5 Editing Tips to Make Your Photo Look Commercial

1. Intro: Hi, My name is Leah. I'm a family and commercial stocks photographer, and I'm here today to show you five basic editing tools to make your photos look more commercial in this class. I will show you the five basic editing techniques that I use for my own stock photos to make him look more commercials. This class is going to be for beginners. I will show you a step by step process from start to finish using photo shop. Now, if you've never used photo shop, it's OK. It's Photoshopped could be overwhelming. It's such a big program, but and for beginner photographers it can be a little bit daunting. But I will try to do my best to take you from start to finish, using simple ways to open it up and to use these tools things you'll need for this class are gonna be Photoshopped. I'm using a photo shop CC version from 2019. If you have an older version or a newer, updated version, that's OK now, most of these tools are gonna be in those versions, but they may not be in the same exact spot that I'm showing you. So you may have to look around to see what your version. Where these tools are Now, the other thing you're gonna need for this class is a photo that you took to edit. Now, with this photo for the class project, you will edit this photo and post it to the project page. I would also like to see your original photo just so that we can see the comparison and to see the difference of these five tools. If you guys have questions, let me know and let's get started. 2. Getting Started-Raw vs JPG: All right, let's get started. So before we start opening up photos and photo shop before we start looking at the tools, I wanna run by two different types of photos that we can take with our cameras. This is something I didn't learn early on. It took a few years for me to learn the differences between these photos and the types of photos, and it really does play into how I and everyone else can edit their photos. So I want to run through this just so that you guys are aware of the basics and it seems like it might be technical. But bear with me. I will walk you through a ZZ as I can the different types of photos that we can take our raw photos in Jay Peak photos. Now I take all my photos in raw with my camera. Now, most of the photography I do is in raw, and I like that because I have a little bit more editing power. I'm going to go through the positives and even the negatives of each of them. If you have a DSLR camera, you can take raw photos. But you could also take J Peg photos In depending on your settings, you can actually set your camera to take either. Or if you don't know your settings, you can actually probably just google your camera touch, type and style and year and see how to change these settings, and they can walk you through it. Now if you're using a phone, phones only do J peg, and I'm sure most point and shoots of probably also only doing J. Peg. I haven't used appointed shooting for many years, so I'm not so sure on point and shoots. But I would assume that it's all J. Peg nowadays. DSLR you actually really have an option. So when I'm using my DSLR, I always go raw their huge files. But I still work with it. J. Peg. Though I take a lot of phone photography, I use my phone. It's always with me. Sometimes I don't have my DSLR with me, or sometimes I just see something right in front of me. And I just want to capture it so phone photography isn't a bad thing, and J pigs really aren't bad. I don't prefer them, but you can utilize still, so J pegs air good format, but it's a zoo, you see, and we go through the differences. There's some restriction from J. Peg that you don't see as much from raw. Let's look at the file extensions. Now this seems a little crazy or a little bit technical. J. Peg is probably something you see all the time dot jp g. So if I take a phone photo and I upload it to my computer, it's gonna upload it as a J. P G. Most photos that we use online are all exchanged by J. P. G. There's other file formats, but J pegs air really pretty popular. Most photos were saved. It's a J peg. So here's the raw extension files. Now, as you see camera to camera, these things change. So if your cameras not here, these are some examples of some companies and their raw formats. If your income is not here, you can actually just look it up by putting in a name your camera and saying raw file extensions, and it will show you the different extension file names for yours. So I have a Nikon. You know, when I take photos, I upload them to my computer And when I'm taking my photos and raw the minute I uploaded on my computer, I don't see J pegs. The extension I see dot any f. That's how we know my wrote photo was raw, so I have a dot NDF file and I opened it up. I start editing from there, so raw files are large files and their un compressed. So what this means is that the camera is not compressing or shrinking the image down. It literally just takes the image of what it seemed. This is great because yes, it's a large file and I need extra SD card space. But I actually have more room now in this large file to be able to manipulate it a little bit more, I can get better color correction, and I can actually have more room and more range to help my highlights and the shadowy areas of my images, whereas J. Pegs or smaller files, and they're actually compressed a bit by the camera. In fact, the cameras sometimes does some sharpening and color correcting on its own within this compression, and there's just not as much range. If you don't have a big file, you just don't have all the information there to edit the photo. So it's not necessarily that you can't edit it because I edit phone images all the time, but you don't have as much range on the JPEG. Smaller files raw photos have to be converted or saved to another format like J. P G to print. If I have a photo that I have taken of a client and I go in, I edit the photo. I can't save it as a raw file if they want to print it, so I actually have to save it as a J peg for them to be able to print. Whereas J. Peg you can actually print thes straight out of camera. Now, this is where J pick, I think, is a little easier, because if you need to print these photos super quick and you don't have time to even edit them, J. Peg works because you can actually just go through ah, app or whatever you need to just to print your photos. Now here's why. I really I'm talking about this like, why am I talking about these two different random images, images and what they are raw photos. When I open it up in photo shop, it opens up what we call camera raw. Now this is a very specific screen in a very specific editing tool that I am going to be using. So I want to let you guys know this. So know what your file is on your image, Because if it's a J