the feather, but then it happens that I have some art effects going on sometimes. So I like to do is, um let's delete this here. I like to drag it out off the frame, so you have, like, a smooth transition above the whole, the whole image. So when I drag it out here, as you see, I have the adjustment going on in the whole foreground, but really smooth So when I click on this year, you see Oh, I have to go down up with the feather again. Sorry. Okay, now So you see, it's a really smooth adjustment. It's feathering out to the top. Of course, I don't have to drag it that much out off the frame, but that's how I like to use it. Let's click on this year and go a bit inside and down here, and that's also a good way when you drag it out completely and then only go up with the top part. Then you have only the feather part in your image. That's also really cool. As you see now, you haven't feathered in your image, and that's really, really nice way to use that filter. In my opinion, yes, you can see pretty cool, and of course I like it to use it. I like to use it locally all the time, so I want to brighten this part here. As you can see now, use only this part off the filter. Next click on it. You see really nice and feathered. If I would go inside with the filter a bit more the night, of course. Adjust more off the off the ice. But I don't want that in this case because then the water gets brightened as well. So I'm dragging it out again a bit, something like that. And you see, it's not that strong extra the adjustment since its feathered quite a lot. So that's a nice way to lose to use their radio filter. And what I also like to do is I will drag it here in the middle. Something like that feathered as it's 100% whether and then I can pick a color some green, maybe. And this way I'm enhancing the Aurora Insight there Really cool. And of course, if I don't want it that strong, I can always go down of capacity here to saturation. But it's also really cool way to use this radio filter to enhance something. Some colors which are already there so really, really cool and powerful. No, I have to reset it, okay. And maybe one more he on this side. So its not too dark. But again, as you see him, only using this part, not the whole filter. So that's what I meant with a usage you probably didn't know or didn't use? I don't know. Maybe you date already, but, um, it's really cool to see that you can actually drag it out off the frame and use only a small part. And so it's really feathered, nice and local. So yeah, I love it. That's not press. OK, and there you see the difference really small and local, but powerful. All right, another way to use it. I will show you based on this image, it's Brewer Force in Iceland, one of my favorite waterfalls there, and what I want to do here is I want that the viewer looks a bit more here to the middle and not to the outside, since everything is like there is no border or something like trees or so on. So it can happen that you lose your eyes on the left on the right side, but I want you to focus to the middle, so I like to use a radio filter also to creative in yet or some kind off in yet. So to do that fistful go again to camera raw total filter camera roll filter, click on the radio filter, and now we will use the outside and there I want to talk in it and we will drag it here. So now everything except this part is you see, we'll get darker and here I don't want it to be feathered too much because, yeah, I want the middle part to be, Yeah, a bit more, right in the older part, A bit brighter. But as you can see as were darkening the outside, it's also losing a bit of shadow information. So to overcome this, we can at the same time, up the shadows. So it's not getting to dock there and maybe the contrast. Yes, you can see. And now we created a nice and natural win yet, And of course, you can always further enhance that by using another radio filter. And we used the inside again and just brighten this part here. So we're creating another area of interest. So two ways to create a vignette, Um, brightening the central part and at the same time darkening the outer part. And that's press OK, and there you see the difference. It's again really settled, but I liked I like it. Let's say the water here is a bit too dark. No so we can always add a blank layer and paint black, like 50% capacity. So we removed the effect. They're sort of waters, not too dark, just as an example. All right, so two ways I like to use the radio filter first. Only a small soft part of it to work really locally. And the other way is to creative in yet and the bright area of interest. So, yeah, I hope you learned something and see you in the next video.
5. Tip No. 4 - Color Painting: welcome to the fourth chapter. He I will show you my favorite way to use color together with dodging and burning. So let's get started. All right, So here's a shot in the from the Dolomites. Perfect morning. In my opinion, some nice glowing fork from the ambient predawn light And they're the clouds above the mountain were really cool, like a blanket about a nice contrast compared to the rough peeks. So yeah, really cool. And what I want to do is I want to further bright in some parts here, in the field, in the valley, and I will show you way how I like to do it. So first of all, I could, of course, use just soft light. I like to use soft light for my dodging and burning, and then I pick a brush and then, like, 30% of Passage e and then I paint. But you see, I'm brightening. That's what I want. But at the same time on de saturating. And I don't want that, as you see, doesn't look that good. Of course I have now to hire passively. I could go down a bit, then it looks a bit better But still I don't want to lose color. So what I will do is we will add not a blank layer. Use soft light again, and I will pick a color which is already there in the fields. Something like that. Maybe some color. Like when I paint on green than I like to use a yellowish tone because it makes it creates a nice mixture and colors. Then we will make it a really bright So we're brightening again, but with color. So we're not losing too much set saturation and it's trial a narrow. It could probably look bad now as well, but we will see. So now again, we're brightening. But we're not losing that much color. As you see, um, let me make the color a bit more saturated. Something like that. Yeah, that's cool. And now I will go down a bit more off the capacity and make it. Oh, I have a hard brush. That's I don't want that. Okay, a bit more. And now I will paint simply on the parts where I want to have a little more light hitting the hills. And of course, I don't have to paint of the same color all the time. But here for demonstration purposes, I will do that and also here in the foreground to make it a bit more brighter. No, not there. Tone here. Maybe a bit here in the mountain area. No, on the mountain. A bit more here, neck and, of course, at a mask and paint black