Transcripts
1. Editing Disaster Files: A Masterclass in Photo Rescue: Hey, guys. Welcome to my new class about
improving your photography. I had this idea a few days ago. I like to read read it a lot, and I saw a post about
a couple that were not happy at all with the results of their
wedding photographer, and the results were honestly I don't want to say terrible, but they were not
up to standard. They were very subpar,
and I thought, Well, I can improve this meaning the shot has already been taken, the wedding will
not be repeated. So I thought, why
not do a class about teaching how you can improve something that's
already been shot. So this is more like an
advanced technique or a bunch of advanced techniques
to improve your editing. This is what this
class is all about. So who am I? My
name is PerTmash. I'm a professional photographer. I have been for 20 years
now. Yeah, that's true. And I work with some major
brands, mostly automotive, but not only my portfolio
consists of Mercedes Benz, Austin, Martin, Porch, and a lot of other automotive brands. I also work with models. I also work with other
stuff like publications, food photography, et
cetera, et cetera. I like to consider myself
well rounded a photographer. The only thing I don't do is weddings and those types of
events that for me is a no, no, I don't feel like I'm particularly skilled in that
area, so I don't do that. But, yeah, that's me.
The necessary equipment for this class won't be much, honestly, because
the idea here is, let's take some shots that have been taken by someone else. There are a lot of free
royalty shots online. Most of them are great, but the idea is, let's take the shot and
improve them after the fact. So that means composition
can't be changed, and a lot of times that means
you get the shots in JPEG. You don't get the shots in raw, which would be awesome, especially for improving
low light situations. But that's what you sometimes get as a professional
photographers Editor, more editor in this case.
But that's what you get. So what you will need
as equipment for this class is just
your typical software to edit your shots. Be it photoshop, light room, whatever, or any other software. I'm not sponsored, so this is just my preferred at
the moment. Software. So you only need to have access to photo
editing software. So what are we going to do? I've touched on
this a bit before, but my main goal here is to tell you show you how
to improve photos that were taken yourself or by another
photographer that you don't really like or that
the client doesn't like and asks you to see if
you can improve them. So this is a very
requested skill lately. I don't know why,
but people have been very disappointed with their
original photographers. So they a lot of times go to their secondary photographer
to get how can I say this, to get better quality photos, but you are not taking them. You are just editing them. So there's a bunch of stuff that can be done,
and we will do it. So, yeah, that's what we are
going to do on this class. That being said, let's go.
2. Actually Saving the Photo: Real-Time Editing Breakdown: Guys, welcome back to my class. This will be a short
class in terms of individual videos because
we are not taking the shot. We are improving a shot
that's been taken by yourself that you don't
like or by someone else. So I'm going to take a shot that was taken
by someone else. I only have it as a low quality, not a very big resolution. JPEG. The photo has
already been edited, I think, by the
previous photographer. So it's all the
complications are all here. So this makes it a bit harder, but it's better for
me to teach you how to go around some
of these situations if you're ever in the position
where you need to improve the quality or the editing
of single or multiple shots, especially if you
didn't take them, which is always the
worst case scenario. So you now see my photoshop, I'm going to improve this shot. This was taken from a
reedit post where the guy, like I said, in my intro, the guy was not happy
at all with the shots that shot were taken
during his wedding, and he publicly posted this and asked if anyone
could improve them. So here I am improving
one and using this skill to teach you guys something that I think
can be really useful, even if you are not improving other people's shots just
for your own workflow. So let's go. Let's improve
this shot and see. Well, as you can see, this shot, let me just zoom
in on the people. Quality is awful. Okay, we are seeing
this at 500%, but even at 100%, you can still see quality
is completely terrible. Too much noise seems
like this was edited in an HDR kind of style where
there's not much separation. There's not much contrast
between light and shadow. There's not much contrast
between the saturations. There's not much difference, let's say, between this area, which should be a bit
darker where they are dancing and the area in the background where there's