peg, J pegs actually will not open up camera. Now there's ways to do this in your settings and get J picks open up in camera raw. But for just your general user in a general photo shop experience whenever you open up a J peg, it will not open up in camera raw. Now there is a way to do it and I will show you this will walk through it, but you actually have to do it in the file menu. So, no, which photo you're taking know why you're taking it? And the differences? Because I think this is really important for photographers to know I am a fan of raw. But like I said, Jay Peak has its place, and phone photography is amazing. And some of these high end J peg images can really be amazing to edit, and you can't. Sometimes you can't even tell between an edited Ron and edited JPEG. So if you're looking at your camera or if you're trying to figure out what your photo that you're gonna be using to edit this is kind of the differences. Figure out which one yours is because when we start opening up in photo shop, it's going to make a difference so onto the next lesson. 3. Opening Your Photo: Okay, So now this is Photoshopped. Here's the French screen. You see all the different images here, but what we're gonna do is file and open. Now I'm gonna show you the two different ways. So we're going to start with the any f. Now, remember that any F is a raw file. This is what we just talked about in the previous lesson. The any f is the Nikon version. This any F tells me it's raw. And when I opened up a raw image in photo shop, this is what we call camera raw. This is a very specific screen to get to. Now, if you're light room user, this is probably pretty familiar to you. This is the screen similar most similar to light room. And this is where we're going to do a couple of our first edits. So we need to get to camera raw now. This is, of course, of raw image. So it is going to open up in camera rock. Now if you don't have a raw image, let's say that your image is a J pic. So J. Peg J. P. G. This is not a raw image file, but I am going to open up this image now. As you see, it's a totally different screen. We're not in camera, Rob. We're just in Adobe Photoshopped right now. So there's the screens on the right side that have different layers in history and my adjustments tab. And then I have all these other tools on the left. Now, when you're in here, we will come back to this for some of our other steps. But for the first few steps, we need to get to camera. So if you have a J peg image and it is opening up in just regular photo shop and not in camera, we're gonna go up to filter and hit camera raw filter. Now this will open up my J peg in the camera raw settings, and now I am good to go to start our first step. 4. Brightness/Contrast: So this is the top five edits for commercial imagery now. The reason I chose commercial imagery is because I'm a stock photographer. I do commercial imagery all the time. I sell my photos online. This class is kind of showing you how to get to that look. Now you don't have to be a commercial photographer to do that. In fact, I will have a shameless plug real quick. I have a class called start selling your photography getting started with stock photography . Now, if you've seen that, then great. If you haven't, it's okay. This class will still be something you could get a lot out of and learn out of. The idea for this is mainly I'm a commercial photographer, and this is really my process on how I take my images from beginning to end before a sell them online. Really, you don't need to be doing commercial photography for this. I use this for my own family photography as well. So if I have a client that I'm taking photos of these air, the same types of edits that I go through for them the edits were going through are the top five edits right Now we are going through brightness and contrast. Brightness is really just the overall lights or darks of the image. Usually is a beginner photographer, you are taking images that tend to be a little bit dark. So I think for beginners it's especially important to kind of look at your brightness and contrast because it's easy to miss. If you have a really, really dark image, you start getting a lot of noise. If the photo has a lot of noise, is gonna be denied pretty quick in the stocker commercial world. So my encouragement would say to start with a really good photo, the better the photo you choose now, the better it will be at the end, when we've made all our tweaks photo shops, not here to fix photos, it's here to edit. So let's grab your photo and let's get into Step number one. So let's get into editing the photo. Now. I'm gonna show you were going to go step by step on the different sliders and what they do and why we would use them. So first we have exposure. Exposure is the amount of lightning image, if I have are darker image which it kind of is. I can start increasing my exposure now. As you see it, I start going up. It gets kind of white like That's really what it's doing. And then I can start going down and we start losing the information. So exposures just how bright or how dark the images contrast. The contrast is how bright the brights are and how dark the dark star. So the more contrast we have my bright skip brighter and my darks get darker. So as you see, we get this image that has really darks and bright brights. Now I can also shift my contrast down, and Michael Brights on his bright in My Dark stone is dark. In fact, it kind of gives almost a washed out gray look, especially in the shadow areas, even near the face. That's what contrast is. It takes the brights to be brighter. The darks to be darker, Ord under does that same movement. OK, so now let's go down to the white so the whites and the image is the overall brightness values oven image. So as I go up, you can see that the brightness is getting stronger. Basically, it's taking all of my highlights, all the brightest areas and making a brighter now if I go down on the slider, is taking all those ST brightest areas of the image and making them darker now. Highlights are very similar to whites, but we're using a lot smaller range. So where's whites take all of the brightest element highlights. Take a little portion of that. So the brightest of the braids and it takes them and brightens them or darkens them. Whites take the whole thing and make it brighter. Highlights. Take the areas that are the brightest and either make him darker or brighter. The whites, It seems great. I'm gonna make my whites whiter mean a zoom in here so you can see. But what do you increase your whites? It actually can start messing with the coloring. You can see it, especially in the face. It gets very orangey and actually messes the colors. Now, if we go upto highlights, we can see if I go up on my highlights. It hasn't done a