to the mask. So a real the adjustment in certain parts. So it looks even mawr contrast. E. All right, let's turn this on and off. You see, it's it's It's quite I did it quite fast now. So no, no Voris, when you're more precise than together. If luminosity mask, it's even more precise than it looks even better, But I still like it already. Simple step in my opinion, yes, and always be careful that you don't add too much brightness to the shadows because otherwise you will use this three dimensional look. So I like toe repaint black in the shadows on my layer mask. So it's a bit more contrast e again. Yes, you see. So, yeah, that's the first tip using color to dodge and burn. And in the second image, I'm actually doing the same. Not much of a difference, but I'm using a darker color, too dark in certain parts. So again I will use the eyedropper picker color here. And then I will go down something like that, and we will use softly blend mode again. Lo opacity. I'm not that low. Something like 30 and now we will paint in the areas areas which we want to be a little bit talker, and it's important when you paint in areas which are darker than the color which we're painting with. Then we're talking when we, of course, adding this color to a dark apart. Then we're broadening again. So envy, dark, want to dark and even more scenes of tones. Here we have to add more darkness to the color, something like that. And when we turned us on and off, that's really settled us, you see. But it's adding saturation, and at the same time it's talking a little bit really cool and what I also want to do here . I want to create another blank layer, and now I want to brighten this water here, but I don't want to simply add y to it. I want to add a little bluish tone. So it keeps this nice, cool look. So again, soft, light brush, low opacity. And now we're painting inside the water. Yeah, quite stopping now, but still nice to look at when we add a layer mask, become pained black on the parts where we don't want the effect. Especially here. Okay, let's turn it on and off. You see, we added some nice cool tint to the water, and at the same time, we're part in it. So really cool. So we added a bit darker saturation to the highlights, Not much as you see, but still, it's a bit more saturated. It's also quite yeah, it's like I said, usually you can use a luminosity mask referred, and then you are a bit more guided with your painting. We can actually do that right now if you want. Ah, have actions going on here, so let's use a highlights. Luminosity mask. I see, uh, we save it, and then we're a bit more guided. We can paint here in this part, but right now it doesn't matter. But you get the idea. I paint with a darker color to add more saturation and darken it a little bit and a paint off a bright, saturated, less saturated color, too. Keep the color, which was already there and brighten it at the same time. Okay, so that's it with this shot. And now let's move to the next chapter and the last one already, So see you there.
6. Tip No. 5 - Fixing contrasty edges: So here we are in the last chapter already. Thank you for watching it so far. I hope you learned something there your little tips, like a said and their first to apply so easy to use. But, uh, they change your images in a completely different way. And yeah, it's like I already said in the intro It's the little things which make a difference. So, yeah, like I said, I hope you like it. And in this chapter here, it's a short one. I'm showing you how to clean edges and red now will demonstrate you what I mean with that. So let's take a look. So here's a night image from northern Norway and it's amazing there. I don't have to mention it. Probably everybody knows Hem noi really popular village. But I love the scene, and it can happen sometimes that when you have really contrast edges, let's say you have a bright sunset or sunrise hitting dark areas. So you have separation between the rocks and the bread sky. Or, in this case, we have white clouds hitting. Um, that compared to the dog rocks here, then we it sometimes happens. It's not chromatic aberration. But it sometimes happens that we have white lines going on up there, and this is because we may be used. Clarity sharpened it, sharpening local contrast whatsoever. And then it happens sometimes that the edges get a bit white. It's fringing, and we don't want that. And especially when we make it a bit smaller for the weapon and maybe sharpen it a bit more . So we have a, um, be a nice weapon Output. That's something you will learn in my other chapter here, a matter classy on Scotia. If you want to take a look, then it happens sometimes that we have white lines on the edges. And to overcome this, there's actually a really simple way. We pretty much only used to stamping tool on a layer and the important part important parties. We used the dark and moat and this only effects tones, which are darker than the ones we sampled. And we used, like, 70% opacity. So in re simple this area and here and when I draw around Iraq, you see I'm not affecting Dirac, but I'm affecting the tones which up rather than the ones reassembled in this case, I can go even up to 100. So I'm drawing around, you see, and cleaning up the edges nicely. And I'm not affecting the rock. If I would use the normal blend mode and I would click on this, you see, I would affect the rock. But with dark in, I don't also here. Yeah, and so on. You get the idea, and you can, of course, do this with another blend mode. First of all, you see, it's nice how it's able to clean up the edges here. And you could do this with a lot of blend mode as well. Let's say you want to brighten the rock. Oh, no, let's say differently. You have some black fringing going on. This happens sometimes when you use the Alton, Effective it too much. I don't have a image right now. I searched for it, but it didn't find it may be here a bit. You see, it's a bit too dark. So what we can also do is we can use to stem, tool and use the light and blend moat for low opacity. And now we sample something here and now you're brightening this part, but not too much in the sky. Yes. You see also here Yeah, you get the idea. So that's actually a really short tip, as I said, but it's also quite powerful, especially when you want to shrink your images down a bit more for rep output or when you want to print it like, really large, like Super Lodge. And then you get this white edging there low. It doesn't look good at all. And this simple way to clean it up. So, yeah, that's it. Now, with my tutorial, I showed you five chapters. I hope you enjoyed watching. And it's also a good start in 2020. So, like I said, I hope you learned something. And, uh, if you liked it, don't hesitate to give me a review on skill share. It helps me. But it also helps you guys because it makes it possible for me to be a published more classes. So, um, enough talking. Now. Enjoy. You're editing and see you next time, guys. So bye bye