fog probably there's a light source that would
illuminate much more. But this seems to
me like this was a rush job to edit this
like it was an HDR. That's why when we are up close, you can see the quality in the background is not that bad. Is not good, but
it's not that bad, but the quality in their faces is just completely terrible. And it's the main focus. So the photographer kind of
shot himself in the foot, but that's what we
have to work on. We have to keep in mind people here are the most
important thing. They are our subject although this is an awesome awesome view, people are our most
important thing, or most important element. They are our subjects. So that's what we
will be focusing on. Now, the first thing I
like to do is duplicate my layer so I can work in
another layer without messing. And I also like to
compare what I've done to the original
image, let's say. First thing, I come to filter, you probably don't see this menu because I'm
recording just the window, but I like to come to
filter and convert for smart filters so
I don't lose my job. Sounds weird. And then
camera raw filter. I like to work in camera raw because if I were to
import a raw file, this is where I would start. So this is where I start
even with a JPEG file that's heavily compressed and terribly edited. So let's go. First of all, I like to add contrast because I
think it was taken out. Just by adding contrast, I feel like this has made a
big change to to the shot, I think the lack of
contrast because of the HDR meaning when
people add it to HDR, they try to neutralize
everything. This means that
the eyelight parts and the shadow parts
come closer together. So there's less of a contrast, less of a difference
between them. So there are situations
where you need that example, architecture when
you're shooting inside and you want to see what's
outside the window, there are situations
like this that don't require HDR almost at all. They require a dreamy look
like it was all amazing. And I'm sure the
day was amazing, but the shots have to have that kind of feeling like
everything was amazing. So let's start to edit. Of course, I'm going to do this my each photographer
has their own style, their own creative
way of working. So this is my way, okay? This is not a right
or wrong way. I'm just going to give
you small tips along the way that might
help you if you are facing some kind of
request like this where the client wants you to improve a shot
that's already Okay. But everyone is free to
have their own style, so there's no wrong style
that doesn't exist. So let's increase exposure a bit because we want to
focus on the couple. We don't want to focus on
the background at first. So let's do this. Bring highlights a bit down, shadows a bit down
for the moment. Blacks a bit down, so it gives a bit more contrast. The whites are not doing much unless I really push
them. Let's see. Now, I shadows down, light. There's a small part in the sky that makes a big difference. So I'm not going to touch
too much on the highlights. Color. I'm going
to add some color. I feel like this doesn't
have enough color, neither vibrance nor saturation. So I'm going to
add a bit of both. A temperature and
for the moment, I won't touch them. Texture, I'm trying not to
add too much because it will inevitably enhance I'm going to zoom in
further so you can see, enhance the lack of details. So texture, I'm going
to put back at zero. Let's bring it back and
play with our clarity. Let's bring clarity down a bit. Okay, fit it here. Let's put a negative vignette, not too much, but focus
our eye on the couple. And another thing is, I feel like this should be more or less the original light because I feel like
there would be like, light coming in from the
back from the outside and not that much light coming in from the bottom and top, meaning from behind
the photographer, because feel like this is like a restaurant or
someplace where they were, and the light would be much stronger coming
from the outside. So I would put this
vignette in the negatives. So it's more
realistic, let's say. Playing with a curve, I'm going
to leave this to the end. I think, one thing that
I usually don't do, but I feel like this photo
is lacking is separation. Do I mean by separation? These leaves on the
distance are as focused as the
face of the bride, which for me is no, no. I don't know which type of
lens the photographer had, but for me in these types of situations, I want separation. I don't want everything
to be sharp. I want this background
to be a bit blurred. And this is where
the new lens blur comes into play. It
does a great job. Of course, you can play with
it now and fix some things, but it does a great job separating the couple
from the background. I feel like this
is a bit too much. I'm going to go about halfway, a bit more maybe in the 40s. Let's just so you see, we've lost the nose, the chin, and we've lost
a bit of the crown, but it's easily
readable if we click on the focus brush and