whole lot on the face area here, but what it's done is it doesn't affect the coloring as much. So you're not seeing that color change. Where is in the whites? You see a lot of color. It affects the tones a little differently. The next thing are the shadows and the black. So let me zoom out. Now, shadows and blacks are very similar to whites and highlights. So blacks are the darkest area. The photos. So if I go darker on it, it get makes my black school blacker. And if I go lighter on it, it lightens them up. Now this, like the whites, is for a broader range. So this is for a lot of the photo. Where is in the shadowy area. It really just takes literally the shadows and lightens them up. So it's a little bit different range and just like in white, affecting the tones. Black can also affect your tones and messes with the color a bit, whereas if my shadows or darker, it really doesn't affect the overall look of some of the areas and some of the tones in the image. So there you go, there's the basics of the image sliders. I'm going to show you my thought process on why I do what I dio. Your image is gonna be different. It may not be as dark is Mine is mine is pretty dark. But in my image, I see I have a lot of darker areas. The face is probably one of the best ways to see it. So I have a lot of darker areas in the eyes. But then I have a really bright area from the sun over here on the site of the face. So what I'm going to dio my hope is to kind of even it out a little bit. Now in some of our future steps, I'm gonna be working on some of these dark and bright areas a little bit more. But for now, I'm going to show you my general threat process because most of thes sliders are what I use . Most of the editing I do is right now, like I want to fix is much of the photo right now as I can. Then once we get into the other sections and the other steps, then we can kind of refine it a little bit. So something Before we start, I will sometimes do just for fun photo shops pretty smart. There is, you see, appear auto and default auto. Is Photoshopped looking your image and saying what it thinks needs to be done? I'm not just starting from scratch, either. So and as you see what it's done, I don't like the image. I don't think Photoshopped has done a good job feel like in the face. There is a little too much darkness going on there. I look and see what it's doing, and I think it's just a little too much. So I'm not really happy with what photo shop is done. Now maybe photo shop has affected your photo, and it's perfect and you love it so great. Or you could start tweaking what photo shop is done based on what your likes or dislikes are. I don't like these. So this little other thing up here's default, and this takes it back to ground zero. Basically what I started with, I know right now I need to increase my exposure a little bit. Now if I go up too much, then I start getting too much brightness up in here. So for me, I don't want it quite that bright, but I do want to brighten it up a little bit because my shadows air just a little bit too dark. So what I'm gonna do is kind of boost it up just a little bit where we're starting to see some details in the eye area, but not necessarily losing a lot of detail in the highlight. Now, in this image contrast now I could go up on my contrast. But my main problem with this image is that my brights are too bright in my darks or too dark contrast makes that harsher. I don't know if I really want is much contrast in this image, because there's already a lot of natural contrasts going on, especially in the face. So I'm gonna take my contrast down just a little bit now if I started taking my contrast down, I don't like it because I'm getting a lot of great. The thing is, if too much I'm now getting too many darks and brights. Not enough. Then I'm starting to get a washed out image, so I will just kind of slide this around and just see where I wanted to be. I probably not gonna do too much with contrast, so we're gonna knock down the contrast just a little bit, but not enough to wear him losing a lot of coloring. So now the next one's highlights. But I don't like to affect my highlights first, because it's just a small portion of whites. Let's start with whites. Usually this is the proper way to do it. The problem that I have in my image right now is my whites are too bright. I don't want to even this out. So I'm gonna take my white slider and I'm gonna knock it down just a bit. Now, if I go too far down, then we have a lot of flatness in the face. It we really do like highlights, highlights or good, but too much of the highlights. You start to get a lot of flatness, so I'm gonna actually knock this down just a little bit and then I'm gonna go back up to my highlights. Now, this is where we can do some sliding around, see where we want to go. I don't want to go high because I'm gonna lose a lot of the sky up in here. So I am going to come down a bit on my highlights. So if I go too far down on my highlights than like with the whites. I get a little more flatness. So I do want to come up a little bit cause I do want some highlights, just not to the same extent. So the more I go, the more sky I lose. So I'm probably going to stay down a little bit on the further end, but not white down at the very bottom Now, blacks, my image right now has quiet a bit of black this section. I probably want to breaking up a little bit. But then I start getting again more flat as I start and more graze as I start sliding my slider. So I'm just gonna affect it just a little bit. And then I'm going to go to my shadows because this is probably weird. I am going to get most of that shadow. I'm really going to start looking at the trees. I need more detail in the tree. I'm going to go up now. If I go up too high, then I start looking like my trees. A really gray and the face starts to get a little flat, so I'm gonna go up. But I don't think I'm going to go up, asshole, I So I'm going to kind of go down in this area here, so I'm still getting some brightness. But I'm not losing out on some of the, um, darkness. So right now, I think this is kind of a good place to sit. This is probably where I would end the brightness contrast. Hopefully, you guys were able to get a couple pointers here and working on your own images. Each image is going to be different. You're gonna have different looks. You're gonna have a different feel right now. A lot of commercial photography. I would encourage more of a higher contrast. But however, there's kind of a trend with lower contrast e images. Right now, it really is dependent on the field you want and the look you want. I would say Just start playing around with it and get some practice with it. Good luck. Keep playing with this. Take a few pictures, get some different images that you're playing with and get some practicing. So now that you figured all that out, let's move on to the next lesson. 5. White Balance: Okay, so edit number two, we're going to start looking at color correcting color. Correcting is also known as white balance. There's a lot that goes into this, and there's a lot of details you can learn as you go, but I'm just gonna give you a brief overview. White balance is making the color in the photo look more neutral. So depending on where your photos being taken, if it's in the sun, for example, you may have more yellow tones, whereas if you're in the shade, it may have more blue tones. If you're taking your photo in the house, you may have different lights that can cast different colors that will affect your image. Really, this is something that you can change in your camera settings, and a lot of photographers as they get used to their cameras, will start looking at the white balance as well as their exposures as they take pictures. Sometimes you can do your best in it just isn't always 100% perfect. So that's where we're able to get into photo shop and kind of tweak things a little bit. Okay, let's open up her image in photo shop now we have our image up. This is the image after the edits from the first lesson. So what we looked at was the area in here. The next area that we're gonna look at is the color area or the white bones area, which is right here. Now, As you see, you can go cooler on it and go more blue or warmer and yellow. And then with the tenant, you go green or magenta. Now I'm gonna show you right here. This is a drop down menu. You can see how it was done, the originals as shot, or you could go into the preset photo shop options. So I have auto and this looks a little too yellow for me. So I don't like that. I'm gonna go back down. I always like going back down to the original image so that I'm comparing it rather than comparing each other. So daylight that adds a little more yellow in a little more magenta, which I actually think looks pretty good. So you can kind of go through all these and see which one matches your image. The best. Now there is another little area option Number two is going up into this right here. There is a dropper tool, and there's two dropper tools. There's a color sampler, but then there's the white balance tool. So we're gonna use the white balance tool and this tool you're gonna actually take it to the lightest gray area of your image. If you do not have a light grey image in your area, then you can also choose the area that is supposed to be the closest toe white. So I have a lot of Gray's Inn, the shorts. I have some graze up in here, but they're kind of in the shadow in their dark, so I'm actually gonna go up into the sky area where the clouds are. So this area right here seems the most promising. It's kind of like Gray. It's not quite white, so I'm gonna literally sample this area, and what Photoshopped does is balances it compared to the area you've chosen. So this added a lot more yellows and a little more magenta, as I bet if I went to daylight, it is very, very similar, so there's different ways to do this. The dropper tool is probably the easier way, but you do have to make sure you're getting it on the right area. Depending on where you put the dropper, you're going to see different areas that are being sampled. So remember you want your lightest gray area, or if that's not available than the closest to white, you can get good luck. Play around with your temperatures. Sometimes it's fun just to see what kind of look and what kind of feel you want for the photo. So there you go. Now we've gone over temperature intent and white balance and on to the next lesson. 6. Rule of Thirds and Crop: All right, let's get into edit number three, which is crop and re size. So why crop and re sites? Why is this part of my process? The crop tool could be utilized for a few things. First of all, we can start getting rid of distracting objects in our image, sometimes on the outer skirts oven image. You may have some things that are coming in that just are too much, though too distracting, and it's always better to get rid of those things than toe have to fix them later on. The other reason is cropping allows us to focus more on our subject, especially if there's really distracting things in the background. Let me give you an example of this. So this photo here is of a model at a coffee shop with her laptop. It's a great photo, except there are some distracting things in this image. All these Terry legs coming in on the right hand side and even the chair in the table leg coming in on the left. It just makes it really kind of an awkward photo. Your eyes aren't necessarily going to her, so what I will do is take the crop tool and crop it down. And now I took out all the extra chair legs. So at a number four, the next lesson will actually be learning how to take out things like this. But it's a lot of work, and sometimes it's easier just to use the crop tool and crop it on down. So then you can utilize a tool that helps you save time overall. Another reason I like going with the crop tool is this allows me to maintain the rule of thirds in an image. Now, the rule thirds, if you're not familiar with it, is a composition guideline where you split the photo into three sections going vertically across and horizontally down. It basically shows you a tic tac toe board. Here's our little tech technical board over the picture. This rule really just makes the image more appealing to the eye. So what we're going to do is take the TIC tac toe board that we've made, put it over our image. There's gonna be rules that go along with this. We're going to make sure the subject of our image is along one of the vertical or horizontal lines, so we're gonna look at this image This first images of the tree. So the tree is the subject matter of my photo. As you see, I have this line right here. This is the line that I'm using to set my subject on. If the tree were in the middle of the image, it wouldn't be as interesting by having the tree shifted over on the actual line. It makes the image more interesting. The other thing that I have going on here is if you look at this horizontal line, I have this branch making sure this branch also sits on the horizontal line. Thes lines are helpful just to kind of keep everything interesting. It's pretty cool image of this tree, but I'm trying to use the lines to add my advantage. This is another image. This is a model playing the violin. I made sure that the model is sitting on this left vertical line. It is hard, I think, naturally because most people want to sit in here. But there's all this area over here and it's kind of unnatural. Tau want to keep a lot of area undone, but really this image is not the same without it being shifted over to