just paint this here. So the nose is bick the
chin and mouth is back. Don't worry if you, let's say, do a little bit more because there's always the blur tool to come and fix whatever you did
that you feel was too much. I'm just doing this
by feeling the crown. So just go do this, and you are going to say, Oh, that looks terrible. Yes, it does. But this
is the first step. I like to add too much
and then remove it. So I'm going to zoom
in even further now. And I'm going to just
on the blur one, blur, read the blur the dot. Here. And now, everything that I feel shouldn't be in
focus in the crown, which is a bit difficult
because it's green on green. So the contrast is not great. So you have to assume
where the crown would end and the background would start so Let's
do the easy ones. These ones, this is easy. This is also easy
because we can clearly see that this is something
that comes from there. If you don't like, you can
always go to the focus tool. So you can go between these
two and do a nice job. What I like to do is not hold the mouse down and
drag, but keep clicking. So it makes small dots. It doesn't make small dots, but it's not a perfect line. If you click here, click
here, click, clear, it will have a nondulation and it will look a bit
better in my eyes. So whenever I start
doing this job, what I do is click click, click, click, click, click
click, click. That's exactly what I'm doing. If you can't hear my mouse, I think it does look better, but to each is, but this is the way I work. Looking better. In here, I won't take that
much. Just a little. Now I can paint because it's completely outside of the crown. I feel like here, it's
missing something. So back to focus.
Let's focus a bit. Here, that's said
some things here. You just try to make it
visually make sense because it's kind of hard to know
where it exactly would end. So you just kind of
wanted to make sense. And you always work with very, very big Zoom working at 300% because if you do good at 300%, it will look great at 100,
if you know what I mean? Something that looks
good with more zoom always looks I'm not
going to say flawless, but looks better with
a bit less Zoom. So kind of dancing
between these two, and I feel like this is a
pretty good starting point. So let's just leave this here and go to fit much
better already. Calibration. I like to play with calibration because
there is a lot of green green spluralV greens, and I can play
with my reds here, you see, it makes a bit
of a difference, right? You don't want to play
with it too much. Why? Because look at her skin. I'm just going to give some little touches to
this. Let me zoom out. Well, if you go to the right
side, she becomes yellow, which is what we don't want
to the left, she becomes red. So just put it. Here, what I will always like
to do to see what it does in each particular photo is to push it to
the limits and see, Okay, what is the
direction I want to go if any direction or
just leave it at zero. In the green department, I'm going to leave it at zero. In the blues, it makes a hell of a difference
to the green. So I'm just going to
put it at zero and then maybe up to the left. So this is before. This is after it's barely
visible the difference. Now you can play also
with the saturation. I'm going to increase
it a bit on the red. I'm going to
increase it a bit on the greens and on the blue. I think I think I'm going
to remove like I said, there's no right or
wrong way to do this. This is all about filling, okay? Detail. Now, this is a hard one because
if you sharpen it, you bring out the noise, let's say, the lack of quality. This is not only noise, it's it's lack of
quality with noise with highly compressed JPEG that has been sent to a website, so you have to be very
careful with the sharpening. Would do a noise reduction first is going to be quite hard to get a perfect balance because of the way this shot was
edited because of the HDR. Even though I feel like
I've made a big progress, I can do a little bit more. I don't want to overdo it. I don't want people to look like they are made out of wax, but I want this to be dreamy. So I'm not I don't want that
fine detail in the face, like all the pores and stuff. So this is a wedding shot. It's meant to look dreamy. It was a dreamy day
for the couple, so that's what we
want to do here. Color grading, I like to do, and this is personal preference, a bit of yellows on the shadows and a bit of yellows
in the highlights. It makes a bit of a difference, and it makes it
seem like there was more sunlight
eating those trees. We didn't lose the green, but we added yellow sunlight
yellow to that color. So that's what I like
to do. Color mixer. I can pick on a green and
try to improve the greens. You can see if this is an
exaggeration, of course, but I can pick there and
improve the greens a bit, and a bit saturation
to the greens, maybe some luminant or remove some luminant depending
on where you want to go, I'm going to remove a bit. So the focus of the eye is