the left. So the next thing to remember when we were looking at the rule of thirds is that a person's I needs to be on the line or cross section of two lines were going to go back to the image of the violinist. As you see, make sure his eyes are on one of the lines Now. A lot of times I will make sure these junction points have the eyes in them as well. It makes it just a little bit more interesting. So the eyes go on one of the lines, and I also make sure it's in one of the junction points. Here's another image of a model, and this is just a head shot. But as you see, I've made sure that the lies are staying on the line and also staying on the cross line. The other rule is to make sure that your horizon line is on one of the horizontal lines. So, for example, here is a photo of beach photo. I made sure that my horizon line, at least where the ocean meets the mountains, is right there on the horizontal top line. No It doesn't always have to be the top line. It could be the bottom line, which here's another image of a barn in this image that I had taken the barn. We have it sitting this line right on the the bottom horizontal line. So as long as one of the horizon lines sits on one of those, it also makes it a lot more interesting. So that's just a quick overview of the rule of thirds. So the next thing we want to do is open our image back up to where we had it, because we can let photo shop show us where the rule of thirds are. Here's the photo we just had done at it. One was looking at all of the highlights and shadows, and then we had the last lesson, which is looking at the white balance and color and temperature. We're still in this camera raw screen. So what? I'm gonna dio down here. It says open image. I'm gonna open the image up, and now it's opened up in photo shop. So this is the regular photo shop screen, not camera raw, and this is where we're going to find the crop tools and all the things we're gonna be using on the left. We have all these little things and it gets overwhelming. If you're just starting photo shop, don't let it get overwhelming. I'll tell you which ones were gonna work through. I'm gonna grab the crop tool. So once you've had the crop tool, tap the image. And if you go up here, there's this interesting little checkerboard that what this is is the overlay for the cross . I always set mine at the rule of thirds, so I make sure that this is hit. I'm gonna look my image. How does it look? Well, mine doesn't look too bad. Actually, I do have my model over here on the line. Now, the horizon line could probably come down a little bit. I think that the line is a little over and even this line right here could probably come down a little bit. Now, my image doesn't have a whole lot of distracting things in the background. However, I'm not loving this tree. It's kind of cut up off at the top, so I think I'm gonna take it down just a little bit now when I take it down. It does shift thes horizontal lines down. But now I'm not getting my model. I always like to keep my model's eyes right on the line so I might come in over on this side just a little bit. But now his hand is over here, off the edge. So I'm going to just move it. I can hold it and move it around and just get this model's eyes right on the line. But I'm gonna just okay it. So when you're okay with where you're at it, check Mark. And then, yes, At this point, I'm happy with it, and that's the end of this step. 7. Patch Tool: All right, let's look at our next at it at it. Number four, which is the patch tool Now the patch tool is probably my favorite tool in Photoshopped. I use it all the time. It helps get rid of things in the image that are very distracting. It also can help even out skin tones and get rid of acne or scars. I use it all the time. The patch tool is a tool that replaces a selected area using a pattern or pixel from another part of the image. So let's open up in photo shop, and I will show you what we are talking about. So let's open up the photo and photo shop and I'll show you how cool this patch Tulis. This image of the girl in the coffee shop from our last lesson is a great image to look at and to kind of, see, um, in an easy way, how this tool works. So I wanted to show you this tool, and then I will open up the golfer and we will edit that photo. But let's start here. So, over on the left, you will see all the different tools on photo shop. Now. Mine has the patch tool up. Right now, what the pastoral looks like is a little looks like a little piece of cloth with sewn edges . It may not look like that on yours. And if it doesn't just hold it down. Yours may look like a banding or couple Arrow's crossing. It looks like that. Just hold on to it and the menu will pop up and you can hit the patch tool. Now, over here, I'm going to start up on the top. We're gonna talk about this area up here and what these all mean? So we're in the patch tool. So if we start going into selections, you can change your selection and all that. But for now, we're just going to stick with the regular box. Just make sure that is clicked then patch. This is normal or content aware. Content aware is a little different patch tool, and I'm not. And it has its place, but I'm not a big fan of it. I usually just keep it at normal, so make sure the patch says normal. Now, these air source and destination and I will go over those each and individualists you can understand what's going on. The other thing is the diffusion. I usually leave it about five years, ways you can tweak this, but, um, for now, let's just leave it at five. So let's get started with the patch tool. So what we're gonna do, I'm gonna make sure it's a source. What it's saying is, when I circle the little piece So we're gonna take this little piece right here If I start moving it around, getting basically a copy of whatever, I'm going over. So I try and make sure that I'm staying within a similar pattern is you see, I have a little preview in the box of what it's gonna look like so I can choose where I'm gonna sit it. We're just going to go with this for right now. And as you see, the little paper is gone. And it matched the area that I had. So it's matching the texture of whatever area I choose now destination. If we click destination, this is a little different. I don't normally use this tool. Usually go by source. But this tool says, Let's say I want to repeat this. Maybe I really like all these papers on the ground. So what I'm gonna do a circle it. And now I can put this anywhere I want. We're gonna have paper all over the ground now. This would be great if you're trying to reproduce an image or a pattern, but for me, I don't like it, so I don't want to do that. But the other option in using destination is taking a portion, and then you can move it right over the top and over the areas you don't want. So let's say at any point in time you're not liking what you did. I'm go over and make sure the history button over here on the right is hit. This basically goes through all the steps of what you've just done. Now, if you don't see a history box than go a pinto window and make sure it says history but the history, basically I can go back up and get back to a point where I started so I can go and hit whatever steps I want. So we're going back to this step. So I've gotten into that paper now, So that's what destination does. I don't want to do that right now, I mainly use source, so we're just gonna utilize this source I'm going to do is go through and basically circle everything that I don't want and get rid of it. Sometimes I don't do it correctly and have to do it all over again. So there's this. So, interestingly enough, a lot of commercial imagery does not like logos and on phones. They don't like the actual keys on the phone because you can tell this is an iPhone. So what they want you to do is actually take out. So what I'll do is circle around and take out the button. But look at that. Sometimes the patch tool is a little wonky. There's some weird things that start happening. Sometimes you can just undo it and do it again. And sometimes that doesn't work. So what I'm going to do is take a bigger section and a bigger area, because what can happen. Is it starting to read this black line so I can utilize this black line, match it up and then do it now because it was bumping up against the black, line it through that highlight. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. So if it's not working, then just go backwards and keep trying it again. The other thing you can do there is a little logo right here on the table. This is tricky, so when you're on an edge, it actually can be very difficult. So what I'll do is actually show you here. So if we take this and I go right to the edge like this and then let's say I want this is my pattern. Well, it's actually starts to bleed over into the silver. So if you're right on the edge is something. Sometimes you'll get residue off of that edge blending in because what's happening is I am going and making this circle, and it is feathering around the image and trying to match the images musters possible. So what it's seeing is the texture that I'm going to, but it's also seeing what's around it, and it's trying to match the two. So if you're up against an edge like this, sometimes it's easier to actually go into the edge like so and actually continue to get John and match it up. And in that situation it actually worked, So the pastoral does have some points of struggle, but a lot of it is just practicing with it, getting used to it, seeing what it looks like and what it's going to dio and it, You get frustrated. It's okay cause it gets hard. But I think there's areas that you can practice and get better at. The image is a lot less distracting. I have. My logo is taken out and this photo is ready to go. Let open up my golfer photo. So we're back to the golfer photo now what in this picture needs to be taken out? Well, there's a few things that I don't like. First of all, I don't like this little tree so I could take this little tree and try and get rid of him and match it along the tree line so that I am getting the tree line Now. The other thing I don't like right now is this logo. So if you're doing photos for stock photography, you will need to take out all your logos. They will not accept any image within any active logo in it for commercial use. This is a little bit of a struggle because I have his collar coming down and in. So let's try it. Let's just follow the collar around and I'm gonna follow logo around and then try and match it up is best is possible. Now I'm noticing that down in this area there is a shadow, so I'm going to try and keep that shadow as much as possible. So there is some discoloration. And if that happens, what I'll do is just patch tool those out. This looks actually pretty decent. Sometimes when you're going up in around an edge like that, it starts meeting the edge. But because this edge is the same color, there wasn't too many issues with it. There's also when I am a stock photographer, you have to look for the very little things. Sometimes there's logos that you don't always know where there. So you have to really scour the image and make sure that they're all taken out. We're gonna steal this looks, so because it's bleeding in, I'm gonna undo that and make a tighter. Sometimes if it's bleeding through, I will make a smaller areas and I will take it in more chunks rather than grabbing the whole thing and over. I will take it in little bits, and this. Sometimes it's easier now. The other reason that the patch tool is really cool is because you can take out little things. So the other thing I can do is take out some either discolorations or areas on the face scars or acne. Now, there's not a lot going on here, but one area right here, where I find that I can do the patch tool this I'm going to do just to help the skin and the texture in the bright spot. It kind of evens out the bright spot. So if I do, this is you see that bagel highlight is gone. So and then the shadow here gets cut in there. So because of the coloring on it, I think I might try and match this up. You can smooth areas that need tohave, better texture, ring or better coloring. It evens out color quite a bit, too. So overall, that's probably one of the top tools I use. It's my favorite tool. I use it all the time because this tool helps refine an image. Play around of the patch tool, see how goes, and we will start with the next listen 8. Dodge and Burn: All right, let's look at the next section. So the next edit that we're going to do is burn in Dodge. So what is burning Dodge? So burning dodges probably my second favor tool in Photoshopped. My first favorites, that patch tool. But burning dodge is actually kind of fun to play with, so the definition of burn and dodge is burned. It makes a portion of the image darker, and Dodge makes a portion of the image letter. Really, what it's doing is taking a flat image and making it look more three d. The reason it is one of my favorite tools is because it could take a flat image and just give it so much more dimension. This is where you think you could go from a regular photography look to a more commercial look. I like using the burn and Dodge tool from food photography to nature photography and even into Portrait's. When I doing this, I could make people's eyes pop. I could make the backgrounds look a little bit better, so I like the burn and dodge tool. I think it gives you coming open creativity to do whatever you want with burning and dodging. There's not really a right and wrong. It depends on how you want your