always on the couple, okay? The curve, I don't think I
will mess with the curve. I think it's pretty
good as it is, but I will now go to my mask. Masks. I will start
with the subjects. Of course, this is the part
that matters most subjects, a bit of exposure, just a bit of exposure. We don't want to bring all
the nasty details back again. So exposure when I had a
little bit of contrast, bring the shadows down a bit. So this seems real. Lights. I'm going to
bring them down a bit because this forehead
is too heavily lit, and then I'm not going
to do much more here. I'm not going to
do much more here. I'm going to call this couple. Always name your masks, and I'm going to do
a duplicate invert, which is not couple. Or you can call it background, but I'm an idiot, so I
just call it not couple. Let's bring down the exposure
a bit very slightly. You don't want to
darken your role sin. What you want to do
is focus the eye. So if you just do this very
lightly, this will work, and you will have a
much better difference between what you want
to shoot and what you don't want to is
basically what I'm doing changing exposures
from the subject and the background and stuff
is re lighting the scene. Of course, I can change
the light on his forehead. I can change the
light like how it's sitting his suit or dress. But I can change if the
background is more dark, less dark, if the couple
is more dark, less dark. So I can control to a certain point the
lighting of the scene, okay so this is all good. What I want to do now
is come to the dehaze. And if you pull all
the way to the left, you see it's completely
ruined, of course. But I always like to
add a bit of dehaze. Not much, just a little bit. It's like adding
fog to the scene. It removes a bit of the
contrast that I added, but I want to remove I want the focus to be on them again. So I just add a bit
of negative dehaze, so I subtract the
haze a negative. So other thing that
I want to do is add a light source coming in
from the back purposely. What I mean by this
is the photographer probably did an edit
to HDR to remove that, but I don't think
that's the correct way. That's why the couple
was not that happy. So let's add light source. There are two steps
that I like to do. People do this in different
ways, very different ways. This is the steps
that I like to do. First of all, I like to
do a linear gradient and pull it like,
so don't worry. I'm just going to do this. This will look terrible at
first, but keep with me. Then I'm going to go
to the dehaze again and add dehaze like
it's a light source. Okay? Now, this is
all very heavy, why? Because I want to see
exactly what it is affecting because I need to remove
places it doesn't make sense. Like, for example, below
the ceiling in this corner, it would enter a bit. So let's just like
this in this way, too. So let's do it a bit like this. Okay, I missed
completely. Let's do it. L so now I can see clearly
how it's affecting. That's why I over exaggerated
the light coming in. And now I also subtract
the subject because the light is on the
background of them. So light in, that's
what I like to call it. And if you can, there are two ways now
to reduce the effect. You can lower the exposure and temperatures
and all of that, or you can just come to the amount if you see you
put the amount to zero. It's exactly as it was. So the amount is at 100, I can duplicate the effect, but what I want to do
is just smooth it. So the photo was like this, but I want some light
coming in from the back. So I'm going to put it at about 50 and let's
see the difference. Now we have a light source
coming from the back. It's like, there was a fake sun. Let's put some
more yellow to it. We can fake the
sunset another bit more dehaze because no one wants to see the details
on the mountain. Although it's a very
beautiful sight, I feel like it's
enough to see this. Once again, this is my
personal preference, do you. There's no wrong way. So I think that's about
it. That's what I do. And now, since there's
a light source, I also like to add the
exact point where it would, in theory, come from. So let's the circle here. And again, let's overcompensate. Let's overdo this so we can
see what we are working with. Okay, so there's a light source. Let's subtract the subject because it's always on the back. And also let's subtract from this side, the ceiling. Okay. Okay let some light leak in
so the ceiling isn't so dark. Let's do it, like, so fake sun. It's what I like to call it. And once again, you can
always come to the amount, and this is what it was, and you can always come to
the amount that you like. In this case, I'm not opposed to do it a bit too obviously. And also you can
change the feather. If you put it to zero,
it feels perfect. If you put it to 100, it's just a small point. So let's do this
like 75 for example. And you can see it adds
a light source there. It's a bit too much for me, so let's put it at about 60.