picture to look. I tend to like my pictures, look a little bit more contrast, ID and a little bit more in depth. And so that's why I choose to do the burn and Dodge, especially with my nature photos. So as we get started into the Dodge and burn, I do want to mention something really quick. There's a lot of different ways to get the same look. Dodging and burning nowadays has new and developed ways with layers, and they are a lot more intermediate or advanced level photo shopping skills. This what I'm going to show you today is just a basic way of doing it. It's kind of the old fashioned way we used to do it, and it's It is the way that I usually do it. It's a little quicker, and it's very basic, so it's kind of what I end up doing before I finish editing my photo. So as we get into the Dodge and burn, the one reason people don't like to do it this way anymore is because they say it's quote unquote destructive of our image. But the reality is is we are changing our image. We are quote unquote destructing our image and we're changing into something better in protecting us against totally destructing our image. There's ways that we can save our image, which I will go over in the next lesson. And there are other ways that we protect ourselves as we go in editing so that we don't lose our time, our work in our energy, one of the ways that we can protect ourselves from losing a lot of the information is by layers. I'm going to start over here in the corner, in the very bottom, and we're gonna do a new layer. No new layer it is. Click and then hold it down onto this. Post it note and you'll see background copy come up with layers kind of like two pieces of paper stacked on top of each other. We have the original drawing, and then we have the one on top of it. So as long as his background copy is highlighted and we're all the edits that we're gonna be doing will go on to that over here in the very corner on our tools, There is a probably either one that looks like a lollipop, a hand and then the sponge. Here we have the Dodge Tool, which makes things lighter. We have the burn tool, which makes things darker, and then we have the sponge tool, and the sponge tool actually will work within these, and I will show you in a little bit. But it either conceptual rate or de saturate. Let's start with Dodge. Now I'm going to explain some of the tools if we go up here to the top. So if you remember, Dodge is a lightening up oven area. We can choose to dodge different things. I can choose to dodge shadows, so wherever my brush goes, it will brighten up the shadows, the mid tones or the highlight. So we're going to go through each of these. But the next thing I want you to look at his exposure. This is kind of the hardness of your brush, so it's kind of like how hard to push with a pencil on a piece of paper. It can be really dark, or it can be really light. We're going to do it on the dark in just so you can kind of see what's going on. Just make sure protect tones is checked and then let me show you what this brush does. So we have highlights any time my brush goes over it, it's just gonna make brighter the highlights just in what I touch. Now toe undo any function. We can go over here in the history and go back this step. If you get too many steps in history, you can't go all the way back. That's why we have this layer background copy. So if anything goes bad, we can always delete the layer and start over again. Highlights. This is just the highlighted. Now there's mid tones. Mid tones just brightened up what the mid tones are, and then we have shadows and shadows. When we dodge those, it will do the brightening of that. It's where we mix thes that sometimes you can get some better dodging, and later we'll do some burning right here. We're going to start, and I don't ever start with 100. I will always go down to probably 10% or less gives you better hold on what you're doing. So I'm just going to start going over the highlights of this tree, we're gonna make it a little brighter, and then I'm gonna take the mid tones and lighten those up. Now, I can also go through and make the shadows like nut. But there's on the tree and probably gonna want to do some darker stuff. So a lot of it is learning the brushes. Do I need more highlights in this area, usually on trees and background items. I like to do more highlights and brighten up some stuff and then mid tones if there's areas that are a little darker. Aiken, Brighton those up, Aziz. Well, the one area I do wanna look out with dodging and burning is this face. So my model's face is still kind of dark. We weren't able to fully lighten it up, but now that we have the Dodge and burn, we can go in a little bit more so I can go in and start shadows. Since there's areas over here near the either a little too dark, I can lighten those up mid tones. I can start taken some of my mid tones up here. It shadowed, so we're gonna do some highlights I think it needs some highlights over here. So as I come back even out the face just a little bit more so that there's a little bit more light on the side of the face, it is still in shadow. I'm not gonna totally fix that. But it is nice to be able, Teoh, add some highlights here and there. Where do I start first? So whenever I start, I usually will start with dodging first, and then I will go into burning second. So burning is the same idea. We have the range which is shadows mid tones and highlight. Well, for example, let's look at it in here. I'm gonna move my exposure up just so you can see it. So that is burning of shadows. This is gonna be burning in mid tones and this is gonna be burning of highlights. So the question comes, What do I dodge and what do I burn? First thing that I usually look at our specific areas that need some kind of lightening or darkening. For example, the face of my model was a little too dark on his right site, so I decided to brighten it up a little bit. The second area that I'm gonna look for are going to be places that can use some contouring . I'm going to start looking at what's already highlighted in shadowed, and I'm gonna accentuate that just a little bit. I can start going through and making some highlights and making some of the areas a little bit brighter brightening up what already is there. So on the trees, there's already brightness on these trees. But I'm going to start going through and making him just a little bit brighter. Then the other thing that I will look for our were the areas that are darker that need to be just a little bit darker. So when I I tend to like a lot of darkness within the trees in the background, I think it gives a little bit more drama. When I'm doing that, I'm gonna choose some of the places in the background that maybe needs a little bit more darkness. But I'm already looking at this at what is already there. I'm going to make some of the darker areas darker in some of the lighter areas lighter, and that really is going to do two things it will contour. It's gonna add some of that three d look that we like to see. A lot of it is painting on. We're just in a lot of It's just trial and error, I Each photo is going to be different. What's the look that I want? Do I want more contrast in certain areas? So a lot of it's just looking at the photo itself and seeing what it needs so I can start adding in a little bit more texture. Now, when you're done with it, you can kind of pull back. So the nice thing about this is we've made all our changes on the background copy. So now I can turn this background copy off and you can't see it, and I can turn it back on. But the great thing about this is now I am toddling back and forth between what I have done . You can see all the changes from the original to the end and to see if I really like it, and so far I'm liking it. I think it's pretty good. This image doesn't need a whole lot of contouring. If I were doing food than I'd probably focus more on the contouring of around the edges, making them look a little bit more. Contrast it so it looks a little bit more. Three D Mine didn't need a whole lot of burning and dodging, but just enough to add that little pop of contrast. So something I do want to mention because we talked about the sponge tool. I do want to briefly mention where that comes in, so the sponge tool is here as we started dodging and burning. Especially if you do extremes of this, you'll start seeing some of the colors change. When I started dodging some of the shadow areas, I could lose color. And sometimes when I start burning, I can gain color so we don't want too much of the color. And that's where this bunch tool comes in. This sponge tool basically saturates or de saturate any of the areas that I'm working in. Where I did lightened up some of the shadows. The face is not as saturated, so keeping my flow low again. I'm going to start adding a little bit of color into the right hand side near the face. This will add just a little bit of color where I was losing it with the shadow. That is that now I could also de saturate stuff. So if I'm like, Oh, this tree right here is a little too much. I can start sort just de saturating it and making it less so, Really, This tool is kind of works with the burning dodge because as you start burning and dodging , you will see the colors will kind of get a little wacky. So this is what helps balance out that burn and dodge coloring. So now we need to take our layers and merge them together. So how we do that is we have this background copy, which is where we made all our changes. You can turn it on and off, and then we have the original, which is what we haven't touched. And as you can see, there's a little lock there saying that it's locked up to put these two together into merge them together. We're going to go up into layer and then we're going to come down to merge visible. So I'm gonna merge visible and Photoshopped will merge the two layers in tow one. And now my photo is ready to be saved. Good luck with the tool. I hope this one helps. I think this is a tool that I usually used to make my commercial photography stand out just a little bit more. When I'm doing stock and commercial photography, I'm up against so many different kinds of photos. So this tool helps my photos pop just a little bit more, so I have that edge on selling photos tend to be flat when you first take them, and even when you contrast in camera raw, they can still look a little bit on that flat side. And that's where burning Dodge really does come in and helps your photo pop out a little bit more. I like it with food photography and nature photography specifically, but I think it can work with pretty much any photo that you have good luck with it. Hopefully, it's something you can utilize and use and can help you in your photo editing 9. Saving Your photo: one thing I do want to go over is saving our photos first thing to remember. These are permanent changes that were doing on the original photo, So it is important to save your changes as a copy or edit. Basically, what I'm saying is we don't want to be writing over original image, that original image that we took in camera. It is important to keep intact. So whenever I make edits on a photo, I will save as a copy or as an edited photo. Sometimes I'll totally rename my photo. So I know that it is different than the one that I've been editing. When you're saving, we want to make sure that we're gonna save as that will make it. So we're not saving over the original image and that we're saving as a new photo Now. The other thing to note is that if you are using a raw image, we also need to change that to a J peg. If you remember our previous lesson about raw images you cannot print on raw, and most of the time when you're uploading online, you're not doing a raw photo as well. Raws a huge photo so we want to make sure that we're saving as a JPEG. So let me show you how to do this. I have my image job. So let's say this is it. This is my photo. I'm really happy where it's at now. I want to save it. So what I'm gonna do is go up to file and make sure I'm doing save ass and not just save. If you put save, you will run the risk of overrating your old photo, so make sure to save as so one thing you can Dio is just say as a copy. When you save as a copy, it adds just that word copy there and then it makes it and changes it into a whole different photo. So if I were to say that it would say the name of the photo and then copy and that won't rewrite over your image, the other thing I could do is just totally rename it something different. I could say golfer edited then I know what I'm actually looking at. It's not just this random picture number. The other thing to make sure is down here format. We want to make sure it says Jay Peg, If yours is raw, it may come up differently. But just make sure it says Jay Pek, And then we save. And now I J peg options always come up. And I always keep it as a larger file because I don't like it. The compression on it is much so I usually just keep it standard. I keep it about a 10 maximum, Um, and then just the baseline standard format. So okay, and it should save it right there, then there. 10. Final Thoughts: So there you go, the five basic at it. I hope you guys were able to get some good information out of it. And for those of you who have never used photo shop before, I hope that it wasn't too difficult. I'm really excited to see what you guys do with your photography. Just a reminder. The project will be to take your photo the before and after, and to place it into the project tab. If you have any questions, let me know. And good luck on all your future edits.