It's about right for me. Okay, so again, this is my
way of doing things, okay? You can see the difference
from the original shot and from my shot original, my shot. I will still reframe this shot because I don't like
the composition at all. It's not centered. It's
not at two thirds. It's not a pleasing composition. I don't understand why
these trees are here. Well, it's just my a few. But I do not really understand why it was
chosen to be this way. It was a conscience decision, but I will now
change this a bit. Okay, let's remove this
until that disappears. And the couple it's now on about two thirds of
the composition. So I like it. I like this more. If you like to
center it, go ahead. I feel like this is a more
pleasing composition. Going to duplicate this
background and merge it with the empty layer just so I can clean these leaves or these holes in the
ground or something. So I'm just going to clean this. I don't like visual
distractions. Whenever I can, I
try to remove them. This is an easy fix. This one is not so
easy because it's removing that's zooming
back to my tool. Let's paint with some careful. Okay. Remove this, remove this. This can be removed. I'm sorry this is
taking a bit of time, but I do like my photos
to be a bit more clean than the original guy or girl did. So let's go back. Now you can compare what
I did clean on the floor. Now, this tree in the back is also not
very pleasing to my eye. So again, let's clean it. Okay, perfect. Let me
just do smooth out. Is okay. This is about right.
Nothing noticeable. Okay? So now we have a much more pleasing shot
to my eyes, at least, there's something here
that I will try to remove, but this I will
remove with the eye because of the
pattern in the back. Generative feel a generative
feel. Well it's working. We've removed some elements that were visual noise, as
we like to call them. So it's almost done to my eyes. So AI does a perfect job. It understands the pattern
and recreates it perfectly. So I always like to do this. When there's a pattern, I
always like to do this via AI. So that's I like to merge these layers so I can
have a complete shot. And since this is not
my working stuff, let's say, this is not my job. I'm just doing this to teach you otherwise I would
keep all the layers, everything that
I've done so I can further change it
if I ever need to. Now, if you don't like
her face or his face, how it's light up, I
don't dislike them. She could be a bit brighter, but doesn't really matter to me. Honestly, I think
it's good enough. It creates a bit of contrast with the
background, so it's not bad. You can always go to the
camera and redo this. So this is my final shot. Compare this to the
original, my original. Why. So you can see, even from low quality image, you can actually improve it. You can't do miracles, but you can actually improve if you know some
techniques and understand, especially where is your target. So I'm not going to
do this much longer. This video, it's already
a big, big video. I'm sorry for that, but I wanted to give you
all the techniques and how I apply them and
how you can apply them. So it's a bit long. Now, what I want you to do, guys, is try it for yourself. Pick a shot from the web that
hasn't got any copyright, so be careful with that and
edit it in a different way. It doesn't mean it
has to be a bad shot. It just has to be a shot
that isn't your style, and you edit it in
your own style. So that's always a thing I
like to do to keep practicing, keep improving, keep
knowing more stuff, understanding better the
functionalities of Photoshop, a light room, et cetera, whatever software you use it's always nice to understand
how you can relight stuff. I know, for example, Luminar has a dedicated relight
functionality based on AI. So the Luminar could be a big player in this re edit shots that were taken
by another photographer. But I chose to do this all
in Photoshop because I feel most of you guys
work with Photoshop. I feel. So that's it.
Thanks for watching. If you have any questions, leave them below, and don't
forget to do the project. Thanks for watching Once again and see you on the next
one, guys. Thank you.
Pedro Thomaz, Pro-Photographer
